Knowra Alfred Adler Alfred Adler Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was an Austrian physician and psychotherapist who founded individual psychology, emphasizing social interest, purposeful behavior, and the influence of feelings of inferiority.
Individual psychology : A psychological approach founded by Alfred Adler that studies people as unified, goal-directed beings shaped by social relationships. This is Adler’s framework for connecting personality, purpose, and social life.
Sigmund Freud : An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed influential theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Adler collaborated with Freud before their theoretical disagreements led to a lasting break.
Adlerian therapy : A psychotherapy approach based on individual psychology that explores goals, belonging, and patterns of living. It applies Adler’s concepts to understand distress and encourage constructive change.
Psychoanalysis : A theory and treatment tradition that explores unconscious conflicts, motives, and experiences, founded by Sigmund Freud. Adler’s school emerged from psychoanalysis but gave social belonging and conscious goals greater weight.
Inferiority complex : A persistent sense of inadequacy that can shape a person’s behavior and self-conception. Adler developed the idea from his account of how people respond to felt inferiority.
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society : A group founded in Vienna in 1902 to discuss and develop psychoanalytic ideas. Adler joined this circle and served as its president before leaving it.
Child guidance movement : A reform movement that developed services to support children’s mental health, development, and education. Adler helped establish child guidance work in Vienna through counseling and public education.
Carl Rogers : An American psychologist who founded person-centered therapy, emphasizing empathy, acceptance, and personal growth. Rogers’s approach offers a later humanistic alternative to Adler’s goal-focused framework.
Compensation (psychology) : Efforts to overcome or offset a perceived weakness, limitation, or shortcoming. Adler saw striving to compensate for felt weakness as a major source of motivation.
Carl Jung : A Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology after separating from Freud’s psychoanalytic movement. Jung, like Adler, became an independent psychological theorist after a break with Freud.
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