Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler
In 1902 a group of men, mostly doctors and all Jewish, began meeting every
Wednesday in an apartment in Vienna. Sigmund Freud’s “Wednesday
Society” would eventually become the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, and
its first president was Alfred Adler.
The second most important figure in the Viennese circle, and the founder
of individual psychology, Adler never considered himself a disciple of Freud.
While Freud was an imposing, patrician type who had come from a highly
educated background and lived in a fashionable district of Vienna, Adler was
the plain-looking son of a grain merchant who had grown up on the city’s
outskirts. While Freud was known for his knowledge of the classical world
and his collection of antiquities, Adler worked hard for better working-class
health and education and for women’s rights.
The pair’s famous split occurred in 1911, after Adler had become increasingly
annoyed with Freud’s belief that all psychological issues were generated
by repressed sexual feelings. A few years earlier Adler had published a book,
Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation, which argued that
people’s perceptions of their own body and its shortcomings were a major
factor in shaping their goals in life. Freud believed human beings to be wholly
driven by the stirrings of the unconscious mind, but Adler saw us as social
beings who create a style of life in response to the environment and to what
we feel we lack. Individuals naturally strive for personal power and a sense of
our own identity, but if healthy we also seek to adjust to society and make a
contribution to the greater good.