Alfred Adler: biography of the founder of Individual Psychology

Neither him psychoanalysis nor can psychodynamic psychology be explained knowing only the work of Sigmund Freud.

In fact, psychotherapy based on the fundamental ideas of psychoanalysis has three great founders: Sigmund Freud (of course), Carl Gustav Jung Y Alfred Adler. This article deals with the latter, who, in addition to being one of the first to question the ideas of the father of psychoanalysis, was the creator of the Individual Psychology.

Alfred Adler biography

Alfred Adler was born into a Viennese Jewish family in 1870, a couple of decades before psychoanalysis began to take shape through the works of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer.

From a very young age, Adler had a series of health complications that are commonly referred to as the beginning of the Austrian's interest in medicine. Career that, in his youth, he successfully studied at the University of Vienna.

After college he meets Freud

After graduating from a medical degree in 1895, he married and began to come into contact with psychoanalysis at the hands of Sigmund Freud, whom he personally met in 1899. From then on, Alfred Adler began to get into the ideas about the functioning of the psyche that he proposed

freudian theory.

Adler's enthusiasm for psychoanalysis and psychology in general led him to become the first president of the city's association of psychoanalysts, the Wednesday Psychological Society (which would later receive the official name of Vienna Psychoanalytic Association), created in 1902.

There the fundamental ideas with which psychoanalysts tried to explain the human mind were debated and developed, and this exposure to the theoretical proposals of Freud and his disciples contributed to Alfred Adler making his theories more and more complex.

The conflict between Adler and Freud

Alfred Adler's notoriety in the emerging psychoanalytic world grew very rapidly, partly because of his closeness to Freud but also because of the vehemence with which he expressed his ideas. In fact, there came a point where Adler became director of the Journal of Psychoanalysis (Zentralbaltt für Psychoanalyse), a publication of which Freud was the editor and which, of course, was highly relevant in his field.

However, shortly after this foray into the publishing world, Alfred Adler began to question fundamental pillars of Freud's theories, such as sexual theory. This caused that in 1911 the opposition to Freud's ideas prevented him from continuing to work in the magazine. Also, that same year Alfred Adler left the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association. This was the first great rupture experienced by the Viennese psychoanalyst circle, although they would follow. others: shortly afterwards Carl Gustav Jung would also definitively distance himself from the orthodox psychoanalysis of Freud.

But Adler was not without interest in creating ideas about how mental processes work. Simply, he created another psychological school similar in many points to the one advocated by Freud. This new school is called Individual Psychology.

Alfred Adler and Individual Psychology

One could talk at length about the discrepancies that caused Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud to split, but the main reasons were twofold.

The first is that Adler gave much less importance to sexuality compared to Freud. He did not believe that neither sex nor the way it is symbolized was an essential regulator of human behavior from the earliest years of life.

The second has to do with the role of the unconscious. Yes for Freud the unconscious It is everything that, acting from the shadows, keeps us tied to a series of behavior and thought patterns according to what we have done in the past, Alfred Adler put more emphasis on the power that each individual has in structuring the functioning of their mind. according to what happens in the present.

That is, on the one hand, it stops considering past acts as a drag that inevitably conditions us, and on the other, it gives more importance to our way of interacting with what we feel and think in the here and now (in addition to recognizing the importance of the context in which we find ourselves in each moment).

Adler forged the foundations of this new Individual Psychology by looking at his disabled patients. Although all of them had a history of similar limitations, some were consumed by their inferiority complex when compared with other people, while in others the physical limitations they experienced acted as a motivating factor that led them, according to Adler, to the self-improvement.

The break between Alfred Adler and Freud, therefore, had much to do with the degree to which the former attached importance to the conscious aspect of thought, which makes us unique people with the ability to build goals originals.

The legacy of Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler died in 1937, but his ideas have had a great echo. He was the first great representative of psychodynamic psychology to question great dogmas of theories of Freud, and built an approach more focused on the creative power of the individual aware of his powers and limitations. Of course, all of his works are outside of what is now considered to be psychology. scientific, but that was not an obstacle so that his influences did not inspire the world of the humanities and the philosophy.

The Individual Psychology that Alfred Adler founded along with other members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association It has had a great influence both on Humanist Psychology that appeared in the second half of the 20th century and on various proposals framed in the psychodynamic current. In a world where philosophy of self-help and self-improvement is gaining a lot of traction, it is not uncommon for Adler's ideas, who had a more optimistic view on how we are supposed to think and feel that your teacher, have good acceptance.