Overcompensation: what it is and how it influences the mind according to Alfred Adler

The term "overcompensation" was widely studied by the Viennese physician and psychotherapist Alfred Adler, widely known for being the founder of the school of individual psychology, as well as for having been a contributor to Sigmund Freud.

Overcompensation in psychology is the exaggeration or aggrandizement of a certain capacity that a person possesses with the objective of conceal or cover up another characteristic or capacity that they consider to be inferior compared to other people, this self-perception may be real or imaginary. In Adler's theory, overcompensation is closely related to the inferiority complex.

In this article we will see in more detail what the concept of overcompensation and the inferiority complex consist of.

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What is overcompensation?

Even if the concept of overcompensation had already been used by Sigmund Freud, it was Alfred Adler, the founder of the school of individual psychology, who introduced this term into his theory in relation to feelings of inferiority suffered by some people, thanks to which this concept was given greater consideration in the field of psychology.

And it is that one of the foundations of Adler's theory of individual psychology is the belief that one of the main motivations for people's psyches is that tendency to trying to compensate for one's own physical characteristics that people consider to be "inferior" to other people's.

In other words, overcompensation is the tendency to try to exaggerate a series of capacities that a person possesses in order to cover or compensate for other capacities. or his own characteristics that he considers to be inferior to those of other people, these being real or even imaginary, the result of an exaggeration created in his imagination.

In the process of overcompensation, it can also happen that a person has any type of physical or cognitive impairment and tries correct it in an excessive and even exaggerated way.

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Overcompensation and inferiority complex in psychology

The inferiority complex is made up of a series of attitudes, mental representations and behaviors related to a feeling of inferiority with respect to other people. It could be said that the inferiority complex is a personal feeling of maladjustment.

Adler in his theory of individual psychology used this construct to give a central meaning to that form of self-perception that some have people, relating some aptitude or physical characteristic, which they considered to be inferior with respect to the functionality that they consider should have (p. For example, a person has a complex with his arms because he thinks that they are "too thin" and that they will not allow him to pick up heavy objects, and may even underestimate his own strength).

So, in his theory he meant that people tried to overcompensate for that physical characteristic that causes them the complex or feeling of inferiority (p. For example, to “compensate” for that complex he has with his arms, he usually always wears long-sleeved shirts).

Adller was especially interested in the study of the inferiority complex and the negative and positive effects of self-esteem during the time he worked with children who had some type of physical disability, in which observed notable differences in the achievement capacity of his patients, and it is that some of them achieve great successes in sport, seeing in them a great motivation to overcome their own abilities day by day. At the same time, other patients were dejected by their disability and had no motivation to try to progress. Therefore, Adeler understood that these differences were due to the self-esteem of each of them,

In psychoanalysis, there are manuals on the subject that explain that the inferiority complex has been characterized by a struggles to achieve certain unrealistic or unattainable goals, thus causing insecurities and complexes in the person.

Freud considered that the inferiority complex was a symptom that should be analyzed in the sessions of psychotherapy in reference to the possibility that there were two types of causes for this complex: real or imaginary. Likewise, Freud referred to the inferiority complex, regardless of whether its cause is real or imaginary, as a series of thoughts about yourself that could trigger feelings of guilt or even depression, being in any case a negative evaluation of oneself.

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Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology

To better understand overcompensation, it is convenient to better understand Adler's theory of individual psychology, which in his psychological approach emphasizes studying and understanding people. people, with all their characteristics, as a whole that is in contact with the environment in which they live, since Adler conceives the human being as a unitary being who is fixed in his environment. That is is influenced by what happens in the community in which you live. Instead, Freud placed less importance on the environmental context and focused more on the intrapsychic life of people.

In turn, Adler sees the human being as an entity that cares about his future, and not so much in his past, as Freud did, which guides him by his own instinct to improvement, which keeps people motivated to start a series of tasks that allow the achievement of goals that have previously been proposed.

Therefore, there are two fundamental ideas in Adler's theory: the desire for superiority and the sense of community of the people.

This sense of community is given by the fact that people are social beings who need relationships and unity with other people for their survival. On the other hand, the desire for superiority is that motivation that people have to improve throughout their lives and is also related to the sense of perfectionism. Then this desire for superiority and perfectionism are produced in the social context, since by nature human beings tend to be competitive and to compare themselves with others.

At the same time, this desire for superiority and perfectionism is often triggered by people's attempts to compensate for a feeling of inferiority, by perceive some kind of own weakness or weak point compared to that of other people around us, and this could be seen as a way of overcompensation. According to Adler, all people suffer that feeling of inferiority at some point in their life and to some extent, so they try in some way to overcompensate.

Adler believes that this feeling of inferiority could be very pronounced and cause great discomfort in those who suffer complicated problems throughout their childhood that make them feel insecure or also in those who suffer a physical limitation of any kind. The importance that Alfred also attached to the impact of childhood experiences in adulthood it comes from the influence that Freud had on him, and Adler also considered that certain complicated events in childhood could condition the rest of life.

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Its relation to people's lifestyles

According to Adler's theory of individual psychology, all human beings live driven by an impulse to improve, what he calls a lifestyle, which can be understood as all the choices and all the acts that a person goes doing throughout his life so that there is an overcompensation of the feelings of inferiority that the person.

So people, according to Adler, often lead a lifestyle that gives meaning to their beliefs and at the same time allows them to progress towards their goals.

Here we see again Adler's premise that people function as a whole that try to achieve a promising future and to overcome the current situation in which they live, so that there is a better constant in different areas than each person consider important and also serve as an overcompensation for some feeling of inferiority.

Adler's theory of lifestyle has three central concepts:

• Fictitious finalism: people are finalists since they are always looking to achieve goals.

• Ideal self: it is constituted by the set of objectives for the future that each person has.

• Creative self: part of the personality that makes sense of the past, corrects mistakes and uses them to seek a better future.

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Example of overcompensation

In childhood and adolescence, comparison with other people is very commonAt the same time that people tend to be more insecure in these stages of their life due to lack of maturity, among other factors, at the same time that his self-concept and his personality.

When a child feels inferior, by having the perception that he is surrounded by other children who are smarter and stronger, this inferiority motivates you to do certain things in order to improve yourself and achieve specific goals, which could be a way of overcompensation.

It must be borne in mind that if this child has a psychological balance, achieving success could be beneficial and consolidate self-confidence, Whereas if he does not have a mental balance, achieving success does not alleviate his feelings of inferiority, so he could develop a complex of inferiority.