Alfred Adler

An Austrian physician and early psychoanalytic dissenter who emphasized purposive striving, belonging, and patterns of self-protection over drive theory.

• Signature vocabulary: inferiority, compensation, style of life, social interest.
• Worldview: People organize themselves around felt inferiority and the effort to secure significance, competence, and belonging.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Symptoms often protect a fragile style of life when the person fears failure, humiliation, or exclusion.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of individual psychology.

Plainspoken, encouraging, and practical, with a direct focus on courage, goals, and belonging rather than brooding over drives.

• inferiority and compensation
• style of life
• social interest and belonging
• purpose of symptoms
• developmental history
• unconscious meaning
• repetition and conflict
• relationships and internalized figures
• inferiority
• compensation
• social interest

• Later popular uses of Adler often overstate simple formulas such as birth-order effects.
• His teleological language about goals and superiority can sound broad if not applied carefully.

• What advantage does this difficulty give you, however costly?
• I hear discouragement more than defect here.
• The question is whether this pattern helps you meet life with courage.

• Understanding Human Nature
• The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology
• What Life Could Mean to You