![]() An inferiority feeling usually acts as an incentive for development. The primary feeling of inferiority is the original and normal feeling that the infant or child of smallness, weakness, and dependency may experience: appreciation of this fact was a fundamental element in Adler's thinking, and an important part of his break with Sigmund Freud. Primary and secondary feelings of inferiority Thus, external factors are vital in character formation. There are some persons who become so infatuated with the idea of compensating for their disadvantages that they end up over-indulging in the pursuit. Under-compensation reflects a less active, even passive attitude toward development that usually places excessive expectations and demands on other people. Genius may result from extraordinary over-compensation. This may take a useful direction toward exceptional achievement, as the stutterer Demosthenes became an outstanding orator, or a useless direction toward excessive perfectionism. Over-compensation reflects a more powerful impulse to gain an extra margin of development, frequently beyond the normal range. The attitude of the world towards them is of a cool, rather uninterested sympathy. There are those who give in to their disadvantages and/or fears and become reconciled to them. A high level of compensation produces subsequent psychological difficulties. In less fortunate circumstances, the child, trapped within a sense of inferiority, compensates - or overcompensates, perhaps in grandiose fashion - by striving, consciously and unconsciously, to overcome and solve the problems of life, moving "from a felt minus to a felt plus". The "normal" person feels a full member of life and has "the courage to be imperfect" ( Sofie Lazarsfeld). In "normal" development, the child has experienced encouragement and accepts that her or his problems can be overcome in time by an investment of patient persistence and cooperation with others. Neurosis and other pathological states reveal the safe-guarding or defensive stratagems (largely unconscious or out of awareness) of the individual who believes her- or himself to be unequal to the demands of life, in a struggle to compensate for a felt weakness, physical or psychological. The character of the individual is formed by his or her responses to their influence in the following ways:Ĭompensation is a tendency to make up for underdevelopment or inferiority of physical or mental functioning through interest and training, usually within a relatively normal range of development. In his view, an individual derives his or her personality traits from external factors that arise out of drive for superiority. The theory of compensation, resignation and over-compensation Īccording to Adler, humans are primarily motivated by an inferiority complex. Both maintain that the individual human being is the best determinant of his or her own needs, desires, interests, and growth. He laid stress on areas such as hated children, physical deformities at birth, birth order, etc.Īdler's theory is similar to the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, who acknowledged Adler's influence on his own theories. Adler based his theories on the pre-adulthood development of a person. These confrontations determine the final nature of a personality. According to him, a person has to combat or confront three forces: societal, love-related, and vocational forces. ![]() He gave special prominence to societal factors. The term "individual" is used to mean the patient is an indivisible whole.įurther information: Alfred Adler § Basic principlesĪdler moved the grounds determining a person’s psychology from sex and libido, the Freudian standpoint, to one based on the individual evaluation of world. Adler said one must take into account the patient's whole environment, including the people the patient associates with. The term "individual psychology" does not mean to focus on the individual. His method, involving a holistic approach to the study of character, has been extremely influential in later 20th century counselling and psychiatric strategies. While Adler initially called his work "free psychoanalysis", he later rejected the label of " psychoanalyst". In developing the concept of individual psychology, Adler broke away from the psychoanalytic school of Sigmund Freud. The papers cover the whole range of human psychology in a single survey, and were intended to mirror the indivisible unity of the personality. The English edition of Adler's work on the subject (1925) is a collection of papers and lectures given mainly between 19. ![]() Individual psychology ( German: Individualpsychologie) is a psychological method or science founded by the Viennese psychiatrist Alfred Adler. School of psychology founded by Alfred Adler ![]()
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