Adler's Individual Psychology

🧠 Psychology By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated October 15, 2026

Quick answer: Adler saw people as goal-directed social beings who strive to overcome inferiority, with social interest as the mark of mental health.

Contents

1. Background
2. Key concepts
3. Counselling and uses
4. References

Background

Adler belonged to Freud's Vienna circle but rejected the primacy of sexual drives and broke away in 1911. 'Individual' means the person as an indivisible whole.

Key concepts

Inferiority and compensation: everyone feels inferior, and overcoming it drives growth; in excess it becomes an inferiority complex.
Striving for superiority: an innate push towards completion, later called striving for perfection.
Fictional finalism: behaviour is pulled by self-chosen future goals more than pushed by the past.
Lifestyle: the personal pattern of beliefs formed in childhood.
Social interest: concern for the community, the criterion of mental health.
Birth order: position in the family shapes personality.

Counselling and uses

Adlerian counselling moves through relationship, lifestyle assessment (early recollections, family constellation), insight and reorientation, with encouragement at its core. Dreikurs extended it to democratic parenting and classroom management.

References

Adler, A. (1927). Understanding Human Nature. Greenberg.
Ansbacher, H. L., & Ansbacher, R. R. (Eds.). (1956). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. Basic Books.
Corey, G. (2017). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy (10th ed.). Cengage, ch. 5.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.