![]() Even if his goal is useless, his behavior is reasonable. On finding out, however, that his aim is to sit on top of the scaffold, the observer may consider the man’s actions to be rational enough. He often illustrated the goal-directedness and “logic” of neurotic symptoms by the following example: If one spots a man at the foot of a scaffold, making strange gestures, one may think that he is confused. His psychological system is, therefore, teleological, whereas Freud’s is causalistic and he used a teleological approach to explore mental illness, in particular the neuroses. In 1912, in his book The Neurotic Constitution, Adler pointed out that all our thinking is goal-directed and forms a unified “style of life,” particularly well revealed in mental aberrations. ![]() It was not until 1925 that he used the term “inferiority complex.” However, his study of the influence of physical disability represents only the beginning of his investigations of the sources of inferiority feelings. Occasionally it is alleged that Adler considered all mental disturbance to be caused by physical disability. Adler explained that the symptoms of a neurosis similarly represent the compensation of inferiority feelings but compensation in an unsatisfactory direction. As an example of so-called overcompensation, a term denoting extreme forms of compensation, he pointed to Demosthenes, who stuttered as a boy but trained his speech by placing pebbles in his mouth and trying to shout down the roar of the waves. ![]() The results of compensation may be satisfactory or unsatisfactory. In 1907, in his book Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation, Adler described the process of compensation for physical disabilities. Of his four children, his daughter Alexandra and his son Kurt are psychiatrists. In 1937, while giving a series of lectures at the University of Aberdeen, he collapsed on the street and died of heart failure within a few minutes.Īdler was married to Raissa Timofeyevna Epstein in 1897. From then on, he spent only the summer months in Vienna.Īdler was an excellent lecturer, and he established contact with his audience as easily in English as in his native German. In 1926 Adler was appointed visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and in 1932, he also began teaching at the Long Island College of Medicine, where he held the title of visiting professor of medical psychology. These clinics functioned until 1934, when they were ordered closed by the fascist regime, which favored an authoritarian approach in the field of education, as elsewhere. Soon there were about thirty such clinics in the city, conducted under his supervision, staffed by his pupils, and affiliated with parent-teacher associations and private institutions. In the following years, he lectured extensively, and one of his books, Understanding Human Nature (1927), commonly referred to as a classic and still on the required reading list of several colleges in the United States, is based on the notes of one of his listeners.Īfter his return from military service during World War I, Adler opened the first child guidance clinic in Vienna. In 1912, Adler named his system Individualpsychologie, and that same year he published The Neurotic Constitution, a book that outlined his main concepts in both their theoretical and practical aspects. In 1911, Adler and nine of his followers left Freud’s circle and developed their own school of thought. The differences between the two men became even more marked after Adler had published, in 1907, his Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation. Upon Freud’s assurance that many different views, including Adler’s own, would be discussed, Adler accepted the invitation.Īdler had never agreed with Freud’s theory that early sexual trauma caused mental disease, and he persistently opposed Freud’s method of dream interpretation. In 1902, when he wrote a review of Freud’s book on dream interpretation, Freud sent him a postcard inviting him to join his discussion circle. Thus, even as a young man of 28, his approach to human problems was holistic, foreshadowing his later basic conceptual approach.Īround 1900, Adler’s chief interest was the study of psychopathological symptoms within the field of general medicine. ![]() ![]() Three years later he wrote his first book (1898), in which he indicated the health hazards to which tailors were exposed, stressing the principle that human beings could not be considered in isolation but only in relation to their total environment. His father, Leopold Adler, had come to Vienna from the Burgenland and was a grain merchant his mother was from Moravia.Īdler was graduated from the University of Vienna Medical School in 1895. Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was the second of six children. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |