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Concept
Individual psychology
Summary
Individual psychology (Individualpsychologie) is a psychological method or science founded by the Viennese psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The English edition of Adler's work on the subject (1925) is a collection of papers and lectures given mainly between 1912 and 1914. The papers cover the whole range of human psychology in a single survey, and were intended to mirror the indivisible unity of the personality.
In developing the concept of individual psychology, Adler broke away from the psychoanalytic school of Sigmund Freud. While Adler initially called his work "free psychoanalysis", he later rejected the label of "psychoanalyst". His method, involving a holistic approach to the study of character, has been extremely influential in later 20th century counselling and psychiatric strategies.
The term "individual psychology" does not mean to focus on the individual. Adler said one must take into account the patient's whole environment, including the people the patient associates with. The term "individual" is used to mean the patient is an indivisible whole.
Adler moved the grounds determining a person’s psychology from sex and libido, the Freudian standpoint, to one based on the individual evaluation of world. He gave special prominence to societal factors. According to him, a person has to combat or confront three forces: societal, love-related, and vocational forces. These confrontations determine the final nature of a personality. Adler based his theories on the pre-adulthood development of a person. He laid stress on areas such as hated children, physical deformities at birth, birth order, etc.
Adler's theory is similar to the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, who acknowledged Adler's influence on his own theories. Both maintain that the individual human being is the best determinant of his or her own needs, desires, interests, and growth.
According to Adler, humans are primarily motivated by an inferiority complex. In his view, an individual derives his or her personality traits from external factors that arise out of drive for superiority.
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