Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler(1870-1937) was a key figure in the psychoanalytic tradition. Although he was a contemporary of Freud, their ideas differed to a great degree. Adler deceptively labelled his version of psychoanalysis as individual psychology. Counter to intuition, this brand of psychology views the person in context of the society in which they are a part. The word individual here have a meaning more closely resembling un-divided or unified. In this way Adler's psychology takes a somewhat Gestalt or wholistic approach to psychology. Where Freud divided the psyche into three (the id, the ego, and the super ego), Adler felt it was much more important to see people as unified wholes.

Adler was an outspoken critic of Freud, and, as with Jung, he found that Freud placed far to much emphasis on the sexual nature of the mind and development. Adler reduced sex to merely a display of superiority. Adler did not think of superiority in the common interpretation of the word, rather an attempt to reach superiority was the overriding motivation for behavior. The desire for superiority in this sense refers to the desire for self-realization, completeness, and perfection, as opposed to a competitive view of superiority. Frustrations may occur when one is appeared to by feelings of inferiority such as inadequacy, incompleteness, or gross imperfection. These feelings may have a variety of sources, such as social status, physical defects, and level of parental care. Excessive frustration with or overcompensation for any of feelings of inferiority are, according to Adler, some of the major roots to psychopathology.

Adler was the first to describe the way in which birth order may effect the development of an individuals personality. He described the only child as most likely to be pampered and as such have a craving for adult attention and difficulty sharing. The First child, while being the center of attention for the first part of life, suddenly is faced with a loss of attention and as such may take to different strategies such as acting out as a means of regaining lost attention. Second and subsequent children will perceive the previous born as a sort of "pace setter" and show a tendency to highly competitive. The youngest child is likely to be the most pampered in a family, however they are likely to experience feelings of inferiority with the entirety of the household being bigger, faster, stronger, and better at everything. Often youngest siblings are highly motivated to become better than the other siblings.

Adler also pioneered such ideas as the Inferiority Complex and the Napoleon Complex.