There are many theorists who have tried to delve into the study of personality theories. However, in this Psychology-Online article, we will highlight a psychologist who introduced the novel concept of individual psychology to the intellectual community, we will talk about Alfred Adler, biography and theories of personality.
We’ll start by talking about someone he never met: Theodore Roosevelt. Son of Martha and Theodore and born in Manhattan on October 27, 1858; It is said that he was a particularly beautiful baby who needed virtually no help to come into this world. His parents were strong, intelligent, handsome and forward-thinking. He must have had an idyllic childhood.
The Story of Theodore Roosevelt
But “Teddie,” as he was called, was not as healthy as he appeared to be at first glance. He suffered from severe asthma and tended to catch colds easily; He frequently had fevers and coughs and suffered from nausea and diarrhea. He was small and skinny. His voice was very high-pitched and he remained that way until his adulthood. He became a sickly young man and often had to sleep sitting in a chair due to asthma. Several times he was on the verge of dying due to lack of oxygen.
But not to paint the picture too dark, Teddie was an active (some would consider hyperactive) child and had a fantastic personality. He was full of curiosity regarding nature and he led a group of cousins on adventures in search of mice, squirrels, snakes, frogs and anything else that could be dissected or punctured. His repeated confinement due to his asthma led him to spend his time on books, which he would devour throughout his life. He could be a sick child, but he certainly had the will to live!
After traveling through Europe with his family, his health began to decline. She had grown in height, but not in her muscularity. Finally, with the help of the family doctor and seconded by his father, he was urged to lift weights. She was 12 years old. In the same way that he did with everything he was taught, Teddie carried out the task with enthusiasm. His health improved He became healthier and for the first time in his life he was able to go a month without an asthma attack.
When he was 13 years old, he realized another flaw in him. He couldn’t hit anything with the rifle his father had given him. When his friends were reading him what was written on a blackboard (he hadn’t realized there was something written there), he realized that I was extremely short-sighted.
That same year, he was sent alone to the camp after a severe asthma attack. On his trip he was mugged by two other boys his age. He realized that Not only could he not defend himself, but he had not even been able to lay a hand on them. He later announced to his father his intention to learn to box. By the time he was at Harvard, he was not only the healthy Teddy Roosevelt, but a frequent champion of a wide variety of athletic competitions.
The rest, as many say, is history. “Teedie” Roosevelt became a great New York assemblyman; a North Dakota cowboy; New York Police Commissioner; Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Lieutenant Colonel of the “Rough Riders”; Governor of New York and best-selling author; all this at the age of 40. After the death of American President William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt takes office as the youngest President of the United States.
How is it possible that someone so sickly can become such a vigorous, healthy and successful person?. Why do some children, whether sickly or not, thrive and others become afraid? Is it a particular impulse of Roosevelt or is it something that underlies all of us? These types of questions were the questions that intrigued a young Viennese doctor named Alfred Adler and that would lead him to develop his theory called Individual psychology.
Biography of Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler born in the suburbs of Vienna on February 7, 1870. He was the second son of three children, the result of a marriage between a Jewish grain merchant and his wife. As a child, Alfred suffered from rickets, which kept him unable to walk until he was four years old. At five, he almost died of pneumonia. It was at this age when he decided that when he grew up he would be a doctor.
Alfred was an ordinary child as a student and preferred playing in the yard to embarking on studies. He was very popular, active and outgoing. Everyone knew him for try to surpass his older brother Sigmund.
Received your medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. During his years of instruction, he joined a group of socialist students, within which he would meet his future wife, Raissa Timofeeyewna Epstein, an intellectual and social activist who came from Russia to study in Vienna. They married in 1897 and eventually had four children, two of whom became psychiatrists.
He began his medical specialty as ophthalmologist, but soon switched to general practice, establishing his practice in a lower-income part of Vienna, close to the Prader, a combination of an amusement park and a circus. Therefore, his clients included circus people, and by virtue of these experiences, authors such as Furtmuller (1964) have suggested that the weaknesses and strengths of these people were what led him to develop his reflections on organic inferiorities and compensation.
He later turned toward psychiatry and in 1907 was invited to join Freud’s discussion group. After writing several articles on organic inferiority, which were quite compatible with the Freudian point of view, he first wrote an article on the aggressive instinct, which was not approved by Freud. He then wrote an article about children’s feelings of inferiorityin which he suggested that Freud’s sexual notions should be taken more metaphorically than literally.
Although Freud himself named Adler president of the Vienna Analytical Society and co-editor of its journal, He never ceased his criticism. A debate was then organized between the followers of Adler and Freud, which resulted in the creation, together with 11 other members of the organization, of the Society for Free Psychoanalysis in 1911. This organization established the headquarters of the Society for Psychology Individual the following year.
During the First World War, Adler served as a doctor in the Austrian Navy, first on the Russian front and then in a children’s hospital. Thus, he had the direct opportunity to see the havoc that the war produced, so his vision was increasingly directed towards the concept of social interest. He believed that if humanity was to survive, it would have to change its habits.
After the war, he embarked on several projects that included the formation of clinics associated with state schools and teacher training. In 1926, she traveled to the United States to teach and eventually accepted a visiting position at Long Island College of Medicine. In 1934, Adler and his family left Vienna forever. On May 28, 1937, while lecturing at the University of Aberdeen, he died of a heart attack.
Individual psychology theory
The desire for perfectionism
Alfred Adler postulates a single “drive” or motivational force behind all our behaviors and experiences. Over time, his theory transformed into a more mature one, calling this instinct the desire for perfectionism. It constitutes that desire to develop our potential to the maximum in order to reach our ideal more and more. It is, as you will see, very similar to the more popular idea of self-actualization.
The thing is, “perfection” and “ideal” are problematic words. On the one hand they are very positive goals, in fact, shouldn’t we all pursue an ideal? However, in psychology, these words have a negative connotation. Perfection and ideals are, by definition, things we will never achieve. In fact, many people live sadly and painfully trying to be perfect. As you know, other authors such as Karen Horney and Carl Rogers emphasize this problem. Adler also talks about it, but he conceives this negative type of idealism as a perversion of a much more positive conception. We will return to the matter later.
The desire for perfection was not the first phrase that Adler used to designate this motivational force. Let us remember that his original phrase was the aggressive drive, which arises when other drives are frustrated, such as the need to eat, to satisfy our sexual needs, to do things or to be loved. The name assertive drive would be more appropriate, given that we consider aggression as physical and negative. But it was precisely this idea of the aggressive drive that motivated the first friction with Freud. It was evident that the latter was afraid that his sexual drive would be relegated to the background within psychoanalytic theory. Despite Freud’s reluctance, he himself spoke of something very similar much later in his life: the death drive.
The desire to improve
Another word that Adler used to refer to this basic motivation was compensation or desire to improve. Since we all have problems, inferiorities in one way or another, conflicts, etc.; Especially in his early writings, Adler believed that we can achieve our personalities as long as we can (or cannot) compensate for or overcome these problems. This idea remains unchanged throughout his theory, but tends to be rejected as a label, for the simple reason that it seems that what makes us people are our problems.
One of Adler’s earliest phrases was the male protest. He observed something quite obvious in his culture (and by no means absent from ours): boys were placed in a more advantageous position than girls. Boys wanted, sometimes desperately, to be seen as strong, aggressive or in control (masculine) and not weak, passive or dependent (feminine). Of course, the point is that men are somehow basically better than women. After all, they have the power, education, and apparently the talent and motivation to do “great things” and women don’t.
Even today we can hear some older people commenting on this when they refer to little boys and girls. If a boy demands or shouts seeking to do what she wants (male protest!), then he is a boy who reacts naturally (or normally). If the little girl is quiet and shy, she is encouraging her femininity. If this happens with a boy, it is a cause for concern, as the boy appears effeminate or may turn out to be a sissy. And if we find assertive girls who seek to do what they believe in, they are “tomboys” and a way will be found to get them to abandon that position.
But Adler did not believe that male assertiveness and success in the world were due to some innate superiority. He believed rather…