individual psychology

individual psychology, body of theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler, who held that the main motives of human thought and behaviour are individual man’s striving for superiority and power, partly in compensation for his feeling of inferiority. Every individual, in this view, is unique, and his personality structure—including his unique goal and ways of striving for it—finds expression in his style of life, this life-style being the product of his own creativity. Nevertheless, the individual cannot be considered apart from society; all important problems, including problems of general human relations, occupation, and love, are social.

This theory led to explanations of psychological normality and abnormality: although the normal person with a well-developed social interest will compensate by striving on the useful side of life (that is, by contributing to the common welfare and thus helping to overcome common feelings of inferiority), the neurotically disposed person is characterized by increased inferiority feelings, underdeveloped social interest, and an exaggerated, uncooperative goal of superiority, these symptoms manifesting themselves as anxiety and more or less open aggression. Accordingly, he solves his problems in a self-centred, private fashion (rather than a task-centred, common-sense fashion), leading to failure. All forms of maladjustment share this constellation. Therapy consists in providing the patient with insight into his mistaken life-style through material furnished by him in the psychiatric interview.