born Feb. 7, 1870, Penzing, Austria
died May 28, 1937, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scot.
Austrian psychiatrist.
He earned his medical degree in Vienna, and from his earliest years as a physician he stressed consideration of the individual in relation to his total environment. A student and associate of Sigmund Freud (190211), he eventually broke with Freud over the importance of early-childhood sexual conflicts in the development of psychopathology. With his followers he developed the school of individual psychology
the humanistic study of drives, feelings, emotions, and memory in the context of the individual's overall life plan. Adler advanced the theory of the inferiority complex to explain cases of psychopathology; Adlerian psychotherapy sought to direct patients emotionally disabled by inferiority feelings toward maturity, common sense, and social usefulness. He established the first child guidance clinic in 1921 in Vienna. He taught in the U.S. (at Columbia University and the Long Island College of Medicine) from 1927 until his death. His works include Understanding Human Nature (1927) and What Life Should Mean to You (1931).