He spent many of his boyhood years in Jewish neighborhoods, though the playground near his home was frequented by families of the Christian working class, and Stepansky notes that it was there that he established his primary social community. He later noted that his observations of economic and social diversity during this time contributed to his eventual emphasis on the importance of “social interest,” which he defined as an awareness of the responsibility to love and cooperate with other people and to contribute to the welfare of humanity (see “ The Earliest Cognitive Therapy?”).Īdler’s parents were Hungarian Jews, but the family attended synagogue only sporadically. His family’s fortunes varied from relative wealth to near-poverty, and his wide circle of friends included girls and boys from all walks of life. At once a frightful terror came over me and a few days later when I was well I decided definitely to become a doctor so that I should have a better defence against the danger of death.”Īdler was struck during childhood by the effects of social and economic inequality. Adler described his feelings during this time to British novelist Phyllis Bottome, a family friend whom he designated as his official biographer: “The doctor, who had suddenly been called in, told my father that there was no point in going to the trouble of looking after me as there was no hope of my living. The resulting awareness of death contributed to his trepidation during a severe bout with pneumonia the next year.
He also recalled the trauma of waking one morning when he was almost four to find that his younger brother Rudolf, with whom he shared a bedroom, had died of diphtheria in the night. His earliest memories were of illnesses such as rickets, which left him sitting on the sidelines as he enviously watched his elder brother’s unfettered activity. The second of seven children, Adler was born in 1870 near Vienna, Austria. Paul Stepansky, a historian of European intellectual history and perhaps the first to undertake an unbiased examination of Adler’s life and work, sees influences from many spheres but concludes that most of the groundwork for his orientation was indeed laid well before his first meeting with Freud.
#Alfred adler known for full
His psychology-and indeed his life-was all about cultivating consciousness, whether of meaning in life, of choices, of the welfare of others, or of the need to overcome the limitations of birth or environment in order to reach the full human potential.Īdler’s critics see his psychology as arising almost wholly from Freudianism or socialism, while his adherents see its roots in his earliest childhood years.
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Though considered one of the three “great fathers” of modern psychotherapy, Alfred Adler is less familiar to most people today than Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. A Plea for Social Conscience Biography: Alfred Adler
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