Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870 - May 28, 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, founder of the school of individual psychology.

Adler's rational approach to human personality

He wrote a book defining his key ideas in 1912: Über den nervösen Charakter. He argued that human personality could be explained teleologically, separate strands dominated by the guiding purpose of the individual's unconscious self ideal to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority (or rather completeness). The desires of the self ideal were countered by social and ethical demands. If the corrective factors were disregarded and the individual over-compensated then an inferiority complex would occur, the individual would become egocentric, power-hungry and aggressive or worse.

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