The individual psychology is a whole of psychological theories worked out by the Austrian doctor Alfred Adler. It constitutes one of the three speculative disciplines of the psychology the depths , at the sides of the Métapsychologie of Sigmund Freud and of the analytical Psychologie of Carl G. Jung.

With simplest and shortest, the doctrines of Adler make the economy of the “expensive Libido” and the repression of the impulses to the theses freudienne and jungienne, posing the concepts of “over-compensation and Sense of inferiority” like pivot of major human psychism.

Genesis

The " psychology individuelle" of Alfred Adler is simply the rupture with Sigmund Freud by moving the explanatory principle of the behaviors of the " Libido " sexual instincts with the " compensation" senses of inferiority. " To be man, it is to feel inférieur" Adler writing. The main issue for the man is to liquidate his Sense of inferiority. In its first work, it used, in examples, the complexes of Napoleon to illustrate his theory. Sociologists proposed the existence of this complex of inferiority on a broader level of the cultural, economic and political achievements. Adler was interested early in psychology of the physical disorders and met Sigmund Freud in 1899 with which it formed the " Psychoanalytical company of Vienne" he was president. He was influenced by the ideas Hans Vaihinger on the conduits directed towards a goal and developed a " organic theory of inferiority and the surcompensation". The divergence with Freud on the primacy of the Libido and the concept of Refoulement occurred in 1911 with the " Congress of Psychoanalysis " in Weimar and the " was formed; Company of psychology individuelle" in 1912. Adler thinks that the theory of repression must be replaced by the concept of the " defensive tendencies of the moi" of a state nevrotic derived from the senses of inferiority and over-compensation of the " protest virile" in Vienna roman catholic male chauvinist pig and anti-semite.

Individual psychology was born from this fracture of the " Psychoanalytical company of Vienne" and the emergence of the " Company of psychology individuelle". Since then, at the sides of the psychoanalysis freudienne, the " will coexist; individual psychology " of Alfred Adler, that its creator will propagate until His death, in 1937, by an intense activity, sharing his time between his consultations, of the courses and the conferences in Europe and in the United States, of the articles and important works (" To cure and éduquer" , " Handbook of psychology individuelle" , " The knowledge of the homme" , " The temperament nerveux"). Whereas Freud like was hypnotized at the beginning by its discovery of the part played by sexuality in the etiology of the Névrose S, Adler insisted from the start on the " Instinct S " dominators of the " Me " and on the innumerable competitions which result from this.

Theory

Contrary to Freud, Adler was persuaded that the human personality implies a certain finality or " Teleology " , that its behavior, in the broadest sense of the term, theoretical and practical, is always function of a goal directed as of childhood. It calls " plan of vie" this fundamental orientation, quite former to the famous " fondamental" project; of Jean-Paul Sartre. For Adler, all " valeurs" were born from the needs for the social life and the great business is, in its eyes, the development of a feeling Community, able to harmonize the individual requirements and those of the company. Nietzschéen, it admits that the life is a fight. The individual must assert some manner, to seek to dominate in a certain way. The failure of this congenital tendency dominating generates what seems the leitmotiv of individual psychology the " feeling of infériorité" , on which the name of Adler will remain dependant as on that of Jung the unconscious collective. In the child, who must exceed himself unceasingly at accelerated intervals, this dominating tendency is particularly strong. But, like the constraint of its entourage obliges it to repress its desires, a violent one conflict of the first years is inevitable. Adler thus considers that the sense of inferiority is " naturel" in the child whose weakness is real compared to the adults, but who it must disappear with the development from the personality and it will disappear if the need for car-assertion in this development is satisfied in a positive way, i.e. socially or culturally valid. Failing this, the sense of inferiority crystallizes and becomes a " complexe". For Adler, any inferiority has as an automatic corollary the search for a compensation, on the level already of the physiological life. The " compensation" appears thus at his place a key concept, as well as that of the " Repression " at Freud.

Genesis of the sense of inferiority

When an individual is born with a physical constitutional organic inferiority or a social conventional inferiority by attribution from the significances and the values, a whole series of unconscious processes start, at the same time physiological and psychic, to restore a certain balance to generate a development which compensates for in an unspecified way this inferiority. The " Libido " freudienne, from this point of view, appears subordinate to a " instinct" of domination and the character of Don Juan, for example, would be explained better by the role that the vanity and the will for power play there, rather than by the erotism as tel. Adler thinks besides that there are " Gift Juan" female, whose behavior betrays the intention to dominate and humiliate the man. He described under the name of " protest virile" the attitude of certain women - " boys manqués" , " women phalliques" , " viragos" , " pétroleuses" , or " Amazones ", etc - which can lead easily to the Frigidité or the Homosexualité. He believes that the need to dominate, also finding the occasion to be exerted under cover of the compassion and devotion, pushes women to love a weak being or disabled person. He also thinks that the inferiority felt at that time of the life can play a great part in the so frequent Névrose S at the critical age.

Being given the almost exclusive role allotted by Adler to the compensatory aiming, it is not astonishing that its interpretation of the dreams differs in all points from that from Freud. It by no means matters to him to seek in them the traces of an initial traumatism, being persuaded that all the oneiric memories are evoked compared to a projection towards a near or remote future. The dream has as a direction, affirms it, to prepare by gropings a way with the superiority wished by the sleeper and to create in him a certain emotional state, a kind of unconscious drive suitable to facilitate to him confrontation with certain difficulties encountered by its particular need for assertion. The fixing of a sense of inferiority can have very diverse consequences. In addition to the case of an inferiority real, organic or functional, very often hereditary, accidental or congenital or simply conventional (the anomaly of the child red-headed, for example, or carrying glasses or any difference with the " autres"). It can originate in an awkward education (parents tyrannical or too conceited, which unceasingly compares their children with others more gifted) or a frustrating social situation (children of proletarians in particular, whose development runs up against material obstacles, social and psychological). There is a particularly serious situation when they are orphans abandoned or high by the Public assistance. Particular circumstances can also play a determining role: the introduction into the family circle of a newcomer, generally a little brother or a little sister, who collects an interest from which the child only profited hitherto. Conversely, a junior will be able to feel crushed by his older brothers or sisters.

Such an inventory could be considerably lengthened. It is enough to understand, in fact, that these various causes count less for Adler than their consequences which involve the formation of some " plan of vie". Many and variable consequences themselves, although they can be brought back to a common denominator whose Adler precisely observed the character of paradoxical ambiguity. Because they can appear alternatively, sometimes at the same individual or the same human group, by a paralyzing timidity and an excessive resignation, or by forfantery and bluff. It is the over-compensation which leads to the oscillation between " car-misérabilisme" and " car-glorification" , like the zigzag of a skid in car on an on the right slipping road corrected or compensated by a great blow of wheel on the left and so on.

Types of compensation

If any human being, according to Adler, thinks and acts according to a finality which is clean for him, the neurotic is, in his eyes, that which mobilizes its psychic forces exaggeratedly to react to a that and sense of inferiority in a directed direction, generally, towards a fictitious goal of power and superiority. If its irrationalism makes him admit that any will constitutes an effort of compensation to the service of the " instincts" of domination of the " moi" , he considers that the need to compensate for a sense of inferiority is, in the highly-strung persons, with the root even of the will and the thought. Adler saw well that an extreme susceptibility is always the revealing sign of a sense of inferiority, in what it emerges each time the person has the vague feeling which one put the finger on the defect of his armor. In the best of the cases, the compensation is positive, even triumphing. It is that of the individual who, having faced his sense of inferiority resolutely, surmounted it so much so that the result is finally higher than that which it would have obtained if, provided better at the beginning, it had rested too much on a pillow of idleness. There is certainly there a deep truth of psychology adlérienne, too often ignored those which await too many the famous " tests" as regards vocational guidance. Because a tension of this kind escapes the objective observation inevitably, resorted it to the instruments most subtly sophisticated.

To this kind of over-compensation, considered as fully valid, Adler opposes others more frequent, but unhappy, negative. Compensations dissimulatrices in the case of the individual who always seeks an alibi with his evasions in front of decisions likely to wound his self-esteem, which pretexts its natural indolence, its lassitude, or is cut off behind a " what good is it? " from strong spirit or that which takes pleasure in a verbal heroism, bluffe the others and itself, fall into the Mythomanie or which resorts to the scandalmongering to decrease the merits of the others, to deny them in their superiority. One would not finish any stating the various forms of compensation dissimulatrice aiming at deceiving others and especially oneself, by an attitude or some compensatory prowess (excess speeds, bravados, bets stupid, drinking bouts of students, etc). One is reminded that the need to compensate, according to Adler, can provide in last spring the key of the dreams. It allots to them like function fictitiously to satisfy a " instinct of puissance" , as the " testifies some; Megalomania " , this daydream, and observes that somnambulic itself is delirious it betrays this need for domination (the fact of going up on a roof). The runnings away of children, due according to Freud to the jealousy with regard to the father, with the hostility tested towards him, express - from the point of view adlérienne - the need to save a " moi" threatened of smothering. More frequently, the escape in pleasure, with the feeling of power, exhaust to oneself which it exempts, constitutes a phantom of compensation.

Other compensatory forms (exploitatrices) comprise they also various methods which one could not give an exhaustive list. It is the child who continues to wet his bed, as if he preferred being rather punished which of living in what he tests like indifference. It is the neurotic who settles in the disease, as if it found in the tyranny exerted on his entourage a satisfaction exceeding the misery of his state. In the light of medicine known as Psychosomatic, today in full rise, many ideas adlériennes is of a great interest, although they appear too radical in this field, by admitting that all the disorders are the expression symbolic system of a certain aiming " téléologique". In any event, Adler has the merit to have worked out, well before Freud, a theory of the total Personnalité, to have emphasized, by showing the existence of a nevrotic purpose, the forces of the " moi" and their need for expansion. The freudiens reproached him an ignorance of the role of the Inconscient, a very insufficient distinction between its processes and those of the Conscience. Such a distinction appears, indeed, as completely secondary at Adler which considers sufficient the observation that the sense of inferiority, when it settles, can cause a faintness interior pushing the individual to be engaged in a certain type of compensation. Adler even required to replace the " Repression " , base of unconscious the freudien by " defensive tendencies of the moi".

Sentimement of inferiority of orders social and cultural

At all events of this particular problem, another merit of the " psychology individuelle" adlerienne is to give an account of the cultural factors, by admitting the role of conventional inferiorities. It is hardly doubtful but, in a company like ours, where competition is exerted with a singular roughness, the woman is placed in a situation ambiguous, suitable to support at her this refusal of femininity and its constraints that Adler describes under the name of " protest virile". It goes in the same way for the " métèque" , foreigner and tutti quanti. Compared with the ideas freudiennes, those of Adler strike by their simplicity, their schematism. This character can appear as an advantage or a defect with the eyes of the freudiens, which see in this " simplisme" of a " saving in explication" who is the simplicity required by the " regulate saving in explication" or " Razor of Ockham " (" Entia not sunt multiplicanda, praeter necessitatem" , not to multiply explanatory entities without need). An positive aspect of psychology adlérienne must, in any case, underlined being: its demonstration that an individual, almost always, can exploit to the maximum his weaknesses as well as his natural gifts and his learned talents and than essence is the courage with which he faces his physical inferiority, real or social etconventionnelle.

Alfred Adler and the sense of inferiority

The life even of Adler constitutes an illustration of its theory. Constitutional and Jewish child weak conventional, it had to exert early his energy in a direction which was to enable him to overcome this constitutional weakness and this conventional inferiority. At the school, it had to surmount large " " difficulties;. These particular conditions will encourage Jung to explain by caracterologic differences the differences in opinion between Adler and Freud: Freud, " extraverti " according to Jung, was to work out a theory of the libido and to attach a great importance to the " " transfer;. Adler, " introvert " , was to stress all the individual concerned about itself and its own going beyond. Among various forms of compensation, let us see these three open categories:

1 - Direct compensation in Newtonian reaction of comparable nature that of felt inferiority, but of opposite orientation and at least equal intensity, like great athletic performances for physical insufficiencies, the financial richness for a monetary poverty, a " hystérocratie" for a " phallocratie".

2 - Compensation in another field, like a intellectual over-development for sousdéveloppement physical.

3 - Compensation on another level, as the rhetoric which replaces the action. Conventional social inferiority can be also compensated by great intellectual successes. The State of California counts 7% of population of Far-Eastern origin which accounts for 30% of Ph.D. of this State.

Over-compensation consists in introducing more and more same thing, but contrary direction, as a skid on the left on a slipping road which is corrected of a blow of wheel on the right amorçant an increasingly full zigzag to the route exit. Of the individual at the companies, this phenomenon is observed in the oscillation between " automisérabilisme" and " autoglolirification" , of the undervaluation of oneself with the over-estimate of oneself, like " Austerlitz " who leads to " Waterloo ".

Practical

Approaching the complexity of the sense of inferiority in a social context of rules of attribution of values and significances which are about the culture, individual psychology opens on a large range of practical works as well on the collective level as in individual space, of anthropology to political economy while passing by education and psychotherapy.

psychotherapy and education

In individual space, the psychotherapy of various techniques and family systemic Thérapies could use with profit the sense of inferiority combined to the mimetic Désir of the model-obstacle where, by subterfuges, the model would not be any more one obstacle, but still a benevolent rival for the emulation in a co-operative competition.

Education could use, with the same profit the alliance of the sense of inferiority with the mimetic desire within the framework of a ecosystemic Approche of the Théorie of the contexts by installing a context of rules of interaction and approximately physical adequate, in such a way that the behavior awaited of learning appears all alone and without difficulty, like an appropriate response with this context and this environment, according to the expression where " nothing succeeds more than the success, by arranging small successes which grow bigger and develop like a snowball rolling on a snow-covered slope. It is a question of arranging a positive feedback amplifying car in " runaway" limited and controlled

For the paradoxical treatment, with the manner of Jay Halley, it would be to play with its sense of inferiority while carrying it like a torch or standard, by autodérision, like this Italian slogan 'Courage, fuyons" , like this sentence celebrates of Coluche, this small " rital" suburbs: " I am not a new rich person, but old a pauvre". There was also Benjamin Franklin which was submitted to the Court of King de France, without wig, with its truths hair and by autodérision of the " good sauvage".

Decolonization

With the sense of inferiority by learned impotence, the countermeasure would be a power learned by the human phenomenon from the predictions which are carried out the they same ones, while going from small successes in great successes where nothing succeeds more as one success as well in individual space than on the collective level. This phenomenon of the predictions which are carried out the they same ones is illustrated for a biomedical example of the placebo effect where inactive elements manage to cure on the basis of major belief in this cure. Then, small successes increase the self-confidence and estimates it self which becomes more undertaking, when each success encourages to undertake to obtain other successes, with the risk to leave coldly acquired competences.

On the collective level, this countermeasure takes place through a competitive co-operation between various groups for the success of the wide very whole team, of clean as a close relation, with a nation, as he saw himself in the history. In political economy, the examples of decolonization are numerous to be freed from the learned impotence forced by the colonial rule to devalue colonized for its psychic tender which leads to its physical tender.

Conclusion

Individual psychology and the sense of inferiority of Alfred Adler have simplicity that the " fairy tale scientifique" freudien does not have. In addition, it is " effective" in the relation intention-realization, " efficace" in the cost-performance relation and " efficiente" in the relation need-satisfaction. For these characteristics, it operates in a large range of applications.

Bibliographical references

• Alfred Adler:

• the nervous disposition , 1912 (Payot, 1948)
• the knowledge of the man , 1927 (Payot, 1949)
• 'the direction of the life , 1933 (Payot, 1950)

Related bonds

• Sense of inferiority

• family systemic Therapies

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