Free Course – Adler’s Individual Psychology

Free course on the work of Alfred Adler, creator of the concept of inferiority complex and the first psychoanalyst to break with Freud. See also the biography of the creator of Individual Psychology.

Hello friends!

Alfred Adler’s work is normally not studied in psychology faculties and I dare say that it is not studied in Brazil. With the exception of perhaps a few scores in History of Psychology classes, individual psychology is virtually unknown among us. And a quick internet search shows only 3 books published in our language: The Science of Living, The Education of Children and The Science of Human Nature.

If the same search is carried out for editions in German or English (or even Spanish) we will see the list grow a lot. In English, on Amazon, you can purchase The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler, in 12 volumes.

With that said, we can see that Adler’s work is not studied in Brazil because it is not translated and it is not translated because it is not studied.

Aiming to fill this gap a little, I decided to create this Free and Introductory Course. I say introductory because it’s based on the book I have The Science of Human Nature. Although it is based only on a single book, it is a special book, the result of lectures given by the author at the People’s Institute in Vienna and which aimed to disseminate knowledge of Individual Psychology to all.

Biography of Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler was born in 1870 and died in 1937. He graduated in medicine in 1895 at the University of Vienna, Austria. He started working as an ophthalmologist and soon after opened his office and worked as a general practitioner.

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Adler lived in the same town as Freud, and in 1902 he joined the psychoanalytic study group that was held on Wednesdays. 🇧🇷Mittwochsgesellschaft), literally, Society of Wednesdays, which included from the beginning Rudolf Reitler and Wilhelm Stekel.

In 1910, Adler became the president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and the following year, in 1911, he and some colleagues decided to withdraw from the psychoanalytic movement. In this way, he was the first major author to break with Freud, three years before CG Jung did so (1914).

Jung, in some of his works, summarized the rupture of the theoretical relationship between Freud and Adler as provoked by contrary positions regarding the nature of the psyche and, in particular, regarding the neurotic psyche.

For Freud, in this period, the cause of neuroses was in sexuality, while for Adler it was in power. That is, while Freud was developing his concepts of Oedipus Complex and infantile sexuality, Adler was working on the concept of inferiority complex. In summary, Jung writes: “For Freud, the conception of the end is the satisfaction of desire; for Adler, it is the usurpation of power”.

We will talk more about the concept of inferiority complex in the Course Lessons.

In 1912, Adler founded the Society for Individual Psychology, which included many scholars of Nietzsche’s work, who considered that the inferiority complex ideas were close to the philosopher who created the Übermensch, the superman.

In the following years, Adler achieved enormous success as the creator of a differentiated psychotherapeutic school and, until the end of his life, he traveled the world giving lectures and courses. In the 1930s, he created children’s clinics, while continuing to work with adults.

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About Adler’s Free Individual Psychology Course

In the Lessons of our Course, we will see how Adler seeks to explain the human psyche and behavior in an integral way, both for psychic health and the causes of mental illness.

Note: no registration is required. Lessons will be published little by little and, at the end, if you have followed along, you will be able to request a Certificate of Participation (worth 25 reais, which is sent by Post).

Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below: