Austrian · 1870–1937
Alfred Adler was an Austrian physician and psychotherapist who founded the school of individual psychology. Born in Vienna, he trained as a doctor and joined Sigmund Freud's circle in 1902. He broke with Freud in 1911 over the role of sexual drives and went on to argue that people are shaped by goals, by feelings of inferiority and by their sense of belonging to a community. He introduced ideas that became part of everyday language, including the inferiority complex, life style and the effects of birth order. Adler set up child guidance clinics in Vienna in the 1920s and trained teachers and parents in his methods. After the rise of the Nazis he moved to the United States, where he taught at the Long Island College of Medicine. His books include Understanding Human Nature and What Life Should Mean to You. He died of a heart attack in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1937 while on a lecture tour.