Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

He was born in Vienna, Austria, another "disciple" of Freud. Adler, like Jung, split from Freud over the sexual overtones as being the prime directive in human behaviour. Seeing people as goal oriented toward personal growth and wholeness, a more cultural approach, he was the instigator of the term "inferiority complex".

Instead he saw social drives, the training arising from ones cultural heritage, and family influences, as being the prime forces in our behaviour and feelings. He saw that cultural influences could be modified by an individual in a personal way, so that each of us develop individual styles in life. His view was that children had to overcome their feelings of being not as good as parents when growing up, since most parents project aspects on them according to, perceived shortcomings. One of his quotes was - "Social interest is the true and inevitable compensation for all the natural weaknesses of individual human beings."

His interest in Dreams lay in that they were a tool for people to sense the aggressiveness of their own need to control and compensate for feelings of inadequacy, in respect to what society as a whole would view this as "acceptable." This was called Individual Psychology.

This writer, being a non-dualist, disagrees that the unconscious collective should be minimalized, and that we are subject to forces outside our control (not all the time though) in our lives.

For Adler, the dream was ‘a tentative feeler toward the future’; ‘a dress-rehearsal for life,’ in which the dreamer reveals his hopes, fears, and plans for the future.’ And he did admit that the person is wiser than they know. These dream tools were then symbols to help them get to their goals in life. Jung did not support this aspect only in the life of a dreamer. Adler's view of dream symbols were very generalised in terms of meaning to a person, in that they reflected earthly physical body existence in the world alone.

So usually, people feel inadequate, they strive to improve themselves, they find various ways to compensate and the well adjusted individual has come to terms with the past (if need be) and is a positive member of society.The ideal person is fully integrated and considers society as a whole in his individual life role, of which he is part. Adler's ideas about maladjusted personalities include those who want power over others, those who want to receive through others without self-effort, and decision avoidance. To get over these, people need to stop pretending their personality to others and tackle goals themselves.

This may also have been the ideal life of the ancient Aboriginal tribes, the good of the tribe being paramount, and individuals taking themselves as special or important without "election", being ridiculed. Here, ego was not supported, but in current life in the world, the opposite occurs, is advertised to, and sold to keep people "up with the Joneses.

Adler viewed the dream life is continuous with the waking life. Dreams are not analysed alone, however, but along with birth order (e.g. the first child who loses out to the next, the second child who may seek to overcome the first, the youngest child who is spoiled), family history, and the client's own responses in terms of personal meaning to events.

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