Individual psychology

Individual psychology (German: Individualpsychologie) is a psychological method and school of thought founded by the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The English edition of Adler's work on the subject, The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1924), collects papers and lectures given mainly between 1912 and 1914.

Adler formulated a personality theory that emphasizes the social and contextual origins of behavior: the circumstances into which a person is born and grows shape personality development and life goals.

In developing individual psychology Adler broke with Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic school and established an independent approach that emphasized social factors, goals, and a holistic understanding of the person rather than Freudian drives. Adler initially described his work as "free psychoanalysis" but later rejected the label "psychoanalysis" for his method, preferring the term individual psychology to stress the indivisibility of the person.

The term "individual" signals Adler's insistence that a person be treated as a unified, goal-directed whole rather than as a set of conflicting drives or parts. Individual psychology also stresses humans' social embeddedness: wellbeing is linked to belonging and contribution to the community — a concept Adler called "social interest" (Gemeinschaftsgefühl).

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