Psychology: Freud vs Adler

 

https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/2020464846253314413?s=20

What if the mental health crisis exists because we followed the wrong guy in modern psychology. There were two major voices: Freud and Adler. Guess which one we built an entire industry around. In Freud's model, everything's about your childhood, your parents, your trauma. You're broken because of what happened to you, and healing means going back and reliving every moment. Adler—he didn't ignore the past, but he said it's not the main thing. What really matters: your beliefs, your goals, your sense of meaning. He believed healing came from taking responsibility, creating connection, and building purpose in the now. But we didn't follow Adler. We followed Freud because Freud's model made it easy to build a business around therapy that keeps you talking year after year. It feels like healing, but nothing actually changes. You explain your patterns, you analyze your wounds, but you stay stuck. What we need is Adler's model. We need to reprogram your subconscious with forward-focused beliefs, not to stay stuck in the past.

Alfred Adler (1870–1937), an Austrian psychologist and one of the key figures in early 20th-century psychology, founded Individual Psychology (also called Adlerian Psychology). He broke away from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic school, rejecting its heavy emphasis on unconscious sexual/aggressive drives and childhood trauma as deterministic. Instead, Adler viewed humans as holistic, goal-oriented, social beings who are fundamentally motivated by the need to belong, feel significant, and overcome perceived limitations.

His theory is teleological (future-focused) rather than causal (past-driven), emphasizing purpose, responsibility, and social context over reliving past wounds. This aligns with the video transcript you shared earlier, which contrasts Adler's forward-looking approach with Freud's backward-looking one.

Here are Adler's key principles and core concepts, drawn from his foundational ideas:

1. Holism / Unity of the Individual

Adler saw people as indivisible wholes ("Individual" comes from the Latin individere, meaning "undivided"). Thinking, feeling, behavior, and emotions cannot be separated—they all serve the person's overall style of life (a unique, consistent pattern of approaching challenges and goals, formed early in life). Treatment addresses the whole person, not just isolated symptoms.

2. Feelings of Inferiority

Everyone experiences inherent feelings of inferiority from childhood (due to physical smallness, dependency, or limitations). These are universal and normal motivators. Healthy inferiority feelings spur growth and adaptation; when overwhelming or unresolved, they lead to an inferiority complex—chronic self-doubt that paralyzes action or leads to discouragement.

3. Striving for Superiority (or Success/Significance)

In response to inferiority, humans have an innate drive to compensate and move toward superiority—not dominance over others, but mastery, competence, perfection, or overcoming difficulties. This is the central dynamic force in personality: a forward movement from a felt "minus" (inferiority) to a "plus" (security, belonging, achievement). Healthy striving is socially useful; unhealthy versions become self-centered or compensatory (e.g., a superiority complex as a mask for hidden inferiority, showing arrogance to cover vulnerability).

4. Social Interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl)

Adler's most distinctive contribution: Humans are inherently social beings whose mental health depends on social interest—a feeling of connection, empathy, and contribution to others and the community. True belonging and significance come from cooperating and contributing, not isolating or exploiting. Low social interest leads to maladjustment, selfishness, or neurosis; high social interest fosters courage, responsibility, and fulfillment.

5. Goal Orientation and Fictional Final Goal

Behavior is purposeful and pulled by future goals, not pushed by past causes. Early in life, individuals creatively form a subjective fictional final goal (a guiding self-ideal or picture of "success") that organizes their style of life. All actions serve this goal, even if unconsciously. Therapy helps reorient toward realistic, socially useful goals.

6. Style of Life

This is the person's unique way of pursuing significance—shaped by early family experiences (e.g., birth order, pampering, neglect), but ultimately self-created through creative power. It includes private logic (subjective interpretations) and guides consistent patterns in relationships, work, and challenges.

7. Encouragement and Courage

Adler emphasized encouragement over criticism. People change when they feel capable and valued. Discouragement breeds avoidance or mistaken goals; encouragement builds courage to face tasks of life (work, love, society) and develop social interest.

Comparison to Freud (as Highlighted in the Video)

• Freud: Past-focused (childhood trauma, unconscious drives); healing via insight into repressed conflicts; can lead to prolonged analysis.
• Adler: Present- and future-focused (beliefs, goals, responsibility); healing via taking action, building purpose/connection, reprogramming forward beliefs; more practical and brief.

Adler's ideas influenced modern positive psychology, humanistic approaches, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and coaching. They promote empowerment: Your past doesn't doom you—what matters is the meaning you give experiences now and your choices moving forward.