Talk:Alfred Adler

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[edit] Birthplace

I think you mean he was born in Penzing.... not Penzig.

According to german sources (biography and internet) Alfred Adler was born in Rudolfsheim which belongs today to the 15th borough of Vienna. Later the family moved from Rudolfsheim to Penzing. 81.62.54.186 19:24, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Terms originally used by Adler

I see that this article uses the terms "social interest" and "inferiority complex". The term which Adler used in his original writings for the former, "Gemeinschaftsgefuhl", is better translated as "community feeling", although U.S. translations of this term used the term "social interest". More conspicuous was this article's use of the term "inferiority complex". Surely Adler's original term was "inferiority feeling"? To put "complex" in a term is more Jungian than Adlerian to me.

[edit] Article Needs Reference to Birth Order

I was very surprised to see this article did not refer to Adler's work on birth order position. It is true that some of Freud's writings on the Oedipus complex indicate that Freud acknowledged that position in the family makes a difference to personality development, but the concept of birth order received more emphasis from Alfred Adler. A reference to this would clarify the relevance of Adler to contemporary psychology. Although it is certainly true that the view that birth order has received many critics (such as Judith Harris), this work is germane to work on sibling differences in personality development. An emphasis on this concept would help to clarify how, implicit in Adler's views is a premise which would be now be shared by contemporary psychologists - that nonshared environment (the environment that children do not share with their siblings) has a bigger impact on development that shared environment (the environment siblings do share).A. Carl 11:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC) I have now added a wiki-link to the Wikipedia article on "Birth Order", although I do think that this particular article could do with some revamping. A. Carl 11:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alfred Adler, MD

I think you'll find that Dr. Adler was trained as a physician, not as a psychologist. While his theory is psychological, and not medical, the record is clear.

David L. Hanson, Ph.D. davidofseattle@comcast.net

_ _ Could we have more detail on this? DLH seems to say he was not a psychiatrist, tho my impression is that he was one of the 3 core figures of psychoanalysis, and that all psychoanalysts are psychiatrists. (Admittedly i haven't done my WP research on those, but it would be valuable to state & interpret the results on this talk page.)
_ _ It also needs to be borne in mind that he is part of the roots of psychology, and IMO helping create psychology & psychiatry before they became as institutionalized by society as they now are makes one a psychologist w/o having formal training in it, and may make one a psychiatrist as well.
_ _ Was he recognized as a psychoanalyst, as my impression is, or not?
_ _ As long as I know, psychiatry is rather the oldest specialized medical practice, having its first specialized hospital unit set by 750 of the present era, at Baghdad (See Kaplan & Sadock´s The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 7th edition, 2000, p. 3302). Surgery entered the universe of medical practices and university studies only much more recently. (sanderfridman@yahoo.com)

[edit] Answer to question on Adler and psychoanalysis

I can answer that question for you. From 1902-1911, he worked with Freud, and was indeed at that time known as a "psychoanalyst". Adler broke from Freud in 1911, and initially called his work "free psychoanalysis", but later called it "Individual Psychology". Although to a general lay public, Freud, Jung and Adler are often seen as the "Big Three" of psychoanalysis, in the strict sense, only Freud was a psychoanalyst. Jung was an analytical psychologist and Adler an individual psychologist. Use of these alternative terms helps to clarify how both Jung and Adler broke from Freud and developed their own schools of therapy. A. Carl 20:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

_ _ I am satisfied that at least for navigational purposes (Dab, LoPbN, etc.), users are likely to seek him as a psychologist, so i am listing him as if he were one on LoPbN, where fine distinctions like which Congolese or Dominican nationality, or which of the handful of types of "football" applies are irrelevant.
--Jerzy•t 14:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Psychiatry refers to the branch of medicine which is concerned with mental illness and generally gives the ability to prescribe medicine to patients, so it wasn't really an established field at this time. Psychoanalysis has no general requirement for medical training (although it often is required by some organisations), so psychoanalysts are not necessarily psychiatrists. However, whether the work of medically trained people in psychoanalysis, such as Adler, contributed to the formation of psychiatry I don't know.
--Phnord 12:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Psychoanalysis is a form of psychotherapy, not a profession. Adler was trainied as a physician, and as he practiced medicine, he became more interested behavioral correlates of medicine. I view him as the first "holistic" physician. As all psychiatrists are first trained as physicians, Adler can easily be viewed as a psychiatrist. However, he was not trained as a psychologist although his theory was and is a psychological one.

[edit] Adlerian psychology

The two pages Classical Adlerian Psychotherapy and Classical Adlerian psychology are currently a little "single author" and might benefit from a wider set of views. Bovlb 04:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Collected works article

There is an article The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler, which is, well, nothing but a list of collected works. Should the article be deleted and the list moved to the Publications section of this article? ArglebargleIV 06:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

Refs 1-5 seem suitable to Classical Adlerian psychology or Adlerian psychology, but not to his bio.
--Jerzy•t 14:44, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image

Whoever conserns himself with this article, please note that the "potentially harmful image" of A. A. that illustrates the article is under the threat of deletion.

I tried to fend off the m:copyright paranoia here twice[1][2] but I am tired of this and I wash my hands off since this is not the primary topic to which I contribute.

More can be found here. If anyone plans to do anything, good luck. --Irpen 22:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Resources

It is a little surprising that the only resource listed is not from a biography of Adler, his own works, a work on his psychology or an encylopedia of psychology. Can we add some resources that relate more closely to him or his work?Hgilbert 15:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is the significance ?

What is the significance of this paragraph?

Jarrod Williamson was one of his extremely homosexual patients, and was very depressed because he was expected to die in the next year from complications of gonorrhoea and "crabs".

Half of the story seems missing. Better to delete something that only confuses.

[edit] Birth order

The last paragraph ends in an incomplete sentence about psychological studies of siblings. It would be interesting to read more. --Ben T/C 15:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re-Write

The article has undergone a substantial re-write during June and July 2007. It had been assessed as a B class piece, I have requested that it be re-assessed and is now in the A class department queue under reconsideration. References to scholarly sources, tightening of the writing, additional categories, a photo (although it is one of the more unattractive ones, I prefered the drawing that was there earlier) and concerns expressed above have all been taken into account in the re-writing.