The Psychology of Alfred Adler: Superiority, Inferiority, and Courage

Alfred Adler’s psychology puts the engine of human suffering in the coping strategies people choose—not in life’s challenges themselves. When setbacks arrive, the pain that follows often comes from the “solutions” a person adopts to protect their self-image and keep moving toward their goals. That practical, common-sense focus—how people respond and how they can change—helps explain why Adler’s ideas remain influential even though his work is often overshadowed by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

Adler starts with a teleological view of mind: people are goal-directed by nature. Humans strive toward self-created aims, and those aims are organized around an early-formed “self ideal,” the kind of person someone wants to become. The self ideal points toward the future and pulls behavior in a particular direction. As people pursue it, they develop a “life style,” a personal, often unspoken set of rules for how to navigate life and reach goals. Adler’s key methodological point is that lifestyles can’t be labeled healthy or unhealthy in advance; they must be judged by what they accomplish in real life. Some lifestyles work until life presents tasks they weren’t prepared for—then weaknesses surface.

Those weaknesses trigger feelings of inferiority, which Adler treats as both subjective and sometimes rooted in measurable “objective inferiorities.” Objective inferiority might be low height, limited strength, less money, or weaker skills. But such facts only produce inferiority feelings when they matter to the person’s self ideal. Conversely, inferiority can also arise without objective grounds when people interpret themselves as falling short in ways that their goals make emotionally significant.

How people respond to inferiority determines psychological health. Adler describes two broad coping routes. “Coping behaviors” treat the situation as a challenge: direct problem-solving when the cause can be addressed (finding a new job, improving inadequate skills), or compensation when it can’t (for example, cultivating reading skills after losing hearing). The alternative is “safeguarding behaviors,” strategies meant to avoid the core issue by shifting attention to excuses and distractions. These can take the form of physical symptoms like headaches or chronic tiredness, anxiety used as justification for inaction, or “distant seeking”—procrastinating or taking only minimal steps before retreating to comfort.

Safeguarding can work briefly, but it eventually loses credibility and effectiveness. At that point, people either confront their problems directly or withdraw from the challenge, risking an “inferiority complex.” Adler links this failure to an unrealistic self ideal—often perfectionism or an overemphasis on wealth, status, power, fame, or beauty—so the person keeps getting thwarted and falls back on avoidance. The remedy begins with becoming more aware of what one is striving for and adjusting the self ideal.

Even then, change requires courage. Adler argues that psychotherapy’s basic task is to cultivate a courageous attitude toward life: courage is not a trait someone either has or lacks, but a willingness to take risks even when outcomes are uncertain or potentially adverse. Since life will keep challenging people, the choice is whether to coexist with discomfort by acting anyway—or retreat further into a comfort zone that deepens misery.