Adler’s Inferiority Complex

Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor and is considered one of the founders of psychoanalysis. His ideas in this field quickly became appreciated and they soon turned into a unified theory on the human personality.

Adler was intrigued by the phenomena and inferiority and claimed that all human beings have an inferiority complex. In his view, to come into this world equals to feeling inferior. When a child notices his shortcomings in comparison with adults, he feels inferior.

This complex of inferiority motivates the child to develop and to strive for great things. As he achieves those things and his inferiority complex is surpassed, it is then triggered again by other shortcomings and creates a new motivation for achievement.

The Adler inferiority complex is thus a motivator for self-growth and achievement, but it is also something that makes the individual feel uncomfortable with their own person, which is why they will commonly try to hide this feeling and even to repress it.

The inferiority complex creates a strive for superiority. An interesting phenomenon can often occur from this: compensation. What it means is that a person will try to compensate their shortcomings by achieving something extraordinary in another area of their lives.

Thus, a short man with an inferiority complex because of his height can be driven by this feeling to study hard, work hard and become, for example, a successful and respected lawyer. According to Adler, many of the great people in society have gotten to where they are by compensating for a feeling of inferiority.

Adler’s inferiority complex was later taken by other psychoanalysts and further developed. This way, it became one of the most well known and often used concepts in the field of human psychology.

It also breached beyond the area of this discipline and entered into the mainstream culture. Today, almost any educated person knows about the concept of the inferiority complex and may apply it in explaining certain behaviors.