Alfred Adler Basic Human Motivation Drive for Superiority

Alfred Adler Basic Human Motivation: Drive for Superiority, the desire for selfimprovement, an “upward drive” for perfection. Basic Human Problem: Inferiority Complex, extreme feelings of weakness or inadequacy; involves an inability to accept natural limitations. An Inferiority Complex occurs when the need for self-improvement is blocked.

Inferiority Feelings and Personality Feelings of inferiority are a natural part of personality development. They start in childhood when we compare ourselves to adults and continue into adulthood when we discover limitations to our abilities. The natural and healthy reaction to inferiority feelings is Compensation, efforts to overcome real or imagined inferiority by developing one’s abilities.

Healthy Versus Unhealthy Processes Healthy Process: Compensation Self -Improvement Unhealthy Process: Compensation Inferiority Complex Overcompensation Trying to appear stronger by striving for power, putting other people down, or showing off; hypersensitive about self-esteem.

Adler Versus Freud For Freud, a person’s primary motivation was sexual pleasure; people were similar to animals and machines: driven by natural forces with no say in what they did. For Adler, the primary motivation was self-perfection and equality with others; the emphasis was on what made people different from animals and machines: goals, values, free will.

"Heredity and environment provide the bricks; the final form of the building is up to us". The building’s form is our Style of Life: the goals we have chosen and the ways we pursue them, our values and priorities, how we see people and events, and our everyday habits.