Chapter 3    Adler: Individual Psychology75
Personality differences between Freud and Adler continued throughout adulthood, 
with Freud preferring intense one-to-one relationships and Adler feeling more com -
fortable in group situations. These personality differences were also reflected in their 
professional organizations. Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and International 
Psychoanalytic Association were highly structured in pyramid fashion, with an inner 
circle of six of Freud’s trusted friends forming a kind of oligarchy at the top. Adler, 
by comparison, was more democratic, often meeting with colleagues and friends 
in Vienna coffeehouses where they played a piano and sang songs. Adler’s Society 
for Individual Psychology, in fact, suffered from a loose organization, and Adler 
had a relaxed attitude toward business details that did not enhance his movement 
( Ellenberger, 1970).
Adler attended elementary school with neither difficulty nor distinction. How -
ever, when he entered the Gymnasium in preparation for medical school, he did so 
poorly that his father threatened to remove him from school and apprentice him to 
a shoemaker (Grey, 1998). As a medical student he once again completed work with 
no special honors, probably because his interest in patient care conflicted with his pro -
fessors’ interest in precise diagnoses (Hoffman, 1994). When he received his medical 
degree near the end of 1895, he had realized his childhood goal of becoming a physician.
Because his father had been born in Hungary, Adler was a Hungarian citizen 
and was thus obliged to serve a tour of military duty in the Hungarian army. He ful -
filled that obligation immediately after receiving his medical degree and then returned 
to Vienna for postgraduate study. (Adler became an Austrian citizen in 1911.) He 
began private practice as an eye specialist, but gave up that specialization and turned 
to psychiatry and general medicine.
Scholars disagree on the first meeting of Adler and Freud (Bottome, 1939; 
Ellenberger, 1970; Fiebert, 1997; Handlbauer, 1998), but all agree that in the late fall 
of 1902, Freud invited Adler and three other Viennese physicians to attend a meeting 
in Freud’s home to discuss psychology and neuropathology. This group was known 
as the Wednesday Psychological Society until 1908, when it became the Vienna Psy -
choanalytic Society. Although Freud led these discussion groups, Adler never consid -
ered Freud to be his mentor and believed somewhat naively that he and others could 
make contributions to psychoanalysis—contributions that would be acceptable to 
Freud. Although Adler was one of the original  members of Freud’s inner circle, the 
two men never shared a warm personal relationship. Neither man was quick to rec -
ognize theoretical differences even after Adler’s 1907 publication of Study of Organ 
Inferiority and Its Psychical  Compensation  (1907/1917), which assumed that physical 
deficiencies—not sex—formed the foundation for human motivation.
During the next few years, Adler became even more convinced that psychoanal -
ysis should be much broader than Freud’s view of infantile sexuality. In 1911, Adler, 
who was then president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, presented his views 
before the group, expressing opposition to the strong sexual proclivities of psycho -
analysis and insisting that the drive for superiority was a more basic motive than sexu -
ality. Both he and Freud finally recognized that their differences were irreconcilable, 
and in October of 1911 Adler resigned his presidency and membership in the Psycho -
analytic Society. Along with nine other former members of the Freudian circle, he 
formed the Society for Free Psychoanalytic Study, a name that irritated Freud with its 
implication that Freudian psychoanalysis was opposed to a free expression of ideas. 
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