“Who was Alfred Adler”  Alfred Adler (1870 to 1937), was an Aus­trian psy­chol­o­gist and psy­chi­a­trist. He grad­u­ated from med­ical school at the Uni­ver­sity of Vienna in 1895.

He was at first a col­league and mem­ber of a dis­cus­sion group with Sig­mund Freud, but dis­agreed with him about the impor­tance that Freud placed on sex drive and pre­de­ter­mi­na­tion. In 1911 he broke with Freud and founded ‘Indi­vid­ual Psy­chol­ogy’. It is the most widely accepted tech­nique next to Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Adler stressed the sense of infe­ri­or­ity, supe­ri­or­ity, and goals instead of Freud’s sex­ual drive and the sub­con­scious. His split with Freud caused a divi­sion between the two ideas that has not healed even today. Some time ago, I took a mas­ters level course in psy­chol­ogy and the instruc­tor was trained as a psy­cho­analy­sis. He refused to dis­cuss in detail any tech­niques employed by Adler. It was quite funny, because he would dis­cuss in detail other the­o­ries that were, in part, derived from Adler.

Today, I think Adler’s influ­ence on psy­chol­ogy is greater than Freud’s. Quo­ta­tions of Adler: “The chief dan­ger in life is that you may take too many pre­cau­tions.” “Man knows much more than he under­stands.” “It is always eas­ier to fight for one’s prin­ci­ples than to live up to them.” “To be human means to feel infe­rior.” “You can­not divide the indi­vid­ual; man is a whole human being.”

B.E.S.T. slave train­ing is found­ing on the the­o­ries and teach­ings of Adler.