ALFRED ADLER
Alfred Adler was the pioneering psychiatrist whose belief in community and social interest shaped the University’s mission and impact-driven approach to education.
about dr. adlER
Alfred Adler was a physician, psychotherapist, and the founder of Adlerian psychology, also referred to as Individual Psychology.
Alfred Adler is widely recognized as the first community psychologist, pioneering an approach that placed community life, prevention, and population health at the center of psychological thought. His groundbreaking work shifted the field beyond the individual, demonstrating how social environments shape people’s ability to live, connect, and thrive. From this perspective emerged Adlerian psychology, an approach rooted in contribution and shared responsibility that frames well-being as nurtured through relationships and collective action.
This vision carried into Adler’s practice. He was among the earliest to provide family and group counseling, recognizing that people heal and grow in connection with others. He championed the use of public education as a way to strengthen community health, ensuring that knowledge and resources reached far beyond the consulting room. Decades before these ideas gained broad acceptance, Adler wrote about the social conditions that influence both physical and mental health. His legacy remains a foundation for Adler University today, shaping our mission to prepare leaders who advance health and well-being in communities worldwide.
Gemeinschaftsgefühl
Gemeinschaftsgefühl (a German term meaning “community feeling” or “social feeling”) was introduced by Alfred Adler to capture the idea that true psychological health comes from a sense of belonging and responsibility to others. It describes the human capacity and need to connect, to cooperate, and to contribute to the common good.
While the root word Gemeinschaft (“community”) comes from the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, Adler transformed the concept into something entirely new within psychology. He took what was originally a sociological distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society/association) and expanded it into a principle of human development. For Adler, Gemeinschaftsgefühl was not just about social structure, but about empathy, cooperation, and social responsibility as the foundation of individual well-being and collective progress.
Early Life + education
Adler was born just outside of Vienna on February 7, 1870. After graduating with a medical degree in 1895 from the University of Vienna, he began his career as an ophthalmologist, but soon switched to general practice in a less affluent area of Vienna near an amusement park and circus. Working with people from the circus, Adler was inspired by the performers’ unusual strengths and weaknesses. It has been suggested that Adler began to develop his insights on compensation and inferiority during this time.
Key years
1898: Connecting health to social conditions
Alfred Adler establishes a practice in Vienna. He links medical problems of tailors with poor living and working conditions, laying the foundation for the study of mental health social determinants.
1902-1907: Joining Freud and co-founding Vienna psychoanalytic society
In 1902 Sigmund Freud invites Alfred Adler to join the Wednesday Psychological Society (later called the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society).
In 1907 Adler was invited to meet with Sigmund Freud. Adler and Freud, along with Rudolf Reitler and Wilhelm Stekel, began meeting weekly during “Wednesday Night Meetings” that eventually grew to begin the psychoanalytic movement. Together, they formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, of which Adler was the first president.
1911-1912: Breaking with Freud, and Forming his Own school
In 1911 Alfred Adler and Freud part ways, and Adler is expelled from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
Although Freud looked upon Adler as one of his first disciples, Adler never viewed himself that way, and broke with Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis in 1911. Many of Adler’s concepts and ideas were separate from Freud’s, particularly regarding the importance of the social realm. Adler used these ideas to form Individual Psychology, and founded the Society of Individual Psychology in 1912.
1916-1918: From military doctor to focussing on social interest
In 1916 Alfred Adler is drafted as a military physician for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1918 Alfred Adler is discharged from military service and begins to emphasize social interest and community issues in his writing.
After serving as a doctor in the Austrian Army in World War I, Adler established a series of child guidance clinics in Austria and embarked on extensive lecture tours in the United States and Europe. To significant acclaim, he successfully promoted his psychological concepts emphasizing social interest, or Gemeinschaftsgefühl.
1920 – 1926 growing global influence
In 1920 Alfred Adler meets medical student Rudolf Dreikurs and invites him on a client visit. In the United States, the Constitution prohibits gender-based restrictions on voting.
In 1921 Alfred Adler establishes the first Child Guidance Clinic in Vienna, and he lectures at Vienna’s Pedagogical Institute.
In 1922 Alfred Adler develops the open forum model of counseling-making psychological intervention and psychotherapy accessible to the general public.
In 1923 Rudolf Dreikurs begins working within Adler’s Child Guidance Clinics.
In 1926 Alfred Adler first travels to the United States. After his Austrian clinics were closed due to his Jewish heritage, Adler emigrated to the United States where he began a professorship at the Long Island College of Medicine.
1933-1937: Final years
In 1933 Alfred Adler publishes Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind, describing our responsibility to each other within our communities. In 1937, while on a lecture tour in Aberdeen, Scotland, Alfred Adler died of a heart attack. His body was cremated in Edinburgh, but the ashes were never reclaimed. They were rediscovered in a casket at Warriston Crematorium and returned to Vienna for burial in 2011.
His Concepts + impact
A visionary
Building on Alfred Adler’s legacy, Rudolf Dreikurs introduced Individual Psychology to Chicago in 1937 with the founding of the Individual Psychology Society. A year later, he launched the first Child Guidance Center on the city’s South Side, offering parenting education and mental health support rooted in community care. In 1941, Dreikurs expanded his efforts with a second center at the Jane Addams Hull House Mary Crane Nursery, where he and his family lived. By 1952, he opened a third center in the Lakeview neighborhood, establishing a model of accessible, community-based mental health care that continues to shape Adler University’s mission and impact today.