Adler and Jung were followers of Freud, yet each established their own unique version of psychoanalysis. Although neither Adler or Jung were pupils of Sigmund, their ideas were all related. I think of them as Freud’s sons. At one point, they were very closely tied to Sigmund but, as children do, they grew up and went off on their own.
And, as often happens, if you don’t accept your children as adults, there is a falling out. In the case of Adler and Jung, they never really reconciled with Freud. With Freud, you were either in or out.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Adler believed that being born second, being sick as a child or being pampered (or neglected) can lead to feelings of inferiority. He spoke from personal experience. The second child of six children of a wealth grain merchant, Adler had rickets as a child and was pampered by his parents. He was frail and unathletic and resented the way his mother doted on his strong older brother.
Born in Penzing, Austria (near Vienna), Adler attended the University of Vienna, receiving his MD in 1895. In 1902, Adler became Sigmund Freud’s most prominent follower. Freud was 14 years older, already famous and like an older, wiser brother. But in 1911, Adler’s had developed his own ideas (some would say had grown up) and they had a falling out. Adler formed his own circle of followers, founded his own journal and, beginning in 1921, established a chain of 30 child-guidance clinics. In 1926 Adler moved to the US. He died on a lecture tour to Scotland.
Adler was the founder of “individual psychology” and coined the term “feelings of inferiority.” In individual psychology, people’s primary motivation is striving for superiority. In light of Adler’s emphasis on inferiority, it would be easy to misconstrue superiority as meaning trying to be more valuable than another. But Alder used superiority as moving higher in rank toward completeness, as getting closer to perfection. Obviously, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority can interfere with reaching our full potential. Although compensation for feeling inferior is good, overcompensating can result in a lifestyle that take unfair advantage of other people. Adler also believed that people have an innate drive for “social interest” (the urge to work with others and be cooperative). Consequently, the goal of Adler’s therapy was for people to become socially useful and emotionally mature.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Jung was born and raised in Switzerland, along the shore of Lake Constance, where his father pastored a small Swiss Reformed Church. Jung received his MD from the University of Basel in 1900, and spent the next nine years working in a psychiatric clinic associated with the University of Zurich.
Freud wanted Jung to succeed him, and so in 1911, over the protests of many others, Freud managed to get Jung elected as the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. By 1912, however, their relationship had cooled, and was finally severed in 1914.
Jung accepted Freud’s insistence on a dynamic psychology of psychic energy and internal motivation. Like Freud, he was deterministic but unlike Freud, Jung incorporated aims, goals, and decisions into his model. Although he distinguished between the conscious and the unconscious, Jung’s unconscious included instincts, cultural knowledge and a basic life urge.
Like Freud, Jung believed in the importance of the unconscious mind, but he subdivided it into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, emotionally charged collections of private attitudes are called complexes. In contrast, archetypes are universal thought forms (e.g., hero, mother, wise old man, etc.) are called archetypes. The most important of these archetypes are formed into systems (i.e., self). For Jung, the self involved striving for unity and wholeness, and was symbolized by a mandala, pearl, diamond, circle, or any object with central point.
Jung proposed 8 personality types, a combination of two personality orientations (extroversion and introversion) and four psychological functions (thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting). Since the self is multifaceted, it shows different sides at different times. Sometimes the self presents its public personality (persona). At other times it reveals its ability to understand the opposite sex (anima and anius), or its darker (shadow) self.