Adlerian Therapy
Adlerian Therapy is a psychoanalytic psychotherapy developed by Alfred Adler in 1912. Its core mechanism: exploring early recollections and lifestyle convictions reveals mistaken goals and private logic; encouragement and social interest development redirect striving from self-protection to contribution. This catalogue links it to depression, anxiety and child and adolescent behavioral problems, typically in individual, group, family format, short-medium.
Related condition topics
These links support exploration. They do not establish that Adlerian Therapy is effective or recommended for each condition.
How Adlerian Therapy works
Exploring early recollections and lifestyle convictions reveals mistaken goals and private logic; encouragement and social interest development redirect striving from self-protection to contribution
Ontology
Feelings of inferiority are universal and motivate compensation; psychopathology arises when striving for superiority becomes self-protective rather than socially embedded
Therapeutic Voice
"Go back as far as you can and tell me one thing that happened. Not something you were told about later, one time you actually remember. What's the clearest moment in it, and what were you feeling right then?"
View of the Person
A goal-directed social being striving to overcome felt inferiority through compensation: health is measured by degree of social interest and contribution
Epistemology
Evidence
Assessment not yet completed
An overall effectiveness assessment has not been completed. This describes the state of our review, not whether the approach works.
Recorded material under review
The existing notes below are retained separately from assessment records. These recorded claims await source checking, including study design, recommendations and numerical estimates.
Not in major guidelines
Limited RCTs; more practice-based evidence
Included in some integrative reviews
Enormously influential despite limited controlled research. Foundational to family therapy and school counseling, and a direct precursor of cognitive therapy: Ellis repeatedly named Adler a forerunner of REBT and was active in Adlerian circles, and Beck listed him among the precursors. Standard in counseling training programs. The social interest concept anticipates positive psychology as well as later relational and community approaches.
Training and certification
Graduate coursework in Adlerian theory + supervised practice. NASAP offers three optional credential tiers above graduate training
NASAP: Certificate of Study in Adlerian Psychology (100 hrs); Certificate in Adlerian Psychotherapy (advanced post-master's, clinical training + supervision); Diplomate in Adlerian Psychology (highest recognition). All optional; none is a license to practice
Graduate coursework + optional workshops. Certificate of Study: 100 hrs across 5 years
Minimal; Certificate of Study application fee $100
Equity & Cultural Adaptations
Clinical cautions and blind spots
Assessment and precautions
Active psychosis, severe cognitive impairment, acute crisis requiring immediate stabilization, clients for whom early recollection work would be retraumatizing without adequate stabilization
Blind spots
Limited controlled research; birth order claims empirically weak; can feel prescriptive about lifestyle goals; teleological framing may oversimplify complex presentations
Philosophical roots
Vaihinger (the philosophy of 'as if', taken over almost directly as fictional finalism); Nietzsche (will to power, reframed as striving from a felt minus toward a felt plus); Marx and Viennese socialism, mediated by Adler's wife Raissa Epstein; Dewey (education and democracy); pragmatism; anticipates positive psychology
Compared with other approaches
Test Yourself
What is social interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl)?
Show answer
The innate potential for community feeling and contribution to others: for Adler, the measure of psychological health.