An Austrian physician, psychologist, and psychotherapist, Alfred Adler was born February 7, 1870, in Vienna and died May 28, 1937, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The son of a grain merchant, he was raised in Vienna and received his medical degree in 1895. After opening his medical practice, he took an interest in social issues and, in 1902, became part of Sigmund Freud's circle of friends. He was one of the most active members of the group and one of the most original. After creating the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) in 1910, he became the head of the Vienna group and, with Stekel, became co-editor of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, founded the same year.

In 1911 he left the IPA with nine other members because of irreconcilable theoretical differences and founded the Verein für Freie Psychoanalytische Forschung (Society for Free Analytic Research), which he transformed in 1913 into the Verein für Individual...