Inferiority, Feeling of (Individual Psychology)

As early as 1907 Alfred Adler considered the state of organic inferiority as a factor in neurosis before linking it to the newborn child's state of physiological immaturity. This state of inferiority is the source of the feeling of inferiority that persists throughout life: "Being a man means having a feeling of inferiority that constantly demands compensation" (1912/2002).

The life history of Alfred Adler, who suffered from rickets as a child, goes some way to explaining his insistence on the importance of the states of organic inferiority at the root of the feeling of inferiority. He later observed the various modulations that the family and cultural environment, as well as the child's choices, introduced into this feeling, which he saw as a stimulant to psychic life. By way of compensation the child will elaborate a directing fiction representing an ideal being who has all the qualities that the child lacks, and will project itself into the future "in the shape of the father, mother, an older brother or sister, a schoolteacher, an animal or a God" (1912/2002). The gap between the self and the directing fiction is all the greater if the child has suffered frustrations or ill treatment and encounters no obstacles in its imaginary world.

Very early on this fiction will be adapted due to the influence of social and cultural factors and will express itself in the form of a counter-fiction (1912/2002). Psychic health is characterized by harmonious relations between the fiction and the counter-fiction, whereas the neurotic will remain under the control of the fiction, making an effort "to shine while acting modestly, to conquer while remaining humble and submissive, to humiliate others with his own apparent virtues, to disarm others with his passivity, to make others suffer through his own suffering, to pursue a virile goal with feminine means, to make himself small in order to seem big."

Compensation for an exacerbated feeling of inferiority can take the form of a superiority complex, the different manifestations of which Adler described in The Neurotic Constitution, whereas discouragement will take the form of an inferiority complex. In this case the subject will use neurotically rich symptoms to flee all situations that threaten its prestige, hence Adler's definition of neurosis: "An attempt to maintain the appearance of value at all costs, while desiring this goal without paying the price" (1930/1927).

Cultural influence manifests itself in the elaboration of the fiction through the choice of a model representing a virile ideal that leads to a mode of apperception that is in accordance with the opposition relation: masculine/dominant/superiority, feminine/defeated/inferiority. The social influence constitutes the correcting element that determines the feeling of inferiority. These two factors make up two lines of force that are present in the formation of the child's lifestyle, which can be compared to the program of perception and behavior with which the child complies unconsciously (1929/1964).

FRANÇOIS COMPAN

See also: Cinema and psychoanalysis; Inferiority, feeling of; Grandiose self; Object; Paranoia; Penis envy; "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes."

Bibliography

Adler, Alfred (1972). The neurotic constitution: Outlines of a comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy (Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind, Trans.). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press. (Original work published 1930)

——. (1964). Problems of neurosis: A book of case histories. (P. Mairet, Ed.). New York: Harper & Row. (Original work published 1929)

——. (2002). The neurotic character. Fundamentals of individual psychology and psychotherapy (Cees Koen, Trans.). San Franscisco: Alfred Adler Institutes. (Original work published 1912)