Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was a medical psychologist and founder of Individual Psychology. He was born in Vienna of Hungarian-Jewish parents. He received his MD from the University of Vienna in 1895 and practiced general medicine before fucusing his studies on psychiatry.

His soundest scientific works were written before World War I and largely prepared during his ambivalent association with the early Freudian group. After serving in the Austrian army he became concerned with child guidance as a method of preventive medical psychology, and gaining favor with the new Austrian government, opened child-guidance centers in Vienna, Berlin, and Munich schools. Family-guidance interviews in public, with general discussion periods, disseminated his methods and theories, particularly among educators. He became an international lecturer in Europe and the United States and was America’s first professor of medical psychology, at Long Island Medical School.

In the 1930s his efforts to spread his doctrine of “social interest” in the face of Europe’s totalitarian nationalisms marked him as preacher rather than scientist, and his later published work served to promulgate a faith rather than to report scientific work. He died in Aberdeen, Scotland, during a lecture tour.