individual psychology

n. Individual psychology was developed in the early 1900s by Alfred Adler, who believed that human behavior was holistic, goal driven, and socially oriented. Through interactions with family and immediate social surroundings, individuals develop a "private logic" or subjective view of life that organizes their thoughts about the world and their place in it and that influences their choice of social groups. Personality and behavior are thought to be crystallized in early childhood and to be stable throughout life. Although there is an absence of empirical work to support its core tenets, some contemporary clinical and counseling perspectives employ a distinctively Adlerian (individual psychology) perspective in treating psychological disorders, and individual psychology continues to be written about in the absence of empirical data in some segments of the field; for example, there is a journal explicitly devoted to individual psychology. At present, individual psychology may be best relegated to the historical canon of theories in personality, though the spirit of Adler's theories can be found in many contemporary perspectives in social and personality psychology (e.g., self-handicapping).

-WGS