Handicaps and Overcompensation.

That is why Adler is right when he advises that any act be viewed in its connection with the overall life plan and its final goal (Adler [1]). Adler derives "a basic psychological law of dialectical transformation of organic inferiority by way of a subjective feeling of inferiority into psychic drives to compensation and overcompensation" (Adler [1], p. 57). Adler's theory took up the opposition not only to the reactionary biological conceptions of E. Kretschmer, for whom the innate constitution determines the body structure, character, and "all subsequent development of the human character is merely a passive unfolding of the basic biological type that is innate in the person" (ibid. p. 174), but Adler's theory is opposed as well to Freud's characterology. The school of the Austrian psychiatrist Adler, which is widely popular and very influential in Europe and America and calls itself individual psychology, that is, personality psychology, developed this idea into an entire system, into a complete theory of the psyche. [Extracted from the article]