“The key conclusion of our study is to understand the need to deal with humans as social beings. By grasping this fact, we have secured an important clue leading to understanding human behavior.” Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was an Austrian psychiatrist who focused on the factors that determine the psychology of human behavior. As one of the three greats of the world’s psychology, he established “personal psychology” and worked to understand human psychology and to identify behavioral patterns that responded to it. He emphasized that personal psychology is not about being interested in possessing the truth but about trying to reach it.

  Personal psychology in his books What Life Should Mean to You and Understanding Human Nature sees that the present and consciousness, society, and the environment greatly influence individual psychology. He sees the individual as part of a context that cannot be separated from society but clearly explains that it does not represent the individual as a whole. In this way, he expressed the characteristics of a free psychology in which one can make decisions and head toward the future with one’s own will and thoughts rather than 100% realizing the present from elements from the past. In other words, it reveals the fact that human behavior is not determined only by unconscious and intuitive elements, but also by conscious and social power. The social interest that humans have is what they look at in society. In the process, we can connect other people’s eyes and ears or establish by telling stories. It can be inferred that goals and practices for them form oneself.

  Another human behavior that tries to go further as a leader with a developmental characteristic can be explained by the result of “elderliness.” Adler divides this sense of inferiority into three categories: innate inferiority, pampered inferiority, and neglect. When an athlete who has injured body wants to overcome his disability, Adler thinks that inferiority is a motivation for life and an opportunity to be the seed of achievement for a goal. In another case, as a child grows up, children accept all the pampering from their parents but approach society and fall into inferiority due to the lack of adaptability. Finally, it is said that self-esteem decreases due to neglect, and you can have an inferiority complex in comparison with others. Adler defined being human as recognizing inferiority and believed that all humans have an inferiority complex. It can be explained that the more humans perceive this positively, the more they develop, but the more they perceive it negatively, it leads to depression and anger. So perspective is important.

  Adler saw that each lifestyle was determined by the way they used their sense of inferiority, and it is said that humans have the right to create life because they have free will. It does not matter what an individual owns, and personality is determined by how they are used. As a goal that occurs in the process, you can understand individual behavior and lifestyle. It allows us to summarize what Adler is trying to say. “The best human understanding is someone who has gone through all the passions on his own, who transforms himself based on his self-awareness and does not give up. There is no meaning in each life. It is about writing it yourself.”