ABSTRACT
Alfred Adler was born on February 7, 1870, in Rudolfsheim, a suburb of Vienna. His father was a Jewish grain merchant with a cheerful disposition and a particular fondness for Alfred, and his mother has been described as gloomy, rejecting, and self-sacrificing. Like Freud and Jung, Adler rose from lower middle-class origins to world fame; but unlike his illustrious counterparts, he remained emotionally attached to the lower classes and keenly concerned with their problems. Adler was a second-born (Ellenberger. 1970, p. 576) who grew up in the shadow of a gifted and successful older brother, and his family included an envious younger brother and three other siblings. Alfred never developed strong ties to his Jewish heritage, per haps because his childhood was spent in liberal and heterogeneous surroundings, and he converted to Protestantism in 1904.
