Depth psychology was of course founded to all intents and purposes by Sigmund Freud, who named his theory and method psychoanalysis. Freud and Adler and Carl G. Jung have often been mentioned as the first triumvirate of this new field. Both Adler and Jung were at first associated with Freud but later separated from him, Adler in 1911 and Jung in 1913. Jung's form of depth psychology, known as analytic psychology or complex psychology, will not concern us because Adler gives no indication of having been stimulated by Jung. The influence of Freud, however, is reflected throughout Adler's work, which to a large extent developed as an antithesis to that of Freud.

When Adler was invited by Freud in 1902 to join the psychoanalytic circle, he was a young practicing physician, fourteen years younger than Freud (15, p. 57). Soon he became a prominent member of the group. He was highly esteemed by Freud, was eventually named his successor as president of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, and became coeditor of an early psychoanalytic journal, the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse. At the same time theoretical differences developed. These gradually increased to the point where both Adler and Freud regarded them as irreconcilable, and Adler resigned from his positions in the psychoanalytic movement (24; 1911d). The small group which left the Freudian circle with Adler established itself at first as the Society for Free Psychoanalytic Research. But by the next year Adler's ideas had crystallized sufficiently for him to decide on the new name of Individual Psychology. The new society became known by this name, and in 1914 Adler founded his own journal, the Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie.

At the time of the separation it appeared to some that the similarities between Freud and Adler were greater than their differences (24); the two used similar methods, described and interpreted much the same phenomena, and often did so in parallel terms. Since then many have believed that the difference was primarily one of terminology, aggravated by personal antagonisms. Others, while appreciating the difference between Freud's libido as the basic drive and Adler's striving for superiority, thought nevertheless that the two theories were otherwise essentially similar, so that the difference was "merely a change of content, comparable to Heraclitus's substitution of fire for Thales's water as the basic element" (21, p. 60). But actually the difference in theory is about as fundamental and far-reaching as is possible within a given area. The change of this one "element" is in fact symptomatic of a change in the whole theory and all its parts. . .

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