Individual Psychology
Individual Psychology
(a) In the widest sense, individual psychology is one of the major departments of psychology, comparable to such other major subdivisions as experimental psychology, abnormal psychology, comparative psychology, etc. It is the branch of psychology devoted to the investigation of mental variations among individuals and includes such topics ascharacter and temperament (see Characterology) mental types, genius, criminality, intelligence, testing, etc. Attention was frst directed to individual differences by Francis Galton (Hereditary Genius, 1869). Galton’s method was applied to mental deficiency by Dugdale (The Jukes, 1877) and Galton himself extended the same type of inquiry to free association and imagery in Inquiries into Human Faculty, 1883. A more recent contribution to individual psychology is Cattell’s American Men of Science (1906).
(b) In a somewhat more restricted sense, individual psychology, in contrast to folk psychology, group psychology or social psychology is the investigation of the individual considered — so far as possible — apart from the influence of the social group of which he is a member,
(c) Finally the term “individual” psychologv has been appropriated by a special school of analytic psychology (see Psychoanalysts), namely that of Alfred Adler. See A. Adler, Problems of Neurosis; E. Wexberg, Individual Psychology. — L.W.