Alfred Adler

Born in Austria to a Hungarian-Jewish grain merchant and his wife, Alfred Adler, much like his more famous contemporary Sigmund Freud, started his intellectual journey firmly rooted in the Central European Jewish experience. However, Adler, always one for forging his own path, converted to Protestantism in 1912, effectively distancing himself from formal Jewish identity, though he remained very much of Jewish origin.

Despite his religious conversion, Adler's theories on the inferiority complex and the drive for superiority, among others, have had a profound and lasting impact on modern psychology. His contributions laid crucial groundwork for humanistic psychology and psychotherapy, proving that one didn't need to be Freud to have a lasting influence. He even introduced the term "lifestyle," which, given his prolific output, one can assume he had little time for.

Adler's break from Freud's psychoanalytic society was legendary, a testament to his independent spirit (or perhaps his own superiority complex). While Freud delved into the unconscious, Adler focused on the conscious individual and their striving for significance, making him a perpetual favorite in self-help literature long before self-help was cool.

He moved to the United States in the 1930s, escaping the encroaching Nazi threat in Europe – a threat that, ironically, wouldn't have cared much for his Protestant conversion when determining his "identity." He died of a heart attack in Scotland while on a lecture tour, still actively spreading his gospel of individual psychology.