Rudolf Dreikurs

Rudolf Dreikurs was an Austrian psychiatrist and educator, born in 1897 and died in 1972, who developed the individual psychology of Alfred Adler into a pragmatic method for understanding the purposes of misbehavior in children and for encouraging cooperation without punishment or reward. He suggested that misbehavior comes from feeling a lack of belonging to one's social group, and that a child acts from one of four mistaken goals: undue attention, power, revenge or avoidance. His aim was for students to learn to cooperate because they feel they are valuable contributors to the classroom. In 1952 he organized followers of Adlerian psychology to found the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology and led it until his death. His books include Children: The Challenge and Psychology in the Classroom.