inferiority complex

inferiority complex
1. Psychiatry. intense feeling of inferiority, producing a personality characterized either by extreme reticence or, as a result of overcompensation, by extreme aggressiveness.
2. lack of self-esteem; feeling of inadequacy; lack of self-confidence.
[1920-25]

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Acute sense of personal inferiority, often resulting in either timidity or (through overcompensation) exaggerated aggressiveness.

Though once a standard psychological concept, particularly among followers of Alfred Adler, it has lost much of its usefulness through imprecise popular misuse.

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 a psychological sense of inferiority that is wholly or partly unconscious. The term has been used by some psychiatrists and psychologists, particularly the followers of the early psychoanalyst Alfred Adler (Adler, Alfred), who held that many neurotic symptoms could be traced to overcompensation for this feeling. The use of the word complex later gained acceptance to denote the group of emotionally toned ideas, partially or even wholly repressed, organized around and related to such feelings of inferiority. The term inferiority complex has lost much of its significance through imprecise popular misuse—for example, as an inappropriately facile explanation of any show of ambition by a person of less-than-average height.

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Universalium. 2010.

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