Daily Inspiration Quote by Alfred Adler

Adler’s line is a small, tidy piece of psychological judo: don’t take the difficult person at face value, take them at their motive. The “hard to get along with” aren’t framed as villains or simply ill-mannered; they’re framed as strivers, people performing superiority as a kind of social survival strategy. That move is classic Adler, whose work orbiting “inferiority feelings” and compensation argued that status-seeking often isn’t confidence but its counterfeit - a defense against shame, weakness, or perceived smallness.

The intent is pragmatic, almost managerial. Adler isn’t asking you to psychoanalyze for sport; he’s offering a rule you can deploy in the moment. If someone is needling, dominating, correcting, or refusing to collaborate, he suggests you treat it less as a personal attack and more as a bid for rank. “Deal with him from that point of view” is the subtextual instruction: respond to the status game rather than the content of the conflict. That might mean not escalating, not getting baited into proving yourself, or strategically offering face-saving outs that let the person feel unthreatened enough to cooperate.

There’s also a cool cynicism here: social friction is rarely about the stated issue. It’s about hierarchy, and everyone is auditioning. In Adler’s early-20th-century milieu - a world of brittle class structures, masculine authority, and rising interest in the hidden engines of behavior - this reads as both diagnosis and social tactic. The quote works because it replaces moral judgment with motive, turning “difficult” into “insecure with a strategy,” which is often the only reframe that gives you room to maneuver.