SOPHIA
DE VRIES
Student of Alfred Adler. Co-founder of Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy
Sophia J. de Vries was born in Arnhem, Holland on February 2, 1901, the youngest of four children. She earned her bachelor's degree in education and a teaching credential in 1919, and began working with children who had emotional and learning difficulties. Her first encounter with Adlerian ideas came through the lectures of Fritz Kuenkel, a popular lecturer in Holland who spoke to teachers and parents about understanding difficult children.
SOPHIA DE VRIES [1901 - 1999]
In 1922 she traveled to Italy to study with Maria Montessori. Returning to Holland in 1925, she married and had two children.
Eight years later she resumed her graduate education in psychology at Amsterdam University, and her interest in Adlerian psychology deepened as she began attending Alfred Adler's lectures in Amsterdam.
In 1935 she went to Vienna, where she took courses given by Alfred Adler, Lydia Sicher, Alexander Müller, Rudolf Dreikurs, August Eichorn, and Karl Bühler. Her study analysis was with Sicher, Adler's first assistant; her case supervision was provided by Müller, a close co-worker of Adler. While in Vienna she also worked with Charlotte Bühler at the Kinderübernahmsstelle, studying children's physical, mental, and psychological development, and participated in Adlerian study groups and child guidance clinics where Ida Loewy and Martha Holub demonstrated family counseling techniques.
World War II interrupted her doctoral studies. The theories of Adler and Freud were forbidden in Holland — only Jung's ideas were permitted to be discussed openly. Because she refused to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler, she was barred from the university. She continued nonetheless to attend the International School for Philosophy in Holland and heard lectures by Carl Jung, Ludwig Klages, and Ernst Kretschmer. And though it was dangerous to do so, she continued to practice Adlerian psychology.
After the war, in 1945, the Adlerian training group was re-established in Holland. Sophia was appointed to the Scientific Committee on Adlerian Psychology and taught courses alongside Alexander Müller in Amsterdam. In 1948 she immigrated to the United States, settled in Southern California, and worked closely with Lydia Sicher. Moving to Northern California in 1952, she worked as a caseworker for Lincoln Child Center in Oakland while continuing to teach and develop a private practice.
For nearly twenty years she served as mentor and consultant to the Alfred Adler Institute of San Francisco, offering study groups, case analysis seminars, supervision, and study-analyses to students. Sophia provided the insight and inspiration for the institute's dedication to Adler's original teachings and his diplomatic, creative style of treatment. One of her great contributions to Adlerian practice was her masterful adaptation of the Socratic method to psychotherapy.
Her translations of writings by Alexander Müller and Alfred Adler provided the foundation for the Classical Adlerian Translation Project — dedicated to translating, editing, and publishing the Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler, as well as unpublished manuscripts of Müller, Bruck, and other Classical Adlerians.