Superiority complex is a term coined by Alfred Adler (1870-1937) in the early 1900s, as part of his school of individual psychology. A superiority complex is a defense mechanism that develops over time to help a person cope with feelings of inferiority. Individuals with this complex typically come across as supercilious, haughty, and disdainful toward others. They may treat others in an imperious, overbearing, and even aggressive manner. In everyday usage, the term "superiority complex" is used to refer to an overly high opinion of oneself. Alfred Adler Alfred Adler was the first to use the term superiority complex. He claimed that a superiority complex essentially came from the need to overcome underlying feelings of inferiority: an inferiority complex. Throughout his works Adler intertwines the occurrence of an inferiority complex and a superiority complex as cause and effect. Among his writings touching on the topic were Understanding Human Nature (1927), and Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings, a collection of twenty-one papers written by Adler and published posthumously in 1964. Adler distinguished a normal striving to achieve from superiority complexes, the latter being attempts in order to overcompensate a feeling of inferiority. He states that those with an inferiority complex develop a superiority complex to overcome the difficulties presented by the former, primarily by inflating their sense of self-importance in some way. Dreams of heroism, and a false assumption of success, revealed for Adler the reactive nature of such strivings. While Adler considered what he refers to in his writing as striving for superiority was a universal of human nature, he thought sound-minded individuals do not strive for personal superiority over others, rather for personal ambition and success through work. By contrast, those with an actual superiority complex were riddled with conceited fantasies, and with dreams of immutable supremacy. Other interpretations In contrast, an edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that was published about twenty years after Alfred Adler's works disagreed that superiority complex (under the formal name of grandiose delusion in the DSM IV) came solely from the effects of an inferiority complex. The DSM IV states that a second cause to this delusional disorder could stem from an exaggerated emotional state. Ada Kahn has argued that the superiority and inferiority complexes cannot both be found in the same individual, since an individual with a superiority complex truly believes that they are