Ichiro Kishimi

Co-author, with Fumitake Koga, of The Courage To Be Disliked — the dialogue that expounds Alfred Adler’s individual psychology and which Kyle read in 2025 and flagged as a quake book. Kishimi is the Adlerian philosopher behind the book’s argument; he is the “philosopher” voice the dialogue dramatizes, the one who denies trauma, replaces etiology with teleology, and insists that “happiness is the feeling of contribution.” Per the afterword, Kishimi framed his own role explicitly — “Socrates’s thought was conveyed by Plato. I would like to be a Plato for Adler” — positioning himself as the transmitter of Adler’s thought, with Koga in turn serving as his Plato.

Context: Ichiro Kishimi is a Japanese philosopher and Adlerian counselor who has translated and written extensively on Alfred Adler’s individual psychology; he co-wrote The Courage to Be Disliked (2013) and its sequel The Courage to Be Happy.

Where this appears

• The Courage To Be Disliked — co-author and the Adlerian “philosopher” whose argument the dialogue carries; the book is his attempt to be a “Plato for Adler.”