Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Japanese philosopher and author duo who popularized Adlerian psychology through their accessible dialogue-based work on self-acceptance and social courage.

Ichiro Kishimi is a Japanese philosopher and translator of Alfred Adler’s work, and Fumitake Koga is a professional writer. Together they produced The Courage to Be Disliked, a philosophical dialogue between a young man and a sage that introduces Adlerian psychology to a broad popular audience. The Socratic format — structured as a debate rather than a lecture — is both the book’s greatest strength and a deliberate choice: it mirrors Adler’s own belief that insight must be wrestled with rather than merely received.

The book’s central claims are provocative: that trauma does not determine your future, that all problems are interpersonal problems, and that happiness requires the courage to accept being disliked. These ideas push back hard against Freudian and deterministic frameworks, and for many readers they land as genuinely liberating. The writing is clean and the structure makes the philosophy digestible even for readers unfamiliar with Adler.

The criticism worth noting is that the dialogue format can feel stagey, and the philosopher character sometimes steamrolls objections rather than engaging them fully. The book also simplifies Adler considerably, which makes it accessible but occasionally leaves more philosophically minded readers wanting depth. As an introduction to Adlerian thought, however, it is hard to beat — and for readers at a crossroads in their lives, The Courage to Be Disliked has proven genuinely transformative.