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ALFRED ADLER'S "INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY"

Classical Adlerian psychology

Founder: Carl Rogers, Originally a nondirective approach developed during the 1940s as a reaction
against psychoanalysis. Based on a subjective view of human experiencing, it places more faith in
and gives more responsibility to the client in dealing with problems.

Basic philosophy: A positive view of human nature is stressed. Humans are motivated by social
interest, by striving toward goals, and by dealing with the tasks of life. People are in control of their
fate, but victims of it. Each person at an early age creates a unique style of life, which tends to
remain relatively constant throughout life.

Key concepts: The client has the potential for becoming aware of problems and the means therapy
to resolve them. Faith is placed in the client's capacity for self-direction. Mental health is a
congruence of ideal self and real self. Maladjustment is the result of a discrepancy between what
one wants to be and what one is. Focus is on the present moment and on the experiencing and
expressing of feelings.

Goal of therapy: To provide a safe climate conducive to clients' self-exploration, so that they can
recognize blocks to growth which were formerly denied or distorted. To enable them to move
towards openness, greater trust in self, willingness to be a process, and increase spontaneity and
aliveness.

Therapeutic relationship: The relationship is of primary importance. The qualities of the therapist,
including genuineness, warmth, accurate empathy, respect, and permissiveness, and the
communication of these altitudes to clients are stressed. They use this real relationship with the
therapist to help them transfer their learning to other relationships.
Techniques: This approach uses few techniques but stresses the attitudes of the therapist, Basic
techniques include active listening and hearing, reflection of feelings, clarification, and "being there"
for the client. This model does not include diagnostic testing, interpretation, taking a case history,
and questioning or probing for information.

Application of therapy: Has wide applicability to individual and group counseling. It is especially
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well suited for the initial phases of crisis-intervention work. Its principles have been applied to
marital and family therapy, community programs, administration and management, and human-
relations training. It is a useful approach to teaching, parent/child relations, and working with groups
composed of people from diverse cultural backgrounds, contribution of the approaches: Unique
contribution is having the client take an active stance and assume responsibility for the direction of
therapy. The approach has been subjected to empirical testing, and as a result both theory and
methods have been modified. It is an open system. People without advanced training can benefit by
translating the therapeutic conditions to both their personal and professional lives. Basic concepts
are straightforward and easy to grasp and apply. It is a foundation for building a trusting relationship,
applicable to all therapies.

Limitations: Possible danger from the therapist who remains passive and inactive, limiting
responses to reflection. Many clients feel a need for greater direction, more structure, and more
techniques. Clients in crisis may need more directive measures. Applied to individual counseling,
some cultural groups will expect more counselor activity. The theory needs to be reassessed in light
of current knowledge and thought if rigidity is to be avoided.
Classical Adlerian psychology is a values-based, fully-integrated, theory of personality, model of
psychopathology, philosophy of living, strategy for preventative education, and technique of
psychotherapy. Its mission is to encourage the development of psychologically healthy and cooperative
individuals, couples, and families, in order to effectively pursue the ideals of social equality and democratic
living . A vigorously optimistic and inspiring approach to psychotherapy, it balances the equally important
needs for individual optimal development and social responsibility. With a solid foundation in the original
teachings and therapeutic style of Alfred Adler, it integrates several resources: the contributions of Kurt
Adler, Lydia Sicher, Alexander Müller, Sophia de Vries, and Anthony Bruck; the self-actualization
research of Abraham Maslow; and the creative innovations of Henry Stein.

Theory of Personality

Primary and Secondary Feelings of Inferiority

The primary feeling of inferiority is the original and normal feeling in the infant and child of
smallness, weakness, and dependency. This usually acts as an incentive for development.
However, a child may develop an exaggerated feeling of inferiority as a result of physiological
difficulties or handicaps, inappropriate parenting (including abuse, neglect, pampering), or cultural or
economic obstacles. The secondary inferiority feeling is the adult's feeling of insufficiency that
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results from having adopted an unrealistically high or impossible compensatory goal, often one of
perfection. The degree of distress is proportional to the subjective, felt distance from that goal. In
addition to this distress, the residue of the original, primary feeling of inferiority may still haunt an
adult. An inferiority complex is an extremely deep feeling of inferiority that can lead to pessimistic
resignation and an assumed inability to overcome.

STRIVING FOR SUPERIORITY (OR PERFECTION)

The basic dynamic force between all human activity -- striving from a feeling of inferiority to one of
superiority.
"To be a human being," he wrote, "means to feel oneself inferior." Adler believed that inferiority
feelings are the source of all human striving. All individual progress, growth and development result
from the attempt to compensate for one's inferiorities, be they or real.
For Adler, we're all overcoming an inferiority. Feeling unattractive, or don't belong somewhere. Not
strong enough or smart enough. So everyone is trying to overcome something that is hampering
them from becoming what they want to become.
Organ inferiorities become psychologically effective through the intervention of feelings of inferiority.
The meaning of superiority changed through the years. Later it came to mean perfection,
completion, or overcoming. Unlike at the beginning, the frame of reference was no longer the
neurotic, but the mentally healthy individual. It came to mean not superior over, not competition.
Rather it became like self-realization.
A ceaselessness and universality of striving. The striving for perfections is innate in the sense that it
is a part of life.
Throughout a person's life, Adler believed, he or she is motivated by the need to overcome the
sense of inferiority and strive for ever higher levels of development.
Inferiority complex: When an inability to overcome inferiority feelings heightens and intensifies them.
In the mentally ill, the goal of superiority turns in the direction of wanting to domineer over others,
lean on others, leave tasks of life unsolved in order not to suffer sure defeats. These goals
contradict reason.
Striving for Significance: The basic, common movement of every human being is--from birth until
death--of overcoming, expansion, growth, completion, and security. This may take a negative turn
into a striving for superiority or power over other people. Unfortunately, many reference works
mistakenly refer only to the negative "striving for power" as Adler's basic premise.
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Compensation : A tendency to make up for under-development of physical or mental functioning
through interest and training, usually within a relatively normal range of development. Over-
compensation reflects a more powerful impulse to gain an extra margin of development,
frequently beyond the normal range. This may take a useful direction toward exceptional
achievement, or a useless direction toward excessive perfectionism. Genius may result from
extraordinary over-compensation. Under-compensation reflects a less active, even passive
attitude toward development that usually places excessive expectations and demands on
other people.

Feeling of Community

Translated variably from the German, Gemeinschaftsgefeuhl, as community feeling, social interest,
social feeling, and social sense. The concept denotes a recognition and acceptance of the
interconnectedness of all people, experienced on affective, cognitive, and behavioral levels. At the
affective level, it is experienced as a deep feeling of belonging to the human race and empathy with
fellow men and women. At the cognitive level, it is experienced as a recognition of interdependence
with others, i.e., that the welfare of any one individual ultimately depends on the welfare of
everyone. At the behavioral level, these thoughts and feelings can then be translated into actions
aimed at self development as well as cooperative and helpful movements directed toward others.
Thus, at its heart, the concept of feeling of community encompasses individuals' full development of
their capacities, a process that is both personally fulfilling and results in people who have something
worthwhile to contribute to one another.

Style of Life: A concept reflecting the organization of the personality, including the meaning
individuals give to the world and to themselves, their fictional final goal, and the affective,
cognitive, and behavioral strategies they employ to reach the goal. This style is also viewed
in the context of the individual's approach to or avoidance of the three tasks of life: other
people, work, love and sex.

Fictional Final Goal: Classical Adlerian Psychology assumes a central personality dynamic
reflecting the growth and forward movement of life. It is a future-oriented striving toward an
ideal goal of significance, superiority, success, or completion. The early childhood feeling of
inferiority, for which one aims to compensate, leads to the creation of a fictional final goal
which subjectively seems to promise total relief from the feeling of inferiority, future security,
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and success. The depth of the inferiority feeling usually determines the height of the goal
which then becomes the "final cause" of behavior patterns.

Based in subjective reality. Something we are all trying to reach, that we strive for we have within
ourselves. Child develops this as a safeguard to deal with the world around.
Fictions are mental states.
A fictional final goal became for Adler the principle of internal subjective causation of psychological
evenness. A basic aspect of our orientation in the world, and one aspect of compensation for felt
inferiorities.

Unity of the Personality: The position that all of the cognitive, affective, and behavioral facets of
the individual are viewed as components of an integrated whole, moving in one psychological
direction, without internal contradictions or conflicts.

Private Logic (vs. Common Sense): Private logic is the reasoning invented by an individual to
stimulate and justify a self-serving style of life. By contrast, common sense represents
society's cumulative, consensual reasoning that recognizes the wisdom of mutual benefit.

Safeguarding Tendency: Cognitive and behavioral strategies used to avoid or excuse oneself from
imagined failure. They can take the form of symptoms--such as anxiety, phobias, or
depression--which can all be used as excuses for avoiding the tasks of life and transferring
responsibility to others. They can also take the form of aggression or withdrawal. Aggressive
safeguarding strategies include depreciation, accusations, or self-accusations and guilt,
which are used as means for elevating a fragile self-esteem and safeguarding an overblown,
idealized image of oneself. Withdrawal takes various forms of physical, mental, and
emotional distancing from seemingly threatening people and problem

Psychology of Use (vs. Possession): The perspective that an individual uses his thinking, feeling,
and actions (even his symptoms) to achieve a social end. He does not merely inherit or
possess certain qualities, traits, or attitudes, but adopts only those characteristics that serve
his goal, and rejects those that do not fit his intentions. This assumption emphasizes personal
responsibility for one's character.

Organ Jargon: An organ's eloquent expression of an individual's feelings, emotions, or attitude.

Usually an ultra-sensitive organ sends a symbolic message of the individual's distress about
a subjectively unfavorable psychological situation.
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SOCIAL CHARACTER OF LIFE.

Person must be seen in social situation. All important problems and values are social
problems and values. Adler's approach was a kind of holistic social "field theory" that
predated Lewin..
Adler was not so interested in the unconscious or spirituality. Emphasis on the social. He
viewed people as mostly conscious rather than mostly unconscious creatures
Referred to private logic -- our own inner chatterbox that tells us what to do.

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW. Like Freud, Adler gave us an all-encompassing view of the

human being. An alternative to Freud. For Adler, it was useless to focus on drives and
impulses without giving attention to how the person creatively directs the drives.

MASCULINE PROTEST. Early in his career Adler put forth the idea of "Masculine protest."
The desire to be above, like a "real man". In so doing he replaced biological, external,
objective causal explanations with psychological, internal, subjective causal explanation.
IN MEN: Feminine traits are carefully hidden by exaggerated masculine wishes and efforts.
This is a form of overcompensation, because the feminine tendency is evaluated negatively
in a patriarchal, masculine-dominated culture.
This can lead to setting the highest, often unattainable goals for oneself. It develops a craving
for satisfaction and triumph, intensifies both abilities and egotistical drives, including avarice
and ambition. Defiance, vengeance, and resentment accompany it, sometimes leading to
continuous conflicts. Pathological fantasies of grandeur result from overly strong masculine
protests. The child may seek to surpass the father in every respect and thereby come into
conflict with him.
IN WOMEN. The masculine protest in women is usually covered up and transformed, seeking
to triumph with feminine means. In our culture one may find a repressed wish to become
transformed into a man. Neurotic mechanisms such as sexual anaesthesia may result.

Comments by Adler's editors Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher: "When the striving for
superiority and overcoming replaced the masculine protest [in Adler's thinking], the term
became limited to the more restricted meaning of the preceding paragraph. It referred to
manifestations in women protesting against their feminine role....
"When the masculine protest is increased, it produces such symptoms as...'frigidity, few
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children, sometimes a late marriage, a weak husband; and nervous disorders which are
often related to the menses, pregnancy, childbirth, and the menopause'.
But the masculine protest may also result in positive adjustment. "The girl...develops a
pronounced feeling of inferiority and pushes on vigorously. She thus discloses a more
thorough training which often gives her marked traits of greater energy. This...can produce a
vast number of both good and bad consequences [including] all sorts of human excellents
and shortcomings."
Adler was still thinking of the aggressive drive as the basic dynamic principle when he was
young and striving to assert his own ideas in opposition to Freud.

NEED FOR AFFECTION. : The need for social relationships is present from the start. If
satisfaction is denied to the outgoing seeking for affection, then the child may turn in on
himself or herself in narcissistic self-love.

THE "CREATIVE SELF" Known by its effects. We have freedom to act, determine our fate,
determine our personality and affect our style of life. Creative power of the self means we
consciously shape our personalities and destinies. The creative power of the self is the
essential principle of human life. Heredity gives us "certain abilities," environment gives us
"certain impressions, These, along with the way we interpret and experience them, make up
the bricks we use in our own creative way to construct our individual attitudes toward life and
our relations to the outside world. We consciously shape our personalities and destinies.

LIFE PLAN: Our strategy to deal with the world around us. Life play and FFG are similar,
they're related. In life plan the child develops a strategy, then tries to get a handle on what's
going on around them. This becomes the fictional final goal and ultimately the lifestyle.

Adler viewed Freud as too concerned with the past. He himself was oriented toward the
future. We look to the future, to our expectations, rather than to the past to explain our
behavior.

STYLE OF LIFE . Comparable to the psyche, personality. It is what we are, who we are, what
we want to be. The life style is usually set in motion by age 4 or 5. It is involved in the
uniqueness of each person, and that person's unique way of striving for superiority. Includes
the goal, the person's opinion of self and world, and his or her unique way of striving for the
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goal in his or her particular situation.
Our basic personality, our uniqueness and how we live our life, comes from the creative
power of the self. Heredity, environment, conscious, unconscious all contribute to this.
Everything Adler says ties into the lifestyle. For Adler, meanings are not determined by
situation, but we are self-determined by the meaning we attribute to a situation.
Style of life is equated with self or ego, a unity of personality. Individuality is seen as the
individual form of creative activity. There is a focus on the direction potentialities are taking.
This is heavily influenced by childhood experiences.

SUCCESS, in Adler's terms, dealt with how we fit into the environment while being true to
ourselves. You're individual, unique. If you're successful only in doing what others want you
to, you're not really successful if it doesn't fit you personally.

SOCIAL INTEREST: Gives us basically a positive outlook on life. An interest in furthering the
welfare of others. We can all work together toward this goal. If we don't have a faulty lifestyle,
we will progress together to help society.

IDEAL PERSONALITY: THE SOCIALLY USEFUL PERSON. :

Wise socialization is achieved not through repression but through social interest,. This is a
potential to cooperate with others to achieve personal and social goals. This became Adler's
criterion for normality and maturity. People can be trained in this direction starting in infancy.
Social interest gives us basically a positive outlook on life. An interest in furthering the welfare
of others. We can all work together toward this goal. If we don't have a faulty lifestyle, we will
progress together to help society.

SOCIAL INTEREST AND INTELLIGENCE. Adler saw social interest as an important part of
a person's intelligent functioning in a given situation. The degree of a person's social interest
determines whether his or her intellectual solution of a problem will have general validity, that
is, will be reasonable or not.
Good intellectual functioning produces solutions to problems which make sense not only to
the individual but also to the group.
GENIUS, acc. to Adler, is primarily a person of supreme usefulness. The essence of genius
lies neither in inherited qualities nor environmental influences, but in that third sphere of
individual reaction which includes the possibility of socially affirmative action. It is only when
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someone's life is recognized by others as having significance for them that we call him or
her a genius.

GOOD ADJUSTMENT.
This is striving on the "commonly useful side."
Poor adjustment is striving on the "commonly useless side."
Mental disturbances are thus understood as disturbances not only in the individual, but in the
social situation as well.
Adler presumes an innate potential for social interest. Not to want to help one's neighbor is
one of the characteristics of maladjustment. The person whose social interest is developed
finds the solution to problems, feels at home in the world, and perceives more clearly.

POOR ADJUSTMENT
The person not interested in his or her fellows has the greatest difficulties in life and provides
the greatest injury to others. "It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
"

PERSONALITY PROBLEMS. Related to a faulty style of life, usually developed in childhood.

COMMUNITY: People have always had to cooperate. A person must cooperate with and
contribute to society to realize both own and society's goals.

ACTIVITY: To a striving for superiority and social interest, Adler later added a third primary
motive of degree of activity.

FAULTY LIFESTYLES
Three things that can interfere with social interest are.
1. Organ inferiorities: People say, "poor kid," etc. Kid starts to think, "I'm missing something
that the other kids have. If circumstance are right for it, these feelings will roll and roll like a
big snowball. If incorrectly handled by parents around the child, they can lead to faulty
lifestyle.
2. The pampered child. Spoiled brat. "Why should I love my neighbor when my neighbor
hasn't done anything for me? I'm here for myself, nobody else. Can get paranoid if others
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don't give him or her what he or she wants.
This often occurs when the parents raised the child for themselves and their own gratification.
Didn't bring him up to be a good member of, to contribute to society.
3. The Neglected child. Also feels cheated by life. Didn't have enough love, caring, etc.
Society owes me that. I want to get it back. They cheated on me, so I'm getting what's mine.
Like the pampered child. A self-perpetuating situation.

NEUROTIC BEHAVIOR.
The neurotic overcompensates for feeling insecure to protect self-esteem. Points to his
symptom to justify lack of social interest. Overindulged child may become self-centered,
neglected child may seek revenge against society.
The safeguarding aspect. To overcompensate for feelings of insecurity and protect his self-
esteem, a neurotic can always point toward his symptom as justification for lack of social
interest.
Neurotic approaches to life include:
1) A distancing attituded
2) Detours
3) A narrowed path
4) A hesitating attitude.
The person is a victim of a wrong attitude toward life that they learned during childhood.
People push their difficulties on others and evade realities.

A TYPOLOGY. Emerges from combining degrees of activity with social interest.

Socially useful person. High social interest and high degree of activity.
Ruling person: Low social interest and high degree of activity. Out for own self interest, not
others. Might be tyrant or despot.
Getting person: Take all and give nothing.
Recluse: Low social interest and low activity.
(I have not seen high social interest and low activity mentioned.

EARLIEST MEMORIES: In his therapeutic practice this is the first question Adler would
always ask, and use it as a basis for discovering the person's lifestyle. It doesn't matter
whether it's true or not. What's important is that you chose those words, that incident, and
vocalized it. If you're lying about it, lying and deceit probably characterize your life.
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There are no chance memories, thought Adler. We consciously choose what we want to
remember, because it will help us in some endeavor.

DREAMS.
2 functions: Problem solving and Forward moving.
Did not deal with nightmares. Dreams serve as a bridge to what we want to attain. To a certain
degree they are prophetic. They keep us moving forward. Dream could be practice for an event that
is coming up. When you practice something you're moving forward and helping solve a problem.

BIRTH ORDER.
Pioneered interest in this area. Adler posited birth order as one of the major childhood social
influences from which the individual creates a style of life.
There is potentially a favorable or unfavorable outcome from each birth order place.
OLDER CHILD. Can feel dethroned. Inferior to younger child
Favorable outcome -- feel responsibility, take care of others.
Unfavorable outcome: Insecure, overly reliant on rules.

MIDDLE CHILD. Has a model in the older child, must share attention from the beginning. Doesn't
realize until later that the older child was alone before.
Favorable outcome: Be ambitious. Want to be at least as good as the older child. Strong social
interest.
Unfavorable outcome: Rebellious and envious. Permanent tendency to try to surpass others.
Difficulty in role of follower.

YOUNGEST. Lots of attention. Often pampered.

Favorable: Much stimulation. Many chances to compete.
Unfavorable: Feel inferior to everyone..
ONLY. Gets undivided attention, often pampered, may compete with father.