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As these members began to break from the Freudian camp, many new
theories emerged that have become well received in their own right. These
new theories, however, hold many of the same underlying beliefs of
psychoanalysis, most importantly the view of the unconscious as an
important drive in human emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. The idea of
defense mechanisms related to the unconscious have also been maintained
in many of these new theories as well as the importance of early
development of the formation of the personality.
Among those we are Alfred Adler and his Individual Psychology, Carl Jung's
Individual Psychology, Erik and Erikson's Ego Psychology, Karen Horney,
Harry Stack Sullivan and Erik Fromm.
ALFRED ADLER
(1870- 1937)
INTRODUCTION -
He was
an Austrian medical doctor, psychologist and
founder of the school of individual psychology. In
collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small
group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among
the co-founders of the psychoanalytic
movement as a core member of the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society. He was the first major
figure to break away from psychoanalysis to
form an independent school of psychotherapy and personality theory.
Following this split, Adler would come to have an enormous, independent
effect on the disciplines of counseling and psychotherapy as they developed
over the course of the 20th century. He influenced notable figures in
subsequent schools of psychotherapy such as Rollmay, Viktor
Frankl, Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis. His writings preceded, and were at
times surprisingly consistent with, later neo-Freudian insights such as those
evidenced in the works of Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich
Fromm.
“ The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding
of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to
every human soul.”
- Alfred Adler
In his youth, Adler was a sickly child which caused him embarrassment and
pain. These early experiences with illnesses and accidents probably account
for his theory of organ inferiority and were the foundation for his theories on
inferiority feelings. According to Adler, each individual has a weak area in
their body (organ inferiority) which tends to be the area where illness occurs -
such as the stomach, head, heart, back, lungs, etc. Adler said that to some
degree every emotion finds expression in the body. From his understanding
of organ inferiority, Adler began to see each individual as having a feeling of
inferiority. Adler wrote, "To be a human being means to feel oneself inferior."
The child comes into the world as a helpless little creature surrounded by
powerful adults. A child is motivated by feelings of inferiority to strive for
greater things. Those feelings of inferiority activate a person to strive upward
so that normal feelings of inferiority impel the human being to solve his
problems successful, whereas the inferiority complex impedes or prevents
him from doing so.
Every person has inferiority feelings whether he will or can admit it. Adler
says that since the feeling of inferiority is regarded as a sign of weakness and
as something shameful, there is naturally a strong tendency to conceal it.
Indeed, the effort of concealment may be so great that the person himself
ceases to be aware of his inferiority as such, being wholly preoccupied with
the consequences of the feeling and with all the objective details that
subserve its concealment. So effectively may an individual train his whole
mentality for this task that the entire current of his psychic life flows
ceaselessly form below to above, that is, from feeling of inferiority to that of
superiority, occurs automatically and escapes his own notice. It is not
surprising that we often receive a negative reply when we ask a person
whether he has a feeling of inferiority. It is better not to the press the point,
but to observe his psychological movements, in which the attitude and
individual goal can always be discerned.
The first born child is given a great deal of attention until the second child is
born and then the first is dethroned from his favored position. This dethroning
experience may affect the child in a number of ways. It may cause him to
protect himself against reversals, be conservative and insecure or it may
cause him to develop a striving to protect others and be a helper. If the
parents have allowed the first-born to feel sure of their affection, if he knows
that his position is secure, and above all, if he is prepared for the arrival of
the younger child and has been trained to cooperate in its care, the crisis will
pass without ill effects.
All other children may be dethroned but never the youngest who is always
the baby of the family and often spoiled in the process. As he has no
followers but many pacemakers, he may strive to overcome them all. Adler
believed that the oldest child would most likely become a problem child and a
neurotic maladjusted adult with the youngest following closely behind. The
second child is by and large better adjusted than either his older or younger
siblings.
The only child has problems of his own for the mother often pampers him.
She is afraid of losing him, so spoils him as a results of her over
protectiveness. As he has no siblings, his feelings of competition is often
directed against his father or a girl against her mother. In later years when he
is no longer the center of attention, he may have difficulties.
The relationship with the client that the Adlerian seeks to establish is one of
friendliness and cooperation. Adler places a high value on the social
relationship between the therapist and the client. He believed that this
relationship could serve as a reeducation bridge to other relationships. He felt
that all people who fail are deficient in concern and love for their fellow
human beings. He spent a lot of time in an attempt to help the client develop
social interest. The Adlerian's concept of cooperation follows as the therapist
sets the example of love, concern and friendship.
The interpretation phase put an emphasis on the goals and style of life of the
client. The therapist has the client look at his feelings and the purpose for his
feelings. The client will not be told what to do but is shown how he is living
out his style of life and what it cost the client to do so. The mirror technique
is used by which the individual looks at himself.
In the reorientation stage, the client is encouraged to drop the old style of life
and take up another that will help him to deal with the realities of life and
receives satisfaction from living. The Adlerian uses encouragement
extensively in their therapy. The purpose of this encouragement is to help the
patient make the transfer from a style of life that is faulty to one that is
healthy. Encouragement is given with the understanding that the client must
gain for himself an attitude toward life that will allow him to approach and
overcome his problems in a realistic manner. To be healthy, the client must
learn to handle his problems with common sense and social interest instead
of fantasy. The therapist should be optimistic, cheerful, tolerant, active and
have empathy. Clients should find the therapist a dependable and benevolent
human being.
Adler compares the individual who has a faulty style of life with a person who
is caught in a dark room and cannot find an exit. The therapist helps the
client illuminate the room so that he can find a way out to a new way of
dealing with his problems. Adler wrote, "Every individual represents both a
unity of personality and the individual fashions that unity. The individual is
thus both the picture and the artist. Therefore if one can change his concept
of himself, he can change the picture that he is painting."
During the first few years of life, each individual develops a style of life that
greatly influences his behavior. Adler wrote, "If we know the goal of a person,
we can undertake to explain and to understand what the psychological
phenomena want to tell us why they were created, what a person had made
of his innate material, why he had made it just so and not differently, how his
character traits, his feelings and emotions, his logic, his morals, and his
aesthetic must be constituted in order that he may arrive at his goal. If we
could infer the individually comprehended goal from the ornaments and
melodies of a human life and, on this basis, develop the entire style of life
(and the underlying individual law of movement), we could classify a person
with almost natural-science accuracy. We could predict how a person would
act in a specific situation." The life style of the individual is considered the
key to his behavior. His major goal is superiority and compensation for his
feeling of inferiority, but he may achieve this goal in a great variety of ways.
Each person has a specific goal that is all his own and make him different
from any other person. As he follows that goal, he adapts early in life a
specific technique for attaining it. The child may feel that he is helpless and
that he can have life only by gaining the support of others. Throughout his
life he will be unable to assert himself constructively, to take direct initiative
for his own destiny. He may develop an illness or disability that demands the
care of others. As the illness develops, it becomes a compensation for the
individual's failure. He may then say, "If I didn't have this illness, I could
succeed as easily as anyone else." The style of life becomes fixed for the
individual must cling to his illness or the bluff of his claim of possible
accomplishment would be recognized. The illness must be convincing
enough, both to himself and others, to maintain the pretence. The patient is
not consciously aware that his illness is an excuse for none fulfillment. No one
is forced to continue all his life in one direction for when he realizes his
mistakes, he can change his style of life and rid himself of those barriers to a
meaningful life.
Adler believed that the spoiled child seeks to be the center of attention. The
hated child adopts the goal of escaping to a safe distance from others. The
eldest child adopts the attitude of keeping what is his, the second child seeks
to surpass, and the only child assumes that others will serve and he will rule.
Childhood experiences which often, but not necessarily, predispose the child
to a faulty style of life are children with inferiorities, spoiled children and
neglected children. These conditions often produce erroneous conceptions of
the world and results in a pathological negative style of life. Children with
physical or mental infirmities are likely to have a greater feeling of inferiority
than others in meeting the task of life. Adler believed that pampering a child
was the greatest curse that could be experienced by a child. They are
potentially the most dangerous to society for they expect others to conform
to their self-centered wishes. Pampering robs the child of his independence.
He is not given the opportunity to accomplish something for himself. This
prevents him using his own power and from learning to cooperate with
others. The neglected child, who was badly treated in childhood, may become
an enemy of society.
Basic life styles: (1). The well-adjusted does not strive for personal
superiority, but seeks to solve his problems in ways that are useful to other
as well as himself. (2). The second type wants to prove his personal
superiority by ruling others. (3). The third type is the getting type. They want
to get everything through others without any effort or struggle of their own.
(4). The fourth tries to avoid every decision. They are the avoiding type.
Adler believed that an almost radical change in character and behavior would
take place when an individual adopted new goals. Adler said that man is not
bad by nature. Whatever his faults have been, faults due to erogenous
conception of life, he must not be oppressed by them. He can change. The
past is gone and with a change in his life style, the individual is free in the
present and future to experience happiness and bring happiness to others.
The style of life is influenced mostly by the quality of the individual's SOCIAL
INTEREST. Social interest is inborn but that inborn quality is brought to its
fullness by guidance and training. The child comes into this world completely
dependent upon others. A person's style of life cannot be understood without
considering the people whom he comes in contact. Relationships with
mother, other family members and society affects an individual in his choice
of a style of life. In order to understand an individual, it is necessary to
consider his attitude toward his fellowman and himself.
The normal person with a well-developed social interest will adopt a useful
style of life by contributing to the common welfare and thus overcoming his
feelings of inferiority. On the other hand, the impaired individual is
characterized by his inferiority feelings, underdeveloped social interest and in
uncooperative goals of superiority. The impaired solves his problems in a self-
centered, private-sense rather than a task-centered, common-sense fashion.
In regards to the person who spends much time in support of public causes,
but has little concern for the individual. As one learns to contribute to the
common welfare, he comes to have a feeling of worth and value and begins
to feel at home in life. Social interest enhances one's intelligence, heightens
his self-esteem, and enables him to adjust to unexpected misfortune. Social
interest gives meaning and purpose to life
* 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.
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.
1. Social embeddedness
This contrasts with a hereditary or biological basis of behaviour. We
are social beings who want to 'belong' and find our place in the group.
All our problems are basically social problems to do with interacting
with others. The group is the field in which we move even if we move
away.
Our ability to cooperate and to contribute is a measure of our mental
health (Adler called it Gemeinschaftsgefühl - ‘community feeling’ or
‘social interest’).
A well adjusted person behaves in line with the needs of a situation. A
maladjusted person has faulty concepts, personal feelings of inferiority
and mistaken goals. They are overly concerned with ‘What’s in it for
me?’ or ‘What do others think of me?’
3. Teleology (goal-directedness)
Contrasts with causal evaluation of behaviour. Our behaviour is
purposive (although we are often unaware of the purpose).
We are not pushed by causes, but pulled by goals and our own
dynamic striving. Causes usually cannot be changed, but goals - once
recognised - offer a choice. power to will" or the belief that individuals
are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move
toward certain goals of self-realization
4. Subjectivity
Contrasts with an assumption of absolutes. We give meaning to life –
reality is as we perceive it.
We cannot be objective about ourselves and our interpretation of
experience. There is no 'absolute truth' for us – reality or truth is how
we feel and what it means to us. Heredity or environment are not as
important as what meaning we give to them. This is a psychology
of use, not possession.
5. Holism
the Adlerian views man as a unit, a self-conscious whole that functions
as an open system .Contrasts with a reductionist view. A part is never
understood by itself. A whole is more than the sum of its parts. We
always look for patterns into which the details will fit (we can perceive
the design of a mosaic without separating the pieces).
EVALUATION OF ADLER
Contributions -
Adler’s psychology was well received from the beginning, particularly by
those who were repelled by many freud’s concepts. For e.g. towards freud’s
Oedipus complex, he said, “ If it existed at all, it was merely the result of
excessive childhood pampering.”
Adler was so much more optimistic about the nature of man. His psychology
reflected his own personality, which was social, cheerful and kind. He
expressed a realistic attitude towards the significance of society while
stressing towards man’s social nature and also how environment influences
mold our behaviour.
His psychology was easily understood and applied, most of his concept were
easily grasped. Although he wrote for professional people, many of his books
were directed towards lay readers as well. His concept of compensation has
been widely accepted, it can be operationally defines and put to experimental
test. Adler emphasized the importance of equality in preventing various
forms of psychopathology, and espoused the development of social interest
and democratic family structures for raising children. His most famous
concept is the inferiority complex which speaks to the problem of self-esteem
and its negative effects on human health (e.g. sometimes producing a
paradoxical superiority striving). the concept of inferiority feelings and its role
has become an integral part of personality psychology. His suggestion of the
universality of inferior feelings, albeit overemphasized the fact, but is still a
household word and a major concept widely used in clinical psychology.
His emphasis on power dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche.
Adler argued for holism, viewing the individual holistically rather than
reductively, the latter being the dominant lens for viewing human
psychology. Adler was also among the first in psychology to argue in favor
of feminism making the case that power dynamics between men and women
(and associations with masculinity and femininity) are crucial to
understanding human psychology (Connell, 1995). Adler is considered, along
with Freud and Jung, to be one of the three founding figures of depth
psychology, which emphasizes the unconscious and psychodynamics
(Ellenberger, 1970; Ehrenwald, 1991). Adler was an early advocate in
psychology for prevention and emphasized the training of parents, teachers,
social workers and so on in democratic approaches that allow a child to
exercise their power through reasoned decision making whilst co-operating
with others.
CRITICISM OF ADLER
Most of the criticisms levied against freud are equally applicable to adler, i.e
unreliability of the data, non - testable hypothesis, dualism and fictions. One
of his least successful concept was of the notion that we are directed by
unconscious fictional goals. The use of fictions was unsubstantial but to
suggest that our fictions could not even be identified made the whole concept
invalid.
Likewise, the notion of creative self will always remain at the theoretical
level. It was nothing more than a regression to the medival concept of the
soul, disguised in modern terms. It added nothing as an explanatory
principle.
Although alder’s psychology still has it’s adherents and their ideas are
expressed in their own journal, “the American journal of individual
psychology”, it has never achieved the fame and popularity of freud’s
system. Some have considered it rather simple – minded and shallow.
A final criticism was that his theory was incomplete and often contradictory.
he seemed to deny determinism in favor of teleology and yet he was very
much determinist in emphasizing early childhood influences that set forth the
style of life, the order of birth and the conditions of the society. Adler
accepted social interest as an innate disposition but it remained up to
environmental influences to actualize it.