Alfred Adler

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Alfred Adler : biography

February 7, 1870 – May 28, 1937

Adler was a very pragmatic man and believed that lay people could make practical use of the insights of psychology. He sought to construct a social movement united under the principles of "Gemeinschaftsgefühl" (community feeling) and social interest (the practical actions that are exercised for the social good).Adler, Understanding p. 139-42 Adler was also an early supporter of feminism in psychology and the social world, believing that feelings of superiority and inferiority were often gendered and expressed symptomatically in characteristic masculine and feminine styles. These styles could form the basis of psychic compensation and lead to mental health difficulties. Adler also spoke of "safeguarding tendencies" and neurotic behavior long before Anna Freud wrote about the same phenomena in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. ?

Adlerian-based scholarly, clinical and social practices focus on the following topics:

  • Social Interest and Community Feeling
  • Holism and the Creative Self
  • Fictional Finalism, Teleology, and Goal constructs
  • Psychological and Social Encouragement
  • Inferiority, Superiority and Compensation
  • Life Style / Style of Life
  • Early Recollections (a projective technique)
  • Family Constellation and Birth Order
  • Life Tasks & Social Embeddedness
  • The Conscious and Unconscious realms
  • Private Logic & Common Sense (based in part on Kant’s "")
  • Symptoms and Neurosis
  • Safeguarding Behaviour
  • Guilt and Guilt Feelings
  • Socratic Questioning
  • Dream Interpretation
  • Child and Adolescent Psychology
  • Democratic approaches to Parenting and Families
  • Adlerian Approaches to Classroom Management
  • Leadership and Organisational Psychology

From its inception, Adlerian psychology has always included both professional and lay adherents. Indeed, Adler felt that all people could make use of the scientific insights garnered by psychology and he welcomed everyone, from decorated academics to those with no formal education to participate in spreading the principles of Adlerian psychology.

Adler’s approach to personality

Adler’s book, Über den nervösen Charakter (The Neurotic Character) defines his earlier key ideas. He argued that human personality could be explained teleologically, parts of the individual’s unconscious self ideally work to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority (or rather completeness).’Inferiority Complex’, in Richard Gregory ed, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) p. 368 The desires of the self ideal were countered by social and ethical demands. If the corrective factors were disregarded and the individual overcompensated, then an inferiority complex would occur, fostering the danger of the individual becoming egocentric, power-hungry and aggressive or worse.Adler, Understanding Ch. 11 ‘Aggressive Character Traits’

Common therapeutic tools include the use of humor, historical instances, and paradoxical injunctions.Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy (1991)p. 155 and p. 385

Psychodynamics and teleology

Understanding fictio

Teleology serves another vital function for Adlerians. Chilon’s "hora telos" ("see the end, consider the consequences") provides for both healthy and maladaptive psychodynamics. Here we also find Adler’s emphasis on personal responsibility in mentally healthy subjects who seek their own and the social good.

Constructivism and metaphysics

The metaphysical thread of Adlerian theory does not problematise the notion of teleology since concepts such as eternity (an ungraspable end where time ceases to exist) match the religious aspects that are held in tandem. In contrast, the constructivist Adlerian threads (either humanist/modernist or postmodern in variant) seek to raise insight of the force of unconscious fictions– which carry all of the inevitability of ‘fate’– so long as one does not understand them. Here, ‘teleology’ itself is fictive yet experienced as quite real. This aspect of Adler’s theory is somewhat analogous to the principles developed in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Therapy (CT). Both Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck credit Adler as a major precursor to REBT and CT. Ellis in particular was a member of the North American Society for Adlerian Psychology and served as an editorial board member for the Adlerian Journal Individual Psychology.