Adlerian Therapy 1

ADLERIAN THERAPY

Introduction
 Alfred Adler was a follower of Freud for over eight years until they differed and parted
ways.
 After Adler’s death in 1937, Rudolf Dreikurs played a key role in propagating the
Adlerian psychology.

Main Concepts in Adlerian Therapy

View of Human Nature
Behavior is goal driven rather than driven by unconscious forces
 Adler rejected Freud’s deterministic view of human nature.
1. Explain Freud’s deterministic view of human nature

 Instead, Adler said that behavior is purposeful and driven by goals rather than
unconscious forces. Therefore, when people act in certain ways, there is a goal behind
that behavior. E.g., a girl may wear short dresses with the goal of getting attention she
desperately craves. She may not admit however that attention seeking is the reason for
her dressing choice. She can give excuses such as ‘my dress my choice’.

Heredity and environment shape us, but only to an extent

 Adler accepted that heredity (i.e. a person’s genes) and the environment they grew up in
influence who they become. However, people have capacity to interpret, influence and
create events so they are not at the mercy of their genes or environment.
 Adler points out that what we choose to do with our abilities and limitations are more
important than our genes or environment although they may limit our abilities in some
ways.
2. Describe some ways in which a person’s environment and genes may influence their life
and how they can work around limitations caused by the genes or environment

Inferiority
 Adler says that we have a tendency to try to fulfill our own unique potential, a process
called striving for perfection or striving for completeness.
 We also tend to feel inferior to others. Inferiority means that you feel that you are not
yet at your best therefore you are motivated to work harder to improve yourself and
achieve more in your life.
 Feelings of inferiority are a normal thing to all people and are a source of human
motivation. But if we don’t overcome these feelings of inferiority, we may end up having
an inferiority complex and can define one’s personality.
 A person who overcompensates for feelings of inferiority develops a superiority
complex.

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3. Describe a person with a superiority complex and a person with an inferiority

complex(you can search the web for information)

Subjective Perception of Reality

 We all perceive the world in our own unique ways. Therefore to understand a person’s
behavior, we need to view their world from their subjective point of view.
 In addition, we all have a private logic i.e. the concepts about our self, others and life
which constitute the philosophy on which an individual’s lifestyle is based.

 Individuals have their fictions i.e. their subjective evaluations of themselves and their
environments which influence their behavior. These fictions can cause mistakes e.g.
1) Overgeneralizing, for example, a man who believes that all women are bad because of
an experience with one woman
2)trying to please everyone for example, behaving in one way to please some people and
then behaving in the opposite way to please another group of people because we want
to be liked by everyone
3)Misperceptions of life and life’s demands e.g. believing that one never gets any breaks
in life and that life is just too hard
4)Minimization or denial of one’s worth i.e. thinking that one will never amount to
anything
5)Faulty values e.g. a person believing that they must be first or be very rich no matter
what needs to be done to achieve that goal.

Social Interest
 Adler said that people are motivated by social relatedness rather than unconscious
instincts
 Social interest is the capacity to cooperate and contribute to one’s society. Developing
social interest is a sign of good mental health. As it develops, feeling of anxiety and
inferiority diminish. Happiness and success are largely related to social connectedness.

 An individual’s life style in terms of their community can either be “useful” or “useless.”
 A “useful” person has a social interest in the community around them whereas a “useless”
person does not and is only concerned with herself.
 Most individuals have the potential of social interest because it is natural for human
beings. This is why we live in groups

Universal Life Tasks

 Adler taught that people must successfully master three universal life tasks;
a) building relationships (social task),
b)establishing intimacy (love – marriage task) and
c) Contributing to the society (occupational task).

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 Other tasks added later are;

d)getting along with ourselves (self-acceptance) and
e) Developing our spiritual dimension (values, life goals, etc).

 The above tasks are so important that if a person fails to fulfill any one of them he may
experience a psychological dysfunction.
 According to Adler, when people seek therapy, it is mostly because they are struggling
with one or more of these tasks.

Birth Order and Sibling Relationships

 Adlerian approach pays attention to the family environment, relationships between
siblings and the psychological birth position in one’s family.
 We are talking about the psychological birth position, not the ordinal birth position. In
other words, it is not the number if siblings born before or after you that matters.
What matters is how, by virtue of your birth position, you adjust to life in your family,
you view life and your overall psychological adjustment.

 Adler was interested with how we interpret our place in the family and this has much to
do with our birth position
 He identified five psychological birth positions; (a) oldest; (b) second of only two; (c)
middle; (d) youngest and (e) only child.
 Birth order is not a deterministic concept but does increase an individual’s probability of
having a certain set of experiences and adopting certain personality or behavioral
dispositions. It doesn’t follow that if you are a firstborn or last born in a family then
your life must turn out a predetermined way
4. What are the psychological birth positions of the members of your group?
5. In what ways have the group members’ personalities been influenced by their
psychological birth positions? Share among the group.

Style of Life
 By 5 years of age, each person creates a lifestyle, or style of life, which is a person’s
characteristic way of relating to others, adapting to obstacles, solving problems, viewing
the world, behaving, and pursuing long-term goals.
 This lifestyle is shaped through interacting with other family members.
 A negative family atmosphere might be authoritarian, rejecting, suppressive,
materialistic, overprotective, or pitying, whereas a positive family atmosphere might be
democratic, accepting, open, and social.
 The individual’s perception of the family atmosphere, rather than any particular events
is what influences the development of a lifestyle.

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 Some people may form maladaptive style of life due to factors within their environment
e.g. a child who was bullied may become sarcastic and boastful as an adult. He may have
learnt to use sarcasm to cope with bullying and this became part of his style of life

Characteristics of Adlerian Therapy

 The goals of Adlerian practitioners revolve around helping individuals develop healthy
lifestyles. This may require educating or reeducating clients about their lifestyles, as
well as helping them overcome feelings of inferiority. They should be able to change
their perception concerning others and the world.
 A major goal of Adlerian therapy is to encourage clients to cultivate and increase social
interest.
 A faulty style of life is self-centered and based on mistaken goals and incorrect
assumptions associated with feelings of inferiority. Therefore, it is important that
clients change self-defeating thoughts and behaviors.
 Clients are not seen as ‘sick’ people needing treatment but are seen as being discouraged.
Therapy should therefore offer encouragement to discouraged clients.

 The therapist’s duties include:

1) Making a comprehensive assessment of the client’s functioning. The therapist gathers
information on the client’s family constellation which includes parents, siblings, others
living at home, life tasks and early recollections. From this information, the therapist
can get a perspective on the client’s major areas of success and failure and the
factors that have influenced the client.
2)Noting how clients have become discouraged and function ineffectively because of
mistaken beliefs, faulty values and goals that are never achieved.
3)Identifying mistakes in clients’ thinking, values and goals.
4)Helping clients to better understand, challenge and change their life story. Clients
should be freed from limiting, problematic life stories.

 During therapy, clients explore their private logic.

 The client is given encouragement and made to realize that he has resources and options
to draw from in dealing with life issues.
 It is the role of the client to develop a plan detailing who they want to be, how they plan
to get there and what is preventing them from getting there.

 A good client-therapist relationship is one between equals and is based on cooperation,

mutual trust, respect, confidence, and collaboration.
 The relationship should be collaborative and the therapist maintains an alliance with the
client. A strong relationship is essential for success in therapy.
6. Contrast the relationship between the therapists and clients in psychoanalysis and
Adlerian therapy

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7. After reading the above section, summarize the goals of Adlerian therapy

Techniques and Procedures

 Adlerian therapy is based on four key objectives that correspond to the four phases of
the therapeutic process.
 Note that the phases are not linear and do not progress in rigid steps but can be seen
instead as interwoven components.

 The phases are;

(a) Forming a therapeutic relationship
o The first phase is to establish a respectful relationship.
o For many clients, this may be their first meaningful relationship.
o The counselor accepts the client unconditionally and this enables the client to explore
her thoughts and feelings.
o The client is also expected to be respectful. The counselor does not allow the client to
play games e.g. refusing to come to therapy sessions.

(b) Gathering information about the client

o Second phase is understanding the client. This begins with the first impressions made
by the client e.g. body language when entering the room.
o The counselor enquires about different areas of the client’s life including personal
life, workplace, friends, intimate relationships and social life.
o The therapist should enquire about the client’s family of origin including: birth
position, number and relationships with siblings, relationships with parents.
o The therapist finds out how the client related with siblings, parents and other family
members and especially whether they were pampered by parents and older siblings.
o The client is asked to recall early memories. The memories recalled are likely to have
a lot of significance to the client even if they are memories of seemingly insignificant
events.
o The client is also asked to report dreams which are also considered to contain
important symbolic information

(c) Giving insight and interpretation

o The third phase is giving insight. The therapist will have formed some hypotheses
about the client’s view of herself, view of the world, mistaken goals etc.
o The therapist checks his hypotheses with the client who may agree or disagree.
o The therapist should not force his insights on the client.
o The client gets to gain an insight into her problems and how the problems are related
with her goals, private logic and lifestyle.

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(d) Reorientation
o The final phase is the reorientation phase.
o This is where the client is guided and encouraged to change.

o To accomplish behavioral change and put insight into action, counselors can use the
following techniques:
1) Confrontation: In this process counselors challenge clients to consider their own
private logic. When clients examine their logic, they often realize they can change
it as well as their behavior.
2) Asking the question: In this procedure, a counselor can ask “What would be
different if you were well?” or “how will your relationship be like if you are able to
solve the problems between you and your parents?” etc. Clients are often asked
such questions during the initial interview, but it is appropriate at any time.
3) Encouragement: Encouragement implies faith in a person. Counselors encourage
their clients by stating their belief that behavior change is possible.
Encouragement is the key to making productive lifestyle choices.
4) Acting “as if”: Clients are instructed to act as if they are the persons they want to
be
5) “Spitting in the client’s soup”: In this technique, counselors point out certain
behaviors to clients, thereby ruining the payoff for the behaviors.
6) Catching oneself: Clients learn to become aware of self-destructive behaviors or
thoughts.
7) Task setting: Clients initially set short term, attainable goals and eventually work
up to long-term, realistic goals
8) “Push button”: Clients are encouraged to realize that they have choices about the
things they pay attention to. The technique is like pushing a button because clients
can choose to remember negative or positive experiences

8. Summarize the four phases of Adlerian therapy

9. Read about psychoanalysis again and identify at least five differences between
psychoanalysis and Adlerian therapy

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