ALFRED ADLER’s

Individual Psychology
Prepared by:

Lomuntad, Kezia Sophia G.

Dagsa, Analiza M.
Alfred Adler
• Born: February 7, 1870; Rudolfsheim, a
village on the western fringes of Vienna
• Died: May 28, 1937 (aged 67); Aberdeen,
Scotland

• Father: Leopold Adler

• Mother: Pauline Beer
• Siblings: Sigmund Adler, Hermine Adler,
Rudolf Adler, Max Adler, Richard Adler, Irma
Adler
• Wife: Raissa Epstein
• Children: Alexandra Adler, Kurt Adler, Valentine
Adler, Cornelia Adler

Best Known as:

• Individual Psychology
• The Concepts of the Inferiority Complex
• The President of the Venna Psychoanalytic Society,
1910
 INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Adler was the original member of the small clique of
physicians who met in Freud’s home, on Wednesday
evening to discuss psychological topics. However when
theoretical and personal differences between Adler and
Freud emerged, Adler left the Freud circle and
established an opposing theory known as Individual
Psychology.
 STRIVING FOR SUCCESS or
1st tenet: The one dynamic force SUPERIORITY
behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or superiority.

• Final Goal
- People strive toward final goal either personal superiority or
the goal of success for all humankind.
- The final is fictional and has no objective existence.
- It has great significance because it unifies personality and
renders all behavior comprehensible.
• The Striving Force as Compensation
- People strive toward for superiority or success as a means of
compensation for feelings of inferiority or weakness.

• Striving for Personal Superiority

- Some people strive toward for superiority with little or no concern for
others. Their goal are personal ones, and their strivings are motivated
largely by exaggerated feelings of personal inferiority or the presence
of an inferiority complex.
• The Striving for Success
- In contrast to people who strive for personal gain are
those psychologically healthy people who are motivated
by social interest and the success of all humankind.
 SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTIONS
2nd tenet: People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality.

• Fictionalism
- Our most important fiction is the goal of superiority or success, a goal
we created early in life and may not clearly understand. This subjective,
fictional final goal guides our style of life, gives unity to our personality.
• Physical inferiorities
- Because people begin life small weak, and inferior, they develop a fiction
or belief system about how to overcome these physical deficiencies and
become big, strong, and superior. But even after they attain size, strength,
and superiority, they may act as if they are still small, weak and inferior.
 UNITY and SELF-CONSISTENCY of
rd PERSONALITY
3 tenet: Personality is unified and self-consistent.

• Organ Dialect
- According to Adler, the whole person strives in a self-consistent fashion
toward a single goal, and all separate actions and functions can be
understood only as parts of this goal.

• Conscious and Unconscious

- Adler defined the unconscious as the part of the goal that is neither clearly
formulated nor completely understood by the individual.
- Conscious thoughts are those that are understood and regarded by the
individual as helpful in striving for success, whereas unconscious thoughts
are those that are not helpful.
 SOCIAL INTEREST
4th tenet: The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest.

• Origins of Social Interest

- Social interest is rooted as potentiality in everyone, but it must be
developed before it can contribute to a useful style of life, it
originates from the mother-child relationship during the early
months of infancy. Every person who has survived infancy was kept
alive by a mothering person who possessed some amount of social
interest. Thus, every person has had the seeds of social interest
sown during those early months.
• Importance of Social Interest
- Adler believed that the effects of the early social environment are
extremely important. The relationship a child has with the mother
and father is powerful that it smoothers the effects of heredity.
Adler believed that after age 5, the effects of heredity become
blurred by the powerful influence of the child’s social
environment. By that time, environmental forces have modified or
shaped nearly every aspect of a child’s personality.
 STYLE OF LIFE
5th tenet: The self- consistent personality structure develops into a person’s style of life.

 The “style of life” refers to the flavor of a person’s life.

 It includes goal, self-concept, feelings for others and attitude towards the
world.
 It is also the product of the interaction of heredity, environment, and a
person’s creative power.
 Fairly established by age 4 or 5.

-A psychologically unhealthy person - inflexible and rigid style of life

-Psychologically healthy person- behave in diverse and flexible ways with a
style of life that is complex, enriched and changing.

Three major problems of life in which they struggle to solve- neighborly love,
sexual love and occupation.
 Creative Power
Final Tenet: Style of life is molded by people’s creative power.

• The freedom to choose and build your own style of life.

• Adler acknowledged the importance heredity and environment in

forming personality.
• However, he believed that people are much more than a product of
heredity and environment.
• Creative power places them in control of their own lives , is
responsible for their final goal, methods of striving that goal, and
the development of social interest.
 ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT
The creative power endows humans, within certain limits,
with the freedom to be either psychologically healthy or
unhealthy and to follow either a useful or useless style of life.

• One factor underlying all types of maladjustments is

underdeveloped social interest.

Neurotics tends to…

1. Set their goals too high.
2. Live in their own private world
3. Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life.
 External Factors in Maladjustments

1.) Exaggerated Physical

Deficiencies
• They must be accompanied by accentuated feelings of
inferiority.
• They tend to be overly concerned with themselves and
lack of consideration for others.
• They fear defeat more than they desire success.
• And life’s major problems can be solved in a selfish
manner.
2.) Pampered style of life

• Lies at the heart of most neuroses.

• Weak social interest but strong desire to perpetuate the
pampered.
• Parasitic relationship with one or both of their parents. They
expect others to look after them, and satisfy their needs.
• They are characterized by extreme discouragement,
indecisiveness, oversensitivity, impatience and exaggerated
emotion especially anxiety.
3.) Neglected style of life

• Children who feel unloved and unwanted.

• Abused and mistreated children develop little social interest.
• They have little confidence in themselves.
• They are distrustful of other people and are unable to
cooperate for the common welfare.
• Experience a strong sense of envy towards the success of
others.
• Generally, they are more suspicious and more likely to be
dangerous to others.
 Safeguarding Tendencies

• Enable people to hide their inflated self- image

and to maintain their current lifestyle.

• Conscious and shield a person’s fragile self-

esteem from public disgrace.
 1.) EXCUSES

• Most common safeguarding tendencies, typically expressed in “yes,

but” and “if, only” format.
• For example:
- “Yes, I agree with your idea, but the school policy will not
allow it.”
- “If only I did not have this physical deficiency, I could compete
successfully.”
• These excuses protect a weak sense of self-worth and deceive
people into believing that they are more superior than they really
are.
 2.) AGGRESSION
• People use aggression to protect their fragile self esteem.
• Aggression may take the form of depreciation, accusation
or self-accusation.

- tendency to undervalue people’s

achievements and to overvalue one’s
Depreciation own.
- evident through criticism and gossip.
 Accusation - the tendency to blame others for
one’s failures and to seek revenge.

-is marked by self- torture and guilt.

Self-Accusation -Masochism, depression and suicide as means
of hurting people who are close to them.
 3.) WITHDRAWAL (safeguarding through distance)
-Some people escape life’s problems by setting up a distance between
themselves and those problems.

Four modes of safeguarding through withdrawal.

• Moving backward
- is the tendency to safeguard one’s fictional goal of superiority by
psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life.
• Standing Still
- People who “stand still” avoid all responsibility by ensuring
themselves against any threat of failure.
-For instance, a person who never applies to a graduate school can
never be denied entrance.
• Hesitating
- Some people hesitate when faced with difficult problems.
- Their procrastinations eventually give them the excuse “It’s
too late now.”
- Most compulsive behaviors are attempt to waste time.

• Constructing obstacles
- Some people build obstacles to show that they can knock
it down.
 Masculine protest
• Overemphasis of being a male/masculine.
• Adler: men’s assertiveness and success in the world is not
due to some innate superiority.
• Rather, boys are encouraged to be assertive in life, and girls
are discouraged.
• Both boys and girls, however, begin life with capacity for
“protest”.
• People want to be thought of as strong, aggressive, in control
(masculine) and not weak, passive, or dependent (feminine).
 Applications of Individual
Psychology

FAMILY EARLY
CONSTELLATION
DREAMS RECOLLECTIONS PSYCOTHERAPY
 Family Constellation

- Birth order, gender of siblings and age

spread
- Structure to describe each member’s
niche within the family system
 BIRTH ORDER
• First Born child
-is likely to have intensified feeling of power or superiority, high anxiety, and over protective
tendencies.
- When the second child comes and “dethrones” the first child, he/she often battles for
his/her lost of position.
Positive Traits Negative Traits
• Nurturing and protective of others. • Highly anxious
• Good organizer • Exaggerated feelings of power
• Unconscious hostility
• Fights for acceptance
• Must always be “right”, whereas others are
always “wrong”
• Highly Critical of others
• Uncooperative
• Second born child
-Second born child begin life in a better situation for developing
cooperation and social interest.
- He/she matures towards moderate competitiveness, having a healthy
desire to overtake the older rival (first born) .

Positive Traits Negative Traits

• Highly motivated • Highly competitive
• Cooperative • Easily discouraged
• Moderately Competitive
• Youngest child
- is often pampered and run a high risk of being problem child.
- Likely to have strong feelings of inferiority and to lack a sense of
independence.

Positive Traits Negative Traits

• Realistically ambitious • Pampered style of life
• Dependent on others
• Wants to excel on everything
• Unrealistically ambitious
• Only child
- May often develop an exaggerated sense of superiority and an
inflated self- concept.

Positive Traits Negative Traits

• Socially mature • Exaggerated feelings of
inferiority
• Low feelings of cooperation
• Inflated sense of self
• Pampered style of life
 EARLY
RECOLLECTION
• are memories
S
of actual incidents that clients recall from their
childhood.

• Adler would ask his patients to reveal their early recollections to gain
understanding about their personality.
• Although he believed that the recalled memories yield clues for
understanding patient’s style of life, he did not consider these
memories to have a casual effect.
• Whether the recalled experiences correspond with objective reality or
are complete fantasies is of no importance.
 DREAMS
• Although dreams can’t foretell the future, they can provide
clues for solving future problems.
• Dreams are used to provide a way of dealing with the
person’s life problems.
• They are an open pathway to your own thoughts, emotions
and actions.
• By analyzing how problems are confronted and future
events planned through their dreams, a great deal could be
learned about a person’s lifestyle.
 PSYCHOTHERA
PY
• Enhance courage, lessen feelings of inferiority, and
encourage social interest.
• Adler would sometimes ask patients, “What would you do if
I cured you immediately?”
• Such question forced the patients to examine their goals and
see that responsibility for their current misery rests with
them.
 PSYCHOTHERAPY

• Through the use of humor and warmth,

Adler tries to increase patient’s courage,
self-esteem, and social interest.
• Adler innovated a unique method of
therapy with problem children by treating
them in front of an audience of parents,
teachers, and health professionals.