Individual

Psychology
Alfred Adler
• Born in 1870, Wien
– Third child of seven
– Apparent physical comfort, but
miserable
in childhood
– Known for his efforts at outdoing his
older brother
• Received a medical degree in 1895
• Married in 1897
– Eventually had four children
– Only son became a psychiatrist and
continued Adler’s work
• Influenced by Marx’s philosophy
• Influence on Horney, Maslow,
Rogers
 Joined Freud’s discussion group in
1902
 Adler’sviews were initially compatible
with Freud’s
 Adler’s views changed and he began
to criticize Freud’s theories
 In 1911, Adler and nine others broke
away from Freud and formed “The
Society for Individual Psychology”
 Involvement in WWI helped develop
the concept of social interest
 Died in 1937
1. The one dynamic force behind people's
behavior is the striving for success or
superiority
2. People's subjective perceptions shape their
behavior and personality
3. Personality is unified and self-consistent
4. The value of all human activity must be seen
from the viewpoint of social interest
5. The self-consistent personality structure
develops into a person's style of life
6. Style of life is molded by people's creative
power
1. The one dynamic force behind people's
behavior is the striving for success or
superiority
• Motivating force the striving for
perfection
• A single "drive" or motivating force lies
behind all our behavior and experience
• Superiority or success
• The desire we all have to fulfill our
potentials, to come closer and closer to our
ideal
• Similar to the more popular idea of self-
actualization
• Personal responsibility to shaping
personality
• Present is shaped by person’s view of
future
• Psychologically healthy people are
aware of themselves
• Critic to unconscious
• Psychologically unhealthy individuals
strive for personal superiority, whereas
• Aggression drive--- the reaction we have
when other drives (e.g., the need to eat,
be sexually satisfied, get things done, or
be loved) are frustrated
– Masculine protest
• A universal drive
• Have role in abnormal development
• will to power or a domination of others
• E.g., In many cultures boys are often held in higher
esteem than girls are
• Better be called the assertiveness drive
• Lastly, called striving for superiority
• Regardless of the motivation for
striving, each individual is guided by a
final goal
 Final goal
 People strive toward a final goal of either personal
superiority or the goal of success for all humankind
 fictional & no objective existence
 unifies personality and renders all behavior
comprehensible
 Each person has the power to create a personalized
fictional goal
 The product of the creative power; that is, people's
ability to freely shape their behavior and create
their own personality
 No effect of genetics or environment
 Set by the time children reach 4 or 5 years of
age
 1. The one dynamic force behind people's
behavior is the striving for success or
superiority
• Compensation
• Striving to overcome
• We all have problems, short-comings,
inferiorities of one sort or another
• The striving force itself is innate, but its
nature and direction are due both to
feelings of inferiority and to the goal of
superiority
• Our personalities could be accounted
for by the ways in which we do -- or do
not -- compensate or overcome those
problems
• Later, however, Adler rejected
compensation as a label for the basic
motive, because compensation makes
it sound as if it is people’s problems
that cause them to be what they are
 1. The one dynamic force behind people's
behavior is the striving for success or
superiority

• Personal superiority
• Goals are personal & no interest of
others
• May be in the form of social interest but
motivated by overcompensation
• Healthy individuals
• concerned with goals beyond
themselves
• capable of helping others without
demanding or expecting a personal
payoff
• able to see others not as opponents but
as people with whom they can
cooperate for social benefit
• Subjective perceptions
– the manner in which they strive is not shaped by reality but by
their subjective perceptions of reality
• by their fictions
– expectations of the future

• Fictionalism
– This subjective, fictional final goal guides our style of life, gives
unity to ow personality
– Not real, acting as if real
– People are motivated not by what is true but by their subjective
perceptions of what is true
• Teleology is an explanation of behavior in terms of its final
purpose or aim
– opposed to causality
– considers behavior as springing from a specific cause
• Physical deficiencies alone do not cause a particular style of
life; they simply provide present motivation for reaching
future goals
 The term individual psychology
 each person is unique and indivisible
 Becoming defensive against unpredictability

 Ways in which the entire person operates with unity

and self-consistency
 Organ dialect
 all separate actions and functions can be understood only as
parts of the goal
 The disturbance of one part of the body cannot be viewed in
isolation
 the deficient organ expresses the direction of the individual's
goal
 Concious & unconscious
 the harmony between conscious and unconscious actions
 the unconscious, part of the goal that is neither clearly
formulated nor completely understood by the individual
• Social interest
– Based on an innate disposition, but it has to be
nurtured to survive
• Babies and small children often show sympathy for others
without having been taught to do so
– Sense of caring for family, for community, for
society, for humanity, and even for life
– a feeling of oneness with all humanity
• A matter of being useful to others
• perfection for all people in an ideal community
– marriage and parenthood is a task for social
interest
– Influence of environment
– Barometer for normality
• Style of life
– includes a person's goal, self-concept, feelings
for others, and attitude toward the world
– the product of the interaction of heredity,
environment, and a person's creative power
– established by age 4 or 5
– Ability to choose new ways of reacting to their
environment
– express their social interest through action

• 3 major problems of life

– neighborly love
– sexual love
– occupation
 Style of life
 Creative power
 the freedom to create her or his own style of life.
 all people are responsible for who they are and how they
behave
 Way to solve problems
 ‘the law of the low doorway’
 Neuroticism
‘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.’
•Underdeveloped social interest
– Neurotics
• tend to set their goals too high

• live in their own private world

• Have rigid and dogmatic style of life

• Overconcerned w/ themselves & care little about

others
 Abnormal development
 Neurosis
a matter of insufficient social interest
 3 types
1. the ruling type
2. the getting type
3. the avoiding type
 Abnormal development
 Neurosis: The Ruling Type
 From childhood on, they are characterized by a
tendency to be rather aggressive and dominant
over others.
 The strength of their striving after personal power
is so great that they tend to push over anything or
anybody who gets in their way
 The most energetic of them are bullies and
sadists;
 Somewhat less energetic ones hurt others by
hurting themselves, and include alcoholics, drug
addicts, and suicides
 Abnormal development
 Neurosis: The getting type
 They are relatively passive
 make little effort to solve their own problems
 Instead, they rely on others to take care of them
 Frequently use charm to persuade others to help them
 Abnormal development

 Neurosis: The avoiding type

 These have the lowest levels of energy and only survive
by essentially avoiding life -- especially other people
 When pushed to the limits, they tend to become
psychotic, retreating finally into their own personal worlds
 Abnormal development
• Adler, like Freud, saw personality or lifestyle as
something established quite early in life
• Basic childhood situations that most contribute to a
faulty lifestyle
1. Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies

2. Pampered Style of Life

3. Neglected Style of Life

 Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies
 must be accompanied by accentuated
feelings of inferiority
 They tend to be overly concerned with
themselves
 lack consideration for others
 feel as if they are living in enemy country
 fear defeat more than they desire success
 life's major problems can be solved only in
a selfish manner
 Pampered Style of Life
 the heart of most neuroses
 weak social interest but a strong desire to
perpetuate the pampered
 parasitic relationship with one or both of their
parents
 expect others to look after them, overprotect them,
and satisfy their needs
 characterized by extreme discouragement,
indecisiveness, oversensitivity, impatience, and
exaggerated emotion, especially anxiety
 Neglected Style of Life
 Children who feel unloved and unwanted
 Abused and mistreated children
 little confidence in themselves
 tend to overestimate difficulties connected with life's
major problems
 distrustful of other people and are unable to
cooperate for the common welfare
 feel alienated from all other people
 more suspicious
 Enable people to hide their inflated self-
image and to maintain their current style
of life
 Kind of defense mechanisms
 symptoms are formed as a protection
against anxiety
 Conscious & shield a person's fragile self-
esteem from public disgrace
 Excuses, aggression, & withdrawal
1. Excuses
 state what they claim they would like to do
 Others then they follow with an excuse
 ‘Yes, but’ & ‘If only’

2. Aggression
 To protect their fragile self-esteem, aggression may
take the form of depreciation, accusation, or self-
accusation
 criticism and gossip
 Unhealthy people invariably act to cause the
people around them to suffer more than they do
 Self-torture & guilt including masochism,
depression, and suicide as means of hurting people
who are close to them
3. Withdrawal
 safeguarding through distance
1. moving backward
 Like regression
 protects people against anxiety-filled experiences

2. standing still
 Withdrawal tendency
 avoid all responsibility by ensuring themselves against any threat
of failure
 never do anything to prove that they cannot accomplish their
goals
3. Hesitating
 procrastinations
 excuse, "It's too late now."
 most compulsive behaviors are attempt to waste time

4. constructing obstacles
 Some people build a straw house to show that they can knock it
down
 birth order
 the gender of their siblings
 the age spread between them
 Only Child
 Family Situation
 Birth is a miracle
 Parents have no previous experience
 Retains 200% attention from both parents
 May become rival of one parent
 Can be over-protected and spoiled
 If the parents are abusive, the only child will have to bear
that abuse alone

 Child’s Characteristics
 Likes being the center of adult attention
 Often has difficulty sharing with siblings and peers
 Prefers adult company and uses adult language
• Family Situation
– Dethroned by next child
– Has to learn to share
– Parent expectations are usually very high
– Often given responsibility and expected to set an
example

• Child’s Characteristics
– May become authoritarian or strict
– be relatively solitary and more conservative than the
other children in the family
– Feels power is his right
– Can become helpful if encouraged
– May turn to father after birth of next child
– Intensified feelings of power and superiority, high
anxiety, and overprotective tendencies
 Family Situation
 Peacemaker
 There is always someone ahead

 Child’s Characteristics
 Ismore competitive, wants to overtake
older child
 May become a rebel or try to outdo
everyone
 Competition can deteriorate into rivalry
 Family Situation
 Is“sandwiched” in
 May feel squeezed out of a position of
privilege and significance

 Child’s Characteristics
 May be even-tempered, “take it or leave
it” attitude
 May have trouble finding a place or
become a fighter of injustice
 Family Situation
 Has many mothers and fathers
 Older children try to educate him
 Never dethroned

 Child’s Characteristics
 Wants to be bigger than the others
 May have huge plans that never work
out
 Can stay the “baby”
 Frequently spoiled
 Family Situation
 One is usually stronger or more active
 Parents may see one as the older

 Child’s Characteristics
 Can have identity problems
 Stronger one may become the leader
 Family Situation
 Child born after the death of the first
child may have a “ghost” in front of him
 Mother may become over-protective

 Child’s Characteristics
 Childmay exploit mother’s over-concern
for his well-being, or he may rebel, and
protest the feeling of being compared to
an idealized memory
 Family Situation
 Parents may be so thankful to have a
child that they spoil him
 They may try to compensate for the loss
of his biological parents

 Child’s Characteristics
 Childmay become very spoiled and
demanding
 He may resent or idealize the biological
parents
Only boy among Only girl among
girls boys

 Family Situation  Family Situation

 Usually  Olderbrothers may act
with women all
the time, if father is as her protectors
away
 Child’s
 Child’s Characteristics
Characteristics  Can become very
 May try to prove he is feminine, or a tomboy
the man in the family, to outdo the brothers
 May try to please the
or become effeminate
father
 In order to help people to discover the
"fictions" their lifestyle is based upon, Adler
would look at a great variety of things:
 birth-order position
 Early recollections
 any childhood problems you may have had
 dreams and daydreams
 pay attention to how people express themselves.
 Enhance courage, lessen feelings of inferiority, and
encourage social interest
 ‘Everybody can accomplish everything.’
 The therapeutic relationship awakens their social
interest in the same manner that children gain social
interest from their parents
 Once awakened, the patients' social interest must
spread to family, friends, and people outside the
therapeutic relationship
 Family Creative Style of Fictional
Life Self Life Finalisms

Birth Order Healthy – Social Interest

Family Constellation Neurotic – Overcompensation
Family Atmosphere Inferiority/Superiority Complex

4 Major Types
Ruling
Getting
Avoiding
Socially Useful