Alfred Adler

Life History

Born: Vienna, Austria, 1970

  • childhood characterised by death & illness

Early Career

Joins Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1902

Founded the Society for Individual Psychology in 1912

concerned about Gender equality

early humanist

humanism= position that humans have value and agency (individually and collectively), and accentuates human ability for life improvement though ingenuity and reason

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

  • Movement away from the Freudian emphasis on sex, the libido & Eros

Assume a more holistic position

  • Emphasis on the individual/patient’s environment (including other people)
  • Societal factors are of key importance
  • Its about the internal in the context of the external world – part of society

individual must combat/confront 3 forces: societal, love-related & vocational

the word 'individual'- is a reference to understanding the patient as an indivisible whole (commonly misunderstood to represent a focus on the individual)

HUMAN NATURE

Context rather than depth psychology

  • Social factors, love-related & vocational (things that bring in the other)
  • Moving beyond ourselves – incorporating various aspects of the other
  • Depth psychology – study of things being dug out from the unconscious

human are socially-oriented

  • We want and seek social relationship
  • Community is good for us
  • Being pro-social- contributing to society, helping people

over arching motive for all humans is to become trong, competent, achieving and creative

3 forces/conflicts

Occupational tasks

Societal tasks

  • performing useful work
  • contributing to society (pro-social)
  • adapting to others
  • interest in others
  • moving outside the bubble that is ourselves

Love Tasks

  • continuance of the human race (can be achieved through helping others to thrive)

INFERIORITY

SUPERIORITY

Inferiority= feeling weak, unskilled for the task facing us, not competent

Experience particularly when we are children- need our parents to get through life and we slowly become independent over time but when we are children we feel inferior to our parents and that is a motivational force

Superiority= becoming better, closer to ideal goals,

Childhood Situations

3 situations that affect our ability to overcome inferiority (and can lead to an inferiority complex)

Organ Inferiority

  • Thought of being lesser to other people or deficient due to a physical characteristic (real or perceived)
  • If not overcome, child is self-centred and feels inferior to peers

Pampering

can lead to sense of entitlement and being demanding of others, lack of sympathy and empathy, lack confidence in own ability as not prepared for challenge for life (parent that has an over pampering style)

Neglect

Can lead to: suspiciousness; isolation; poorly developed capacity for love; inability to gain love and esteem; over-estimation of difficulties; under-estimation of own abilities; demands for pampering/special consideration as compensation

COMPLEXES- INFERIORITY

certain childhood conditions can lead to the development of complexes

a psychological condition that exists when a person's feelings of inadequacy are so intense that daily living is impaired

a sufferer is a person "... whose thoughts are so overtaken by these feelings that they cannot function normally"

COMPLEXES- SUPERIORITY

also rooted in feelings of inferiority

Adler believed that this was actually a defence mechanism meant to hide or compensate for feelings of inferiority

results when a person over-compensates for feelings of inferiority by placing "to much emphasis on striving to perfection"

“The superiority complex is one of the ways that a person with an inferiority complex may use as a method of escape from her or his difficulties. She or he assumes that she or he is superior when she or he is not, and this false success compensates her or him for the state of inferiority which she or he cannot bear.”

INTERPLAY

Adler would have said that if someone has a superiority complex they always have an inferiority complex

internalised superiority/ inferiority complex

Fictional Final Goals

  • as humans, we all strive to be better than we are (overcoming early- childhood feelings of inferiority)

we create fictional final goals to guide our behaviour

future focused movement towards an ideal self completion

behaviour determined by perceptions of what we hope to achieve in the future

looking around at the world and deciding what is possible to achieve and striving towards it

Our ideas about what is possible are shaped by our perceptions and interpretations of the world

Style of Life

unique way we go about attaining the particular life circumstances

Determined by:

  • The child’s perception and interpretation of their intrinsic ability (heredity) and their objective environment (such as birth order)

Indicated by:

  • Early recollections
  • Dream analysis

Faulty Life Styles

Pampered

Neglected

  • Children who are neglected become vengeful and enemies of society
  • Not all neglected children become like this
  • Children who are pampered fail to develop social interest, instead, expecting the world to meet their needs and externalizing responsibility

BIRTH ORDER- the order in which we are born says a lot who will turn out to be