TOP - Adler: Individual Psychology by Feist & Feist
Proponent: Alfred Adler was born on February 7, 1870, in Rudolfsheim, a village near Vienna.
Individual psychology presents an optimistic view of people while resting heavily on the notion of social interest, that is, a feeling of oneness with all humankind.
To Adler, people are born with weak, inferior bodies—a condition that leads to feelings of inferiority and a consequent dependence on other people. Therefore, a feeling of unity with others (social interest) is inherent in people and the ultimate standard for psychological health.
Main tenets of Adlerian theory
- The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or superiority.
- People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality.
- Personality is unified and self-consistent.
- The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest.
- The self-consistent personality structure develops into a person’s style of life. Style of life is molded by people’s creative power.
Striving for Success or Superiority
The first tenet of Adlerian theory is: The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or superiority.
1. The Final Goal - According to Adler (1956), people strive toward a final goal of either personal superiority or the goal of success for all humankind.Each person has the power to create a personalized fictional goal, one constructed out of the raw materials provided by heredity and environment. However, the goal is neither genetically nor environmentally determined. Rather, it is the product of the creative power, that is, people’s ability to freely shape their behavior and create their own personality.
2. The Striving Force as Compensation - People strive for superiority or success as a means of compensation for feelings of inferiority or weakness. Adler (1930) believed that all humans are “blessed” at birth with small, weak, and inferior bodies. These physical deficiencies ignite feelings of inferiority only because people, by their nature, possess an innate tendency toward completion or wholeness. People are continually pushed by the need to overcome inferiority feelings and pulled by the desire for completion.
3. Striving for Personal Superiority - Some people strive for superiority with little or no concern for others. Their goals are personal ones, and their strivings are motivated largely by exaggerated feelings of personal inferiority, or the presence of an inferiority complex. Murderers, thieves, and con artists are obvious examples of people who strive for personal gain.
4. 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. These healthy individuals are concerned with goals beyond themselves, are capable of helping others without demanding or expecting a personal payoff, and are able to see others not as opponents but as people with whom they can cooperate for social ben- efit. Their own success is not gained at the expense of others but is a natural tendency to move toward completion or perfection.
People who strive for success rather than personal superiority maintain a sense of self, of course, but they see daily problems from the view of society’s develop- ment rather than from a strictly personal vantage point. Their sense of personal worth is tied closely to their contributions to human society. Social progress is more important to them than personal credit (Adler, 1956).
Subjective Perceptions
Adler’s second tenet is: People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality. People strive for superiority or success to compensate for feelings of inferiority, but the manner in which they strive is not shaped by reality but by their subjective perceptions of reality, that is, by their fictions, or expectations of the future.
1. 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.
2. 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. Adler (1929/1969) emphasized that physical deficiencies alone do not cause a particular style of life; they simply provide present motivation for reaching future goals. Such motivation, like all aspects of personality, is unified and self-consistent.
Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality
The third tenet of Adlerian theory is: Personality is unified and self-consistent.
1. Organ Dialect - According to Adler (1956), the whole person strives in a self-consistent fashion to- ward a single goal, and all separate actions and functions can be understood only as parts of this goal. The disturbance of one part of the body cannot be viewed in iso- lation; it affects the entire person. In fact, the deficient organ expresses the direction of the individual’s goal, a condition known as organ dialect. Through organ di- alect, the body’s organs “speak a language which is usually more expressive and dis- closes the individual’s opinion more clearly than words are able to do” (Adler, 1956, p. 223).
2. Conscious and Unconscious - A second example of a unified personality is the harmony between conscious and un- conscious actions. Adler (1956) defined the unconscious as that part of the goal that is neither clearly formulated nor completely understood by the individual. With this definition, Adler avoided a dichotomy between the unconscious and the conscious, which he saw as two cooperating parts of the same unified system. 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
The fourth of Adler’s tenets is: The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest. Social interest can be defined as an attitude of relatedness with humanity in general as well as an em- pathy for each member of the human community. It manifests itself as cooperation with others for social advancement rather than for personal gain (Adler, 1964).
1. 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 rela- tionship 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.
2. Importance of Social Interest - Social interest was Adler’s yardstick for measuring psychological health and is thus “the sole criterion of human values” (Adler, 1927, p. 167). To Adler, social interest is the only gauge to be used in judging the worth of a person. As the barometer of normality, it is the standard to be used in determining the usefulness of a life. To the degree that people possess social interest, they are psychologically mature. Imma- ture people lack Gemeinschaftsgefühl, are self-centered, and strive for personal power and superiority over others. Healthy individuals are genuinely concerned about people and have a goal of success that encompasses the well-being of all people.
Style of Life
Adler’s fifth tenet is: The self-consistent personality structure develops into a per- son’s style of life.
1. Style of life is the term Adler used to refer to the flavor of a person’s life. It in- cludes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward the world. It is the product of the interaction of heredity, environment, and a person’s creative power. Adler (1956) used a musical analogy to elucidate style of life.
People with a healthy, socially useful style of life express their social interest through action. They actively struggle to solve what Adler regarded as the three major problems of life—neighborly love, sexual love, and occupation—and they do so through cooperation, personal courage, and a willingness to make a contribution to the welfare of another. Adler (1956) believed that people with a socially useful style of life represent the highest form of humanity in the evolutionary process and are likely to populate the world of the future.
Creative Power
The final tenet of Adlerian theory is: Style of life is molded by people’s creative power.
Each person, Adler believed, is empowered with the freedom to create her or his own style of life. Ultimately, all people are responsible for who they are and how they behave. Their creative power places them in control of their own lives, is re- sponsible for their final goal, determines their method of striving for that goal, and contributes to the development of social interest. In short, creative power makes each person a free individual. Creative power is a dynamic concept implying movement, and this movement is the most salient characteristic of life. All psychic life involves movement toward a goal, movement with a direction (Adler, 1964).
Abnormal Development
According to Adler (1956), the one factor underlying all types of maladjustments is underdeveloped social interest. Besides lacking social interest, neurotics tend to (1) set their goals too high, (2) live in their own private world, and (3) have a rigid and dogmatic style of life
1. External Factors in Maladjustment
A. Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies - Exaggerated physical deficiencies, whether congenital or the result of injury or dis- ease, are not sufficient to lead to maladjustment. They must be accompanied by ac- centuated feelings of inferiority. These subjective feelings may be greatly encouraged by a defective body, but they are the progeny of the creative power.
B. Pampered Style of Life - A pampered style of life lies at the heart of most neuroses. Pampered people have weak social interest but a strong desire to perpetuate the pampered, parasitic rela- tionship they originally had with one or both of their parents. They expect others to look after them, overprotect them, and satisfy their needs. They are characterized by extreme discouragement, indecisiveness, oversensitivity, impatience, and exaggerated emotion, especially anxiety. They see the world with private vision and believe that they are entitled to be first in everything (Adler, 1927, 1964).
C. Neglected life stye - The third external factor contributing to maladjustment is neglect. Children who feel unloved and unwanted are likely to borrow heavily from these feelings in creating a neglected style of life. Neglect is a relative concept. No one feels totally neglected or completely unwanted. The fact that a child survived infancy is proof that some- one cared for that child and that the seed of social interest has been planted (Adler, 1927).
2. Safeguarding Tendencies - Adler believed that people create patterns of behavior to protect their exaggerated sense of self-esteem against public disgrace. These protective devices, called safe- guarding tendencies, enable people to hide their inflated self-image and to maintain their current style of life.
A. Excuses - The most common of the safeguarding tendencies are excuses, which are typically expressed in the “Yes, but” or “If only” format. In the “Yes, but” excuse, people first state what they claim they would like to do—something that sounds good to others— then they follow with an excuse.
B. Aggression - Another common safeguarding tendency is aggression. Adler (1956) held that some people use aggression to safeguard their exaggerated superiority complex, that is, to protect their fragile self-esteem. Safeguarding through aggression may take the form of depreciation, accusation, or self-accusation. Depreciation is the tendency to undervalue other people’s achievements and to overvalue one’s own. Accusation, the second form of an aggressive safeguarding device, is the tendency to blame others for one’s failures and to seek revenge, thereby safeguarding one’s own tenuous self-esteem. The third form of neurotic aggression, self-accusation, is marked by self- torture and guilt. Some people use self-torture, including masochism, depression, and suicide, as means of hurting people who are close to them.
C. Withdrawal - Personality development can be halted when people run away from difficulties. Adler referred to this tendency as withdrawal, or safeguarding through distance. Some people unconsciously escape life’s problems by setting up a distance between them- selves and those problems. Adler (1956) recognized four modes of safeguarding through withdrawal: (1) moving backward, (2) standing still, (3) hesitating, and (3) constructing obstacles. Moving backward is the tendency to safeguard one’s fictional goal of superiority by psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life. Psychological distance can also be created by standing still. People who stand still simply do not move in any direction; thus, they avoid all responsibility by ensuring themselves against any threat of failure. Closely related to standing still is hesitating. Some people hesitate or vacillate when faced with difficult problems. Their procrastinations eventually give them the excuse “It’s too late now.” The least severe of the withdrawal safeguarding tendencies is constructing obstacles. Some people build a straw house to show that they can knock it down. By overcoming the obstacle, they protect their self-esteem and their prestige. If they fail to hurdle the barrier, they can always resort to an excuse.
3. Masculine Protest
In contrast to Freud, Adler (1930, 1956) believed that the psychic life of women is essentially the same as that of men and that a male-dominated society is not natural but rather an artificial product of historical development. According to Adler, cul- tural and social practices—not anatomy—influence many men and women to overemphasize the importance of being manly, a condition he called the masculine protest.
APPLICATION OF INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOY
We have divided the practical applications of individual psychology into four areas: (1) family constellation, (2) early recollections, (3) dreams, and (4) psychotherapy.
Family Constellation
In therapy, Adler almost always asked patients about their family constellation, that is, their birth order, the gender of their siblings, and the age spread between them. Although people’s perception of the situation into which they were born is more important than numerical rank, Adler did form some general hypotheses about birth order.
Early Recollections
To gain an understanding of patients’ personality, Adler would ask them to reveal their early recollections (ERs). Although he believed that the recalled memories yield clues for understanding patients’ style of life, he did not consider these memories to have a causal effect. Adler (1929/1969, 1931) insisted that early recollections are always consistent with people’s present style of life and that their subjective account of these experiences yields clues to understanding both their final goal and their present style of life.
Dreams
Although dreams cannot foretell the future, they can provide clues for solving future problems. Dreams are disguised to deceive the dreamer, making self-interpretation difficult. The more an individual’s goal is inconsistent with reality, the more likely that person’s dreams will be used for self-deception. For example, a man may have the goal of reaching the top, being above, or becoming an important military figure. If he also possesses a dependent style of life, his ambitious goal may be expressed in dreams of being lifted onto another person’s shoulders or being shot from a can- non. The dream unveils the style of life, but it fools the dreamer by presenting him with an unrealistic, exaggerated sense of power and accomplishment.
Psychotherapy
Adlerian theory postulates that psychopathology results from lack of courage, exag- gerated feelings of inferiority, and underdeveloped social interest. Thus, the chief purpose of Adlerian psychotherapy is to enhance courage, lessen feelings of inferi- ority, and encourage social interest. This task, however, is not easy because patients struggle to hold on to their existing, comfortable view of themselves. To overcome this resistance to change, Adler would sometimes ask patients, “What would you do if I cured you immediately?” Such a question usually forced patients to examine their goals and to see that responsibility for their current misery rests with them.
Adler often used the motto “Everybody can accomplish everything.” Except for certain limitations set by heredity, he strongly believed this maxim and repeat- edly emphasized that what people do with what they have is more important than what they have (Adler, 1925/1968, 1956).
PERSONALITY is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior.
Traits con- tribute to individual differences in behavior, consistency of behavior over time, and stability of behavior across situations. Traits may be unique, common to some group, or shared by the entire species, but their pattern is different for each individual. Thus each person, though like others in some ways, has a unique personality.
Characteristics are unique qualities of an individual that include such attributes as temperament, physique, and intelligence.
Theory Defined
A scientific theory is a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses.
First, a theory is a set of assumptions. A single assumption can never fill all the requirements of an adequate theory. A single assumption, for example, could not serve to integrate several observations, something a useful theory should do.
Second, a theory is a set of related assumptions. Isolated assumptions can neither generate meaningful hypotheses nor possess internal consistency—two criteria of a useful theory.
A third key word in the definition is assumptions. The components of a theory are not proven facts in the sense that their validity has been absolutely established. They are, however, accepted as if they were true. This is a practical step, taken so that scientists can conduct useful research, the results of which continue to build and re- shape the original theory.
Fourth, logical deductive reasoning is used by the researcher to formulate hy- potheses. The tenets of a theory must be stated with sufficient precision and logical consistency to permit scientists to deduce clearly stated hypotheses.
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To cite reference:
Feist, Jess & Feist, Gregory J. 2008. Theories of Personality, 7th Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.
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