Adler & Individual Psychology: Personality Ch. 3

Individual Psychology

• Takes an optimistic view of people

• Importance of “social interest” (i.e., feelings of oneness with humankind)

• Assumes people are motivated by success and superiority

• Assumes that present behaviour is shaped by people’s view of the future

Alder

• Adler was one of the original members of the group that met at Freud’s home on Wednesday evenings to discuss psychology

• As a colleague of Freud, Adler does retain a few of Freud’s ideas, but his theory of individual psychology diverges in significant ways including believing that psychologically healthy people are consciously aware of what they are doing, and why they are doing it

• This did not please Freud

Biography of Adler

• Born outside of Vienna, Austria

• Lived from 1870-1937

• Based on his early experiences (e.g., found his brother dead at 4, almost died from pneumonia at 5), Adler desired to forestall death and decided to be a physician

• Had a life-long rivalry with his older brother (a successful business owner)

• Had a bitter falling out with Freud and the two became rivals

Adler’s Personality is Described as…

• optimistic, warm

• Competitive

• Friendly

Adlerian Theory

• Adler’s name is less well-known than other personality theorists

• Influenced several of theorists we will discuss later this term (e.g., Horney, Maslow, Rogers)

• Adler did not prioritize the perpetuation of his theories

• Most of his ideas were put together by editors from this lectures

  • Adler was not a gifted writer

• Key points for Adler:

  • People are born weak and inferior, and this condition leads to feelings of inferiority and dependence on others

  • Feeling unity with others (i.e., social interest) is inherent in people and is the standard for psychological health

Theory of Individual Psychology

1. The one dynamic force behind people’s behaviour is the striving for success or superiority

2. People’s subjective perceptions shape their behaviour 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

Striving for Success or Superiority

• According to Adler, all motivation comes from a single drive: striving for success or superiority

• His thinking evolved from all motivation coming from aggression, then from masculine protest (i.e., a will to power or a domination of others), and then to striving for superiority

• His final theory defined:

• Striving for superiority as limited to people who are motivated to gain personal superiority over others

• Striving for success as limited to describing people who are motivated by highly developed social interest

• Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal superiority, whereas psychologically healthy people strive for success for all of humanity

The Final Goal

• Regardless of whether someone is striving for superiority or success, their final goal is fictional and does not exist in objective reality

• That said, the final goal is of great significance

• it organizes personality and

• it allows behavior to make sense

Creative Power

• People’s ability to freely shape their behavior to create their own personality

• Starts during childhood (~4-5 years old) during which time people are small, incomplete, weak

• Feelings of inferiority and powerlessness

• Final goals linked to being big, complete, strong reduce these feelings of inferiority

• “law of the low doorway” (Adler, 1929)

The Final Goal in Relation to Children

• According to Adler, a child’s situation influences the formation and pursuit of their final goal

• If neglected or overly pampered, the goal remains largely unconscious

• Feelings of inferiority are compensated for in devious and counter-productive ways

• Being overly-needy because of an unconscious goal of wanting to be forever dependent on a parent

• Children who experience love and security set goals that are largely conscious and understood

Subgoals

• In pursuit of their final goal, people pursue many subgoals

• These subgoals are often conscious, but their connection to final goal usually remains unconscious and unknown

• Adler described this process like subplots in a larger story

• Once the ending is known (i.e., the final goal), all the subplots (i.e., subgoals) acquire new meaning

The Striving Force

• According to Adler, people are simultaneously pushed by the need to overcome inferiority feelings and pulled by the desire for completion of the final goal

• “Without the innate movement toward perfection, children would never feel inferior; but without feelings of inferiority, they would never set a goal of superiority or success. The goal, then, is set as a compensation for the deficit feeling, but the deficit feeling would not exist unless a child first possessed a basic tendency toward completion (Adler, 1956)

• The final goal is created by the individual and can take any form

Fictionism

• Fictions are ideas that have no real existence, yet influence people as if they really existed

  • E.g., Life is fair

• Adler’s emphasis on the use of fictions is consistent with his teleological view of motivation

• Behaviour is explained by its aim as opposed to by a specific cause

Physical Inferiorities

• We form goals to overcome inferiority during a stage in life when we are small and weak

• Adler notes that when people grow up (and become large/strong) they still may act as if they were still small and weak

• The striving force is persistent

Does Adler believe in uniqueness or sameness?

• Adler believed that each person is unique and indivisible

  • “Individual Psychology”

Fundamental Unit of Personality

• There is no such thing as a person having inconsistent behavior

• All of someone’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are directed toward a single goal and serve a single purpose

• Both conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings

• Includes organ dialect – internal and external messaging of body parts

Conscious and Unconscious

According to Adler, conscious thoughts are those that are understood (i.e., make sense in relation to our goals), whereas unconscious thoughts are not understood

Social Interest

• A better translation from the original German is either “social feeling” or “community feeling”

• Oneness with all humanity

• Empathy for each member of the human community

• Adler felt that social interest is a necessity for perpetuating the human species

• “the sole criterion of human values” (Adler, 1927)

• Adler believed that social interest develops from early interactions with parents

• Both mother and father are important for creating a positive social environment

• To avoid creating maladjusted adults, parents need to strike a balance between overly pampering and neglecting their children

Abnormal Developement

Adler believed that underdeveloped social interest is a factor linked to all types of maladjustment

What does Adler think of neurotics?

• Set goals too high as an overcompensation for exaggerated feelings of inferiority

• Live in their own private world (i.e., are overconcerned with themselves)

• Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life

• Approach challenges for social life (e.g., friendships, sex, work) from a personal angle that precludes success

Safeguarding Tendencies

• Formed as a protection again anxiety

• Conscious and designed to shield a person’s fragile self-esteem from public disgrace

• Excuses and aggression

Aggression

Consists of depreciation, accusation, and self-accusation

Excuses

• Yes, but” and “If only”

• Protect self-esteem by creating a false perception that the self is more superior than what is actually the case in reality

Depreciation

Tendency to undervalue other people’s achievements and to overvalue one’s own

Accusation

Tendency to blame others for failures and seek revenge

Self-accusation

• Tendency to use self-torture and guilt to devalue the self

• inflicts suffering on others while protecting one’s own magnified feelings of self-esteem

Withdrawal

safeguarding by creating distance between the self and one’s problems

Moving Backward

the tendency to create false feelings of superiority by reverting to a more secure period of life

Standing Still

tendency to not move in any direction and avoiding responsibility to avoid threats of failure

Hesitating

tendency to procrastinate and eventually create the excuse “it’s too late now” to preserve inflated sense of self

Constructing Obstacles

• tendency to create barriers to success

• If overcome, feeling of superiority are felt; if not, can be used an excuse to protect the self-image

Application of Individual Psychology

Family constellation and birth order was a key component of Adler’s work with patients

Alderian Psychotherapy

Main goals:

• Enhance courage

• Lessen feelings of inferiority

• Encourage social interest

“What would you do if I cured you immediately?”

• Question designed to get patients to examine their goals and potentially see that the responsibility for their own current misery rests with them

• Adler often used the motto “Everybody can accomplish everything”

• Took a warm, permissive, cooperative approach to therapy

Related Research to Adler

• Adler’s theories have generated a respectable amount of research

• Mixed support for his ideas

• Birth order, intelligence, academic achievement, and personality

• Birth order is not linked to personality (at least using the “Big 5 Factor” model)

• Birth order does have a small, but statistically significant association with intelligence and career outcomes

Issues with Adler

• Overall, Adler’s theory has proven useful based on the criteria from Chapter 1, however, some of these ideas are unfalsifiable

• For example, Adler believed that childhood experiences and memories influence adult personality, but that the recall of childhood memories in adulthood is influenced by adult personality and style of life

  • Circular logic

• Many of Adler’s concepts lack precise operational defintions

  • E.g., final goal, superiority, creative power, etc

Individual Psychology’s Concept of Humanity

• Free choice

• Optimism

• Teleology

• Conscious and unconscious determinants of behaviour

• Social influences on personality

• Uniqueness