PSYCH05X Midterm Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology

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Alfred Adler

Born on February 7, 1870

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Adlerian Theory

  • Less famous because of: not having an organization, not a gifted writer, many of his views are incorporated in the works of later theorists

  • To Adler, people are born with weak, inferior bodies - a condition to feelings of inferiority and a consequence of dependence on other people

  • A feeling of unity with others (SOCIAL INTEREST) is inherent in people and the ultimate standard for Psychological Health

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Major Tenets of Adlerian Theory

  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 personal style of life

  6. Style of life is molded by people’s creative power

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The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or superiority

  • Physical Deficiencies

  • Strving for Success

  • Striving for Superiority

  • Feelings of Inferiority

  • Compensation

  • Inferiority Complex

  • Superiority Complex

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Physical Deficiencies

Activate feelings of inferiority - feelings that motivate a person to strive for either

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Striving for Success

Success for all humanity: Psychologically healthy

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Striving for Superiority

Striving for personal superiority over others: Psychologically unhealthy

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Feelings of Inferiority

  • Psychological aspect of being inadequate

  • For Adler, perception of inadequency or weakness is more important than the actual weakness

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Compensation

  • Adler believed that all humans are “blessed” at birth with small, weak and inferior bodies

  • People are continually pushed by the need to overcome feelings of inferiority and pulled by the desire for completion

  • The striving force is innate

  • Efforts one makes to make up for a weakness or deficiency (organ inferiority)

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Inferiority Complex

Feelings of inferiority act as a barrier to positive accomplishment - “inability to solve life’s problems”

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Superiority Complex

Exaggerated opinion of one’s abilities and accomplishments - The person becomes insensitive, boastful, arrogant, insulting and lacking social interest

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People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality

  • Fictionalism

  • Final Goal

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Fictionalism

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

  • People are motivated not by what is true but by their subjective perceptions of what is true

  • Most important fiction is the goal of superiority or success

  • This subjective, fictional final goal guides our style of life, gives unity to our personality

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Personality is unified and self-consistent

  • Organ Dialect

  • Conscious and Unconscious

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Organ Dialect

  • The disturbance of one part of the body cannot be viewed in isolation; it affects the entire person

  • Through organ dialect, the body’s organs “speak a language which is usually more expressive and discloses the individual’s opinion more clearly than words are able to do”

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Conscious and Unconscious

  • Unified personality is the harmony between conscious and unconscious

  • Adler avoided the dichotomy between the unconscious and the conscious, which he saw as two cooperating parts of the same unified system

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Social Interest

  • Feeling of oneness with humanity

  • Manifests itself as cooperation with others for social advancement rather than for personal gain

  • It is the natural condition of the human species and the adhesive that binds society together

  • Necessity for perpetuating the human species

  • Originates from the mother-child relationship

  • The relationship of a child with the mother and father is so powerful that it smothers the effect of heredity

  • Yardstick for measuring psychological health and is thus “the sole criterion of human values”

  • The only gauge to be used in judging the worth of a person

  • Standard to be used in determining the usefulness of life

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GEMEINSCHAFTSGEFUHL

  • German word for Social Interest

  • Social feeling

  • Community feeling

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Style of Life

  • Flavor of a person’s life

  • Includes person’s goal, self-concept, feeling for others, and attitude towards the world

  • Established by age 4 or 5

  • People with a healthy, socially useful style of life express their social interest through action

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Creative Power

  • The people’s creative power places them in control of their own lives, is responsible for their final goal, determines their method of striving for that goal, and contributes to the development of social interest

  • Makes each person a FREE INDIVIDUAL

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Abnormal Development

  • Underdeveloped Social Interest

  • Neurotics

  • People have become failures in life because they are overconcerned with themselves and little care about others

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Underdeveloped Social Interest

One factor underlying all types of maladjustments

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Besides lacking social interest neurotics:

  1. Set their goal too high

  2. Live in their own private world

  3. Have a rigid; and

  4. Dogmatic style of life

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3 Factors that Contribute to Abnormality

  • Exaggerated Physical Deficiency

  • Pampered Style of Life

  • Neglected Style of Life

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Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies

Each person comes into the world “blessed” with physical deficiencies, and these deficiencies lead to feelings of inferiority. People with exaggerated physical deficiencies sometimes develop exaggerated feelings of inferiority because they overcompensate for their inadequacy. They tend to be overly concerned with themselves and lack consideration for others.

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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 relationship they originally had with one or both of their parents. They expect others to look after them, overprotect them, and satisfy their needs

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Neglected Style of Life

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

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Safeguarding Tendencies

  • Adler believed that people create patterns of behavior to protect their exaggerated sense of self-esteem against public disgrace

  • Enable people to hide their inflated self-image and to maintain current style of life

  • Excuses

  • Aggression

  • Withdrawal

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Excuses

  • Most common of the safeguarding tendencies

  • Typically expressed in “Yes, but” or “If only”

  • These excuses protect a weak—but artificially inflated—sense of self-worth and deceive people into believing that they are more superior than they really are

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Agression

  • Some people use aggression to safeguard their exaggerated superiority complex, that is, to protect their fragile self-esteem.

  • Depreciation

  • Accusation

  • Self-accusation

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Depreciation

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

  • Evident in such aggressive behavior as criticism and gossip

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Accusation

Tendency to blame others for one’s failures and to seek revenge, thereby safeguarding one’s own tenuous self-esteem

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Self-accusation

  • Neurotic aggression, marked by self-torture and guilt

  • Self-accusation is the converse of depreciation, although both are aimed toward gaining personal superiority. With depreciation, people who feel inferior devalue others to make themselves look good. With self-accusation, people devalue themselves in order to inflict suffering on others while protecting their own magnified feelings of self-esteem

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Withdrawal

  • Personality development can be halted when people run away from difficulties

  • Moving backward

  • Standing still

  • Hesitating

  • Constructing obstacles

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Moving Backward

  • Tendency to safeguard one’s fictional goal of superiority by psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life.

  • Similar to Freud’s Regression

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Standing Still

People who stand still simply do not move in any direction; thus, they avoid all their responsibilities by ensuring themselves against any threat of failure. They safeguard their fictional aspirations because they never do anything to prove that they cannot accomplish their goals

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Hesitating

  • People hesitate or vacillate when faced with difficult problems. Their procrastinations eventually give them the excuse “It’s too late now.”

  • Adler believed that most compulsive behaviors are attempts to waste time

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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

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Masculine Protest

  • In contrast to Freud, Adler believed that the psychic life of women is essentially the same as that of men

  • Men and women overemphasize the importance of being manly

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Applications of Adlerian Theory

  • Family Constellation

  • Early Recollections

  • Dreams

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Family Constellation

  • Birth order

  • Gender of siblings

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Birth Order

  • First Born

  • Second Born

  • Youngest Childern

  • Only Child

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First Born

  • Likely to have intensified feelings of power and superiority, high anxiety, and overprotective tendencies

  • Feelings of dethronement

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Second Born

Extremely ambitious

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Youngest Children

  • Most pampered

  • Lacks sense of independence

  • Ambitious but lazy

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Only Child

Often sweet and affectionate

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Early Recollections

Adler believed that recalled memories yield clues for understanding styles of life and final goals

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Dreams

Provide clues for solving future problems

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Adlerian Psychotherapy

  • The chief purpose of Adlerian psychotherapy is to enhance courage, lessen feelings of inferiority, and encourage social interest

  • Adler emphasized that what people do with what they have is more important than what they have