Biography

• Born on February 7, 1870 in Penzing, Austria

• 2nd to 6 children, was raised in Vienna in the suburbs

• Age of 5 developed pneumonia; this life threatening experience motivated Adler to pursue medicine

• In 1895, received medical degree at University of Vienna; here he met a group of social students and his future wife, Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein, an intellect

• Married in 1897 and had 4 children

• He became a physician and had an office across from a circus in a lower-class part of Vienna

• He later turned to psychiatry as it related to physical/mental disorders

• In 1902, he met Freud and they formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society where Adler was the president

• This led to Freud to claim Adler as a disciple

• Founder of Individual Psychology

• Passed away May 29, 1937 in Aberdeen, Scotland from a heart attack

• Joined Freud’s discussion group in 1902

  • Adler’s views were initially compatible with Freud’s

• Adler’s views changed and he began to criticize Freud’s theories

• In 1911, Adler and 9 others broke away from Freud and formed “The Society for Individual Psychology”

• Involvement in World War 1 helped develop the concept of social interest

Individual Psychology

• Presents an optimistic view of a person resting heavily on social interest (feeling of oneness with all humankind)

Alfred Adler

• Developed the approach of Individual Psychology

• Contributions to understanding of personality

  • Notion of striving for superiority

  • Role of parental influence on personality development

  • Effects of birth order

• Opposites do not contradict

• Nature + nurture + creative power

• Foundations for humanistic

• Born with inferiority

• Creative Power: you can choose who you want to be

• Style of Life

  • Avoid -> avoid what is causing the inferiority

  • Dominant -> dominance over others

  • Getting -> dependence/relying on others

  • Parts of childhood experiences personality

  • We have to choose to change

Birth Order

• First Born Children

  • Subjected to excessive attention from parents

  • Arrival of second child ends the pampering

  • Strong perception of inferiority

• Middle-Born Children

  • Develop a strong superiority striving

  • Highest achievers

  • Try hard to catch up with their older siblings

• Last Born Children

  • Pampered throughout their childhood

  • Vulnerable to strong inferiority feelings

6 Tenets of Adlerian Theory

• Striving for Success/Superiority: the one dynamic force behind people’s behavior

• 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

• The style of life is molded by people’s creative power

Striving for Success and Superiority

• Reduced all motivation to a single drive

• Everyone begins life with physical deficiencies that activate feelings of inferiority

• Psychologically unhealthy - strive for personal superiority

• Psychologically healthy - seek success for all humanity

The Striving Force as Compensation

• People strive for superiority/success as a means of compensation for feelings of inferiority/weakness

• The striving force is innate but its nature and direction are due to feelings of inferiority and to the goal of superiority

• Without the innate movement toward perfection, children would never set goal of superiority/success

The Final Goal

• Each person has the power to create a personalized fictional goal

  • Provided by heredity and environment

  • Product of creative power – ability to freely shape their behavior and create their own personality

  • The final goal reduces the pain of inferiority, feelings and points that person in the direction of either superiority/success

Subjective Perceptions

• People strive for superiority/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 – their fictions/expectations of the future

Fictionalism

• Our most important fiction is the goal of superiority/success – a goal we created early in life and may not clearly understand

• This guides our style of life, gives unity to our personality

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

  • Ex. Men are superior than women

  • Ex. Humans have freewill that enable them to make choices

  • Ex. God rewards good and punishes evil

• A person’s image of ultimate fulfillment (e.g., money, admiration, health, etc.; in neurotics this goal is inflexible)

• Adler’s teleological view of motivation (vs. Freud’s causality)

Personality is United and Self-Consistent

• 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

  • Conscious and 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

• Gemeinschaftsgefühl: German term for social interest

• Social Interest

  • Attitude of relatedness with humanity as well as empathy for each member of the human community

  • Natural condition of the human species and the adhesive that binds society together

• A person with well developed social interest strives not for personal superiority but for the perfection for all people in an ideal community

• The natural inferiority of individuals necessitates their joining together to form a society

• Social interest is a necessity for perpetuating the human species

  • Without protection and nourishment from a father/mother, a baby would perish

  • Without protection from the family/clan, our ancestors would have been destroyed by animals that were stronger

Mistaken Styles of Life

• Ruling Type

  • Seek to dominate; may be antisocial/high achievers

  • Sense of aggression (masochism)

• Getting Type

  • Dependent on others; may become depressed

  • Rely on others

  • Little effort to solve problems

• Avoiding Type

  • Isolated and possibly cold

  • Molded by people’s creative power

    • You have a choice

    • Force your way through/adjust

Style of Life is Molded by People’s Creative Power

• Creative Power

  • The freedom to create her/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” - bump or bend

    • Neuroticism

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/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

• Neurosis: The Getting Type

  • 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

• Neurosis: The Avoiding Type

  • 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

• Adler, like Freud, saw personality/lifestyle as something established quite early in life

• Basic Childhood Situations that most contribute to a faulty lifestyle

• Neurosis

  • People seen with exaggerated trait

  • Not normal but not clinically diagnosable

  • Childhood experiences that give rise to the personality

1. Exaggerated physical deficiencies

2. Pampered style of life

   • Spoiled; overdependent

3. Neglected style of life

   • Exaggerate what’s going on

• 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 only 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 other people

  • More suspicious

Parental Influence on Personality Development

• Parental behaviors that lead to problems in children’s life

• Pampering

  • Robes the child of independence and adds to feelings of inferiority

• Neglect

  • Children who receive little attention from their parents

  • Grow up cold and suspicious

  • Are incapable of warm personal relationships