Chapter 4 – Psychodynamic Approach: Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology

Background on Alfred Adler

 1870 to 1937
 Born in Austria
 Sickly child
o Had a lot of health issues which led him to feel very weak and inferior compared
to his peers and older brother
 Medical issues influenced him to be a physician/ophthalmologist
o Decided to leave medicine because he found the idea of losing a patient too
difficult
o Later went to psychology because as a physician when interacting with patients
the sense of feeling inferior was common across his patients
o Felt this played in a role with psychology and development
 Formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society with Freud
o Freud wanted him to be a protégé, but Adler didn’t think they had that kind of
relationship, he saw them as equals and didn’t want to defer to all Freud’s views
 Founded the Society of Individual Psychology in 1912
 Emigrated to the USA in 1937
 Died in 1937 while attending conference in Scotland

1. The View of Man Underlying the Theory

 More optimistic view compared to Jung and Freud
 We are ultimately responsible for determining our own life
 Did not see us as victims of the past
o Past has influence but we are not limited to that
o More future oriented
 Human beings’ function in a purposeful way
 The unconscious goal is to master your environment
 Drives and past events are subordinate to individual purpose and creative abilities to
identify and achieve own goals
 Man is a social being
 Viewed men and women as equals
o Sexism of the time influenced Freud and Jung’s theories, but Adler saw them as
equals
o Adler didn’t believe that women were inferior, but he believed that society made
them feel more inferior
 Had more issues of feeling inferior to deal with
o People today refer to him and his theory as feminist’s

2. The Structure of the Personality

 Adler’s view of personality is holistic
o A proper understanding of personality can never be achieved by studying the
components separately
  Therefore, doesn’t propose any structures of the personality such as an Id and Ego

3. The Dynamics of the Personality

Fictional Finalism
 We are goal oriented
 Individual behaviour is determined by the goals we set for ourselves and the methods
we devise for achieving them
 Goals are fictional and not necessarily true/based on facts
o Created in the imagination
 We live “as-if” these goals are true
 We are moving towards goals that are false
 Goals guide our development whether they are true or not, we live as-if they are true
 Example:
o Referring to the free will vs determinism debate, it doesn’t matter if free will
actually exists, if we believe it exists then we will act according to that belief
o If you believe in God, then you are letting that belief guide your behaviour as if it
is true, whether or not that belief is true
o Men are better than women
o Men and women are equal

Striving for Superiority

 The striving to move from a position experienced as inferior to one of superiority,
perfection, or totality
o We all feel inferior in some way, and we try to change those feelings to feeling
superior
o Feeling of being inferior as motivation to be better
 Striving for power
o Taking something seen as a weakness and turning it into a strength
o Can be done in a negative or positive way
 Positive social way of attaining power
 Negative antisocial way of attaining power
 Striving for social interest
o Everyone should have an innate desire to serve their community, help others
around them, and help all of man kind
o Positive healthy natural expression of striving for superiority
o Turning feelings of inferiority to building yourself up and helping others

Inferiority
 Organ inferiorities
o Beginning point
o Physiological or constitutional defers or limitations (real or perceived) triggering
strong feelings of inferiority
o Physiological feeling of feeling inferior whether real or perceived
  Feelings of inferiority
o Normal and inevitable feelings of weakness which result from helplessness
during childhood
 Everyone has these feelings but how we deal with these feelings determines if we
develop in a healthy or negative way

Compensatory Reactions for Inferiority

 Ways that we deal with the feeling of inferiority
 Compensation
o Healthy
o Overcoming these real or imagined weaknesses through effort and practice
o Develop the weakness into a strength or develop abilities in different areas to
build strength in other areas
o The way you compensate should always be in a way that is healthy for you and
the larger social context
 Sensitivity
o Negative
o Preoccupation with the perceived weakness
o Hypersensitive about it
o Get hurt and upset easily if someone mentions your weakness, feel belittled,
insulted, attacked, etc.
o Can lead to neuroses
 Inability to compensate
o Negative
o Usually because of unrealistic or excessively high life goals
o Cannot overcome source of inferiority
o Leads to the development of an Inferiority Complex
o Makes inferiority more intense, poor opinion of yourself, inability to cope, low
self-esteem, don’t feel like you can achieve, missing the ability to achieve power
 Overcompensation
o Negative
o Over emphasis on strong points in a way to hide weaknesses
o Unproductive for individual and society
o Leads to the development of a Superiority Complex
 Related to narcissism
 Exaggerated sense of self-worth and self-esteem
 False sense of power and security
 Hide your inferiorities by bringing attention to other people’s inferiorities

Lifestyles
 The way that a personal influences and interprets their circumstances
 Involves social interest and how people compensate for feelings of weakness
 Lifestyle pretty much established by age of 5
 o Part of theory where past has some influence on personality
o Not limited to these lifestyle
 Basic way of interpreting a situation/behaving in a situation
o Depending on your lifestyle you will be predisposed to behaving in different ways
 Perceptual filter influences how we interpret circumstances
 The methods we use to reach our own specific goals we establish in our lives
 Types of lifestyles:

o Socially useful type

 Only positive lifestyle
 High social interest, involved in helping mankind
 Actively engaged in helping others
 Goals are community focus, trying to help others
 Ambitious, optimistic, active problem solving, oriented toward success in
realistic way, good leader
o Ruling type
 Active but destructive
 No interest in other people, low social interest, more selfish
 Looks at how things help them even if it will hurt society
 Ambitious and seeking goal achievement but the goals have different
priorities (oriented toward helping themselves)
 Seen as being power seeking, manipulative, exploitive, aggressive,
dominating
o Getting type
 High social interest but go about it in a passive way
 Pursuit goals in passive ways, let others take initiative
 Not seen as being ambitious or goal striving
 Seen as friendly and charming but lacking in independence
o Avoiding type
 Low in self-interest but pursue goals in passive way
 Low activity
 Seen as trying to escape life problems, lazy, passive aggressive
 Problems with interpersonal life
Summary
 Motivation: the striving for superiority
 Source: the experience of inferiority
 Manifestation: compensation processes and lifestyle

4. The Development of the Personality

How the Individual’s Lifestyle Develops
 No formal stages
 First five years are critical
 Adolescence, maturity, old age: no major changes
o Lifestyle stays the same but the goals that drive
development/behaviour/personality change
o The lifestyle can change but it is not easily changed

Faulty Lifestyles
 If any of these conditions are present in the first 5 years of life, it will lead to a faulty
lifestyle
 Rooted in three early childhood conditions
o Physical inferiority
 Can lead to healthy compensation and in that case, it will lead to an
appropriate, healthy lifestyle
 In cases where it leads to a negative compensatory response, it will lead
to the strangulation of social interest/feelings.
 Refocuses the social interest onto ourselves.
 Makes us more preoccupied and self-involved.
 Makes us pay too much attention to what others think of us.
o Neglect
 Neglected children don’t know what love and cooperation is
 Negatively impacts social interest
 Parents do not nurture social interest and show child how to use it
 Neglected children develop sense of feeling worthless, amps up feelings
of inferiority
 Leads them to becoming suspicious of other people and isolation
o Pampering
 Most serious of all parental errors
 Robs the child of independence and initiative
 Child will not be able to score high in active category
 Passive lifestyle
 Leads to shattered self-confidence and the idea of entitlement

Social Environment
 Family atmosphere
 o The communication style and quality of the emotional relationships between all
members of the family
o Whether the child will act actively or passively and constructively or destructively
 Family constellation
o Different relationships between the family members and their relative status
o Birth order and how is plays into the development of children
 First born
 Focus of attention, then dethroned from this position
 Can lead to feeling of inferiority
 Battle to regain supremacy and reclaim their title as being the
most important
 Intellectually developed, organized, authoritarian, insecure,
hostile towards others, serious, goal oriented, rule conscious,
responsible, high achiever, high in self-esteem, risk aversive
 More parental pressures to succeed which leads to success
 Second/Middle born
 Older sibling as a pacesetter
o Someone trying to match
 Competition may motivate
 Ambitious, optimistic, risk of becoming rebellious and
underachiever if they didn’t surpass older sibling
 Role of entertainer of the family, desperately fighting for attention
 More likely to be lonely but loyal to friends
 Youngest
 Pet of the family
 Fast development to surpass the others
 Potential to be high achievers but only if they are not pampered
 Only child
 Remain the focus of attention
 Spend more time with adults, less time with children
 Mature earlier, used to being the centre of attention, risk of being
pampered
o Twins
 One twin tends to be more dominant than the other
o Ghost child
 When a child dies
 If fist child dies before other children meet them, still impacts family
constellation and how the parents treat other children
o Adopted
o Only boy among girls
o Only girl among boys
o All boys
o All girls
 o More than three years separating between children, subgroups can be formed

The Creative Power of the Self

 Ability and freedom to choose or form our own life goals and to plan how we are going
to achieve these goals
 Not limited by the effects of genetics and social environment (nature and nurture)
o We choose how this influences us
 We are self-determined by the meaning we give to our experiences… Meanings are not
determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to
situations
 We have the ability and freedom to choose how we behave, our goals, our development,
etc.

5. Optimal Development
 Social interest is cornerstone of healthy personality functioning and adjustment
 Using proper compensation to strive for superiority
 Developing the social useful type lifestyle

6. Psychopathology
 Lack of social interest
 Excessive preoccupation with self
o Self-absorption, being egocentric and insecure, self-doubt and fear etc.
 Safeguarding tendencies
o Similar to Freuds defense mechanisms
o Things we do to protect ourselves from anxiety and insecurity, etc.
o Only neurotic people use safeguarding tendencies
o These are conscious
 Degrees of differences similar to Freud and Jung
o Not qualitive differences, quantitative differences
 Neurotic people - Having unrealistic life goals (fictional finalism) leads to developing
inferiority or superiority complexes (some issues coping with life)
 Psychotic people – complete failure at coping with life

7. Implications and Applications

 Education
o Role of parenting
o Child guidance clinics
 Psychotherapy
o Assumes symptoms are the result of a defective lifestyle
o Helping people overcome defective lifestyles
 Importance of family constellation