Individual Psychology

• Alfred Adler's Biography:

  • Outgoing and gregarious young boy
  • 2nd born among 7 children and had many friends
  • Social networks and connections were important to him
  • Had a rivalry with his older brother
  • Experienced poor health as a child, almost died of pneumonia
  • Younger brother, Rudolf, died at age 4
  • Decided at age 5 that his main goal in life would be to conquer death
  • Transitioned from specialization to psychiatry
  • Published a study on Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation
• Adlerian Theory of Personality:

  • Adler emphasized a positive view of human nature
  • Believed individuals can control their fate, partly through helping others (social interest)
  • Lifestyle analysis helps understand how individuals help others
  • Early interactions with family, peers, and teachers shape feelings of inferiority and superiority
• Freud vs. Adler:

  • Freud reduced motivation to sex and aggression, while Adler focused on social influences and striving for superiority and success
  • Freud emphasized past experiences shaping present behavior, while Adler focused on people's view of the future shaping behavior
  • Adler believed psychologically healthy people are aware of their actions and motivations
• The Six Tenets of Adlerian Theory:

  1. Striving for success and superiority

  2. Subjective perceptions shaping behavior

  3. Unified and self-consistent personality

  4. Value of human activity seen through social interest

  5. Personality structure develops into a style of life

  6. Style of life molded by creative power
• Striving for Success and Superiority:

  • Everyone begins life with physical deficiencies activating feelings of inferiority
  • Striving for superiority involves personal superiority over others
  • Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal superiority
  • Psychologically healthy individuals seek success for all humanity
• The Final Goal:

  • Each person creates a personalized fictional goal
  • Developed by heredity and environment
  • Reduces feelings of inferiority and guides towards superiority or success
  • Children set their final goal by age 4 or 5
  • Neglect or pampering can affect the consciousness of the final goal
• Fictionalism:

  • The goal of superiority or success is a significant fiction guiding behavior
  • Fictions influence behavior as if they were real
  • Adler's teleological view of motivation focuses on future goals or ends
• Physical Inferiorities:

  • People develop beliefs to overcome physical deficiencies
  • Feelings of inferiority stimulate striving for perfection
  • Organ inferiorities become meaningful when they stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority
• Unify and Self-Consistency of Personality:

  • Each person is unique and indivisible
  • Inconsistent behavior does not exist in individual psychology
  • Behavior viewed from the perspective of a final goal appears consistent
• Organ Dialect:

  • Disturbance in one part of the body affects the entire person
  • Deficit organs express individual goals
• Conscious and Unconscious:

  • Unconscious goals are not clearly formulated
  • Unconscious goals influence behavior and motivations
• Adler believed that conscious and unconscious are two cooperating parts of the same unified system
• The degree of social interest developed during childhood years determines whether people's behavior leads to a healthy or unhealthy style of life
• Social interest, known as Gemeinschaftsgefuhl in German, is the attitude of relatedness with humanity and empathy for each member of the human community
• Individuals with well-developed social interest strive for the perfection of all people in an ideal community, rather than personal superiority
• Social Interest is rooted as a potentiality in everyone, originating from the mother-child relationship during early infancy
• Marriage and parenthood involve developing social interest, with the mother fostering cooperation and the father avoiding emotional detachment and paternal authoritarianism
• Social interest was Adler's yardstick for measuring psychological health and is considered "the sole criterion of human values"
• The style of life encompasses a person's goals, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward the world, influenced by heredity, environment, and creative power
• People with a healthy style of life express their social interest through action and strive to solve life's major problems through cooperation and contribution to others' welfare
• Abnormal development can result from underdeveloped social interest, leading to maladjustments such as setting unrealistic goals, living in a private world, and having a rigid style of life
• Safeguarding tendencies are patterns of behavior that protect a person's self-esteem against public damage, including excuses, aggression, depreciation, and self-accusation
• Withdrawal is a safeguarding tendency where individuals distance themselves from problems through modes like moving backward, standing still, hesitating, and constructing obstacles
• Family constellation, including birth order, gender of siblings, and age spread, plays a role in determining a person's lifestyle and relationships within the family
• Adler's theory emphasizes free choice over determinism, optimism over pessimism, teleology over causality, and social factors over biological influences
• Adlerians believe that people are motivated by social interest (the desire to contribute to others) and strive towards perfectionism.
• The aim of Adlerian psychotherapy is to promote self-awareness and personal growth by exploring one's life story or "life style."
• Adler believed that the goal of therapy is to help individuals understand their unique place within society, rather than focusing solely on individual problems.
• The goal of therapy is to increase awareness of one's own unique lifestyle and how it affects their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• Individual psychology focuses on understanding an individual's unique perspective rather than generalizing based on group characteristics.
• Adler believed that everyone has an equal potential for success but may be held back by their own limitations.
• Therapy involves exploring childhood experiences and identifying negative beliefs or attitudes developed during this time.
• Adlerians view mental illness as a result of faulty thinking rather than brain chemistry.