PURPOSE OF THIS CHAPTER
This introductory chapter provides a bird’s-eye view of
Adler’s system. We begin with a paragraph found on the
inside front cover of every issue of the Journal of
Individual Psychology, as written by Dr. Heinz L.
Ansbacher, its editor from 1957 to 1973.
The Journal of Individual Psychology is devoted to a
holistic, phenomenological, teleological, field-theoretical,
and socially oriented approach to psychology and related
fields. This approach is based on the assumption of the
uniqueness, self-consistency, activity, and creativity of
the human individual (style of life); an open dynamic system
of motivation (striving for a subjectively conceived goal of
success); and an innate potentiality for social life (social
interest).
In this chapter we shall examine this statement in detail.
We recommend that the reader re-read, this summary. We shall
now expand on every important term of this statement in
detail.
HOLISM
Is a human like a flower or like an automobile? Are we
essentially unitary or are we made up of parts? Are we
body/mind or are we body and mind? Are we an entity
or an assemblage? Do we have a conscious mind and a separate
unconscious mind, or do we have a mind with various aspects?
Are we still ourselves when asleep or when drunk or when
sick, or are we like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Individual Psychology firmly takes the position that we are
indivisible units. Like the flower which came from a single
fertilized cell, we are a unity; we are not an assemblage of
parts like a machine. Adlerians deny concepts such as those
of Sigmund Freud that the human being can be divided into
parts such as the ego, the id, and the superego. While such
division can be done for heuristic (i.e., research,
investigation) purposes, we deny that such thinking can
ultimately be productive since the individual is a unity!
Now this may seem to be some abstract philosophical
conception of little importance. Nothing could be further
from the truth. In explaining human nature one always begins
with basic hypotheses. Should the basic hypotheses be
incorrect, further assumptions based on these hypotheses
will also be incorrect, and a whole system of resulting
beliefs will be essentially erroneous. For this reason it's
important to begin with patently true assumptions. However,
since IP, like all personality theories, is not a proven
theory, it is important for the reader to think for
him/herself on this as well as on every other issue. What do
you think: Are humans’ integrals or
disjunctives? Are you a unity, essentially a single
individual, or are you composed of discrete parts in a
clever assemblage? Do you have thoughts and feelings
and desires and goals and memories, are
you the sum of these or are they part of you?
The word individual in Individual Psychology does not
mean the opposite of “social” or “group.” Individual
Psychology is not a psychology of individuals as opposed to
groups of people. The term individual in German has
the connotation and denotation of a unity, an indivisible
whole. It refers to the unique individuality of individuals.
Jan C. Smuts (1961) coined this word holism which we
are discussing. Smuts said that personality was
“fundamentally an organ of self-realization” (p. 290).
According to Ansbacher (1961), Smuts himself was a
self-realized or self-actualized man as described by Abraham
Maslow (1954). Holism also relates to other concepts. One is
the notion of Gestalt-the idea that the total is more than
the sum of its parts. A simple example would be to take
three equal straight lines. Line them up next to each other
and you have one configuration; put them so that the end of
each touches the end of another and you now have a different
configuration. The first set is three parallel lines, but
the second is a triangle! Surely the two configurations are
not the same. The reflex-arc concept (Dewey, 1896) which
introduced the concept of a non-elementaristic view of
behavior is still another associated idea. Holism is also
related to creativity. If anything happens only because
something else caused it, then everything is determined.
Then there would be no responsibility. No one would create
anything. A poem would be caused, not created, as would any
work of art.
Holism presents a challenge to the sciences of physics and
chemistry based on Isaac Newton’s laws of thermodynamics,
specifically the first law, which reads, “Quantities of heat
may be converted into mechanical work and conversely.” This
law represents a fundamental view of the conservation of
energy: What goes into something cannot be more or less than
what goes out. Smuts (1961) said, “Either the first law of
thermodynamics must be given up, or life and mind are
nullities” (p. 164). Physics and chemistry and biology are
physical sciences. Newton’s laws hold for the human body as
a machine that uses calories of heat to operate, but this
law of conservation does not apply to the mind.
According to Ansbacher (1961, p. 146), Adler appreciated the
work of Smuts. Smuts reciprocated his feelings for Adler and
stated that Individual Psychology was “in a way closer to
common sense and kinder to human nature than was the science
of the nineteenth century” (p. 285).
We can contrast some psychological theories in terms of
holism: One view is that people are made up of divisible
parts, such as Berne’s (1961) Parent-Child-Adult, or Freud’s
(1964) Ego-Id-Superego. The other point of view is that
people are unitary organisms. Biologically, the issue is
clear enough: We start life when the sperm and egg fuse into
a single cell, the zygote. As the zygote begins to expand
and divide, subparts or organs begin to develop, and so the
final entity, the human body, originates from a single egg.
It is not put together piece by piece, as occurs with an
airplane, an automobile, or a fountain pen.
PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology essentially means “subjective, personal.” It
refers to a person’s direct experience. That is, if you
look at a picture by Paul Klee or Pablo Picasso or Margaret
Keene, that picture is that picture-it is the
reality. But your reality is your impression of
it-what it means to you. You may find one picture exciting,
another dull, another ugly. These are all personal views-and
they are true for you. Reality then is your impression, your
view, your perception.
Adolf Hitler was idolized by millions and hated by millions.
Every individual who had an opinion of Hitler had a
personal, private view. This view for them was reality. If
you come into a semi dark room and you see a dog on the bed,
this is your reality at that moment and you will react to
what you see as though it were really a dog. Say that
what you saw was a coat: the “real reality” was a coat, the
“subjective reality” was a dog. Now if you are afraid of
dogs, you will be scared by the coat because to you at that
time the coat was a dog!
IP deals with this “subjective reality”-our impressions,
views, perceptions, apperceptions, conclusions—and not with
physical reality. If you believe you are God, this is
your reality.
Phenomenology has important human consequences. Consider two
children and say that one of them is much brighter than the
other—actually has greater brain power. Now let us say that
this “bright” child actually does poorly in school compared
to the other. This difference in actual accomplishment may
be due to phenomenology. The bright child may be
discouraged, may have feelings of inferiority, and may not
like to study, and may want to punish his parents by doing
poorly, and so on. The reason for the academic differences
may be due to the phenomenology of the two children—one is
ambitious, alert, and eager while the other is discouraged,
resentful, and unwilling to learn.
This leads to one of the maxims of IP: Adlerian
Psychology is a psychology of use rather than of possession.
It is not what you have that counts, but rather what you
do with what you have. Some people with advantages will fail
while some people with disadvantages will succeed.
Happiness, good grades, good children, and so on—the things
that people want to attain—are a function more of
phenomenology; that is, the person’s view, and not only of
“facts” such as high IQ, good environment, or favorable
opportunities.
Let us now put in a caveat. Adlerian psychology is not 100
percent phenomenological. We recognize the importance of
reality, of limits. A child born without legs has no chance
of becoming a high jumper; a child with Down’s syndrome will
most probably never go to college. We recognize objective
reality—conditions outside of and beyond the individual:
physical, social, and economic factors set limits. For this
reason, Individual Psychology takes an intermediate position
relative to the determinism-indetermmism point of view. We
neither say “You can become anything you want” (the pure
indeterministic position) or “You are completely controlled
by outside events” (the pure deterministic position) but,
rather, we say, “Within the limits established by your
biology and the environment, there is generally a lot you
can do.”
We Adlerians see this as the only proper logical position
one can take: phenomenology (that is to say, the
individual’s total “mind”) directs the person, who in turn
is limited by biological/social/environmental conditions.
TELEOLOGY
Teleology means “purposive, moving toward goals.” IP sees
individuals constantly in the process of striving. We ask
about a person when we don’t understand him: “What is he
after?” By this, we mean: “What is his goal?”
Now this may sound very obvious, but let us examine other
points of view. Some systems of psychology, especially those
that view the human as object, see the person as the result
of the past, controlled by past experiences. They conceive
of people as “learned,” “trained,” “conditioned”-and
otherwise not free. The past determines the present. The
individual is seen at any moment as the result of his or her
past. This deterministic point of view is best found in the
behaviorist psychologies.
A second viewpoint is the here-and-now position. This view
says that any person at any time makes decisions in terms of
how the immediate moment is perceived. So, the past and the
future are not that important; the now is important.
The third point of view, the one that IP sponsors, is the
teleological (from the Greek telos-goal), which says
that the individual is best understood in terms of where he
is going. Adler said, “Ask not whence but whither?”
There is truth to all three positions. In any human
situation, the past, the present, and the future are
involved. We make decisions based on what has happened to
us in the past, what the situation is now, and what
we are after. Say that you are in your room studying for
an examination. The phone rings. You answer it and a friend
asks if you want to see a movie. Now you have to make a
decision. Many factors will enter into the decision: your
past pleasure at seeing movies, your present
state of physical comfort, your future intention to
do well. There is a dynamic interaction among the past, the
present, and the future. No one can deny the effects of the
past, no one can deny the importance of the moment, and no
one can deny the force of the future. But which of these
three views of time is the most likely to lead to
understanding ourselves and others?
IP states simply that we understand people and their
behavior best in terms of their goals. If we know what a
person wants, then we can best predict that person’s
behavior.
FIELD THEORY
This concept is rather difficult to explain. Let us try to
make clear what it means to say that IP is a field theory by
examining some basic concepts.
Dichotomies-Extension
Aristotle thought in terms of dichotomies. “Man is either an
animal or he is not.” “Things are either hard or they are
soft.” “People are either good or they are no good.”
Galileo, however, thought not in terms of dichotomies but in
terms of degrees. “This man is a bit taller than that
woman.” “He is twice as hungry as he was an hour ago, but is
one-half as hungry now as he will be in two hours.”
Reductionism
Some people reduce things to their basic components. By
dissecting, and otherwise analyzing, they reduce things to
their elements. In our prior discussion on holism, the
individual was seen as a totality who cannot be broken into
parts: doing so prohibits a complete understanding of any
person.
Interactionism
The Adlerian is concerned with verbs and not nouns: “In
psychology, all nouns should be understood as verbs” (Rom,
1977, p. 27); that is what psychology is all about: wanting,
desiring, moving, going, pushing, shoving, and things of
that sort. All these terms represent action and imply
interaction with the “environment.” Some other psychological
systems are static and directed to elements such as
nouns—for example, the IQ, the Unconscious, Archetypes, and
abilities.
IP is a relational psychology in which the individual is
seen always in movement in a social field. Though one is a
unique individual, he or she is not apart from others. We
shy away from terms such as schizophrenic since it is
a class designation, a category, and does not explain the
richness of a striving person in a social field. Adler saw
people in movement, directed toward personal goals, and
these movements were always in a social field. In a
field-theoretical point of view, all elements within the
system affect each other Consequently IP represents a
dynamic point of view.
SOCIAL ORIENTATION
This aspect is perhaps the most unique of Adler’s
contributions. Every other personality theory, as a matter
of principle sticking to the rigid scientific viewpoint
characterized by objective sciences, refuses to concern
itself with such issues as goodness and badness. Some
systems openly state that they do not contain any view
whatever of morality. They are objective.
IP, in contrast, is subjective, taking a strong viewpoint
relative to human happiness and success, and says that good
comes from social integration and social concern. The
central concept, which we shall now only touch on briefly,
is Gemeinschaftsgefuhl.
Adlerian Psychology says it is not enough to know what human
nature is —how we develop, how we change, how we relate,
what makes us human. All this is fine and good, and is part
of science, equally important is using knowledge for
general human good, permitting people to grow and develop
and advance and enhance themselves. Knowledge for the sake
of knowledge is fine, but the use of knowledge is more
important. Therefore, the student of human nature should not
only tell the world things but should also give
messages, should give instructions. The analogy
might be in medicine: of what use is it to discover that
smoking cigarettes develops cancer if this information is
kept in professional journals and medical books? The
information should be broadcast so that people win know
enough to stop smoking if they want to avoid the risk of
cancer.
The analogy is not perfect, no analogy is. Of all the major
personality theories, only the Adlerian forthrightly states
that to be happy and successful in life you have to be
“good”—in a socially connected way. We have put the word
“good” in quotation marks because as shall be discussed in
Chapter 5, the concept of Gemeinschaftsgefuhl,
usually translated as “social interest,” is quite
complicated and has a considerable number of definitions.
The term social orientation contains still another
concept. The individual is embedded in his/her society and
cannot be studied in isolation. We have referred to this
aspect already in considering field theory. We gain our
standards from others; we do things because of others; our
lives are fully related to others.
COMMON SENSE
Up to this point in commenting on the Journal of
Individual Psychology statement we have finished
analyzing the first sentence. Before we go on more we would
like to point out that the reader may have noticed something
unusual. All we have written probably sounds familiar. You
might even begin to wonder at this point what is new and
different about IP. It all sounds so reasonable, so full of
common sense. After all, people, you may say, are
entities; they are unique individuals. After all,
psychology involves one’s unique perceptions and reactions
to life. After all, you may think, a good way to understand
people is to know what then- goals are; and you may say that
to point out that we are social creatures and need one
another and find happiness by belonging and participating is
nothing new. In short, you may dismiss what you have read as
being simply common sense.
Adler was once criticized exactly for this: “But what you
have said is nothing but common sense!” someone stated after
one of his lectures. Adler is reputed to have said, “And,
what’s wrong with common sense?”
Can we at this point tell you a big secret about psychology?
Many people think that psychology should be difficult to
understand. If we present them with terms such as
abreaction, archetypal image, awareness context, cathexis,
collective unconscious, contra sexual, ctyptomnesia, and
so on, they will feel awed and impressed. But if we talk
simple language, some people may feel cheated.
Well, we have to admit it. IP is simple in its theory and
simple in its language. We can explain all human behavior,
be it neurotic behavior, delinquent behavior, or crazy
behavior, quite simply. What’s more—we can readily prescribe
behavior on the part of those who wish to change others. We
treat maladjusted people as successfully as those who use
more complicated terms. We have commonsense explanations.
Let us give an example relating to the concept of the
unconscious.
In the Freudian and Jungian conceptualizations, in an aspect
of the individual called the id are found various
horrible drives coming to the individual through the
centuries, implanted in the genes of individuals. The child
has a desire to kill its parents, or to have sexual
relations with mother or father, has a built-in imprinted
tendency to aggrandizement, and so on—all of these being
biologically inherited. We Adlerians simply toss all these
notions out as idle speculation; unproven fantastic theories
with not the slightest evidence, and contrary to
common sense.
As Adlerians we operate in terms of the simplest hypotheses,
and reject anything cumbersome or mythological, which just
does not seem sensible, especially if we can explain the
phenomenon more simply. Certainly some people do have
horrible thoughts. But they need not have inherited them.
They could have invented them themselves. Sure, people do
things without knowing why. Few of us have perfect insight
into ourselves, but we need not posit an unconscious; we can
simply say that memory, self-understanding, and so on,
operate on a continuum and we may simply be unaware of some
aspects of ourselves. Certainly what are known commonly as
“Freudian slips” exist—but we need not posit any fanciful
explanation to account for them. In short, it is possible to
explain just about everything in psychology and do this
simply. In a review of a book on psychodrama, J. L. Moreno
complained that the author had made the complex simple. The
author rebutted that Dr. Moreno had made the simple complex.
IP is a commonsense psychology, uses simple language, and
yet can deal with the most complex problems.
UNIQUENESS
In the explanation of Individual Psychology, this word calls
for some comment. We see each person as different from
every other person, yet all people are alike! Harry Stack
Sullivan said that people are more alike than different, and
we would agree—but at the same lime each of us is a unique
human being.
Now let us go into this subject a bit deeper.
Psychology is generally divided into three areas:
-
Cognition-thoughts,
ideas, perceptions.
-
Affection-emotions,
feelings.
-
Conation-willing,
acting, behaving.
Each individual has a different personality. Adlerians call
this one’s “style of life”—one’s unique way of operating. We
each think, we feel, and we act differently. The unique
combination of these three aspects of human behavior (we use
the word behavior in two senses—a problem that plagues
psychology: one sense is observable action, such as
“I am right now typing this material, and so I am behaving”;
but the other sense of the word has to do with implicit
behavior—what goes on in my “mind”—my thoughts and
feelings as I type) is what makes each of us a unique
person.
Adlerians see the intellect—that is to say, cognition—as
number one. We are what we think Both feelings and
actions are subservient to thoughts. To understand
individuals we presume that in the beginning was the
thought; after that came feelings and actions.
Now let us attempt to give a general picture of how we
come to have our unique styles of life.
As infants, most probably all we have is awareness of strong
stimuli; and these stimuli most probably can be divided into
three types: (a) neutral ones —these simply let us be
and live and grow; (6) painful ones—these make us cry and
scream and thrash about; and (c) pleasant ones—these make us
gurgle and coo and be happy. So the child at 2:00
p.m. is fast
asleep at peace with the world—condition (a); then at
2:15 p.m. the
child is hungry and has stomach pains and cries—condition
(b); and then while being fed, at 2:17 P.M., the
child is happy—condition (c)
As the child goes through life, he wants to avoid condition
(b)—pain—and he begins to generalize what to do to
avoid being hungry, being yelled at, being spanked, being
made fun of, and so on. These generalizations become
precepts that he is not aware of—in short, they are in his
“mind” but he has no awareness. This is what some of our
psychoanalytic colleagues might call the unconscious. At
least we can all agree that this material is not conscious.
Nevertheless, each of us as we develop in life begins to
assemble a series of conclusions about life—what is right
and what is wrong, how to get what one wants, what people
are like, what we are like, and so on. This collection of
personal concepts is known in Adlerian terminology as
“private logic” and represents our deepest views of self and
others and life—in short, they represent our philosophy.
Given any situation, we then tend to react in terms of these
engrams, if we want to think of them as physical
impressions on our brain or in terms of these unconscious
structures, if we wish to think in psychoanalytic
terms. They make up our uniqueness. It is this combination
of thoughts that makes up our uniqueness, and it is this
combination that psychotherapists of the Adlerian persuasion
go after to understand the unique human being and to help
modify the person.
SELF-CONSISTENCY
By this time, some items in this introductory chapter will
appear like old friends. Self-consistency should now be
predictable. Adlerians view the human person as operating
always in a consistent manner, operating to achieve certain
goals. We do not believe in split selves or in internal
conflicts or in anything, no matter how reasonable it may
sound or how obvious it may appear, which in effect says
that one part of the individual wants to go one way and one
part wants to go another. The person, when viewed
holistically, always operates in a consistent manner.
But—we can almost hear you shout this—how about
conflicts? Say one has a real problem, such as duty
versus love, or a real decision, such as whether to take
another job or stay on the present job? What about this land
of situation?
Explaining this is no problem at all. Some people are
consistent in the sense that they never have such problems.
When a decision is to be made, they think over everything,
and they just make a decision. Other people are consistent
in that they never can make a decision and they agonize over
everything. In short, the person who readily makes decisions
is self-consistent in that respect; and the person who
cannot make decisions is self-consistent in that respect.
But, you may persist, how about a person who has a really
hard decision to make, and who is not a worrier, and who
really does not know what to do?
We will agree that some decisions are difficult to make,
such as whether to submit to an operation or not, whether to
marry or not, whether to go along with another person’s
decision or not—but this still in no way indicates any lack
of self-consistency.
Here is an example of such a situation. Jim is in love with
two girls and he cannot decide whom to marry. One day it is
Jill and the next day it is Jasmine. He feels torn, and
worries about his decision. “How is it,” he asks, “that one
day I really love Jill and want to many her, and the next
day I am with Jasmine and now I want to marry her?” Some
people might reply, “Hey, you are inconsistent, you can’t
make up your mind.” Not Adlerians—we would say: “You are
very consistent; you don’t want to marry at all, and you are
playing a game, and you probably play this ‘on the one hand
I want this and on the other hand I want that’ type of game
all the time.”
People are extremely consistent but they may appear
inconsistent, and they may be consistent in being
inconsistent. The person who is alternately kind and then
cruel has developed a pattern of kindness/cruelty; the
person who is gentle and then rough has developed a pattern
of gentility/roughness; the person who is understanding at
times and unreasonable at times has also developed this
pattern. These are complicated patterns that people develop.
We see it, for example, in alcoholics. Some have a pattern
of drinking heavily every day. This type of consistency is
evident. Some will be sober for a year and then go on a
bender for a week. And they will repeat this pattern
consistently.
ACTIVITY
Two most important aspects of Individual Psychology applied
to human behavior are (a) direction, derived from
goal striving, and (b) activity. We see the human
person as constantly moving toward goals. Consequently,
activity —energy expended—is of great theoretical
importance.
This concept does not necessarily relate to physical
activity in the sense of someone being hyperactive but,
rather, refers to rate of directed expended energy. Thus,
one person will focus his or her energy to achieve a
particular goal while another will scatter it in various
directions. Another person will devote to a project only
intermediate effort or partial effort.
The importance of activity relates to the major problem of
psychotherapy: encouragement. Two people may have
exactly the same goals, the same amount of energy,
everything may appear identical, but one has courage and
pursues goals actively, persistently, intelligently, and
consistently, while another person will hesitate, fumble,
and back away. For this reason, directed activity—going
after one’s goals in a sensible manner—is a prerequisite of
a successful life and in psychotherapy is something that the
therapist tries to get the client to achieve.
CREATIVITY
If you have taken courses in psychology or sociology,
you may well have been told that human behavior results from
two factors: heredity and environment. In some instances,
you will be told, heredity is the more important component
and in some instances environment is more important, but the
two interact in practically everything—and they determine
behavior. There just is nothing else! Anything else would be
transpersonal—that is to say, mystical and speculative.
Adlerians do not agree. We see both heredity and environment
as important, providing possibilities and limits. We posit
something else: creativity.
We say, yes, we all do have hereditary limits and we do have
environmental limits, but what the individual becomes within
these limits is a function of the individual’s self—
creativity. In other words, we are self-made to some
extent and we have to take credit for our personalities.
Life is not simply determined by heredity and environment:
the individual has choice, has freedom of will. We are not
simply pawns in a complicated calculus of factors beyond
ourselves. We are thinking units who, although caught in
the web of influences of biology and society, nevertheless
can extricate ourselves and move around freely and
self-directed. We have the unique capacity among living
creatures to determine our destiny to a considerable extent.
This view comes close to some religious and legal views. We
are not afraid of being at times closer to the ideas of
philosophy, theology, or jurisprudence than to academic
psychology. There may be great wisdom in what “people
believe,” especially if these ideas are shared by many over
a long tune, It is just possible that folk wisdom, religious
ideas, and other so-called superstitions may be correct and
that so-called scientific knowledge may be incorrect. In any
event, Adlerians believe in a creative self, in the ability
of people to make decisions independently of direct
influences of heredity and environment. We see people as
responsible, not mechanically driven; as independent units
with the ability to make free decisions; and we see a normal
individual’s behavior as being under his or her control.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
From our point of view, the so-called scientific systems of
psychology—reductionistic and materialistic—are essentially
disrespectful of humans. Adlerians take the position that
individuals are self-directed, creative, and able to make
decisions. In a beautiful passage, Mosak (1979) writes:
If my feeling derives from my observation and conviction
that life and people arc hostile and 1 am inferior, I may
divorce myself from the direct solution of life’s problems
and strive for personal superiority through
overcompensation, through wearing a mask, through
withdrawal, through attempting only safe tasks where the
outcome promises to be successful, and through other devices
for protecting my self-esteem, (p. 46)
We are not fooling ourselves when we think we have the
ability to make decisions. Far from our being machines, the
human condition include choice, even though the choice may
be “contaminated,” as it was, by past experiences. People
are able to rise above their surroundings and make
surprising decisions.
OPEN MOTIVATION
What most people call psychology is what psychologists call
motivation. We often say, “I wonder why he did what he did?”
or “Why does she act as she does?” Both questions, hi
effect, ask about motives.
Many systems of psychology concentrate on “needs”—meaning
tissue requirements, like water or food; or
“drives”—meaning instinct like pushes within the body such
as sexual desires; or about social pressures—the demand that
people conform to others. Adlerians agree to some degree;
but since IP is a psychology of use rather than of
possession, these social or biological forces are not seen
as primary. Rather, the creative self directs the individual
in terms of subjective goals using and fulfilling these
needs, pressures, and so on, as appropriate for the
individual in his movement toward his goals.
How can we make this vital point clearer? Throughout life we
want. The child may want attention and direct his life to
getting his parents’ attention. He grows up and now still
wants attention, and may try to get it through athletics.
One person may try to get attention by being attractive,
another by being witty, another by being clever, another by
unusual mannerisms, and so forth and so on.
Adlerians view people as being on the go, in action, moving
forward, constantly looking for short-term and long-term
goals, mobilizing their biological and social resources,
looking for their personal, unique, subjectively determined
goals for success, goals which are their own inventions, the
results of their creativity. To live means to make choices.
SOCIAL INTEREST
Adler felt strongly that mental health—personal success in
life—was a function of an individual’s social interest,
which means “identification with humanity,” a “feeling of
community,” or “belonging to life.” Social interest is
viewed as an innate aptitude, a potentiality that must be
consciously developed, possibly the best antonym for social
interest might be “selfishness,” although “ano-mie” also
conveys an opposite of social interest. According to Adler
all important life problems are social problems—occupation
is a social issue since it relates to what one does,
which in turn affects others; the family is a social
institution, and how one operates within the family affects
others; and society is a greater social unit, and
certainly how one operates in society affects others.
Adler (1912), commenting on this topic, stated:
It is such children [lacking in social interest] who become
the criminals, problem children, neurotics and suicides.
They are lacking in social interest and therefore in
courage and self-confidence, (p. 341).
OTHER CONCEPTS
Striving for Perfection
Adler’s theory has often been largely, and sometimes we
think purposefully, misinterpreted by a large number of
“authorities.” For example, ask many otherwise well-informed
people about Adler and you are likely to hear two concepts:
“power” and “inferiority feelings.” But when “power” is
explained, the wrong interpretation will be given: namely,
that Adler preached the importance of individuals becoming
superior, attempting to subdue others, and ultimately taking
over the world. As the reader knows by now, exactly the
opposite is true. How could such a misinterpretation take
place?
What Adler said in effect was that each person strove for
self-improvement, having an innate desire to become better,
to become superior, to move forward and onward. This is what
is known generally as “growth force,” and it is found in
various guises in the writings of many personality
theorists.
Adler stated that every person moved “from a perceived minus
to a perceived plus”—as we have discussed in taking up the
notion of activity and direction. Striving for perfection is
movement directed at self-improvement and greater
competency. This is different from striving for superiority
over others, which clearly implies that the goal is to be
above others, but certainly not “interested in their
interests.”
Fictional Finalism
This concept refers to the unconscious elements of the
individual in establishing personal private goals, which
are only partly in awareness. It is the goal that the
individual created, and on which he acts. In short, we
usually do not know what we are really after, but we behave
consistently as if reality and our goals were not our own
perceptions and our own fictions. This is one of the
purposes of psychotherapy: to learn who we are and what we
are about.
Life Style
The correct Adlerian term would be “style of life”—or one’s
unique personality. All the elements discussed so far add
up to the dynamics of the life style. Essentially, what
others see and what the individual knows about self is based
on deeply established personal constructs, the so-called
private logic. The beliefs that compose the music of one’s
behavior are together—the composition and the music—the
individual’s life style.
Inferiority Feelings
Behavior is usually affected by feelings of inferiority.
Awareness of our deficiencies may generate feelings of
distress and ideas of what we must be so as not to be
inferior within our own self-perceptions. Feelings of
inferiority are common, normal, and functional, in that they
serve as motivators to movement, but the direction taken as
a result of suffering from inferiority feelings determines
whether the subsequent behavior is useful or useless.
SUMMARY
Now that we have cut up Individual Psychology into a lot of
pieces, let us see if we can assemble everything into a
meaningful whole. IP is essentially a philosophy of life and
a theory of personality relatively simple in structure. IP
has been accepted by many people as the best explanation for
human nature, the best vehicle for dealing effectively with
people socially, educationally, organizationally,
therapeutically—the most useful guide for successful human
behavior.
The Individual Psychologist sees people as unique,
coordinated, logically related, intact, indivisible
units—and not as assemblages of parts. People operate in
terms of their phenomenology—perceptions, memories, ideas,
concepts, values. Their outward behavior is a function of
these elements, the so-called • mind. The mind can be
arbitrarily broken into cognition (thinking) and affection
(feelings). Of the two, cognition is the master; affection
(emotion) serves the purposes of the intellect. Our emotions
are not simply the result of outside events but, rather, are
due to our interpretations of these events. Every human
being is goal-directed. Human behavior is the result of the
tendency of individuals to move toward private goals, some
not even known to the individuals. If a person is
unsuccessful in life and wants better self-understanding,
he/she may go for therapy. In Adlerian therapy, one of the
main objectives is to understand a person’s motives, which
in turn are embedded in what is known as a person’s private
logic or personal constructs.
Individual Psychology gets its name from the basic notion of
holism, that the person is an Individuum - that is
to say, an invisible unit. Yet individual Psychology is
really a social psychology in that it stresses strongly that
the individual is meaningless except in social terms, and
that the person operates in a social environment. Also, the
normal, healthy, and successful individual belongs to life,
sees himself/herself as part of the humanity—has social
interest.
Moreover, while it is agreed that individuals are formed and
directed to some extent by hereditary and environmental
factors independent of the individual, nevertheless, people
in the IP view are responsible and creative, and
consequently responsible for themselves.
Putting this together in a different way, we see people as
self-directed, unique, integrated, responsible, moving
toward private goals (often without too much
self-understanding) and basically always wanting to be part
of humanity. If they are successful, they have social
interest and therefore have courage. They feel they are part
of humanity, not against it or outside of it.
Individual Psychology is an optimistic point of view. It
sees the individual as central, intact, integrated, hi
control of self. It views life as an ongoing process, and
sees people as striving for success, represented by their
unique goals—fictions that they have developed.
This point of view is applicable and represented in all of
life—in activities such as child guidance centers, parent
training centers, schools, individual psychotherapy and
group psychotherapy, mental institutional organizations,
counseling of adolescents, of school children, of married
people, dealing with psychosomatic problems, babies,
diagnoses of personality disturbances, cultural conflicts,
religion, business psychology, correctional psychology,
social problems such as poverty and crime, substance abuse
treatment, sexual problems, problems of old age, projective
techniques, school systems, learning problems, mental
retardation and its handling, and a host of other issues and
. problems.
Manaster Guy J. ,
Corsini Raymond J., Individual Psychology, theory
and practice.
Copyright ©
2005 International Association of Individual
Psychology
