Notes:

Biography of Alfred Adler

 Alfred Adler was born on February 7, 1870, in Rudolfsheim, a village near Vienna.
 He was the second-born among the seven children of Pauline and Leopold Adler.
 Adler was weak and sickly when he was little, he nearly died at age 5 of pneumonia. It
was when he went skating with an older boy who later left him alone.
 Hearing the doctor who checked him, declaring him dead, along with the traumatic
experience brought about by his brother’s death when he was 4, he got motivated to be
a physician to overcome death.
 Several of Adler’s earliest memories were concerned with the unhappy competition
between his older brother Sigmund’s good health and his own illness which continued
into middle age.
 Adler was more comfortable in group situations and was interested in social
relationships.
 He married Raissa Epstein, an early feminist and political in December of 1897. They
had four children namely: Alexandra and Kurt who became psychiatrists; Valentine, a
political prisoner; and Cornelia who aspired to be an actress.
 Adler was an original member of Freudian circle, but the two never shared warm
personal relationships. Irreconcilable differences between them emerged. Adler left the
circle, formed an organization, and established an opposing theory known as Individual
Psychology.
 He died of a heart attack on May 28, 1937.

Introduction to Adlerian Theory

According to Adler, people are born with weak, inferior bodies which leads to feelings of
inferiority and a consequent dependence on other people. Therefore, social interest or a feeling
of unity with others is inherent in people and is the ultimate standard for psychological health.
Main Tenets of Individual Psychology:
1. The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or
superiority.
*striving for superiority – limited to those people who strive for personal superiority over
others
*striving for success- actions of people who are motivated by highly developed social
interest
 Regardless of the motivation for striving, each individual is guided by a final goal.
Final Goal - is fictional and has objective existence;
- It unifies personality and renders all behavior comprehensible.
- The goal is neither genetically nor environmentally determined but a
product of the creative power.
 People strive for superiority or success as a means of compensation for feelings of
inferiority or weakness. They are continually pushed by the need to overcome inferiority
feelings and pulled by the desire for completion.
 Some people strive for superiority with goals that are personal ones and their strivings
are motivated largely by inferiority complex. Some create clever disguises and may
consciously or unconsciously hide their self-centeredness behind the cloak of social
concern.
 Psychologically healthy people are motivated by social interest and success of all
humankind. Their own success is not gained at the expense of others but is a natural
tendency toward completion or perfection. Social progress is more important to them
than personal credit.
2. People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality.
 The manner in which people strive is shaped not by reality but by subjective perceptions
or fictions, expectations of the future.
 Our most important fiction is the goal for superiority or success which we created early in
life and may not clearly understand. This guides out style of life and gives unity to our
personality.
 Adler’s emphasis on fictions is consistent with his strongly held teleological view of
motivation, one in which people are motivated by present perceptions of the future.
 Starting life with physical deficiencies such as being small, weak, and inferior, people
develop a fiction or belief system about how to overcome those.
 Adler insisted that the whole human race is blessed with organ inferiorities. These
physical handicaps have little or no importance but become meaningful when they
stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority, which serve as an impetus toward perfection
or completion.
 Physical deficiencies alone do not cause a particular style of life; they simply provide
present motivation for reaching future goals.
3. Personality is unified and self-consistent.
 Inconsistent behavior does not exist. Thoughts, feelings, and actions are all directed
toward a single goal and serve a single purpose.
 Ways in which Person operates with Unity and Self-Consistency:
a. Organ Dialect or Organ Jargon expresses the direction of the individual’s goal.
Through it, 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.”
b. Harmony between Conscious and Unconscious actions. Adler defined the
unconscious as that part of the goal that is neither clearly formulated nor
completely understood by the individual and are not helpful in striving for
success; whereas conscious thoughts are those that are understood and
regarded by the individual as helpful in striving for success.
4. The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest.
 Social Interest or Gemeinschaftsgefuhl could mean a feeling of oneness with all
humanity.
 It is the natural condition of the human species and the adhesive that binds the society
together. Social Interest is a necessity for perpetuating the human species.
 It is rooted in the potentiality in everyone, but it must be developed before it can
contribute to a useful style of life. It originates from the mother-child relationship during
early months of infancy.
 Adler believed that marriage and parenthood is a task for two, which may influence a
child’s social interest in different ways.
 a. The mother’s job is to develop a bond that encourages the child’s mature social
interest and fosters a sense of cooperation.
If she favors her husband or society, the child will feel neglected and unloved;
conversely, if she favors the child over the father, her child may become spoiled.
b. The father is the second important person in a child’s social environment. A
successful father avoids the dual errors of emotional detachment and paternal
authoritarianism which prevent the growth and spread of social interest in a child.
 Social interest measures psychological health and is the sole criterion of human values.
It is the only gauge to be used in judging the worth of the person. As the barometer of
normality, it is the standard to be used in determining the usefulness of a life.
5. The self-consistent personality structure develops into person’s style of life.

6. Style of life is molded by people’s creative power.