Alfred Adler would explain Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers sitcom series) his behavior by his theory

of 'masculine protest'. Basil projects intellectual superiority but this is triggered by an underlying
sense of inferiority/not being able to deal with todays dynamic reality. Classification on Axis II
DSM - depressive disorderl. Oldham: Serious Style of character.

Jan

More to read:

Adler's View of Psychopathology

Adler's view of psychopathology is simple. It generally occurs in thepresence of two conditions:

an exaggerated inferiority feeling and an insufficientlydeveloped feeling of community. Under
these conditions, a person may experienceor anticipate failure before attempting a task that
appears impossible andmay become "discouraged". Feelings of inferiority are common withthe
following conditions.

A. Physical Inferiority: Sometimes can lead to healthy compensation,but sometimes leads to

strangulation of social feelings. Instead of focusingof adjustment to society, they become
continually preoccupied with themselvesand the impression they have on others.

B. Neglect: Neglected children have never known what love and cooperationare like. They feel
worthless and express inferiority complexes throughsuspiciousness, isolation, and maliciousness.

C. Pampering (spoiling): The most serious of all parental errors. Pamperingrobs children of their
independence and initiative, shatters their self-confidence,and creates the parasitic impression
that the world owes them a living.(Note: Adler considered Freud's patients to be mainly
pamperedadults, maybeeven Freud himself).

A man who was pampered as a child may give up looking for work, becomedepressed, and then
depend on parents or public assistance for support.Forcing others to provide for him may yield a
secret feeling of power andsuperiority that compensates for his feelings of inferiority.
Unpreparedfor the normal challenges that might lead to failure, he pays the pricefor his painful
depression, but uses it to maintain his passive self-indulgenceand protect himself from a real test
of his capacities.

A woman who was abused by her father as a child may choose to rejectand depreciate all men
as vile creatures and never engage in a satisfactorylove relationship. She may feel lonely, but she
can always feel morallysuperior to all abusive males who are punished by her rejection. She
wouldrather punish all men for the sins of her father, than conquer her fearsand develop the
ability to love one man.

What these situations have in common are adults whose inferiority feelingsseem so
overwhelming and in whom the feeling of community is so underdevelopedthat they retreat to
protect their fragile yet inflated sense of self. Theyemploy what Adler called safeguarding devices
to do this. These are similarto Freud's ego defense mechanisms.

Individuals can use safeguarding devices in attempts both to excuse themselvesfrom failure and
depreciate others. Safeguarding devices include symptoms,depreciation, accusations, self-
accusations, guilt, and various forms ofdistancing. Symptoms such as anxiety, phobias, and
depression, can all beused as excuses for avoiding the tasks of life and transferring
responsibilityto others. In this way, individuals can use their symptoms to shield themselvesfrom
potential or actual failure in these tasks. Of course, individualsmay be able to do well in one or
two of the tasks of life and have difficultiesin only one, e.g., in work, community, or love.

Depreciation can be used to deflate the value of others, thereby achievinga sense of relative
superiority through aggressive criticism or subtle solicitude.Accusations attribute the responsibility
for a difficulty or failure toothers in an attempt to relieve an individual of the responsibility andto
blame others for the failure. Guilt may create a feeling of pious superiorityover others and clear
the way for continuing harmful actions rather thancorrecting them. Distancing from tasks and
people can be done in many waysincluding procrastination, avoiding commitments, abuse of
alcohol and/ordrugs, or suicide.

These safeguarding devices are largely unconscious and entail very realsuffering on the part of
individuals who employ them. For them, however,the protection and elevation of the sense of self
is paramount, and theyprefer to distress themselves or others rather than reveal their
hiddenexaggerated feeling of inferiority.

Another category of influence is the societal factors outside the familythat shape how individuals
develop their views of themselves and the world.Adler recognized the school as a dominant
influence and spent much of histime training teachers and establishing child guidance clinics
attachedto the schools throughout Vienna.

Social discrimination on the basis of poverty, ethnicity, gender, religion,or educational level can
also exacerbate inferiority feelings. Adler emphasizedthat it was not just the objective facts or
influences that had an impacton the child, but the interpretation the child gives to them. Children
whoare discriminated against because of physical deformities or socio-economicstatus may find it
difficult to maintain a positive sense of self.

Finally, in a way that was far ahead of many others of his day, Adlerrecognized the destructive
influence of our culture's archaic view genderroles. He observed that women were typically
devalued and this was a majorinfluence in their exaggerated feelings of inferiority. But he also
realizedthat men, too, were adversely affected. The over-valuing of men often leadsto extremely
high expectations, and when men begin to see that they cannotmeet these expectations, their
inferiority feelings also increase. Adlerdescribed this as a "masculine protest". Females may
reject thefeminine role and attempt to become more masculine. Adler felt that thehealthiest
arrangement is a recognized equality of value between men andwomen, which would then result
in a higher level of cooperation betweenthem .
 TRIBUTE
TO ALFRED ADLER

CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
CHAPTER 2 - Birth Order, Fictional Finalism, Theory of Psychoanalysis
CHAPTER 3 - Style of Life and Social Interest
CHAPTER 4 - Inferiority, Compensation and Superiority
CHAPTER 5 - What Others say about Adler's Theories
CHAPTER 6 - Questions for Individual Psychologist
CHAPTER 7 - Organ Inferiority and Compensation
CHAPTER 8 - Fictionalism and Finalism
CHAPTER 9 - Striving for Superiority and Style of Life
CHAPTER 10 - Social Interest from an Adlerian Perspective
CHAPTER 11 - Fundamentals of Adlerian Psychology
CHAPTER 12 - Notes From "Understanding Human Nature"
CHAPTER 13 - Style of life
CHAPTER 14 - Individual Psychological Treatment
CHAPTER 15 - Individual Psychological Therapeutics
CHAPTER 16 - Summary of Adler's Teachings
CHAPTER 17 - Beverly's Case History and Adler Bibliography

CHAPTER 1
In 1972 and 1973, I went through four quarters of Clinical Pastoral
Education (C.P.E.) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.
When I went there, I was a very outgoing person but inside, l felt inferior.
When someone gave me a compliment, I would smile and say "Thank you,"
but inside I would discount the compliment.

During the second quarter of C.P.E., our supervisor Chaplain Ray Stephens
assigned each student, two pioneer psychologist to present a class on
each. I was assigned to report on Alfred Adler and Viktor Frankl. As I
prepared those two classes, I began to notice a change in how I felt about
myself. I recognized that I could overcome my inferiority feelings (Adler)
and that I could have meaning and purpose in my life (Frankl). As a result of
those two classes, I went from low man on the totem pole to a class leader.
The transformation I experienced (physically, emotionally and spiritually)
could be compared to a conversion experience. Adler and Frankl (Article on
Frankl will follow) have contributed to my understanding of human
personality and how I relate to an individual in the therapeutic situation.

Thyra Boldes once wrote of Adler that he was real, whether he was joking or
serious, whether in private discussion or lectures, his real personality
always seemed to say, "Life is holy. Have reverence for life. Every thing
which happens is important."

In his youth, Adler was a sickly child which caused him embarrassment and
pain. These early experiences with illnesses and accidents probably
account for his theory of organ inferiority and were the foundation for his
theories on inferiority feelings. According to Adler, each individual has a
weak area in their body (organ inferiority) which tends to be the area where
illness occurs - such as the stomach, head, heart, back, lungs, etc. Adler
said that to some degree every emotion finds expression in the body. From
his understanding of organ inferiority, Adler began to see each individual as
having a feeling of inferiority. Adler wrote, "To be a human being means to
feel oneself inferior." The child comes into the world as a helpless little
creature surrounded by powerful adults. A child is motivated by feelings of
inferiority to strive for greater things. Those feelings of inferiority activate a
person to strive upward so that normal feelings of inferiority activate a
person to strive upward so that normal feelings of inferiority impel the
human being to solve his problems successful, whereas the inferiority
complex impedes or prevents him from doing so.

The healthy individual will strive to overcome her inferiority through

involvement with society. She is concerned about the welfare of others as
well as herself. She develops good feelings of self-worth and self-
assurance. On the other hand, some are more concerned with selfishness
than with social interest. She may express this selfishness in a need to
dominate, to refuse to cooperate, wanting to take and not to give. From
these unhealthy responses, the person develops an inferiority complex or a
superiority complex. A superiority complex is a cover up for an inferiority
complex. They are different sides of the same coin. The person with the
superiority complex has hidden doubts about her abilities.

Adler developed a theory of personality based upon: (1) inferiority feelings

and inferiority complex, (2) striving for superiority, (3) style of life, (4) social
interest, (5) birth order, (6) fictional finalism, (7) the creative self, (8)
masculine protest, (9) the interpretation of dreams, and (10) theory of
psychotherapy. I will discus how some of these theories have affected me.
Adler said, "We do not flatter ourselves, we have not explored the last and
ultimate facts, nor have we voiced the last truth. All we have attained cannot
be more than part of the present knowledge and culture. And we are looking
forward to those who are coming after us." If we, as hypnotherapists, would
take that statement to heart; we would be much better off as a profession.

Adler describes four basic life styles: (1) The first type is well-adjusted and
does not strive for personal superiority but seeks to solve his problems in
ways that are useful to others as well as himself. (2) The second type wants
to prove his personal superiority by ruling others. (3) The third type wants
to get everything though others without an effort or struggle on his own (4)
The fourth type avoids every decision.

Adler believed that an almost radical change in character and behavior will
take lace when the individual adopts new goals. The way to help a person
with any negative responsive life style is to help the person move form
reacting wrongly to life by changing his way of viewing life. People can
change, the past can be released so that the individual is free to be happy in
the present and future.

Adler's Fictional Finalism is an interesting concept for hypnotherapist.

Fictional finalism simply states that people act as much from the "as if" as
from reality. One of my understandings of the subconscious mind is that
whatever the subconscious mind accepts as true, it acts "as if" it is true
whether it is or not. When one imagines tasting a lemon, he month waters
and often taste the lemon "as if" there really was a lemon to lick.

According to Adlerian counseling, the counselor explores the current life

situation as it is viewed by the client to include his complaint, problems and
symptoms. The client's early life and position in the family constellation are
discussed. Adler believed that the order of birth is an important determiner
of personality. The first born is given a great deal of attention until the
second child is born and the first is dethroned. The dethroning experience
may affect the child in a number of ways such as hatred for the second
child, conservatism, insecurity, or may cause a striving to protect other and
be a helper. The second child is in a different situation for he shares
attention from the beginning which may cause him to be more cooperative
or competitive. He may strive to surpass the older child. All other children
are dethroned but never the youngest who is often spoiled. He may seek to
be taken care of by others or strive to overcome all others.

Some favorite questions of Adler were: "And why do you feel like that?"
"What purposed does your illness serve?" "What do you think is the reason
for your reacting that way?" The interpretation puts an emphasis on the
individual's goal and life style. The Mirror Technique is used whereby the
individual looks at himself. Adler compares the client with a person who is
caught in a dark room and cannot find an exit. The therapist helps the client
illuminate the room so that she can find a way out to a new way of dealing
with the problem. Adler wrote, "Every individual represents both a unity of
personality and the individual fashions that unity. The individual is thus
both the picture and the artist." Therefore if one can change her concept of
herself, she can change the picture she is painting.

Adler had very little to say about hypnosis, but what little he did say
indicates that he did not understand the clinical possibilities of hypnosis.
He recognized that no one can be hypnotized against his will. He did believe
that the individual who allowed himself to be hypnotized placed himself
under the power of the hypnotist. In spite of his misunderstanding of
hypnosis, he offers a lot to the hypnotherapist with his Fictional Finalism,
Mirror Technique, Family Constellation, and his understanding of Inferiority
Feelings and Inferiority Complex.

CHAPTER 2

BIRTH ORDER, FICTIONAL FINALISM AND THEORY OF

PSYCHOANALYSIS
 (Adler at 25)

BIRTH ORDER: Adler stressed that the order of birth was an important
determiner of personality. In spite of their common heritage, siblings are
usually very different from each other. It is not the child's position in the
successive births that influences his character, but the situation into which
he is born and the way in which he interprets it. For instance: if two children
of a family are born much later than the earlier ones, the oldest of the two
may develop like a first born and the younger one as a second child.

The first born child is given a great deal of attention until the second child
is born and then the first is dethroned from his favored position. This
dethroning experience may affect the child in a number of ways. It may
cause him to protect himself against reversals, be conservative and
insecure or it may cause him to develop a striving to protect others and be
a helper. "If the parents have allowed the first-born to feel sure of their
affection, if he knows that his position is secure, and above all, if he is
prepared for the arrival of the younger child and has been trained to
cooperate in its care, the crisis will pass without ill effects."

The second child is in a different situation for he shares attention with

another child and is therefore a little more likely to cooperate than the
oldest child. He has a sibling that is older than he is and who is ahead of
him so the strives to catch up. Adler used the Biblical account of Jacob and
Esau as an example for the second child's striving to surpass the older
sibling. The second child may continue his exaggerated struggle for equally
with the older child or his ambitiousness may result in worthwhile
achievement.

All other children may be dethroned but never the youngest who is always
the baby of the family and often spoiled in the process. As he has no
followers but many pacemakers, he may strive to overcome them all. Again
Adler uses the Bible to illustrate his point as he refers to Joseph and David.
He includes Joseph because he was 17-years-old when his younger
brother, Benjamin, was born. Adler believed that the oldest child would
 most likely become a problem child and a neurotic
maladjusted adult with the youngest following closely
behind. The second child is by and large better adjusted
than either his older or younger siblings.

The only child has problems of his own for the mother often pampers him.
She is afraid of losing him, so spoils him as a results of her over
protectiveness. As he has no siblings, his feelings of competition is often
directed against his father or a girl against her mother. In later years when
he is no longer the center of attention, he may have difficulties.

FICTIONAL FINALISM: Adler was influenced by the philosopher Hans

Vaihinger whose book, The Psychology of the "As If" was published in
1911. In this book, Vaihinger proposed that people live by many fictional
ideals that have no relations to reality. These are ideas that cannot be
tested and confirmed. Some of these are "all men are created equal,"
"honesty is the best policy," and "the end justifies the means." The fictions
may help people to deal more effectively with the reality or may hinder his
efforts to accept reality. Adler took this idea and came to the conclusion
that people are motivated more by their expectations of the future than they
are by the past. If a person believes that there is heaven for those who are
good and hell for those who are bed, it will probably affect how he lives. An
ideal or absolute is a fiction.

Adler's Fictional Finalism is an interesting idea for hypnotherapist. Fictional

Finalism simply states that people act as much from the "as if" as from
reality. One of my understandings of the subconscious mind is that
whatever the subconscious mind accepts as true, it acts "as if" it is true
whether it is or not. When one imagines tasting a lemon, his month waters
and often he tastes the lemon "as if" there really was a lemon to lick.

Ansbacher states that there are five points to Adler's understanding of

Fictional Finalism: (1) The fictional final goal became for Adler the principle
for internal, subjective causation of psychological events, (2) The goal
represented a creation of the individual and was largely subconscious, (3) It
also became the principle of unity and self-consistency of the personality
structure: from the point of the view of the subject, the fictional goal was
taken (4) as the basis for orientation in the world and (5) as one aspect of
compensation for felt inferiority.

THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: The Adlerian Therapist departed from

Freud's method of having the client recline on a couch while the therapist
sits behind the client. Adler preferred to face the client and engage in free
discussion, not free association. There are four phases of counseling for
the Adlerian: (1) the relationship, (2) the investigation of dynamics, (3)
interpretations to the client and (4) reorientation.

The relationship with the client that the Adlerian seeks to establish is one of
friendliness and cooperation. Adler places a high value on the social
relationship between the therapist and the client.

He believed that this relationship could serve as a reeducation bridge to

other relationships. He felt that all people who fail are deficient in concern
and love for their fellow human beings. He spent a lot of time in an attempt
to help the client develop social interest. The Adlerian's concept of
cooperation follows as the therapist sets the example of love, concern and
friendship. Adler personally emanated a quiet magic and one felt his inner
warmth and interest so strong that there was immediate rapport between
him and the client.

The investigation phase explores the current life situation as it is viewed by

the client to include his complaints, problems, and symptoms. The
functioning of the individual in the three major areas of life (work, social,
and sex) are investigated and discussed. The patient's early life, position in
the family constellation, and his relationships to siblings and parents are
discussed. The following questions and similar ones are often asked, "And
why do you feel like that about it?" "What do you think is the reason for
your reacting that way?" "What purpose does your illness serve?"
Gradually the client realizes how he got into his way of making
inappropriate reactions to his problem. Knowing why he reacts as he does,
he has the opportunity to change. As he changes, he is in a position to
substitute a wise for a foolish reaction, a courageous for a cowardly one, a
normal for a hysterical one.

The interpretation phase put an emphasis on the goals and style of life of
the client. The therapist has the client look at his feelings and the purpose
for his feelings. The client will not be told what to do but is shown how he is
living out his style of life and what it cost the client to do so. The mirror
technique is used by which the individual looks at himself.

In the reorientation stage, the client is encouraged to drop the old style of
life and take up another that will help him to deal with the realities of life and
receives satisfaction from living. The Adlerian uses encouragement
extensively in their therapy. The purpose of this encouragement is to help
the patient make the transfer from a style of life that is faulty to one that is
healthy. Encouragement is given with the understanding that the client
must gain for himself an attitude toward life that will allow him to approach
and overcome his problems in a realistic manner. To be healthy, the client
must learn to handle his problems with common sense and social interest
instead of fantasy. The therapist should be optimistic, cheerful, tolerant,
active and have empathy. Clients should find the therapist a dependable
and benevolent human being.

Adler compares the individual who has a faulty style of life with a person
who is caught in a dark room and cannot find an exit. The therapist helps
the client illuminate the room so that he can find a way out to a new way of
dealing with his problems. Adler wrote, "Every individual represents both a
unity of personality and the individual fashions that unity. The individual is
thus both the picture and the artist. Therefore if one can change his concept
of himself, he can change the picture that he is painting."

CHAPTER 3

THEORY: STYLE OF LIFE AND SOCIAL INTEREST

"Style of life" or "life style" are common terms for us today. It

may come as surprise to many that Alfred Adler coined those
phrases. "Style of life" was the slogan of Alder's Individual
Psychological and personality theory. It is the recurrent theme in all of
Adler's later writings and the most distinctive feature of his psychology. In
his writings, Adler used the terms "style of life," "pattern of life," "life plan,"
"Life scheme," and "line of movement" interchangeably. For Adler, the
individual's STYLE OF LIFE is one's personality, the unity of the
personality, the individual form of creative opinion about oneself, the
problems of life and his whole attitude to life and others.

During the first few years of life, each individual develops a style of life that
greatly influences his behavior. Adler wrote, "If we know the goal of a
person, we can undertake to explain and to understand what the
psychological phenomena want to tell us why they were created, what a
person had made of his innate material, why he had made it just so and not
differently, how his character traits, his feelings and emotions, his logic, his
morals, and his aesthetic must be constituted in order that he may arrive at
his goal. If we could infer the individually comprehended goal from the
ornaments and melodies of a human life and, on this basis, develop the
entire style of life (and the underlying individual law of movement), we
could classify a person with almost natural-science accuracy. We could
predict how a person would act in a specific situation." The life style of the
individual is considered the key to his behavior. His major goal is
superiority and compensation for his feeling of inferiority, but he may
achieve this goal in a great variety of ways.

The striving for superiority is based on the human's ability to be aware of

himself, of his ability to remember past experiences and to imagine himself
in the future. The individual's life style is determined by his inventive and
creative power and is an expression of his uniqueness. Each person
develops his concept of self and of people and of the environment which
surrounds him in his own unique and personal way.

Each person has a specific goal that is all his own and make him different
from any other person. As he follows that goal, he adapts early in life a
specific technique for attaining it. The child may feel that he is helpless and
that he can have life only by gaining the support of others. Throughout his
life he will be unable to assert himself constructively, to take direct initiative
for his own destiny. He may develop an illness or disability that demands
the care of others. As the illness develops, it becomes a compensation for
the individual's failure. He may then say, "If I didn't have this illness, I could
succeed as easily as anyone else." The style of life becomes fixed for the
individual must cling to his illness or the bluff of his claim of possible
accomplishment would be recognized. The illness must be convincing
enough, both to himself and others, to maintain the pretence. The patient is
not consciously aware that his illness is an excuse for none fulfillment.
Adler wrote, "His chief occupation is to look for other people to take his
burden into account and thus wins his way to privilege life, judged by more
lenient standard than others. At the same time, he pays the cost of it with
his neurosis." No one is forced to continue all his life in one direction for
when he realizes his mistakes, he can change his style of life and rid
himself of those barriers to a meaningful life.

Adler believed that the spoiled child seeks to be the center of attention. The
hated child adopts the goal of escaping to a safe distance from others. The
eldest child adopts the attitude of keeping what is his, the second child
seeks to surpass, and the only child assumes that others will serve and he
will rule.

Childhood experiences which often, but not necessarily, predispose the

child to a faulty style of life are children with inferiorities, spoiled children
and neglected children. These conditions often produce erroneous
conceptions of the world and results in a pathological negative style of life.
Children with physical or mental infirmities are likely to have a greater
feeling of inferiority than others in meeting the task of life. Unless they
make proper compensations for their inferiority, they will have difficulty in
enjoying a meaningful life. Adler believed that pampering a child was the
greatest curse that could be experienced by a child. They are potentially the
most dangerous to society for they expect others to conform to their self-
centered wishes. Pampering robs the child of his independence. He is not
given the opportunity to accomplish something for himself. This prevents
him using his own power and from learning to cooperate with others. The
neglected child, who was badly treated in childhood, may become an enemy
of society.

Basic life styles: (1). The well-adjusted does not strive for personal
superiority, but seeks to solve his problems in ways that are useful to other
as well as himself. (2). The second type wants to prove his personal
superiority by ruling others. (3). The third type is the getting type. They want
to get everything through others without any effort or struggle of their own.
(4). The fourth tries to avoid every decision. They are the avoiding type.

Adler believed that the style of life came from early experiences but unlike
Freud, the determinist, Adler wrote, "We do not suffer from the shock of our
experience, the so-called trauma, but we make out them just what suits our
purpose. We are self-determined by the meaning we give our own
experiences. We are masters of our own actions."

Adler believed that an almost radical change in character and behavior

would take place when an individual adopted new goals. Adler said that
man is not bad by nature. Whatever his faults have been, faults due to
erogenous conception of life, he must not be oppressed by them. He can
change. The past is gone and with a change in his life style, the individual is
free in the present and future to experience happiness and bring happiness
to others.

The style of life is influenced mostly by the quality of the individual's

SOCIAL INTEREST. Adler wrote, "Social interest is the true and inevitable
compensation for the natural weakness of individual human beings." Social
interest is inborn but that inborn quality is brought to its fullness by
guidance and training. The child comes into this world completely
dependent upon others. A person's style of life cannot be understood
without considering the people whom he comes in contact. Relationships
with mother, other family members and society affects an individual in his
choice of a style of life. In order to understand an individual, it is necessary
to consider his attitude toward his fellowman and himself.

The normal person with a well-developed social interest will adopt a useful
style of life by contributing to the common welfare and thus overcoming his
feelings of inferiority. On the other hand, the impaired individual is
characterized by his inferiority feelings, underdeveloped social interest and
in uncooperative goals of superiority. The impaired solves his problems in a
self-centered, private-sense rather than a task-centered, common-sense
fashion. In regards to the person who spends much time in support of
public causes, but has little concern for the individual, Adler wrote, "It is
easier to embrace the world than a single human being." As one learns to
contribute to the common welfare, he comes to have a feeling of worth and
value and begins to feel at home in life. Social interest enhances one's
intelligence, heightens his self-esteem, and enables him to adjust to
unexpected misfortune. Social interest gives meaning and purpose to life

CHAPTER 4

ALFRED ADLER'S INFERIORITY, COMPENSATIONS AND

SUPERIORITY

Over the past years, I have conducted several seminars

and written articles on Alfred Adler that were received
warmly. As a result, I am witting a series of articles on
Adler's theories that have had an influence on my
understanding of human nature and use of hypnotherapy.
Adler did not have a proper understanding of hypnosis.
He understood that one could not be hypnotized against
his will, but once hypnotized, the individual was under the
control of the hypnotist. We are now aware that one is not
under the control of the hypnotist for one will not do anything against his
will under hypnosis.

When you hear terms like inferiority feelings, inferiority complex,

superiority complex, compensation, style of life, goal-directed, family
constellation, fictional finalism, the relationship between body, mind, and
spirit, and psychiatry as the science of interpersonal relations, to mention
only a few, you are encountering ideas developed by Alfred Adler. These
ideas and theories were developed from 1907 when his first book was
written until his death in 1937.

Adler felt that there is a unity of body and soul so that the psychic attitude
affects the physical and the physical affects the psychic. Adler believed that
to a certain degree every emotion finds some body expression. The
individual will show his emotion in some visible form: perhaps in this
posture and attitude, perhaps in his face, perhaps the trembling of his legs
and knees. Similar changes could be found in the organs themselves. The
circulation of blood is affected as shown when a person blushes or turns
pale. In anger, anxiety, sorrow, or any other emotion, the body always
speaks and each individual's body speaks a language of its own.
When one person is afraid, he trembles, the hair of another will stand on
end, and a third person will have palpitations of the heart. Still others will
sweat or choke or tremble or speak in a hoarse voice. Some people react to
stress with lose of appetite, while other overate. One people feel the effect
of stress in the head, another in the stomach, another in the bladder,
another in the back, or another in some other part of the body. If examined
closely, we shall find that every part of the body is involved in an emotional
expression and that those physical expressions are the consequences of
the action of the mind and the body. The understanding of the relationship
between the mind, body, spirit is one of Adler's contribution to Human
Trinity Hypnotherapy.

(Demosthenes)

A ground breaking area in the theory of human nature for Adler

was his understanding of INFERIORITY
FEELINGS, COMPENSATION AND STRIVING FOR
SUPERIORITY. Inferiority feelings and
compensation originated with Adler's early
studies of organ inferiority and compensation. In
his book, Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Physical
Compensation (1907), Adler described the process of
compensation for physical disabilities or limitations.
Depending on the attitude one takes toward his defects, his compensation
for disabilities or limitations will be satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Favorite
examples for Adler were Demosthenes, who became a great speaker in
compensation for an early defect in speech; Annette Kellerman, who
became a champion swimmer not so such despite as because of bodily
weakness; the limping Nurmi, who become a famous runner. Others with
similar problems did not compensate by excelling but used their defect as
an excuse to preserve their fantasy that they would have gained prestige
had they not had the defect.

From his understanding of organ inferiority, Adler began to see each

individual as having a feeling of inferiority. Adler wrote, "to be a human
being means to feel oneself inferior. The child comes into the world as a
helpless little creature surrounded by powerful adults. A child is motivated
by his feelings of inferiority to strive for greater things. When he has
reached one level of development, he began to feel inferior once more and
the striving for something better begins again which is the great diving
force of mankind."

Every person has inferiority feelings whether he will or can admit it. Adler
says that since the feeling of inferiority is regarded as a sign of weakness
and as something shameful, there is naturally a strong tendency to conceal
it. Indeed, the effort of concealment may be so great that the person himself
ceases to be aware of his inferiority as such, being wholly preoccupied with
the consequences of the feeling and with all the objective details that
subserve its concealment. So effectively may an individual train his whole
mentality for this task that the entire current of his psychic life flows
ceaselessly form below to above, that is, from feeling of inferiority to that of
superiority, occurs automatically and escapes his own notice. It is not
surprising that we often receive a negative reply when we ask a person
whether he has a feeling of inferiority. It is better not to the press the point,
but to observe his psychological movements, in which the attitude and
individual goal can always be discerned.

Both healthy individual and the neurotic individual cope with their feeling of
inferiority by compensatory action through gaining power to overcome the
sense of weakness. These aggressive reactions often lead to considerable
success in terms of recognized achievement in some area of life; some
accomplishment of power over others. The healthy individual will strive to
overcome his inferiority feelings through involvement with society. He is
concerned about the welfare of others as well as himself. He develops good
feelings of self-worth and self-assurance.

The negative responses to these feelings of inferiority become the

inferiority complex or the superiority complex. Both reflect feelings of
inferiority for they are two sides of the same coin. There are those who act
and feel inferior and those who feel inferior but in denial try to lord it over
others. The interesting thing is that they are both symptoms of a poor self-
image. The individual with a superiority complex is more concerned with
attaining selfish goals than with social interest. He may express this
selfishness in a need to dominate, to refuse to cooperate, or he may want to
take and not to give. Feelings of inferiority activate one to strive upward so
that normal feelings of inferiority impel the human being to solve his
problems successfully. On the other hand, the inferiority complex and
superiority complex impedes or prevents him from doing so.
Be it noted that feelings of inferiority can be expressed in many different
ways. Adler liked to tell this story about three children who visited the zoo
for the first time. As they stood before the lion's cage, one of them shrank
behind his mother's skirts and said, "I want to go home." The second child
stood where he was, very pale and trembling, and said, "I'm not a bit
frightened." The third glared at the lion fiercely and asked his mother, "Shall
I spit at it?" All three children really felt inferiority, but each expressed his
feelings in his own way, consonant with his style of life.

These feelings of inferiority lead to a STRIVING FOR SUPERIORITY. The

striving for superiority is innate and carries the individual from one stage to
the next. This striving can and does manifest itself in many different ways
and each person has his own way of attempting to achieve perfection. This
idea progressed through three stages. Adler first came to the conclusion
that aggression is more important than sexuality. The aggressive impulse
was followed by the "will to power" and finally "striving for superiority."
Many people reading Adler come to the wrong conclusion that striving for
superiority is equated with "striving for power." Adler described the striving
for power as a source of neurosis and crime. He pointed out that striving for
power drives people in useless directions. Power-lust is a mental disorder
or disease.

All people wish to overcome the difficulties and problems of their life. Each
individual would like to reach a point in life when he feels strong and
complete. Adler wrote, "We shall always find in human being this great line
of activity; this struggle to rise from an inferior to a superior position, from
defeat to victory, from below to above. It begins in earliest childhood and
continues to the end of our lives." The healthy individual will strive for
superiority through his involvement with society. He will have a concept of
superiority that includes the welfare of others as well as himself. The
neurotic lives his life in constant fear of loss that will express itself in the
need to dominate, to refuse to cooperate, to aggressive and antisocial
behavior.

Regarding both the health and neurotic striving for superiority, Adler writes,
"If an individual, in the meaning he gives to life, wishes to make a
contribution, and if his emotions are all directed to this goal, he will
naturally be bound to bring himself into the best shape. He will begin to
equipment himself to solve the three problems of life (behavior toward
others, occupation and love) and to develop his abilities." If he works to
ease and enrich others as well as himself, he shall enrich his own life and
others. If he develops his personality without regards to others, he will
make himself unpleasant and seek to solve the problems of life in unhealthy
ways.
Understanding feelings of inferiority, compensation, and striving for
superiority should be an asset in counseling your clients. Certainly one of
the biggest problems in our society is the inappropriate handling of feelings
of inferiority. It is our opportunity as therapist and counselors to help
people find ways to best use their feelings of inferiority to benefit
themselves and society.

CHAPTER 5

WHAT OTHER SAY ABOUT ADLER'S THEORIES

MORE ON ALFRED ADLER: (When source is known, credit will be given.)

Development of Faulty Lifestyles: due to three faulty childhood conditions:
Physical Inferiority: Sometimes can lead to healthy compensation, but
sometimes leads to strangulation of social feelings. Instead of focusing of
adjustment to society, they become continually preoccupied with
themselves and the impression they have on others. Neglect: Neglected
children have never known what love and cooperation are like. They feel
worthless and express inferiority complexes through suspiciousness,
isolation, and maliciousness. Pampering (spoiling): The most serious of all
parental errors. Pampering robs children of their independence and
initiative, shatters their self-confidence, and creates the parasitic
impression that the world owes them a living. Note: Adler considered
Freud's patients to be mainly pampered adults, maybe even Freud himself.
ALFRED ADLER: SOCIAL FEELING INTEREST: (By Erick Pettifor): We
cannot judge a human being except by using the concept of social feeling
as a standard, and measuring their thought and action by this standard. We
must maintain this point of view because every individual within the body of
human society must subscribe to the oneness of that society. We have to
realize our duty to our fellow human beings. We are in the very midst of a
community and must live by the logic of communal existence. This logic
determines the fact that we need certain known criteria for the evaluation of
our fellows. The degree to which social feeling has developed in any
individual is the only universally valid criterion of human values. We cannot
deny our psychological dependency upon social feeling. No human being is
capable of ignoring her social feeling completely.

For we all know we have a duty to our fellow human beings. Our social
feeling constantly reminds us of the fact. This does not mean that social
feeling is constantly in our conscious thoughts; but it does require a certain
amount of determination to deny it and set it aside. Furthermore, social
feeling is so universal that no one is able to begin any activity without first
being justified by it. The need for justifying each act and thought originates
in our unconscious sense of social unity. At the very least it is the reason
why we seek extenuating circumstances to excuse our actions.
Interestingly enough, social feeling is so fundamental and important that,
even if we have not developed this ability to consider others as fully as
most people have done, we still make efforts to appear as if we had done
so. This means that the pretense of social feeling is sometimes used to
conceal the antisocial thoughts and deeds that are the true expressions of a
personality. The difficulty lies in differentiating between the false and the
genuine; it is this very difficulty that raises the understanding of human
nature to the plane of a science.

GUIDED AND EIDETIC IMAGERY: (Henry T. Stein)

[Refer to http://home.att.net/~Adlerian/ The Alfred Adler Institute of
Northwestern Washington and San Francisco] For many clients, cognitive
insight and new behavior lead to different feelings. Some clients need
additional specific interventions to access, stimulate, or change feelings.
Guided and eidetic imagery, used in an Adlerian way, can lead to emotional
breakthroughs especially when the client reaches an impasse. Eidetic
imagery can be used diagnostically to access vivid symbolic mental
pictures of significant people and situations that are often charged with
emotion. Guided imagery can be used therapeutically to change the
negative imprints of childhood family members that weigh heavily on a
client and often ignite chronic feelings of guilt, fear, and resentment. These
techniques are typically used in the middle stages of therapy. Alexander
Muller recommended the use of imagery when a client knew that a change
in behavior was sensible, but still didn't take action (Muller 1937). Some
clients need a vivid image of themselves as happier in the future than they
presently are, before they journey in a new direction that they know is
healthier.

TWELVE STAGES OF CLASSICAL ADLERIAN PSYCHOTHERAPY: (James

Wolf): [Refer to http://home.att.net/~Adlerian/ The Alfred Adler Institute of
Northwestern Washington and San Francisco] Classical Adlerian
psychotherapy is characterized by a diplomatic, warm, empathic, and
Socratic style of treatment. This climate embodies the qualities of respect
and equality necessary for building a trusting cooperative, relationship. A
full psychotherapy can be envisioned as a progression though twelve
stages. These stages should be considered as teaching guidelines and
should not be interpreted as a systematic procedure. Psychotherapy is an
art that must be practiced creatively. The best therapeutic strategy is
frequently a unique invention for the individual client.

1) Empathy and Relationship Stage: Establishing an empathic, cooperative,

working relationship. Offering hope, reassurance, and encouragement.

2) Information Stage: Unstructured gathering of relevant information.

Details of presenting problem and overview of general functioning.
Exploration of early childhood situation, memories, and dreams.

3) Clarification Stage: Clarifying vague thinking with Socratic questioning.

Evaluating consequences of ideas and behavior. Correcting mistaken ideas
about self and others.

4) Encouragement Stage: Encouraging thinking and behavior in a new

direction. Beginning to move in a new direction, away from life style.
Clarifying feelings about effort and results.

5) Interpretation and Recognition Stage: Interpreting inferiority feelings,

style of life, and fictional final goal of superiority. Identifying what has been
in avoided in development. Integrating birth order, earliest recollections,
and dreams.
6) Knowing Stage: Reinforcing client's self-awareness of life style and
feelings about new successes. Client knows what needs to be done but may
feel blocked.

7) Emotional Breakthrough Stage: When needed, promoting emotional

breakthroughs with "missing experiences" that correct past or present
negative influences. Use of role-playing, guided imagery, and group
dynamics.

8) Doing Differently Stage: Converting insight into a different attitude.

Experimenting with concrete actions based on abstract ideas. Comparing
new and old behavior.

9) Reinforcement Stage: Encouraging all new movements toward significant

change. Affirming positive results and feelings. Evaluating progress and
new courage.

10) Social Interest Stage: Using client's better feelings to extend

cooperation and caring about other people. Learning to give generously of
oneself and to take necessary risks. Awakening feeling of equality.

11) Goal Redirection Stage: Challenging client to let go of self and the old
fictional goal. Dissolving the style of life and adopting new values.
Discovering a new psychological horizon.

12) Support and Launching Stage: Launching client into a new, creative,
gratifying way of living for self and others. Learning to love the struggle and
prefer the unfamiliar. Promoting a path of continual growth for self and
others.

Alfred Adler - (Gaspare Birbiglia): Adler disagreed with the sexual etiology
of neuroses and belief that individuals were motivated by social
responsibility and need achievement, not driven by the inborn instincts.
Adler felt that humans were motivated by social, interpersonal factors. He
saw people as having control over their lives, with each individual
developing a unique lifestyle. Adler's emphasis is on the conscious rather
than unconscious, process, with individuals assuming responsibility for
their life decisions. Adler's most useful contribution was his observation of
family constellation and birth order. The concept of family constellation has
to do with the child's interactions with and perceptions of the family group.
Adler associated characteristics with position in birth order. First children
have to be first in order to maintain superiority. Second children never have
their parents undivided attention. The youngest child resembles an only
child and is usually spoiled.
Alder's contributions: 1. The Adlerian view of human nature is essentially
positive. 2. The relationship between the counselor and the client is valued.
3. The concept of family constellation has been useful and has yielded
important research investigations. 4. Adlerian theory is used by parent-
education groups. 5. The concept of natural consequences has influenced
child-rearing practices.

SELECTIONS FROM FUNDAMENTALS OF ADLERIAN

PSYCHOLOGY: (Rudolf R. Dreikurs): The human
community sets three task for every individual. They are:
work, which means contributing to the welfare of others,
friendship, which embraces social relations with comrades
and relatives, and love, which is the most inmate union
with some one of the other sex and represents the
strongest and closest of emotional relationships which can
exist between two individuals. (p 4-5)

Social interest is expressed subjectively in the consciousness of having

something in common with other people and of being one with them." AA
man who thinks only of himself, of how he is to uphold his own dignity and
of the role he means to play, is sure to cause trouble within his circle of
friends and acquaintances. (p 5) People who make it their object to get as
much as possible are always clutching emptiness. None but those who can
seek their happiness as part of the whole, that is to say, in the contribution
they themselves can make to the common-wealth, can feel satisfied with
themselves and their lives. The social interest is therefore expressed by
willingness to contribute without thought of reward. (p 6)

With regard to man in particular, Alfred Adler declares that it is impossible

for us to understand his behavior and actions unless we know his goal. (p
10) He is not driven through life by his past but impelled to go foreword into
the future - and the force that impels him is not an external force. He moves
of his own accord. All his actions, emotions, qualities and characteristics
serves the same purpose. They show him trying to adapt himself to society.
Character is not determined causally by equipment or instincts. Neither is it
formed by environment, which would bring us back once more to causal
determination. (p 23-14)

SELECTIONS FROM ALFRED ADLER: THE MAN AND HIS WORK: (Hertha
Orgler)

No one is forced to continue all his life in one direction, no matter what the
direction is. As soon as he realizes his error he can change his style of life
and rid himself of these faults. (p 30) It is evident here that a human being's
development is not influenced by facts, but the opinion he has of these
facts. (p 31) Adler calls the following methods the three entrance gates to
the mental life. (1) the position of the child in the relation to his brothers and
sisters; (2) the first childhood memory; (3) dreams. (p 32) Adler has
emphasized the fact that all children grow up in completely different
situation and that the position of the child in the constellation of children is
of the utmost importance in the development of its character. Three
positions are of special interest: that of the oldest, of the second and of the
youngest. (p 33)

Even in sleep the human being is still occupied with his problems. The
impetus which the dream gives him is intended to help him solve his
immediate problems more easily. The dream is also directed toward the
future; here the direction forward a goal can be perceived. The choice of the
dream pictures gives us a key to the life-style of the dreamer. (p 54) Only
when it is realized that the Superiority Complex covers an Inferiority
Complex can one understand that to those possessed with such striving for
power can never be satisfied with what they have achieved. The deeply
hidden doubt of their own abilities spurs them on to prove always anew that
they are superior to others and never allows them any rest. (p 80)

Thyra Boldsen wrote, "Dr. Adler was real. Whether he was joking or serious,
whether in private discussions or in lectures, his real personality always
seemed to say: 'Life is holy, have reverence for life, everything which
happens is important.' When he lectured you felt: He is truly a prophet of
righteousness and kindness, teaching these laws which govern human fate
to happiness for obedient and to self-destruction for the disobedient." (p
185)

BASIC PROPOSITIONS OF ADLER’S INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY: FROM

THE INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ALFRED ADLER: HEINZ L.
ANSBACHER, PH.D. AND ROWENA R. ANSBACHER, PH.D.

A summary of the theory of Individual Psychology might well be helpful to

the reader as an initial orientation to the work of Alfred Adler. To serve this
purpose we submit the following set of propositions which have suggested
themselves to us.

1)There is one basic dynamic force behind all human activity, a striving
from a felt minus situation towards a plus situation, from a feeling of
inferiority towards superiority, perfection, totality.

2) The striving receives its specific direction from an individually unique

goal or self-ideal, which though influenced by biological and environmental
factors is ultimately the creation of the individual. Because it is an ideal, the
goal is a fiction.

3) The goal is only "dimly envisaged" by the individual, which means that it
is largely unknown to him and not understood by him. This is Adler's
definition of the unconscious: the unknown part of the goal.

4) The goal becomes the final cause, the ultimate independent variable. To
the extent that the goal provides the key for understanding the individual, it
is a working hypothesis on the part of the psychologist.

5) All psychological processes form a self-consistent organization from the

point of view of the goal, like a drama which is constructed from the
beginning with the finale in view (1912a, p. 46) . This self-consistent
personality structure is what Adler calls the style of life. It becomes firmly
established at an early age, from which time on behavior that is (p 1)
apparently contradictory is only the adaptation of different means to the
same end.

6) All apparent psychological categories, such as different drives or the

contrast between conscious and unconscious, are only aspects of a unified
relational system ( 1926b, p. 402) and do not represent discrete entities and
quantities.

7) All objective determiners, such as biological factors and past history,

become relative to the goal idea; they do not function as direct causes but
provide probabilities only. The individual uses all objective factors in
accordance with his sty1e of life. "Their significance and effectiveness is
developed only in the intermediary psychological metabolism( so to speak"
( 1926b, p. 402) .
8) The individual's opinion of himself and the world, his "apperceptive
schema," his interpretations, all as aspects of the style of life, influence
every psychological process. Omnia ex opinione suspensa sunt was the
motto for the book in which Adler presented Individual Psychology for the
first time (1912a, p. 1) .

9) The individual cannot be considered apart from his social situation.

"Individual Psychology regards and examines the individual as socially
embedded. We refuse to recognize and examine an isolated human being"
(1926a, p. ix).

10) All important life problems, including certain drive satisfactions,

become social problems. All values become social values.

11) The socialization of the individual is not achieved at the cost of

repression, but is afforded through an innate human ability, which,
however, needs to be developed. It is this ability which Adler calls social
feeling or social interest. Because the individual is embedded in a social
situation, social interest becomes crucial for his adjustment.

12) Maladjustment is characterized by increased inferiority feelings,

underdeveloped social interest, and an exaggerated uncooperative goal of
personal superiority. Accordingly, problems are solved in a self-centered
"private sense" rather than a task-centered "common sense" fashion. In the
neurotic this leads to the experience of failure because he still accepts the
social validity of his actions as his ultimate criterion. The psychotic, on the
other hand, while objectively also a failure, that is, in the eyes of common
sense, does not experience failure because he does not accept the ultimate
criterion of social validity.

CHAPTER 6

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGISTS:

FROM SOCIAL INTEREST: A CHALLENGE TO MANKIND: ALFRED ADLER:
Capricorn books, New York. 1964:

For the understanding and treatment of difficult children. Compiled and

annotated by the International Society for Individual Psychology.

I. How long have the troubles lasted? In what situation was the child,
materially and mentally, when the failings became noticeable?

(The following are important: changes in surroundings, starting school,

change of school, change of teacher , birth of younger members of the
family, setbacks at school, new friendships, illnesses of the child or of the
parents, etc. )

2. Was there anything unusual about the child previously? Due to bodily or
mental weakness? Cowardice? Carelessness? Desire to be alone?
Clumsiness? Jealousy? Dependence on others at meals, in dressing,
washing, going to bed? Is he afraid of being left alone? Afraid of darkness?
Has he a clear idea of his sex? Any primary, secondary, and tertiary sexual
characteristics? How does he regard the other sex? How far has his
instruction in (p 299) sexual questions proceeded? Step-child? Illegitimate?
Boarded out? What were his foster-parents like? Is he still in touch with
them? Has he learned to walk and speak at the normal time? Does he do
this without mistakes? Was the teething normal? Had he any noticeable
difficulties in learning to write, calculate, draw, sing, swim? Has he had any
special attachment to any one mother, father, grandparents, nurse? (Care
should be taken to discover the establishment of a hostile attitude to life,
anything that might rouse feelings of inferiority, tendencies to exclude
difficulties and persons, traits of egotism, irritability, impatience,
heightened emotion, activity, eagerness, caution.)

3. Has the child caused much trouble? What things or persons does he fear
most? Does he cry out at night? Does he wet his bed? Does he want to
domineer? Over strong, or only over weak persons? Has he Shown a
particular fondness for lying in the bed of one of his parents? Is he
awkward? Intelligent? Was he much teased and laughed at? Does he shows
excessive vanity about his hair, clothing, shoes? Does he pick his nose?
Bite his nails? Is he greedy at table? Has he stolen anything?

Has he difficulties at the stool? (This will show clearly whether he has given
evidence of more or less activity in striving for pre-eminence. Further,
whether obstinacy has prevented the cultivation of his instinctive activity. )

4. Did he make friends easily, or was he unsociable, and did he torment

people and animals? Docs he attach himself to younger persons, older,
girls (boys)? Is he (p 300) inclined to take the lead? Or does he stand aside?
Does he collect things? Is he niggardly? Fond of money? (This will show
his ability to make contact with other persons, and the extent to which he is
discouraged.)

5. How does the child conduct himself at present in all these relationships?
How does he behave at school? Does he attend willingly? Does he arrive
too late? Is he agitated before going to school; does he hurry? Does he lose
his books, satchel, and papers? Does he get excited about school tasks and
examinations? Does he forget or refuse to do his home-lessons? Does he
waste his time? Is he grubby? Indolent? Has he much or little
concentration? Does he disturb the lessons? Attitude to his teacher?
Critical? Arrogant? Indifferent? Does he seek help from others in his work,
or does he always wait for them to make the offer? Is he keen about
gymnastics and sport? Does he consider himself partly or entirely devoid of
talent? Does he read a great deal? What sort of reading does he prefer? Is
he backward in every subject? (These questions will give an insight into the
child's preparation for school life and into the results of experiments at
school on the child. They will also show his attitude towards difficulties.)

6. Correct information regarding his home conditions, illnesses in the

family, alcoholism, criminal tendencies, neurosis, debility, syphilis,
epilepsy, standard of living? What deaths have there been? How old at the
time? Is the child orphaned? Who rules in the family? Is the upbringing
strict, fault-finding, pampering? Are the children (p 301) frightened at life?
How are they looked after? Stepfather or mother? (This gives a view of the
child in his position in the family and enables an estimate to be made of the
influences that have helped to form the child.)

7. What is the place of the child in the family succession? Is he the oldest,
second, youngest, or an only child? Any rivalries? Frequent crying? A
spiteful laugh? Tendency to depreciate other persons without cause?
(Important for characterology; throws light on the child's attitude to other
persons.) 8. What kind of ideas has the child at present about his future
calling? What does he think about marriage? What are the professions of
the other members of the family? What are the marital relations of his
parents? (From the answers it is possible to draw conclusions about the
child's courage and his hope for the future. )

9. Favorite games? Favorite stories? Favorite characters in history and

poetry? Is he fond of interrupting the games of other children? Does he
become lost in fantasies? Day-dreams? (This indicates his prototypes in his
striving for superiority.) 10. Earliest recollections? Impressive or frequently
recurring dreams? (Of flying, falling, being hindered, arriving too late for a
train, running a race, being imprisoned, anxiety dreams. ) (One often finds
in these a tendency to isolation; warning voices that lead the child to take
excessive (p 302)caution; ambitious impulses and the preference for certain
persons, for passivity, etc. ) II. In what respect is the child discouraged?
Does he feel himself slighted? Does he react favorably to appreciation and
praise? Has he superstitious notions? Does he retreat from difficulties?
Does he begin to do various things and then Soon leave them alone? Is he
uncertain about his future? Does he believe in the injurious effects of
heredity? Was he systematically discouraged by those around him? Has he
a pessimistic outlook on life?

(This will give important viewpoints for discovering whether the child has
lost confidence in himself and is seeking his path in a wrong direction. ) 12.
Additional faults: Does he make grimaces? Does he behave himself
stupidly, childishly, comically? (Rather uncourageous attempts to draw
attention to himself.)

13. Has he defects in speech? Is he ugly? Ungainly? Club-footed? Rickets?

Knock-kneed or bow-legged? Badly developed? Abnormally stout, tall,
small? Defects in the eyes or the ears? Is he mentally arrested? Left-
handed? Does he snore at night? Is he strikingly good-looking? (Here we
are dealing with difficulties in life which the child as a rule exaggerates.
These may lead to a chronic state of discouragement. A similar mistaken
development often occurs in the case of very handsome children. They get
the idea that everything must be given them to be retained without effort
and in this way they neglect to make the right preparation for living.) (p 303)

14. Does the child speak openly of his lack of ability, of his 'not being gifted
enough' for school, for work, for life? Has he thoughts of suicide? Is there
any connection in point of time between his want of success and his
mistakes? (Neglect, forming gangs.) Does he place too great value on
material success? Is he servile? Hypocritical? Rebellious? (These are
expressive forms of a deep-seated discouragement. They often occur after
vain attempts to excel which have come to grief not only on account of their
inherent aimlessness, but also as the result of want of understanding on the
part of those round the child. After the failure there comes the search for a
substitutive gratification in another field of struggle. ) 15. The child's
positive achievements? Type? Visual, acoustic, kinesthetic? (An important
finger-post, since possibly the interest, inclination and preparation of the
child point in another direction than that formerly taken. )

On the basis of these questions, which should not be put point by point, but
conversationally, never mechanically, but always naturally and
progressively, there is always formed a picture of the child's personality. By
this the child's errors, though they are certainly not justified, will be made
quite intelligible. When mistakes are discovered they should always be
explained in a friendly manner, patiently and without threats.

In connection with the mistakes of adults I have found (p 304) the following
model of examination to be of some value. By adhering to it the expert will
gain well within half an hour a penetrating insight into the individual's style
of life.

Certainly my own inquiries do not always keep to the rule of the following
sequence. The expert will not fail to notice its agreement with a medical
questionnaire.

By following it the Individual Psychologist, on account of the system by

which he works, will gain from the answers many a hint that would
otherwise have remained unnoticed. The following is approximately the
sequence:

I. What are your complaints?

2. How were you situated when you noticed your symptoms?

3. How are you situated now?

4. What is the nature of your calling?

5. Describe your parents in relation to their character, health, the illness of

which they died, if they are not alive; what was their relation to yourself?

6. How many brothers and sisters have you? How are you placed among
them? What is their attitude towards you? How are the others placed in life?
Do they also have any illness?

7. Who was your father's or your mother's favorite?

8. Look for signs of pampering in childhood ( timidity, shyness, difficulties

in forming friendships, disorderliness, etc.).

9. Illnesses and attitude to illnesses in childhood?

10. Earliest recollections of childhood? (p 305)

11. What do you fear, or what did you fear the most?

12. What are your ideas about the other sex, in childhood or in later years?

13. What ca1ling would have most interested you, and in the event of your
not having adopted it, why did you not do so?

14. Ambitious, sensitive, inclined to angry outbursts, pedantic,

domineering, shy, impatient?

15. What sort of persons are around you at present?

Impatient? Bad-tempered? Affectionate?

16. How do you sleep?

17. Dreams? (Of falling, flying, recurrent dreams, prophetic, about

examinations, missing a train, etc.) 18. Illnesses in the family tree?

I should like at this point to give my readers an important hint. Any one Who
has Come thus far and has not completely grasped the significance of these
questions ought to begin again from the start and reflect whether he has
not read this book with alack of proper attention, or-God forbid !-with a
hostile bias. If I had to explain here the meaning of these questions for our
knowledge of the formation of the style of life, I should have to repeat the
whole book. So this sequence of questions and the children's questionnaire
may very well serve as a test, since the result will show whether the reader
has gone along with me, that is, whether he has acquired an adequate
amount of social feeling. That, indeed, is the most important object of this
book. It is meant to (p 306) enable the reader not only to understand other
persons, but to grasp the importance of social feelings and to make it living
for himself. (p 307)

CHAPTER 7:

ORGAN INFERIORITY AND COMPENSATION: FROM THE INDIVIDUAL

PSYCHOLOGY OF ALFRED ADLER: HEINZ L. ANSBACHER, PH.D. AND
ROWENA R. ANSBACHER, PH.D.
The following selections on organ inferiority establish Adler as a field
theorist from the very beginning of his work. Written by a physician who
until a few years earlier had been a general practitioner, they are a
contribution to the theory of disease, according to which diseases can no
longer be understood as separate entities. A disease afflicts only the
inferior organs. But what constitutes an inferior organ? Inferiority is a
relative concept, relative to the environmental demands, to the total
situation. In this way, outcomes previously understood as due to
independent agents are now seen as the result of the interaction of forces.
The various aspects of such interaction refer to: the organism and the
physical environment, the organism and the social (p 22) environment, the
separate organs with one another, and body and mind.

From the point of view of the psychologist, then, the significance of these
selections is, firstly, that they represent an exposition of field theory, albeit
in terms of medical material.

The significance of these selections is, secondly, that they present the first
formulation of Adler's theory of compensation. It in the organ-environment
interaction, the balance threatens to turn against the organism, it responds
through attempts at compensation. Through the superstructure of the
central nervous system the mind, as part of the entire organism, will play its
part in the process of compensation or maintenance of equilibrium. Thus
Adler arrived at the concept of psychological compensation. The theory of
compensation is similar to that of homeostasis which Walter B. Cannon
presented twenty-five years later, and when Cannon's The Wisdom of the
Body appeared, Adler wrote an enthusiastic review of it ( 1933d) . This
relationship between compensation and homeostasis was recognized in a
paper by John M. Fletcher entitled "The Wisdom of the Body," where he
states: "I am not sure but that in Adler's mechanism of compensation we
have a phenomenon which may be subsumed under what is described by
Cannon as homeostasis" (30, p. 14) . In another paper Fletcher explains:
"Compensation. . . becomes at once much more intelligible when conceived
as hemostatic defense reaction" (29, p. 86). Since compensation, like
homeostasis, aims at maintenance of equilibrium, it would as the
dominating dynamic principle belong to a relatively static, closed system.
Adler’s theory, however, developed into a completely open system of
dynamics in which the dominating force was a ceaseless upward striving
and in which compensation then assumed a secondary role.

Thirdly Adler's writings on organ inferiority are of significance in that they

are an early discussion of the problem of psychosomatic disorders.

In the foreword to a reprint edition of the Study of Organ Inferiority, Nolan

D. C. Lewis concludes: "This little book has not only an important historical
value but it presents a number of foci for future research. A thorough
investigation of organ inferiority concepts should be undertaken and
included as a part of the present day trends in psychosomatic medicine"
(72,p.ix).

The selections below cover the theoretical essence of the material

contained in the Study of Organ Inferiority ( 1907a ), Adler's first major
contribution, but are for the most part taken from a summary presented by
him in a lecture held the same year. This lecture contains all the (p 23)
theoretical points while omitting the detailed medical material which
represents the greater part of the original study.

In conclusion of this introduction we should like to point out that the term
inferiority feeling, an integral part of Adler's psychology, is not to be found
in the Study of Organ Inferiority or its summary . The concept of inferiority
feeling did not appear until three )'ears later ( 191oa: see pp. 44-45) . The
understandable mistake has frequently been made of assuming that the
Study includes the discussion of inferiority feelings. Yet at this time Adler
still confined himself to objective terms and was not concerned with
anything so subjective as feelings.

As a general remark, we should add that the selections here and throughout
this chapter, aside from the aspects which became integrated in Adler's
system, tend to be expressed in terms of outdated physiology and deal with
drive psychology which Adler subsequently attacked severely.

Despite tendencies pointing toward unity of the personality, the self is still
absent from the discussion.

ORGAN INFERIORITY AND ITS OUTCOMES: The inferiority to which I refer

applies to an organ which is developmentally retarded, which has been
inhibited in its growth or altered, in whole or in part. These inferior organs
may include the sense organs, the digestive apparatus, the respiratory
tracts, the genito-urinary apparatus, the circulatory organs, and the nervous
system. Such inferiority can usually be proved only at birth or often only at
the embryonic stage. The innate anomalies of organs range from
malformation to slow maturation of otherwise normal organs. Since there is
a strong relationship between inferiority and disease, we may expect that an
inherited inferiority corresponds to an inherited disease.

The fate of the inferior organs is extremely varied. Development and the
external stimuli of life press toward overcoming the expressions of such
inferiority . Thus we may find approximately the following outcomes with
innumerable intermediate stages: inability to survive, anomaly of form,
anomaly of function, lack of resistance and disposition to disease,
compensation within the organ, compensation through a second organ,
compensation through the psychological superstructure, and organic or
psychological overcompensation. We find pure, compensated, and
overcompensated inferiorities. (p 24)

THE RELATIVITY OF ORGAN INFERIORITY TO EXTERNAL DEMANDS: One

way by which organ inferiority itself is through localization of a disease in
that specific organ. This occurs when the inferior organ reacts to
pathogenic stimuli from the environment- We wish to replace the obscure
concept of "pathological disposition" by the following proposition: Disease
is the resultant of organ inferiority and external demands. The latter are
limited in duration and to a particular cultural environment. Changes in
external demands represent cultural progress, changes of the mode of
living, or social improvements. They are the work of the human mind and, in
the long run, tend to curb excessive straining of the organs. The external
demands are related to the developmental potentialities of the organs and
their nervous superstructure, and they condition the relative inferiority of an
organ when their requirements exceed a certain measure.

Within these observations chance, as the correcting factor in development,

seems to be precluded. A clear example would be Professor Habermann's
observation that members of occupations such as blacksmiths and artillery
gunners, who are exposed to loud noises, are prone to diseases of the ear.
It can easily be seen that not every auditory apparatus is suited for such
occupations. But it is also clear that such injuries regularly give cause for
technical changes in industrial procedure, that continuous employment in
certain occupations changes the affected organs, and that health hazards
exist on the path to parity (Vollwertigkeit ) .

In summary, we may say that hygiene and preventive medicine are subject
to the conditions of compensation. All therapeutic methods are likewise
aimed at the compensation of organ inferiority which has become visible.

FORMS OF COMPENSATION: As soon as the equilibrium, which must be

assumed to govern the economy of the individual organ or the whole
organism, appears to be disturbed due to inadequacy of form or function, a
certain biological process is initiated in the inferior organs. The unsatisfied
demands increase until the deficit is made up through growth of the inferior
organ, of the paired organ, or of some other organ which can serve as a
substitute, completely or in part. This compensating for the defect through
increase (p 25) in growth and function may, under favorable circumstances
achieve overcompensation; it will usually also include the central nervous
system in its increased development.

If reflex anomalies of the mucous membranes have been definite1y shown

to be re1ated to the psyche, then this holds even more for chi1dhood
disorders, such as retarded speech development, stammering, blinking,
thumb sucking, and eating difficulties. These are the visible expressions of
an a1tered functioning of inferior organs and represent striking
disturbances in the process of compensation.

Usually, however, the normal grow of the superordinated nerve tracts, that
is, simple compensation through growth, seems to be sufficient to bring
about normal functioning. In this event the organ anomaly remains the
same, and upon closer examination we very often find that
unextinguishable remnants last throughout life. In other cases the defect
may have been overcome for all normal conditions only. It reappears as
soon as psychological tension arises but remains hidden at times of rest.
Frequent examples of this are: blinking in bright light, squinting during
close work, stammering during excitement, and vomiting during emotion.
This confirms our guess that compensation is due to overperformance and
increased growth of the brain. This strengthening of the psychologica1
superstructure is shown by the successful outcome; its relation to steady
exercise is easily guessed. Thus a1so in the central nervous system the
same relationships of inferiority and compensation prevail.

In favorable cases of compensation, the inferior organ has the better

developed and psychologically more potent superstructure. The
psychological manifestations of such an organ may be more plentiful and
better developed as far as drive, sensitivity, attention, memory,
apperception, empathy, and consciousness are concerned. In the favorable
case, an inferior nutritive apparatus may muster the greater psychological
potency in all re1ations to nourishment. But it may also be superior in
everything related to the gaining of food, since its superstructure will
dominate and draw the other psychological complexes into its orbit. The
food drive will dominate to such an extent that it may find expression in all
personal and social relations, as in gourmandism, acquisitiveness,
parsimony, and avarice. The same holds true for other inferior organs. This
may lead to a more extended sensory life and a more carefu1 and correct
appraisal of the world as far as it is accessible to the organ in question.

Through this process psychological axes develop according to which the

individual is oriented. This a1ways takes p1ace in dependency on one (p 26)
or more inferior organs. The striving to gain pleasure for these organs
becomes noticeable also in dreams and fantasy, as well as in play and
occupational preference and choice, because in the case of an inferior
organ, primitive activity of the organ ( drive) is always associated with
pleasure. Certain childhood disorders point to this pleasure with such
clearness that they are mistaken for sexual activity . If we carry this thought
further, we ultimately arrive at the supposition that the psychological
superstructure of the organ largely functions as a substitute for the
deficiencies of the organ in order to gain its pleasure in relation to the
environment.

COMPENSATION AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: Since the inferiority of

the deviating organs comes from the external environment, changes of the
environment, organ inferiority, and corresponding ameliorating brain
compensation all take place under mutual influence. This point of view of
mutual interaction seems applicable also to the origin of highly cultivated
psychomotor achievements, to the origin and development of language and
art, to the nature of genius, and to the birth of philosophical systems and
world philosophies. I trust that it will prove its worth also in respect to the
invention and solution of new problems. This point of view forces us much
more clearly than any other to avoid the pitfalls of abstraction and to
observe the phenomena in their context and in flux. I have pursued it in the
field of medical science;

perhaps my modest suggestion will meet with approval elsewhere as well.

But the picture of the world which is founded in brain compensation cannot
develop unlimitedly, for it cannot give free reign either to its drives or to its
unconscious component. Rather its expressions are limited by the social
environment and by the culture, which, through the drive for self-
preservation, permit the expressions of the psyche to unfold only when
they can fit themselves into the frame of the culture. Nonetheless the
strengthened superstructure of the inferior organ often assumes new and
valuable modes of operation. To be sure, these ways may also be
pathological ways, as in the neuroses. (p 27)

OUTCOMES OF OVERCOMPENSATION: When overcompensation attempts

to assert itself in a cultural manner and in this effort enters into new,
although difficult and often inhibited, paths, the very great expressions of
the psyche arise which we must attribute to genius. Lombroso in his theory
of genius dealt only with the mixed cases and thus arrived at a false
conception of the pathological genius. The inferior organ is not a
pathological formation, although it represents the basic condition for
pathology . Under favorable conditions the impulse toward brain
compensation can end in an overcompensation which shows no trace of
pathology .

The outcome of overcompensation depends on several conditions; in other

words, it is overdetermined. As one of these conditions we have met the
limitations of culture. Another determiner is the chaining of the dominant
superstructure to other psychological fields. For example, the visual
superstructure may be chained to the auditory organs and to the
superstructure of the language organs. Only these multiple compensations,
their confluences and mutual inhibitions give us an adequate picture of the
psyche. The outcome of an overcompensation depends, thirdly, on its
stamina. Nature very often fails in the correction of the inferior organ, in
these cases creating transitory compensations which easily succumb to
attacks. Inability, neurosis, psychological disease, in short, pathological
forms may appear in this event. A small sample from the analysis of
paranoia may serve as illustration. The overcompensation of the inferior
visual apparatus plays an outstanding part, in addition to other apparatus.

The drive to see, for example, has become highly developed in a great part
of paranoiacs and has exhausted all visual possibilities in the world. Then
an unfavorable constellation sets in and the weakness of the
overcompensation expresses itself in hallucinatory fits and visual
appearances. The forces constituting reason soon show a similar fallibility,
the patient regarding himself as the object of the visual drive of others.

The positive counterpart may be shown in a small aspect of the psyche of

the poet Schiller for which I am indebted to the Viennese writer Rank, who
is familiar with my views. I should like to preface this example by stating
that I must attribute especially to the dramatic poet a particular and unique
overcompensation of the visual organ. In such overcompensation is
founded his scenic power, the selection and elaboration of his material. In
the drama of the marksman William Tell, Schiller reveals a large (p 28)
number of allusions to the overcompensation of the visual organ, phrases
which concern the eye and its functions. I wish furthermore to point out the
blinding of Melchthal and the hymn to the light of the eyes in William Tell.
Schiller himself had weak eyes, suffered from inflammation of the eyes,
and, until adulthood, from the childhood disorder of blinking. He was much
interested in hunting. Weltrich relates that the family of Schiller received its
name on account of strabismus ( schielen ) . This would be of interest for
the study of heredity . I mention this to call attention to the relationship of
the poet to the inferior organ.

Signs of an inferior visual apparatus playa large part in the development of

painters ( see also Reich, J ., "Kunst und Auge." Oesterreichische
Rundschau, Vienna, 1908) . Guercino da Centa, 15th century, was given his
name because he squinted. Piero de la Francesca, who is particularly
credited with the art of perspective, became blind in old age, according to
Vasaris. Among the more modern painters Lenbach had only one eye.
Mateyko was extremely myopic. Manet suffered from astigmatism. Among
art students, approximately seventy per cent have been found to suffer from
some optical anomalies.

Among orators, actors, and singers, I have also very often found signs of
organ inferiority. The Bible reports about Moses that he had a heavy
tongue, whereas his brother Aaron had the talent of talking. Demosthenes,
became the greatest orator of Greece. Camille Demoulin who usually
stuttered is reported by his contemporaries to have been very fluent when

he made a speech.

Musicians quite frequently suffer from ear afflictions. Beethoven and Robert
Franz, both of whom became deaf, are well-known examples. Klara
Schumann reports hearing and speech difficulties in childhood.

Myths have also, since time immemorial, taken hold of the phenomenon of
the inferior organ and its overcompensation. The myth of the blind
marksman who always hits the target is related to the William Tell saga.

The following quotation from Grimm's German Mythology bears witness to

how closely our conception of compensation and
overcompensation of the inferior organ corresponds to the
popular feeling: "We find want of limbs in the heroes as well
as in the Gods. Orin is one-eyed, Tyr - one-handed, Loki -
lame, Hoeder - blind, Vidar - dumb, Hagano also one-eyed,
Walkeri - one-handed, Gunther and Wieland are lame; and
there are a goodly number of blind and dumb heroes." (Tyr
likeness)

Far from offering those details as complete proof, the example

are intended only to direct the (p 29) theory of organ inferiority and its
relation to philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics.

Confluence and Transformation of Drives (1908): COMMENTS: It was in fact

dealt with already in the preceding part, for both interaction of forces and
compensation imply the unity of the organism. Adler's next contribution,
presented below, was more specifically concerned with unity, which he
conceived in the form of a "confluence of drives." At this time, Adler was
still a member of the Freudian circle and still subscribed to drive
psychology and hedonism; he still had the natural-science approach,
seeking to explain mental life as caused by physiological processes.

In the same paper, he also described the "transformation of drives," an idea

which came to be of the greatest importance in Freud but which in Adler
merely foreshadowed his later view that all causal factors, including drives,
are relative to the individual's ultimate goal and style of life.

CHAPTER 8: FICTIONALISM AND FINALISM: FROM THE INDIVIDUAL

PSYCHOLOGY OF ALFRED ADLER: HEINZ L. ANSBACHER, PH.D. AND
ROWENA R. ANSBACHER, PH.D.

When Adler separated from Freud, he had developed away from a

biologically oriented, elementaristic, objective drive psychology and toward
a socially oriented, subjectivistic, holistic psychology attitudes. The present
chapter will show the part which Hans Vaihinger' s fictionalism, "idealistic
positivism," played in Adler's further development in this direction.

Vaihinger' s work appeared in 1911, the same year in the beginning of which
Adler withdrew from the psychoanalytic circle. When Adler presented in the
following year, 1912, his "Comparative Individual Psychology" in The
Neurotic Character, his most important book, this was replete with evidence
of Vaihinger' s influence and contained several sincere acknowledgments
of this, such as: "It was good fortune which made me acquainted with
Vaihinger' s ingenious Philosophy of "As If" (Berlin, 1911) , a work in which
I found the thoughts familiar to me from the neurosis presented as valid for
scientific thinking in general" ( 1912a, p. 22).

In our experience, it is impossible to gain a complete understanding of

Adler's theory, especially with respect to his important concept of j the
"fictional goal," without 3 knowledge of Vaihinger's fictionalism.
Accordingly, we will deal with brief presentations of Vaihinger through
selections from his book, and secondly, with Adler's own fictional finalism.
(p 76)

A. Fictionalism By Hans Vaihinger: Fictions, according to Vaihinger, are

ideas, including un-yet serve the useful function of enabling us to deal with
it better than we could otherwise. This statement, "All men are created
equal" would be an example of a fiction. The statement is in contradiction to
realize; yet, as an ideal, it is of great practical value in everyday life. This
sort of fiction comes close to a working hypothesis which is adopted as a
basis for action because it works in practice, although its truth is dubious.
Such fiction can better be understood by comparing it to hypothesis; while
the hypothesis submits its reality to the test and demands verification, the
fiction is a mere auxiliary construct, a scaffolding to be demolished if no
longer needed. As distinguished from both fiction and hypothesis, dogma
refers to an idea which is considered definitely established. Another aspect
of the fiction, helpful in understanding the concept, is its subjective
character. According to Vaihinger the subjective is fictional.

The main influence of Vaihinger on Adler was to provide him with a

philosophic foundation for his developing subjective finalism, as will be
shown in the selections from Adler in the second part of this chapter.
Beyond this, however, Adler adapted a number of concepts from Vaihinger
to his theory of personality and abnormal psychology; this will be shown in
the comments after some of the selections from Vaihinger which follow.

THE MEANING OF FICTIONS: The mind is not merely appropriative, it is

also assimilative and constructive. In the course of its growth, it creates its
organs of its own accord in virtue of its adaptable constitution, but only
when stimulated from without, and adapts them to external circumstances.
Such organs are, for example, forms of perception and thought, and certain
concepts and other logical constructs.

Our subject is the fictive activity of the logical functions; the products of
this activity-fictions. The fictive activity of the mind is an expression of the
fundamental psychical forces; fictions are mental structures. The (p 77)
psyche weaves this aid to thought out of itself for the mind is inventive.

Fictio means, in the first place, an activity of fingere, that is to say, of f

constructing, forming, giving shape, elaborating, presenting, artistically
fashioning, conceiving, thinking, imagining, assuming, planning, devising,
inventing. Secondly, it refers to the product of these activities, the fictional
assumption, fabrication, creation, the imagined case. Its most conspicuous
character is that of unhampered and free expression.

The organic function of thought is carried on for the most part

unconsciously. Should the product finally enter consciousness also, this
light only penetrates to the shallows, and the actual fundamental processes
are carried on in the darkness of the unconscious.

Nominalism naturally declared all general ideas to be ficta, fictiones,

without, however, attaching to fiction the positive meaning which it has for
us. The negative sense of the fiction we call the assumption, for instance,
that general ideas are expressions for something unreal, that is, definitely
invented and fabricated; whereas by its positive sense we mean the
realization that these fictions have nevertheless great practical value, that
they serve as the means for acquiring knowledge.

For us the essential element in a fiction is not the fact of its being a
conscious deviation from reality, a mere piece of imagination-but we stress
the useful nature of this deviation. If we simply say, "The whole world is our
idea and all forms are subjective," we get an untenable subjectivism. But if
we say: "Conceptual forms and fictions are expedient psychical
constructs," then these are closely related to "cosmic agencies and
constituents" ( Lass) , for it is they that call these expedient forms into
existence in the organic being.

The ''as if" world, which is formed in this manner, the world of the "unreal"
is just as important as the world of the so-called real or actual ( in the
ordinary sense of the word) ; indeed it is far more important for ethics and
aesthetics. This aesthetic and ethical world of ''as if," the world of the
unreal, becomes finally for us a world of values which particularly in the
form of religion, must be sharply distinguished in our mind from the world
of becoming.

It is senseless to question the meaning of the universe, and this is the idea
expressed in Schiller's words: "Know this, a mind sublime puts greatness
into life, yet seeks it not therein" (Huldigung del Kiinste, 1805). This is
positivist idealism. (p 78)

The Fictional Final Goal: Freud's biologica11y oriented system tacitly

accepted a mechanistic, reductionistic positivism; it looked for ultimate
causes in the past and in objective events. As we have seen, Freud held
that "in the psychological field the biological factor is rea11y the rock-
bottom" ( see Fp. 51-52) , and he anticipated that we may reach " a (p 87)
position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical
ones" ( see pp. 60-61).

Adler’s subjectivism, where values, goals, and secondary motives had

replaced drives and primary motives in importance, was not a physiological
reductionism. If mental events cannot be reduced to physiological events,
systematization is possible only by establishing a hierarchy of these mental
events, that is, a hierarchy of values and goals. This leads to the
philosophical position of teleology and finalism, the determination by final
causes. But in this position there lay the danger of parting from the
scientific basis and approaching theology. It was in Vaihinger s idealistic
positivism that Adler now found for his subjectivistic and finalistic
psychology a philosophical foundation which was acceptable, encouraging,
and stimulating.
The influence of Vaihinger on Adler finds its most obvious expression in his
term fictional. Three attributes of Vaihinger’s term are important for the
understanding of Adler’s use of it.

1) From the psychological, not logical point of view, Vaihinger s concept of

fiction comes very close to what one would today call the subjective or the
personal frame of reference or the phenomenal field. Vaihinger say's that
the fictional includes the subjective, "subjective is fictional" (see p. 83) .

2) Fictions are not reducible to objective causes. According to Vaihinger

Fictions are mental structures. The psyche weaves this aid to thought out of
itself; for the mind is inventive" ( see pp. 77-78) . Fictional structures are
thus creations of the individual.

3) Thought processes, including the fictional activity, are fundamentally

"carried on in the darkness of the unconscious" ( see p. 78) .

When Adler combined the concept of the fiction with that of the goal, as in
fictional goal or the guiding fiction, he implied that his view of causality was
subjectivistic, that it was deterministic only in a restricted sense, and that it
took unconscious processes into account. These three points may be
expanded as follows.

1) Adler had already taken the observable forward orientation of the

individual and his concern with the future as the center of his dynamic
psychology. By now describing goals and the future as fictional, he
expressed in effect that this future was not the objective future but a
subjective future as experienced in the present. Thus he avoided the
teleological dilemma of the determination of present events by something
which remains in the future. This solution is, of course, the one generally (p
88) accepted today in one form or another. Wolfgang Kohler stated it most
succinctly from the point of view of Gestalt psychology when he said: "It is
not the actual future, the future as such, toward which we are directed in
our planning, and in which we perceive our goals; it is that part of an
actually present phenomenal field which we call the 'future' " (62, p. 380) .
Adler's fictional or subjective finalism or teleology does not violate Kurt
Lewin's principle of the contemporaneity of motivation (68, p. 34) . Adler's
fictional (subjective) goal is a present one; it derives its great importance
from the postulate that it is an ever-present goal ( 1930a, p. 5), although it is
not necessarily present in consciousness. "We can comprehend every
single life phenomenon, as if the past, the present, and the future together
with a superordinated, guiding idea were present in it in traces" (1912a, p.
iii). If we translate "as if" into "subjective" we find that this sentence refers
to the subjective past, present, and future as being present in the
phenomenological field in trance.
2) The term fictional goal also expressed Adler's conviction that the origin
of the goal is, in the last analysis, not reducible to objective determiners.
Although the objective factors of heredity and environment, organ
inferiorities, and past experiences are utilized by the individual in the
process of forming his final goal, the latter is still a fiction, a fabrication, the
individual's own creation. Such causality corresponds to "soft"
determinism, that is, "determinism from the inner nature of life," as
contrasted to "hard" determinism "from external pressures alone" (William
James, according to Murphy, 84, pp. 644-645) . Adler was not aware of the
term "soft" determinism, nor of Jaspers' distinction between external,
objective causation and internal, subjective causation ( see pp. 13-14) .
When Adler rejects causality without qualification, he is in fact rejecting
"hard" determinism or external causation. Thus each time the word cause
or any of its derivatives is found below, the reader should understand it to
signify external, objective causation, the old causa efficiens. It is only this
which Adler rejected and not internal causation or the old causa finalis.

3) Finally the fictitiousness of the goal also implies its unconscious nature.
Adler's goal concept is characterized particularly by the fact that the
individual is largely unaware of his goal, that it is a hidden or unconscious
goal, a goal which the individual does not understand. It is the true nature
of the individual's hidden goal which constitutes, according to Adler, the
essential content of the unconscious. (p 89)

As the five sections within this part will show: (1) the fictional final goal
became for Adler the principle of internal, subjective causation of
psychological events, similar to Jaspers' concept of the schema: (2) the
goal represented a creation of the individual and was largely unconscious:
(3) it also became the principle of unity and self-consistency of the
personality structure; from the point of view of the subject, the fictional goal
was taken as the basis for orientation in the world; and (5), as one aspect of
compensation for felt inferiorities.

One more characteristic of fictional which played a part in Adler's use of the
word should be mentioned. This characteristic, which belongs to the
logical, not to the psychological, properties, is that a fiction can also be a
working hypothesis, as in the case of the "heuristic fiction" (see p. 80).
Accordingly, the fictional goal was at first used by Adler also as a heurisbc
concept in that he regarded the individual ''as it" he were striving toward a
final goal. Several years later, Adler dropped this last, logical connotation
troll his use of the word fictional. "Our experience and our impressions
strengthen in us the conviction that this heuristic method represents more
than an auxiliary method of research, and that it fundamentally coincide to
the largest extent with real events of psychological development, which are
partly consciously experienced and partly deducible from the unconscious.
The goal-striving of the psyche is consequently not only our view but also a
basic tact" ( 1927a, pp.56-57).

Eventually Adler relinquished the term fictional altogether when speaking of

the goal. However, the three psychological meaning of the term fictional, as
subjective created and unconscious, remained the most essential
components of Adler’s goal concept. (p 90)

CHAPTER 9: STRIVING FOR SUPERIORITY AND STYLE OF LIFE: FROM

THE INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ALFRED ADLER: HEINZ L.
ANSBACHER, PH.D. AND ROWENA R. ANSBACHER, PH.D.

We have seen that Adler tended from the beginning toward a theory of the
unity and self-consistency of the personality. I Such a theory would need a
prepotent dynamic force. This was at first ) described as the aggression
drive, the outcome of a confluence of drives. After Adler had abandoned
drive psychology, it became the "wanting to be a real man" of the masculine
protest. With Adler's full commitment to fictional finalism in 1912, the
fictional goal became the principle of unity of the personality and the
striving toward this goal the prepotent dynamic force.

While in the preceding chapter our selections were concentrated on the

theoretical significance of the goal, its origin, and its functions for the
subject, and we omitted as much as possible discussion of the content of
the goal and the goal striving itself, still it became evident that the goal is
one of superiority, that consequently the striving is toward I superiority, and
finally that the striving is compensatory, originating in a feeling of inferiority
.

From then on and throughout the years of Adler's writings the general
description of the governing dynamic force as one of striving from
inferiority to superiority, from "below" to "above" remained the same. But
the meaning of superiority, or above, that is, the specific goal point,
underwent an important change.

At first, above meant being a real man, power, self-esteem, security; all
these goal points were expressed in terms of the individual. But in these
early days, Adler as a psychiatrist, wrote in terms of the neurotic patient; it
was the neurotic whom Adler showed as striving for enhancement of his
self-esteem or for the safeguarding of it. When he generalized from the
neurotic, he described the normal individual as behaving in the same way,
only less clearly so and to a lesser degree. The neurotic was the frame of
reference, the standard of comparison so to speak. (p 101)

Later, above came to mean perfection, completion, or overcoming, goal

points which are no longer fully expressed in terms of the self but which
can be applied to outside objects also. While overcoming may refer to
internal obstacles, it usually refers to external ones; completion usually,
refers to a task; and perfection to an achievement or a product. When Adler
wrote in these terms, the frame of reference was no longer the neurotic, but
man in general, the mentally healthy individual. When he now generalized, it
was from the normal to the abnormal; the abnormal also strives for
perfection, although it may hardly recognized as such.

What brought about this change in frame of reference from the abnormal to
the normal? Originally Adler had drawn his inferences from his patients;
regarding normal individuals, he only knew that they must be similarly
motivated. The difference between the two was one of degree, the normal
showing a less accentuated, less dogmatized, goal of superiority and less
urgency in leaching it than the abnormal. The greater motivation of the
neurotic came from his greater inferiority feeling. But Adler had not
answered the question: In what respect, if any, is the normal more
motivated than the neurotic? This question would certainly need to be
answered since the normal would seem to strive as much as the abnormal,
certainly at least in many instances.

The change and the answer were made possible by the fact that Adler
developed a criterion for normality, during the period roughly from 1920-
1930. Once he had such a criterion, he could rewrite his motivational theory
in terms of the normal. Adler’s ultimate concept of social interest becomes
this criterion. The ideally normal individual has an ideal amount of social
interest. Thus, while the neurotic is more concerned with his self-esteem,
and has a personal goal of superiority, the normal individual, due to his
greater social interest, is more concerned with gaining satisfaction by
overcoming difficulties which are appreciated as such by others as well. He
has a goal of superiority which includes the welfare of others. The
difference in motivation between the normal and abnormal then became
primarily one of kind of instead of degree. While the abnormal is more
motivated in the direction of a private intelligence and is more self-centered
in his striving, the normal is more motivated in the direction of common
sense that is, he is more task-centered in his striving.

When Adler replaced the earlier formations of the meaning of superiority by

striving for perfection, he did not leave the earlier out of account; they were
given a subordinate position in his system, just as he (p 102) had given the
drives and heredity and environment a subordinate place.

Our reason for beginning the presentation of the selections on the striving
for superiority with Adler’s late writings is that thereby we can best present
the entire picture, with all the parts organized according to their relative
significance.

Accordingly, the first part of the present chapter will deal with the striving
for superiority in terms of perfection, and the second part in terms of self-
enhancement. This will be followed by the discussion of the inferiority
feeling, the origin of all the striving, according to Adler , while the last
section will deal with his further views on the position of drives in human
dynamics. (p 103)

Man as an everstriving being cannot be like God. God who is eternally

complete, who directs the stars, who masters fates, who elevates man from
lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human
soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection to date. In
God’s nature, religious mankind perceives the way to height. His call it
hears again the innate voice of life which must have its direction towards
the goal of perfection, toward overcoming the felling of lowliness and
transitoriness of the existence here below. The human soul, as part of the
movement of life, is endowed with the ability to participate in the uplift,
elevation, perfection, and completion. (p 107)

THE THREE GENERAL SOCIAL TIES: One of Adler's favorite devices for
teaching and preaching the "absolute truth" of social embeddedness and
the resulting necessity of a well-developed social interest was to point out
that all the main problems in life are problems of human cooperation.
Although Adler does not say so, he implies that in present society the
satisfaction of almost all conceivable needs depends on the solution of
these problems of cooperation. These problems represent the ties of the
individual to social life and are somewhat loosely classified into problems
of occupation, social relations in general, and love and marriage.

At this point Individual Psychology comes into contact with sociology. For
a long time now I have been convinced that all the questions of life can be
subordinated to the three major problems - the problem of communal life, of
work, and of love. These three arise from the inseparable bond that of
necessity links men together for association, for the provision of livelihood,
and the care of offsprings.

These three ties in which human beings are bound set the three problems
of life, but none of these problems can be solved separately. Each of them
demands a successful approach to the other two.

a. Occupation: The first tie sets the problem of occupation. We are living on
the surface of this planet, with only the resources of this planet, with the
fertility of its soil, with its mineral wealth, and with its climate and
atmosphere. It has always been the task of mankind to find the right answer
to the problem these conditions set us, and even today we cannot think that
we have found a sufficient answer. In every age, mankind has arrived at a
certain level of solution, but it has always been necessary to strive for
improvement and further accomplishments.

When somebody makes shoes, he makes himself useful to someone else,

and he has the right to a sufficient livelihood, to all the advantages (p 131)
of hygiene, and to a good education of his children. The fact that he
receives payment for this is the recognition of his usefulness in an age of
developed trade. In this way, he arrives at a feeling of his worth to society,
the only possible means of mitigating the universal human feeling of
inferiority. The person who performs useful work lives in the midst of the
developing human society and helps to advance it.

b. Society: The second tie by which men are bound is their membership in
the human race and their association with others of their kind. The attitude
and behavior of a human being would be altogether different if he were the
only one of his kind alive on earth. We have always to reckon with others, to
adapt ourselves to others, and to interest ourselves in them. This problem
is best solved by friendship, social feeling, and cooperation. With the
solution of this problem, we have made an incalculable advance towards
the solution of the first. It was only because men learned to cooperate that
the great discovery of the division of labor was made, a discovery which is
the chief security for the welfare of mankind. Through the division of labor
we can use the results of many different kinds of training and organize
many different abilities, so that all of them contribute to the common
welfare and guarantee relief from insecurity and increased opportunity for
all the members of society.

Some people attempt to evade the problem of occupation, to do no work, or

to occupy themselves outside of common human interests. We shall always
find, however, that if they dodge this problem, they will in fact be claiming
support from their fellows. In one way or another, they will be living on the
labor of others without making a contribution of their own.

c. Love: The third tie of a human being is that he is a member of one of the
two sexes and not of the other. On his approach to the other sex and on the
fulfillment of his sexual role depends his part in the continuance of
mankind. This relationship between the two sexes also sets a problem. It,
too, is a problem which cannot be solved apart from the other two
problems. For a successful sol1,tion of the problem of love and marriage,
an occupation contributing to the division of labor is necessary, as well as a
good and friendly contact with other human beings. In our own day, the
highest solution for this problem, the solution most coherent with the
demands of society and of the division of labor, is monogamy. In the way in
which an individual answers this problem the degree of his cooperation can
always be seen.

These three problems are never found apart, for they all throw (p 132)
cross-lights in on another. A solution of one help toward the solution of the
others, and indeed we can say that they are all aspects of the same
situation and the same problem - the necessity for a human being to
preserve life and to further life in the environment in which he finds himself.
(p 133)

STYLE OF LIFE: Style of life is variously equated with the self or ego
(1931b, p. 4: 1935a, p. 7), a man’s own personality (1931a, p. 200), the unity
of personality (1935a, p. 7), individuality (1931b, p.4), individual form of
creative activity (1935a, p. 8), the method of facing problems (1933a, p 16),
the whole attitude to life (1920c, p. 135) and others.

Although in Adler's earlier writings the emphasis was on the goal, he had
from the beginning used several terms foreshadowing the style of lite.
When he was still mechanistically and biologically oriented and attempted
to express the unity of the individual through the concept of the confluence
of drives, he was also aware of the uniqueness of the individual and of the
need to give this idea an expression. This he did at first with the term
psychological main axis. In 1912, in The Neurotic Character, the main axis
became the guiding idea which provides the approach to the fictional goal
through the life plan: "We may look upon every single manifestation of life
as it in its past, present, and future there were contained traces of a
superordinated guiding idea. . . Comparative Individual Psychology sees in
every psychological process the imprint, a symbol so to speak, of the se1t-
consistently oriented life plan" ( 1912a, p. iii) . In 1927 we find schema of life
(Lebens-Schablone) and line of movement used synonymously with style of
life ( 1927a, p. 3) . Finally, in 1933 Adler proposed the individual's law of
movement as underlying the style of life (see pp. 195-196).

Unity and Sovereignty of the Self: The child is constantly confronted afresh
with every-varying problems. Since these can be solved neither by
conditioned reflexes nor by innate abilities, it would be extremely
hazardous to expose a child who is equipped only with conditioned reflexes
or with innate abilities to the tests of a world which is continuously raising
new problems. The solution of the greatest problem would always be up to
the never-resting creative mind. This remains pressed into the path of the
child's style of life, as does everything that has a name in the various
schools of psychology, such as instincts, impulses, feeling, thinking,
acting, attitude to pleasure and (p 174) displeasure, and finally self-love and
social interest. The style of life commands all forms of expression; the
whole commands the parts.

In real life we always find a confirmation of the melody of the total sell, of
the personality, with its thousand fold ramifications. If we believe that the
foundation, the ultimate basis of everything has been found in character
traits, drives, or reflexes, the self is likely to be overlooked. Authors who
emphasize a part of the whole are likely to attribute to this part all the
aptitudes and observations pertaining to the sell, the individual. They show
"something" which is endowed with prudence, determination, volition, and
creative power without knowing that they are actually describing the sell,
rather than drives, character traits, or reflexes.

Individual Psychology goes beyond the views of philosophers like Kant and
newer psychologists and psychiatrists who have accepted the idea of the
totality [wholeness] of the human being. Very early in my work, I found man
to be a [sell-consistent] unity. The foremost task of Individual Psychology is
to prove this unity in each individual - in his thinking, feeling, acting, in his
so-called conscious and unconscious, in every expression of his
personality. This (self-consistent) unity we call the style of life of the
individual. What is frequently labeled the ego is nothing more than the style
of the individual.

The very first requisite for a science of psychology is missing from

psychoanalysis, namely, a recognition of the coherence of the personality
and of the unity of the individual in all his expressions.

Gestalt psychology shows a better understanding of this coherence. But we

are not satisfied with the Gestalt alone or, as we prefer to say, with the
whole, once all the notes are brought into reference with the melody. We are
satisfied only when we have recognized in the melody the author and his
attitudes as well, for example, Each and Each's style of life. (p 175)
 CHAPTER 10:

SOCIAL INTEREST FROM AN ADLERIAN PERSPECTIVE: FORM

FUNDAMENTALS OF ADLERIAN PSYCHOLOGY: By Rudolf R. Dreikurs,
M.D. Alfred Adler Institute, Chicago, Ill. 1953:

(A friend with Adler)

What forms the personality of a human being? What makes a man act as he
does? What forces govern all the activities of the human mind? These are
the fundamental questions which psychology tries to answer. So many
people are now exploring them and there are so many theories that we are
apt to feel confused. Some assume that the life of each individual is
determined by the experiences and desires of his ancestors (lung). Others
regard the Psyche as the battlefield of a variety of instincts, corresponding
to various forms of the sexual instinct (The Psycho-Analysis of Freud) .
Many think that the most complicated behavior patterns are the outcome of
the automatic action of certain reflex mechanisms, which are built up and
maintained by habit (The Reflexology of Bechterev). others look upon man
with all his functions as the mere product of his environment, which
through the medium of education directs his behavior (The Behaviorism of
Watson). A number of other theories have been advanced by different
pioneers in order to explain psychic phenomena. The leading idea of the
Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler is found in his recognition of the
importance of human society, not only for the development of the individual
character, but also for the orientation of every single action and emotion in
the life of a human being.

There are certain species that cannot exist without close contact with their
kind. Man belongs to these. Nature has not fitted him to survive
singlehanded. He is not equipped in the same way as other animals for the
struggle tor existence. He neither has weapons of attack in the form of
sharp teeth, great physical strength and powerful claws, nor is he able to
defend his life by (p 1) extraordinary swiftness or inconspicuous smallness.
It seems that men formed herds exactly like other herding animals simply
because this was necessary in order to preserve existence. [1 It is a well-
known fact that birds fitted to share the struggle for existence and to rear
their young in pairs. gather together in flocks before undertaking the
difficult task which a long journey involves. Likewise weak, defenseless
animals form herds in order to organize a better defense. The formation of a
community is a very effective way of preserving existence, and therefore it
is often adopted. but it is not the only way. Animals similar to those living in
communities are also frequently found leading a solitary mode of existence
( wild elephants).]

Most of us have no adequate idea of the extent to which man nowadays

depends on co-operation with his fellow men. We have only to think of the
thousands of people whose labor we employ each day, or need only
consider how many people have co-operated to provide our houses,
clothing, food, and a thousand other necessities of our daily lives. For
thousands of years man has lived in more or less close social relations with
his fellow men and has adapted himself to a system of division of labor and
mutual assistance. The human infant is one of the most defenseless
creatures in the world. He cannot find his food without help, nor even move
alone. In exercising all his functions he depends on the co-operation of
others.

The question now arises: to what extent can living in a closely knit
community form the character of an individual? It might seem, as Freud
maintains, that human instincts adapt themselves only incompletely and
faultily to the reality of close social relationships, and that the human
Psyche is indeed at the mercy of incompatible demands-the need for
adjustment to the community, and the needs of innate instincts. [2
Throughout the book the reader will find several references to the basic
differences between Freud’s Psycho-Analysis and Adler's Individual
Psychology. Such references are indicated because of the affinity and
contradictions between these two schools of thought, which often puzzle
the student. A thorough comparison cannot be presented in this book, but a
few indications of the different aspects presented by each may contribute to
some clarification. At this point we may refer to one of the basic
differences. For Freud all human conflicts are intra-personal, caused by
opposing conflicts within the personality structure, i.e., between the
person's Ego, Super Ego and Id, the unconscious. For Adler, all problems
and conflicts are inter-personal. This implies a different emphasis on both
the origin of conflicts and on therapeutic procedures. For Freud, the
maladjustment with its consequent disturbance of human relationships
originates in the inner-personal conflicts, while for Adler the inner conflicts
express disturbed human relationships. Freud emphasizes the inner needs,
while Adler emphasizes the significance of the attitude toward others.]
Observation shows that not only among men, but also among animals,
close social relationships, with the very delicate adjustment to (p 2) the
claims of others which is involved in such relationships, decisively affect
the nature and characteristics of species, and even enable some individuals
to free themselves from laws of nature which otherwise prove generally
irresistible. All living creatures feel a compulsion to maintain life, which
causes them to seek for food, and a desire to propagate themselves, which
finds its fulfillment in sex. And yet under certain circumstances men refuse
to obey their natural instincts. Children may choose to refuse food if they
think such tactics are the best they can adopt in a struggle with their
parents. Prisoners starve themselves as a form of protest. Thousands upon
thousands of people who wish to evade the claims of a love relationship
suppress every sexual desire. Man has tamed his natural instincts and
subordinated them to his attitude to his environment; and we find that the
bees go to even greater lengths. They have reduced the sexual instinct--
0therwise an all-powerful instinct, dominating the whole animal kingdom-to
a precisely ordered function, which they regulate in accordance with the
needs of their commonwealth at any given moment. They not only
command means enabling them to produce males or females, according to
the needs of the group, but they can also allot the sexual function to certain
individuals and deprive others of it by simple changes in the diet. Thus
creatures like bees, who live in the most closely knit communities known to
us, can reverse generally valid biological laws. This supports Alfred Adler's
view of the importance of society for the development of individual
character among human beings.

When we observe people we find that the nature, character (p 3) and action
of an individual are determined by experiences he encounters in the
community within which he grows up. Here we have seem to approach
Watson’s theory of Behaviorism, according to which man is the mere
product of his environment. But if we look deeper we find that in addition to
the influence of environment another vitally important circumstance
remains to be considered. Different people respond in different ways to the
same experience and influences. Man does not merely react. He adopts an
individual attitude. The attitude adopted depends on the impressions the
individual forms in early childhood. Environment is indeed a forceful factor.
Yet this environment is no the individual’s real environment, but merely his
environment as it appears subjectively to him. Therefore the decisive factor
for the development of character is not the influence of environment, but
the attitude to environment which the individual take up. Man develops his
characteristic behavior - by opposition or support, negation or affirmation,
acceptance or non-acceptance of the group into which he is born.

Man’s urge to adapt himself to the arbitrary conditions of his environment is

expressed by social interest innate in every human being. But this innate
social characteristic, which is common to all, must be developed if the
individual is to be qualified to fulfill the complicated demands of the
community in which he lives.

The human community sets three tasks for every individual. They are: work,
which means contributing to the welfare of (p 4) others, friendship, which
embraces social relationships which comrades and relatives, and love,
which is the most intimate union which some one of the other sex and
represents the strongest and closest emotional relationship which can exist
between two human beings.

These three tasks embrace the whole of human life with all its desires and
activities. All human suffering originates from the difficulties which
complicate the tasks. The possibility of fulfilling them does not depend on
the individual's talents nor on his intelligence. Men of outstanding capacity
fail where others with far inferior powers achieve relative successes. It all
depends on social interest. The better this is developed and the happier the
relationship between the individual and the human community , the more
successfully does he fulfill the three life tasks, and the better balanced his
character and personality appear.

Social interest is expressing subjectively in the consciousness of having

something in common with other people and of being one of them. People
can develop their capacity for co-operation only if they feel that in spite of
all external dissimilarities they are not fundamentally different from other
people-if they feel belonging. A man's ability to co-operate may therefore be
regarded as a measure of the development of his social interest.

A specific example will help us to visualize the situation more clearly: A

man becomes a member of a group, a club, a political party or some other
association. His social interest expresses itself subjectively in his
consciousness of being a part. Expressed objectively it will show how far
he is able to co-operate there. On his social interest depends how soon he
makes contact with others, whether and to what extent he can adapt himself
to others, whether he is capable of feeling with and understanding other
members. A man who thinks only of himself, of how he is to uphold his own
dignity and of the role he means to play, is sure to cause trouble within his
circle of friends and acquaintances. (p 5)

Readiness to co-operate, which is one of the characteristics of a good

comrade, is tested most rigorously in difficult situations. Most people are
perfectly willing to co-operate so long as everything is to their liking. It is
much more difficult to remain a good comrade in an uncongenial situation.
If the tie which binds a man to a group is weak, he will easily break away as
soon as anything he does not like happens. The stronger his feeling of
membership, the more surely will he remain loyal to the group, even when
he cannot enforce his own wishes. We never find conditions which entirely
conform to our wishes in any human relationship, be it friendship, the
family, love or work. Sooner or later, therefore, we are bound to become
involved in critical situations, and the way we behave then will show
whether we are community minded or not.

Another characteristic of the good comrade is his readiness to demand less

than he offers. Nowadays most people brought up in large towns are
spoiled children, who measure their happiness and satisfaction only by
what they get. This is a grave error, for which thousands pay in
unhappiness and suffering. People who make it their objective to get as
much as possible are always clutching emptiness. They are insatiable. Only
a rare and brief moment of attainment rewards months or years of
covetousness and ambition. None of these who can seek their happiness as
part of the whole, that is to say, in the contribution they themselves and
their lives. The social interest therefore is expressed by willingness to
contribute with thought of reward.

We shall have a sufficiently reliable criterion as to whether any given action

takes into account the needs of the commonweal, if we observe to what
extent the action is objective. Objective action implies suitable and right
behavior in any situation. It is impossible to prescribe how anyone should
behave in this or that situation. Every situation involves a special and very
complicated set of circumstances, and no one can say (p 6) beforehand
how they should be handled. The crucial questions are:-Have the rules of
community life been observed? Is the individual ready to subordinate
himself to them? If so, he will know more or less the right course to adopt in
any situation, no matter how difficult, because he will be able to regard his
problems objectively. He will never be baffled if he can subordinate ego-
centric wishes to the objective needs of the group.

In spite of the apparent chaos of present-day social relationships we have

rules to guide us. These rules are clear to everyone even though they have
never been definitely formulated.

Each person becomes aware of the relentless logic of social life as soon as
he tries to escape it. Success or failure is the answer given by the society to
fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the life tasks.

Frequently a man whose contacts with the community are superficial

appears to be consistently successful, while another who always seemed to
have adapted himself sufficiently to the needs of society may suddenly
break down. The explanation is that the strength of the social interest is not
always put to the proof. If a man is spared by favorable circumstances from
undergoing rigorous tests, he may easily give others the impression of
being able to solve every problem. He is like a pupil who for some time
escapes examinations. His knowledge is taken for granted. If a man has to
endure great hardships his lack of training for life will be revealed more
quickly. But sooner or later everyone has to show how far his social interest
has developed. This moment decides whether his life can be happy or not.
Therefore disaster and misfortune are not inevitable causes of suffering and
discouragement, but test situations, which prove whether people are ready
to co-operate. While one accepts defeat, another keeps a brave heart. He
never loses his feeling of comradeship with other people and in the end he
wins through.

Yet the social interest does not mean, as misrepresentations of the

teachings of Alfred Adler often incorrectly state, simply a feeling of
belonging to a certain group or class of people, or (7) benevolence towards
the whole race. Sometimes the interests of various groups conflict. (This is
the dilemma of a workman on strike, who may hesitate between his family's
welfare and the need for solidarity with his fellow workers. ) In such
perplexing situations the social interest causes us to see that the interests
of the super-ordinate group, which are justified on the ground of objective
needs, have the first claim on us. We certainly want to do what we can to
help men to found a society embracing the whole human race, to whose
interests all the special interests of individuals and groups would be
subordinated. But in practice we are still a long way from realizing this
ideal. The social interest has no fixed objective. Much more truly may it be
said to create an attitude to life, a desire to co-operate with others in some
way and to master the situations of life. Social interest is the expression of
our capacity for give and take. (p 9)

CHAPTER 11 FUNDAMENTALS OF ADLERIAN PSYCHOLOGY: By Rudolf

R. Dreikurs, M.D. Alfred Adler Institute, Chicago, Ill. 1953:

THE LIFE PLAN AND THE LIFE STYLE: At birth the child
encounters an unknown world and a mode of life which he has to learn.
Above all he has to learn the rules of the human community , to perform
functions and master the tasks set by life. At first the child sees only that
part of life and of the human community which is bounded by his
environment, the family in which he is living. To him this environment
means "life" and the members of the family seem to be "society" and he
attempts to adapt himself to them.

He seeks to maintain himself within this concrete group by means of a

variety of acquired accomplishments, characteristics, modes of behavior,
capacities and artifices. The difficulties he encounters have been outlined in
previous chapters. If we now examine the situation more closely we find
that the child is bound to get the impression that the difficulties he
personally experiences are the absolute difficulties of life. He does not
realize that the other people round about him are involved in conflicts of an
entirely different nature. His growing intelligence prompts him to overcome
the difficulties of his position, so far as this appears possible, unaided and
alone.

This explains why every individual by the time he is four to six years old
has developed a definite character and why any fundamental change of
character after the fourth to sixth year is almost impossible without outside
aid through psychotherapy. Character is therefore simply the manifestation
of a certain plan which the child has evolved and to which he will adhere
throughout the rest of his life.

A child's life plan does not grow out of a certain peculiarity nor out of
isolated experiences, but out of the constant repetition of the difficulties,
real or imagined, which he encounters. Each individual will find out special
ways and means which appear to be serviceable for his special plan. Out of
the individual's (p 43) special life plan develops the life style which
characterizes him and everything he does. His thoughts, actions and
wishes seize upon definite symbols and conform to definite patterns. The
life style is comparable to a characteristic theme in apiece of music. It
brings the rhythm of recurrence into our lives. Everyone offers the stoutest
opposition to any attempt that is made for whatever reasons to change his
life style.

So we can understand why an only child becomes timid if he feels that to be

alone and unaided is the greatest hardship in life-a difficulty which cannot
be surmounted, and why he betrays himself at every turn if he rates his
importance in the community in terms of the recognition and consideration
he gets. We can understand why the eldest child of a family may live in
constant dread of being supplanted and why a second child may always
feel at a disadvantage. It also becomes clearer why in later life these people
continue to behave as though they were still living in the same situation as
in childhood.

In addition to the difficulties encountered within the family circle, the child’s
social environment plays an important part in fixing the life plan. The
family's position in the community may cause the child to conclude that
community life involves certain social and economic dangers. Social
conditions may determine the ideas he forms about his position in relation
to his comrades and playmates-in short, in relation to all his fellow beings.
In order to contend with all these dangers he tries to evolve a definite plan.
An imaginary example may make the situation plainer. Let us picture a child
growing up in a colony of thieves. He learns that if he is to maintain himself
at all he must keep a careful watch on his property, distrust others and
defend himself against their predatory tendencies. Later on he is able to
leave the colony and live in the ordinary world where thieves do not
compose the entire population. But he continues to behave as before,
because his chief fear in life is to become the victim of a thief. He does not
believe the assurances other people give him that this fear is excessive,
and is always looking out for incidents (p 44) which appear to justify his
behavior. Whenever anything is stolen he feels triumphant. If on the other
hand he hears of an honest finder who has given up his find, he is inclined
to dismiss the report as untrue and say that he is not simpleton enough to
believe such a fantastic story . And if sooner or later it becomes impossible
for him to doubt a person's honesty, he gets out of his dilemma in another
way. This man, he says, must certainly be crazy-at least, he is different from
normal people.

Probably, however, his companions will appeal to his better nature and tell
him that he really must give up his unreasonable mistrust. He may then try
to prove that he is broad-minded and actually give his confidence to some
person; but it is practically certain that the first person he trusts will turn
out a thief -partly because people of this type have been familiar to him
from childhood and he feels secretly at home with them, and partly because
he can turn the incident to account as an irrefutable argument: "There now,
you see what happens if I believe what you say!" After this he can continue
to practice without let or hindrance the rules of conduct he learned as a
child and hold the wickedness of other people responsible for all the
disagreeable experiences he goes through in consequence.

This obviously imaginary example of a single peculiar circumstance

exaggerated out of all proportion to the real conditions of life illustrates
firstly the importance of the life plan. Secondly it shows that it is possible to
persist in the course first chosen only by grossly misrepresenting facts
encountered later. We are forced to regard everything we see and all our
experiences from a biased standpoint if we wish to preserve intact the
mistaken ideas about life and ourselves which we formed as children. The
private logic which each person evolves appears to justify his mistaken
behavior, and prevents him from seeing that most of the difficulties and
disappointments in his life are the logical consequences of mistakes in his
life plan. We "make" our experiences according to our "biased
apperception" and can learn by experiences only if no personal bias is
involved. (p 45)

THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION: The theory that each person has an innate
individuality from birth would appear to find confirmation in the fact that
children in the same family ate different from each other. It is indeed
admitted by those who uphold this theory that the parents' behavior can
influence the child's attitude, and through this the development of his
character, but they say that the parents treat all the children alike and that
therefore the differences between the children must be attributed to their
equipment.

Upon closer examination, however, it is found that each child has an

essentially different position in the family and must see all the
circumstances of his childhood in an entirely different light. Besides, in
practice the parents never treat two children alike, but behave very
differently to each. There may be a difference in the affection they feel for
the children, and there certainly will be in the opinions they hold about
them. At this point it might be useful to suggest briefly some points of view
which are characteristic of the different children in a family.

Let us begin with the eldest child. The outstanding fact of his childhood is
that at first, though only for a limited period, he was the only child. While he
is the only child he is likely to get far too much spoiling. He is the center of
attraction and the special object of his parents' care. Then he suddenly
finds himself in the midst of a tremendous experience. A brother or sister is
thrust upon him. Even if the first child is already a few years old he is hardly
ever able to gauge the situation correctly. He notices only that another child
now monopolizes his parents, especially his mother, who devotes herself to
him, and lavishes any amount of time and care on him. He readily believes
that the newcomer will rob him of her love. He cannot know, of course, that
he was once looked after by his mother in exactly the same way and that all
the care she bestows on the second (p. 37) child does not mean that she
loves him more. So, feeling that he has been set aside, the eldest child
frequently shows understandable jealousy when another child is born, even
if before the birth of this child he longed for a brother or sister.

If the mother can make the elder child aware of his undiminished value by
pointing out to him his importance as the elder and therefore more
advanced child. and so enlist his will to co-operate. he will adapt himself to
the new situation with comparative ease.. But the parents may not
understand what is going on in the elder child's mind and may grow
impatient over his unfounded jealousies and ailments. If, as is most
probable, they then take the younger child under their protection in order to
defend him against the elder child's overbearing conduct, the elder child
may easily give up trying to win good opinions by making himself useful, as
he probably could do, but become obstinate and try to take up his parents'
attention by resorting to every possible trick that naughtiness can suggest
to him.
Even if under the most favorable circumstances two children of the same
parents manage to live together in apparent harmony they may become
involved in a competition which, though not always openly declared is none
the less deadly. The elder child tries either to preserve his superiority or, if
it is already endangered, at least to prevent the younger child from attaining
superiority. The older the second child becomes and the greater the part he
takes in activities which formerly appeared to be the prerogative of the elder
child, the more reasonable seems the latter's fear of being overtaken and
surpassed. He endeavors in every way to safeguard his superior position as
the elder and more advanced child.

What has been said about the first child suggest the situation which the
second child meets. He never loses sight of the brother or sister who has
got a short start of him. He fully realizes that the elder child is endeavoring
to impose his superiority on him. He resents the imputation that he is less
important. He regards everything the other child can do and he himself
cannot do as an indication of his own inferiority. So (p 38) every second
child tries to catch up with the first child. This explains why second children
are generally much more active than first children, whether they choose the
line of useful achievement or naughtiness.

The outcome of the competition between the first and second child depends
mainly on the support each child gets from others. The one who has the
parents on his side is, of course, in a stronger position. Occasionally also
an elder child, like Esau in the Bible, may renounce his birthright because
he simply gives up trying to hold his position against the attacks of thee
younger child. The child who emerges victorious from the struggle is more
likely to be successful throughout the remainder of life than the other, who
will always accept defeat too easily. The duel between the first two children
generally decides the whole subsequent course of their lives.

As frequently observed, however, one child is not always victorious in

everything and the other defeated in everything. One achieves superiority in
one activity and the other in another. When this happens we have the
plainest proof that the development of individual character is influenced
even in the smallest detail by the attitude to environment adopted in
childhood.

It is not too much to say that we usually find a fundamental difference both
as regards nature and character between the first two children. This
becomes easy to understand if we remember that each of the two tries to
achieve superiority in the very field where the other encounters difficulties.
The younger child in particular develops an almost uncanny power for
detecting the elder child's weak points and proceeds to win praise from
parents and teachers by achieving brilliant successes where the other has
failed. When there is keen competition and only a slight disparity of ages
between two children of the same parents, we often find that later on at
school each does particularly well in subjects in which the other does
badly. If one child is puny and ailing the other grows up robust and hardy. If
one is exceptionally clever at lessons the other tries to win recognition by
success in something else. A child whose rival is (p 39) very attractive in
appearance will probably try to impress people with his intelligence or
courage; but obviously it would be impossible to enumerate all the
variations produced by this preference for the opposite.

The difference in character, temperament and interest between the first and
second child often seems to be based on inherited capacities, especially if
each of the children appears to take after a different parent. But a child's
psychological attitude can make the physical likeness to one parent more
pronounced. A certain similarity may result from imitation of this parent's
facial expressions, gestures, attitudes and peculiarities of speech; for a
characteristic cast of features is gradually formed by constant repetition of
the same facial movements.

To a far greater extent, however, similarity of nature and character is the

outcome of the child's special training. It is true that we cannot tell
beforehand why the child should imitate this particular trait. We can only be
wise after the event. Often the child tries to acquire the characteristics of
the parent whose ally in family quarrels he has become.1 He seizes on
these characteristics because he hopes to reach the goal of superiority (p
40) by evincing like the parent who is his ally a definite character as against
the other members of the family. Actuated by the same desire to gain
power, many children imitate the parent with whom they are in direct
conflict. The parent who counters many wishes and is very severe is the
child's conception of power. This explains why children may imitate the
parent they fear. They merely wish to have this parent's power. So we are
able to formulate the only fundamental law governing the development of
the child's character: he trains those qualities by which he hopes to achieve
significance or even a degree of power and superiority in the family
constellation.

In a large family of children the conflict between the first and second child
is repeated under some form or other lower down in the family, but it
generally tends to be less fierce. Consequently children who come in the
middle of a family usually develop more balanced characters. The third
child frequently sides with one of the two elder children. Often two children
lower down in the family treat each other as competitors like the first and
second children.

If there are four children, the middle child finds himself in a characteristic
situation. He has neither the same rights as the older nor the privileges of
the younger. Consequently, a middle child often feels squeezed out
between the two. He may become convinced of the unfairness of life and
feel cheated and abused. In some instances, the middle child can overcome
his predicament by pushing down his two opponents and elevating himself
through special accomplishments. The position of a middle child is
accentuated when three children follow one another closely, when a girl is
between two boys, or vice versa.

The youngest child has a special role to play. Not merely one child, but all
the other children are ahead of him. All the other members of the family
spoil him and regard him as the little one. He generally develops
characteristics which make it likely that other people will help him to shape
his life, such as helplessness, a winning nature and whimsicality. But
youngest (p 41) children often prove very clever if their smallness becomes
an impulse for outstanding achievement.

A boy in a family of girls and vice-versa one girl in a family of boys is in a

special position. These children will form a characteristic appreciation of
their roles and will develop qualities which help them to play these roles.
They often overestimate the importance of the role of their own sex,
because this represents the essential difference between themselves and
all the other children. Naturally the importance they attach to the role played
by their own sex also depends on the value attached to it within the whole
family and above all on the value attached by the parents to their own sex
roles, with the possible superiority of either the father or the mother.

So it becomes understandable why people adopt a certain attitude to their

fellow beings in childhood, and why above all they get a definite idea of
themselves. We must now try to see why a line of conduct which was
reasonable and understandable in childhood is pursued throughout the rest
of life. (p 42)

THE FICTIVE GOALS - THE MASCULINE PROTEST: As we have seen, what

most often endangers the success of the individual's attempts to fit into the
community and his hope of living a sane and happy life is the feeling of his
own inferiority. So each human being's chief problem is the problem of his
own value. As long as his value remains unchallenged be is in no danger of
creating problems for himself-not even when he encounters external
difficulties which do not involve psychological problems but most often
provide a stimulus for consistent effort.

Uncertain people who come into sharp conflict with their surroundings,
including neurotics of all kinds, have the greatest difficulty in solving this
problem of their own value. But no human being is entirely free from
neurosis, least of all the modern city dweller, since the first human
community he knew was most probably the discordant family of the present
day.

In obedience to the human law of overcompensation, every human being's

life is directed toward the goal of increased personal importance. As the
individual, while remaining unconscious that he has set this goal before
himself, nevertheless gives a bias to his whole life and to all his action in
his endeavor to reach it, this fictive goal is the key to the riddle of his whole
personality . The stronger his feeling of inferiority the more complicated his
behavior becomes.

The child who has a constitutional inferiority-we may include the ugly child,
the pampered child and the child who bas been brought up too strictly in
the same group-will make great efforts to escape the many hardships of his
life and to ward off the danger of a defeat which seems to threaten at some
distant future date. He feels that he needs a signpost to keep in view (p 46)
because he has no sense of direction. So he has recourse to a helpful
fiction. He regards himself as unskillful, inferior, subordinated and
uncertain in judgment. He finds a guiding line which becomes the normal
line followed by his thoughts and actions when he takes as his second fixed
point his father or mother, whom he endows in imagination with all the
power in the world. He then tries to rise above his uncertainty to the
supposed security of his all-powerful father, and even surpass him.

All feelings of uncertainty and inferiority give rise to a need for an objective
to guide, reassure and make life bearable. The result is the crystallization
and hardening of every characteristic which represents a guiding line in the
chaos of life and so lessens uncertainty . In the many complications and
perplexities of life the guiding lines are intended to divide right from wrong
and above from below.

In the eyes of the child brought up in the modern civilized world the
concepts masculine and feminine are just such a pair of contraries
corresponding to above and below. Our civilization is mainly a masculine
civilization, and the child gets the impression that while all adults enjoy
superior powers the man's position is superior to the woman's. Although
she occasionally manages to encroach on his privileges, he still appears to
be more powerful, more important and more fortunate. He has greater
physical strength; he has the advantage in height; he has a more powerful
voice. As soon as the child is able to appreciate the numerous social
privileges enjoyed by men he may easily come to regard the male as the
symbol of power. His concept of masculine will include whatever is "above"
and his concept of feminine whatever is "below." The woman's role seems
to be one of service and long suffering. The boy's goal of superiority
prompts the resolve: "I'm going to be a real man." From this standpoint he
protests against any treatment which seems likely (p 47) to lower his value.
So the "masculine protest" may become the main fiction of his whole
personality .

We find that women also have masculine goals if they are unwilling to
accept their sex role. Some desire power, knowledge or strength as an
expression of the masculine ideal. In fact, most people have a masculine
goal or an equivalent of a masculine goal.

The masculine goal is, of course, only a fiction, which determines what is
"above'; and what "below." and enables the individual to select a guiding
line. Every child creates any pairs of contrary concepts of "above" and
"below," as his own experiences in life suggest. Even normal children want
to be tall and strong and take command in something-"like father," and this
final goal influences their behavior. Any child who feels small and helpless
may accept the guiding fiction that he should behave as if his role was to be
superior to everybody.

The neurotic is not alone in trying to make his life conform to fictions which
increase his sense of personal importance. The healthy person also would
have to give up all hope of orientation in the world if he did not try to make
his picture of the world and his experiences conform to fictions. These
fictions assume very definite shape in times of uncertainty, and find
expression in the individual's opinions, beliefs and ideals.

The fiction of a final goal of power attracts all human beings, especially
people who feel uncertain of themselves, such as neurotics. The influence
of this fictive goal is enormous. It draws all psychic forces in its direction.

A human being's fictive goals and the guiding lines by which he hopes to
reach his goals remain unchanged throughout his life as long as they are
not disclosed by unusually penetrating self knowledge. That he must have if
he is to change them. A human being’s character is the outcome of his life
plan, fictive goals and guidelines. Passions and "instincts" are exaggerated
and intensified approaches. An apparently spontaneous change of
character may occasionally be observed, but if it was not due to the
exercise of an unusual degree of insight, but to external (p 48) influences,
such as a change of environment, it generally proves to have been
superficial. The most cherished goals were not abandoned. Consequently
the fundamental nature of the personality remained unaffected. The change
was merely a change in the choice of means.

An individual may consider being the first as essential for maintaining any
position in the group, because that was how he defeated his competitors as
a child. In that situation he has concluded he was lost and utterly worthless
unless he was first. The way in which he maintains his primacy depends on
the situation in which he finds himself. If he has a chance to be first in his
class, he may study hard to maintain this position. If unable to do so in a
higher school of learning, he may switch to another activity in which he still
can succeed over all others, either by athletic achievements, popularity ,
sexual attraction or some other achievement which he then may cultivate. If
there is no chance-according to his own evaluation of the situation-to be
the first by useful achievement, he may shift to the useless side and
become the "worst," either by misbehavior, drinking, gambling or illness.
The destructive powers of a patient who wants to be the worst patient are
as unlimited as the amount of work and effort which an over ambitious
"successful" person uses to stay on top. (p 49)

CHAPTER 12: NOTES FROM UNDERSTANDING HUMAN NATURE: ALFRED

ADLER: FACETT, Greenwich, Conn.

THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION: WE HAVE often drawn attention to the fact

that before we can judge a human being we must know the situation in
which he grew up. An important moment is the position which a child
occupied in his family constellation. Frequently we can catalogue human
beings according to this view point after we have gained sufficient
expertness, and can recognize whether an individual is a first-born, an only
child, the youngest child, or the like.

People seem to have known for a long time that the youngest child is
usually a peculiar type. This is evidenced by the countless fairy tales,
legends, Biblical stories, in which the youngest always appears in the same
light. As a matter of fact he does grow up in a situation quite different from
that of all other people, for to parents he represents a particular child, and
as the youngest he experiences an especially solicitous treatment. Not only
is he the youngest, but also usually the smallest, and by consequence, the
most in need of help. His other brothers and sisters have already acquired
some degree of independence and growth during the time of his weakness,
and for this reason he usually grows up in an atmosphere warmer than that
which the others have experienced.

Hence there arise a number of characteristics which influence his attitude

toward life in a remarkable way, and cause him to be a remarkable
personality. One circumstance which seemingly is a contradiction for our
theory must be noted. No child likes to be the smallest, the one whom one
does not trust, the one in whom one has no confidence, all the time. Such
knowledge stimulates a child to prove that he can do everything. His
striving for power becomes markedly accentuated and we find the youngest
very usually a man who has developed a desire to overcome all others,
satisfied only with the very best this type is not uncommon. One group of
these youngest children excels every other member of the family, and
becomes the family's most capable member. But there is another more
unfortunate group of these same youngest children; they also have a desire
to excel, but lack the necessary activity and self-confidence, as a result of
their relationships to their older (p 123) brothers and sisters. If the older
children are not to be excelled, the youngest frequently shies from his
tasks, becomes cowardly, a chronic plaintiff forever seeking an excuse to
evade his duties. He does not become less ambitious, but he assumes that
type of ambition which forces him to wriggle out of situations, and satisfy
his ambition in activity outside of the necessary problems of life, to the end
that he may avoid the danger of an actual test of ability, so far as possible.

It will undoubtedly have occurred to many readers that the youngest child
acts as though he were neglected and carried a feeling of inferiority within
him. In our investigations we have always been able to find this feeling of
inferiority and have been able also to deduce the quality and fashion of his
psychic development from the presence of this torturing sentiment. In this
sense a youngest child is like a child who has come into the world with
weak organs. What the child feels need not actually be the case. It does not
matter what really has happened, whether an individual is really inferior or
not. What is important is his interpretation of his situation. We know very
well that mistakes are easily made in childhood. At that time a child is faced
with a great number of questions, of possibilities, and consequences.

What shall an educator do? Shall he impose additional stimuli by spurring

on the vanity of this child? Should he constantly push him into the limelight
so that he is always the first? This would be a feeble response to the
challenge of life. Experience teaches us that it makes very little difference
whether one is first or not. It would be better to exaggerate In the other
direction, and maintain that being first, or the best, is unimportant. We are
really tired of having nothing but the first and best people. History as well
as experience demonstrates that happiness does not consist in being the
first or best. To teach a child such a principle makes him onesided; above
all it robs him of his chance of being a good fellow man.

The first consequence of such doctrines is that a child thinks only of

himself and occupies himself in wondering whether someone will overtake
him. Envy and hate of his fellows and anxiety for his own position, develop
in his soul. His very place in life makes a speeder, trying to beat out all
others, of the youngest. The racer, the marathon runner in his soul, is
betrayed by his whole behavior, especially in little gestures which are not
obvious to those who have not learned to judge his psychic life in all his
relationships. These are the children, (p 124) for instance, who always
march at the head of the procession and cannot bear to have anyone in
front of them. Some such race-course attitude is characteristic of a large
number of children.

This type of the youngest child is occasionally to be found as a clear-cut-

type example, although variations are common. Among the youngest we
find active and capable individuals who have gone so far that they have
become the saviors of their whole family. Consider the Biblical story of
Joseph! Here is a wonderful exposition of the situation of the youngest son.
It is as though the past had told us about it with a purpose and a clarity
arising in the full possession of the evidence which we acquire so
laboriously today. In the course of the centuries much valuable material has
been lost which we must attempt to find again.

Another type, which grows secondarily from the first, is often found.
Consider our marathon runner who suddenly comes to an obstacle which
he does not trust himself to hurdle. He attempts to avoid the difficulty by
going around it. When a youngest child of this type loses his courage he
becomes the most arrant coward that we can well imagine. We find him far
from the front, every labor seems too much for him, and he becomes a
veritable "alibi artist" who attempts nothing useful, but spends his whole
energy wasting time. In any actual conflict he always fails. Usually he is to
be found carefully seeking a field of activity in which every chance of
competition has been excluded. He will always find excuses for his failures.
He may contend that he was too weak or petted, or that his brothers and
sisters did not allow him to develop. HIS fate becomes more bitter if he
actually has a physical defect, in which case he is certain to make capital
out of his weakness to justify him in his desertion.

Both these types are hardly ever good fellow human beings. The first type
fares better in a world where competition is valued for itself. A man of this
type will maintain his spiritual equilibrium only at the cost of others,
whereas individuals of the second remain under the oppressive feeling of
their Inferiority and suffer from their lack of reconciliation with life as long
as they live.

The oldest child also has well-defined characteristics. For one thing he has
the advantage of an excellent position for the development of his psychic
life. History recognizes that the oldest son has had a particularly favorable
position. Among many peoples, in many classes, this advantageous status
has (p 125) become traditional. There is no question for instance that
among .the European farmers the first born knows his position from his
early childhood and realizes that some day he will take over the farm, and
therefore he finds himself in a much better position than the other children
who know that the must leave the father's farm at some time; in other strata
of society it is frequently held that the oldest son will some day be the head
of the house. Even where this tradition has not actually become
crystallized, as in simple bourgeois or proletarian families the oldest child
is usually the one whom one accredits with enough power and common
sense to be the helper or foreman of his parents. One can imagine how
valuable it is to a child to be constantly entrusted with responsibilities by
his environment. We can imagine that his thought processes are somewhat
like this: "You are the larger, the stronger, the older, and therefore you must
also be cleverer than the others."

If his development in this direction goes on without disturbance then we

shall find him with the traits of a guardian of law and order. Such persons
have an especially high evaluation of power. This extends not only to their
own personal power, but affects .their evaluation of the concepts of power
m general. Power IS something which is quite self-understood for the oldest
child, something which has weight and must be honored. It is not surprising
that such individuals are markedly conservative.

The striving for power in the case of a second-born child also has its
especial nuance. Second-born children are constantly under steam, striving
for superiority under pressure: the race-course attitude which determines
their activity in life is very evident m their actions. The fact that there is
someone ahead of him who has already gained power is a strong stimulus
for the second born. If he is enabled to develop his powers and takes up the
battle with the first born, he will usually move forward with a great deal of
elan, the while the first born, possessing power, feels himself relatively
secure until the second threatens to surpass him.

This situation has also been described in a very lively fashion m the Biblical
legend of Esau and Jacob. In this story the battle goes on relentlessly, not
so much for actual power, but for the semblance of power; in cases like this
it continues with a certain compulsion until the goal is reached and the first
born is overcome, or the battle is lost, and the retreat, which often evinces
itself in nervous diseases, begins. The attitude of the (p 126) second born is
similar to the envy of the poor classes. There is a dominant note of being
slighted, neglected, in it. The second born may place his goal so high that
he suffers from it his whole life, annihilates his inner harmony in following,
not the veritable facts of life, but an evanescent fiction and the valueless
semblance of things.

The only child of course finds himself in a very particular situation. He is at

the utter mercy of the educational methods of his environment. His parents,
so to speak, have no choice in the matter. They place their whole
educational zeal upon their only child. He becomes dependent to a high
degree, waits constantly for someone to show him the way, and searches
for support at' all times. Pampered throughout his life, he is accustomed to
no difficulties, because one has always removed difficulties from his way.
Being constantly the center of attention he very easily acquires the feeling
that he really counts for something of great value. His position is so difficult
that mistaken attitudes are almost inevitable in his case. If the parents
understand the dangers of his situation, to be sure, there is a possibility of
preventing many of them, but at best it remains a difficult problem.

Parents of "only" children are frequently exceptionally cautious, people

who have themselves experienced life as a great danger, and therefore
approach their child with an inordinate solicitude. The child in turn
interprets their attentions and admonitions as a source of additional
pressure. Constant attention to health and well being finally stimulate him
to conceive of the world as a very hostile place. An eternal fear of
difficulties arises in him and he approaches them in an unpracticed and
clumsy manner because he has tested only the pleasant things in life. Such
children have difficulties with every independent activity and sooner or later
they become useless for life. Shipwrecks in their life's activity are to be
expected. Their life approaches that of a parasite who does nothing, but
enjoys life .while the rest of the world cares for his wants.

Various combinations are possible in which several brothers and sisters of

the same or opposite sexes compete with each other. The evaluation of
anyone case therefore becomes exceedingly difficult. The situation of an
only boy among several girls is a case in point. A feminine influence
dominates such a household and the boy is pushed into the background,
particularly if he is the youngest, and sees himself opposed by a closed
phalanx of women. His striving for recognition (p 127) encounters great
difficulties. Threatened on all sides, he never senses with certainty the
privilege which in our retarded masculine civilization is given to every male.
A lasting insecurity, an inability to evaluate himself as a human being, is his
most characteristic trait. He may become so intimidated by his womenfolk
that he feels that to be a man is equivalent to occupying a position of lesser
honor. On the one hand his courage and self-confidence may easily be
eclipsed, or on the other the stimulus may be so drastic that the young boy
forces himself to great achievements. Both cases arise from the same
situation. What becomes of such boys in the end is determined by other
concomitant and closely related phenomena.

We see therefore that the very position of the child in the family may lend
shape and color to all the instincts, tropisms, faculties and the like, which
he brings with him into the world. This affirmation robs of all value the
theories of the inheritance of especial traits or talents, which are so harmful
to all educational effort. There are doubtless occasions and cases in which
the effect of hereditary influences can be shown, as for instance, in a child
who grows up removed entirely from his parents, yet develops certain
similar "familial" traits. This becomes much more comprehensible if one
remembers how closely certain types of mistaken development in a child
are related to inherited defects of the body. Take a given child who comes
into the world with a weak body which results, in turn, in his greater tension
toward the demands of life and his environment. If his father came into the
world with similarly defective organs and approached the world with a
similar tension, it is not to be wondered at that similar mistakes and
character traits should result. Viewed from this standpoint it would seem to
us that the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics is based upon
very weak evidence.

From our previous descriptions we may assume that whatever the errors to
which a child is exposed in his development, the most serious
consequences arise from his desire to elevate himself over all his fellows,
to seek more personal power which will give him advantages over his fellow
man. !n our culture he is practically compelled to develop according to a
fixed pattern. If we wish to prevent such a perilous development we must
know the difficulties he has to meet and understand them. There is one
single and essential point of view which helps us to overcome all these
difficulties; it is the view-point of the development of the social feeling of
this development succeeds, obstacles are insignificant, but since the (p
128) opportunities for this development are relatively rare in our culture, the
difficulties which a child encounters play an important role. Once this is
recognized we shall not be surprised to find many people who spend their
whole life fighting for their lives and others to whom life is a vale of
sorrows. We must understand that they are the victims of a mistaken
development whose unfortunate consequence is that their attitude toward
life also is mistaken.

Let us be very modest then, in our judgment of our fellows, and above all,
let us never allow ourselves to make any moral judgments, judgments
concerning the moral worth of a human being! On the contrary, we must
make our knowledge of these facts socially valuable. We must approach
such a mistaken and misled human being sympathetically, because we. are
ma position to have a much better idea of what is going on within him than
he is himself. This gives rise to important new points of view in the matter
of education. The very recognition of the source of error puts a great many
influential instruments for betterment into our hands. By analyzing the
psychic structure and development of any human being we understand not
only his past, but may deduce further what his future probably will be. Thus
our science gives us some conception of what a human being really is. He
becomes a living being for us, not merely a flat silhouette. And as a
consequence we can have a richer and more meaningful sense of his value
as a fellow human than is usual in our day. (p 129)

CHAPTER 13: THE STYLE OF LIFE: FROM SOCIAL INTEREST: A

CHALLENGE TO MANKIND: ALFRED ADLER: Capricorn books, New York.
1964:

We will summarily reject no method and no way of discovering the attitude

of the individual to the questions of life and of finding out the meaning
which life wants to disclose to us. The individual’s interpretation of the
meaning of life is not a trivial matter, for it is ultimately the plumb-line of his
thinking, feeling, and acting. The real meaning of life, however, is shown in
the opposition that meets the individual who acts wrongly. The task of
instruction, education and healing is to bridge the distance between the real
instruction, education, and healing is to bridge the distance between the
real meaning of life and the erroneous action of the individual. Our
knowledge of man as an individual has existed from time immemorial To
give only a single instance, the historical and personal narratives of ancient
peoples-the Bible, Homer, Plutarch, and all the Greek and Roman poets,
sagas, fairy-tales, fables, and myths--show a brilliant understanding of the
human personality. Until more recent more recent times it was chiefly the
poet who best succeeded in getting the clue to a person's style of life. Their
ability to show the individual living, acting, and dying as an (p 32)
indivisible whole in closest connection with the problems of his
environment rouses our admiration to the highest pitch. There can be no
doubt that there were also unknown men of the people who were in advance
of others in their knowledge of human nature and who passed on their
experiences to their descendants. Plainly, both these men and the great
geniuses in the knowledge of humanity were distinguished by their more
profound insight into the connection of the mainsprings of human action
with one another. This talent could only have sprung from their sympathetic
bond with the community and from their interest in mankind. Their wider
experience, their better knowledge, their more profound insight, came as
the reward of their social feeling. There was one feature of their work that
could not be missed: that was their ability to describe the myriad,
incalculable expressive movements of the individual in such a way that
others were able to comprehend them without needing to have recourse to
weighing and measuring.

This power was due to their gift of divination. Only by guessing did they
come to see what lies behind and between the expressive movements,
namely, the individual's law of movement. Many people call this gift
'intuition', and believe that it is the special possession only of the loftiest
spirits. As a matter of fact, it is the most universal of all human gifts. Every
one makes use of it constantly in the chaos of life, before the abysmal
uncertainty of the future.

Since all our problems, the least as well as the greatest, are always new and
always modified, we would (p 33) constantly be involved in fresh mistakes if
we were forced to solve them by one single method-for instance, by
'conditioned reflexes'. This perpetual variety in our problems imposes on us
ever fresh demands, and forces us to test anew any mode of conduct we
may have adopted hitherto. Even in a game of cards 'conditioned reflexes'
are not of much use. Correct guessing is the first step towards the mastery
of our problems. But this correct guessing is the specially distinctive mark
of the man who is a partner, a fellow man, and is interested in the
successful solution of all human problems. Peculiar to him is the view into
the future of all human happenings, and this attracts him whether he is
examining human history in general or the fortunes of a single individual.

Psychology remained a harmless art until philosophy took charge of it. A

scientific knowledge of human nature has its roots in psychology and in the
anthropology of the philosophers. In the manifold attempts to bring all
human events under a comprehensive, universal law the individual man
could not be disregarded. The knowledge of the unity of all the individual's
expressive forms became an irrefutable truth. The transference to human
nature of the laws governing every event resulted in the adoption of varied
points of view, and the unfathomable, unknown regulating force was sought
for by Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Nietzsche, and
others in some unconscious motive power that was called either moral law,
will, , will to power, or the 'unconscious'. Along with the transference of
general laws to human activity introspection came into vogue. (p 34) By this
human beings were to be able to predicate something about psychical
events and the processes connected with them. This method did not remain
long in use. It fell rightly into discredit because there could be no assurance
of obtaining objective reports from anyone.

In an age of technical development the experimental method was

extensively used. With the help of apparatus and carefully selected
questions, tests were arranged that were meant to throw light on the
functions of the senses, on the intelligence, character, and personality. By
this method knowledge of the continuity of the personality was lost, or
could only be restored by guessing. The doctrine of heredity which later on
came to the fore gave up the whole attempt and contented itself with
showing that the main thing was the possession of capacities and not the
use made of them. The theory of the influence of the endocrine glands also
pointed in the same direction, and concentrated on special cases of
feelings of inferiority, and their compensation in the event of organic
inferiority.

Psychology underwent a renaissance with the advent of psycho-analysis.

This resurrected the omnipotent Ruler of human destiny in the from of
sexual libido and conscientiously depicted in the unconscious the pains of
hell, and original sin in the ‘sense of guilt’. Heaven was left out the account,
but this omission was afterwards rectified by the creation of the ‘ideal-ego’,
which found support in Individual Psychology’s ‘ideal’ goal of perfection.
Still, it was a notable attempt to read between the lines of consciousness - a
step forward towards the (p35) re-discovery of the style of life-of the
individual's line of movement-and of the meaning of life, although the
author of psycho-analysis, reveling in sexual metaphors, did not perceive
this goal that hovers before humanity. Besides, psycho-analysis was far too
cumbered by the world of spoiled children, and the result was that it always
saw in this type the permanent pattern of the psychical structure, and the
deeper layers of the mental life as apart ofhuman evolution remained
hidden from it. Its transitory success was due to the predisposition of the
immense number of pampered persons who willingly accepted the views of
psycho-analysis as rules universally applicable, and who were thereby
confirmed in their own style of life. The psycho-analytic technique was
directed, with great energy and patience, towards showing that expressive
gestures and symptoms were connected with the sexual libido, and making
human activity appear to be dependent on an inherent sadistic impulse.
Individual Psychology was the first to make it sufficiently clear that these
latter phenomena were artificially produced by the resentment of spoiled
children. Still there is here also an approach to the recognition of the
evolutionary impulse-a tentative adjustment to it. The effort is, however,
unsuccessful; in the usual pessimistic fashion the idea of the death-wish is
taken as the goal of fulfilment. But this is not an active adaptation; it is
simply the expectation of a lingering death founded on the somewhat
doubtful second basic law of physics.

Individual Psychology stands firmly on the ground of (p 36) evolution and in

the light of evolution regards all human striving as a struggle for perfection.
The craving for life, material and spiritual for perfection. The craving for life,
material and spiritual, is irrevocably bound up with this struggle. So far,
therefore, as our knowledge goes, every psychical expressive form
presents itself as a movement that leads from a minus to a plus situation.
Each individual adopts for himself at the beginning of his life, a law of
movement, with comparative freedom to utilize for this impressions of his
environment. This law of movement is for each individual different in tempo,
rhythm, and direction. The individual, perpetually comparing himself with
the unattainable ideal of perfection, is always possessed and spurred on by
a feeling inferiority. We may deduce from this that every human law of
movement is faulty when regarded sub specie aeternitatis, and seen from
an imagined standpoint of absolute correction.

Each cultural epoch forms this ideal for itself from its wealth of ideas and
emotions. Thus in our day it is always to the past alone that we turn to find
in the setting-up of this ideal the transient level of man's mental power, and
we have the right to admire most profoundly this power that for countless
ages has conceived a reliable ideal of human social life. Surely the
commands, 'Thou shalt not kill' and 'Love thy neighbor', can hardly ever
disappear from knowledge and feeling as the supreme court of appeal.
These and other norms (p 37) of human social life, which are undoubtedly
the products of evolution and are as native to humanity as breathing and
the upright gait, can be embodied in the conception of an ideal human
community, regarded here as the impulse and the goal of evolution. They
supply Individual Psychology with the plumb-line by which alone the right
and wrong of all the other goals and modes of movement opposed to
evolution are to be valued. It is at this point that Individual Psychology
becomes a 'psychology of values', just as medical science, the promoter of
evolution by its researches and discoveries, is a 'science of values'.

The sense of inferiority, the struggle to overcome, and social feelings - the
foundation upon which, the researches of Individual Psychology are based -
are therefore essential in considering either the individual or the mass. The
truth they represent may be evaded or put into different words; they may be
misunderstood and attempts may be made to split hairs about them, but
they can never be obliterated. In the right estimate of any personality these
facts must be taken into account, and the state of the feeling of inferiority,
of the struggle to overcome, and of the social feeling must be ascertained.
But just as other civilizations under the pressure of evolution drew different
conclusions and followed wrong courses, so does every single individual. It
is the child's work to create, in the stream. of development, the mental
structure of a style of life and the appropriate emotions associated with it.
The child's emotional, and as yet barely grasped, capacity of action, serves
him as a (p 38) standard of his creative power in an environment that is by
no means neutral, and provides a very indifferent preparatory school for
life. Building on a subjective impression, and guided often by successes or
defeats that supply insufficient criteria the child forms for himself a path, a
goal, and a vision of a height lying in the future. All the methods of
Individual Psychology that are meant to lead to an understanding of the
personality take into account the meaning of the individual about his goal of
superiority, the strength of his feeling of inferiority, and the degree of his
social feeling. A closer scrutiny of the relation of these factors to one
another will make it clear that they all contribute to the nature and extent of
the social feeling. The examination proceeds in a way similar to that of
experimental psychology , or to that of functional tests in medical cases.
The only difference is that it is life itself that sets the test, and this shows
how strong the bond is between the individual and the problems of life. That
is to say, the individual as a complete being cannot be dragged out of his
connection with life - perhaps it would be better to say, with the community.
His attitude to the community is first revealed by his style of life. For that
reason experimental tests, which at the best deal only with partial aspects
of the individual's life, can tell us nothing about his character or even about
his future achievements in the community. And even Gestaltphsychologie
needs to be supplemented by Individual Psychology in order to be able to
form any conclusion regarding the attitude of the individual in the life
process. (p 39)

The technique of Individual Psychology employed for the discovery of the

style of life must therefore in the first place presuppose a knowledge of the
problems of life and their demands on the individual. It will be evident that
their solution presumes a certain degree of social feeling, a close union
with life as a whole, and an ability is lacking in it innumerable variations
together with its consequence. This in the main will take the form of
evasiveness and the 'hesitant attitude'. The interrelated bodily and mental
phenomena that make their appearance with it I have called an 'inferiority
complex'. The unresting struggle for superiority endeavors to mask this
complex by ‘superiority complex’, which, ignoring social feeling, always
aims at the glitter of personal conquest. Once all the phenomena occurring
in a case of failure are clearly understood, the reasons for the inadequate
preparation are to be sought for in early childhood. By this means we
succeed in obtaining a faithful picture of the homogeneous style of life, and
at the same time in estimating the extent of the divergence from social
feeling in the case of a failure. This is always seen to be a lack of ability to
get into contact with other people. It follows from this that the task of the
educationist, the teacher, the physician, the pastor is to increase the social
feeling and thereby strength the courage of the individual. He does this by
convincing him of the real causes of his failure, by disclosing his wrong
meaning - mistaken significance he has (p 40) foisted on life - and thus
giving him a clearer view of the meaning that life has ordained for humanity.

This task can only be accomplished if a thoroughgoing knowledge of the

problems of life is available, and if the too slight tincture of social feeling
both in the inferiority and superiority complexes, as well as in all kinds of
human errors, is understood. There is likewise required in the consultant a
wide experience regarding those circumstances and situations which are
likely to hinder the development of social feeling in childhood. Up till now
my own experience has taught me that the most trustworthy approaches to
the exploration of the personality are to be found in a comprehensive
understandings of the earliest childhood memories, of the place of the child
in the family sequence, and of any childish errors; in day and night dreams,
and in the nature of the exogenous factor that causes the illness. All the
results of such an investigation-and along with these the attitude to the
doctor has also to be included-have to be assessed with great caution, and
the conclusion drawn from them has constantly to be tested for its harmony
with other facts that have been established. (P 41)

CHAPTER 14 INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT

NOTES FROM INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT: By Erwin

Wexberg, M.D. Translated by Arnold Eiloart, B.Sc. Ph.D., Revised by
Bernard H. Shulman, M.D. First edition published 129 and second edition
1970 by Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago.

Introduction: In the year 1907 the Vienna physician, Dr. Alfred Adler,
published a monograph entitled, "A Study of the Inferiority of Organs." This
paper represented a successful attempt to place constitution-pathology on
a new basis. With the help of a wealth of clinical material, Adler proved
[Adler first published his work on organ inferiority in 1907.It was published
in English translation as Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical
Compensation. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co.,
19l7. The word "proved" is much too strong Adler's monograph provides
much presumptive evidence and contains impressive descriptive material.
The work has never had adequate follow-up studies.] It is an excellent
example of an early approach to psychosomatic studies. that weakness of
certain organ systems, e.g., of the digestive tract, of the urogenital tract,
etc., creates a predisposition to disease in the regions of the respective
organ-system without regard to any extraneous causation of the disease in
question; and that this is the case whether the weakness be hereditary or
caused by injuries suffered early in life-within the womb or in early
childhood. Thus one finds families in which kidney diseases of the most
varied kind are constantly occurring: chronic nephritis, nephrolithiasis,
tubercLl1osis of the kidneys, may alternate in such families. A special form
of organ-inferiority was shown to be segmental-inferiority, a congenital
weakness of certain metamers of the body in which diseases and anomalies
occur in the derivatives of all three germinal layers in the realm of the
segment affected. Characteristic (p 1) is, e.g., the occurrence of naevi on
the breast and on the skin of the back in the case of lung troubles or of
individuals disposed to lung disease. Finally, Adler, in this paper, already
indicated the possibility of the organism physiologically and
psychologically compensating and overcompensating for organ-
inferiorities. The striking phenomenon that among painters, e.g., one finds
many with congenital anomalies of vision, was, he said, evidently to be
interpreted as such a compensation of the organic defect, a compensation
effected within the psychic superstructure. [The term '.psychic
superstructure" may imply that the psychic apparatus is grafted on to the
top of a somatic substrate. This editor prefer" to think of psyche and soma
as two manifestations of an overall pattern.]

The idea of organ-inferiority, originating with Adler's study of it, forms today
an established component of the accepted constitution-pathology. In the
course of developments Adler himself turned his attention to psychology
and entered into close relations with Sigmund Freud and the then
unimportant psychoanalytic school, whose views he in part adopted,
without however, yielding his independence within the realm of
psychoanalysis. This independence of Adler's ideas which had their origin
directly in the theory of organ inferiority and its compensation, and had
developed from that, led finally to the breaking of his connection with
psychoanalysis. In the year 1912 Adler left the Vienna Psvchov v analytic
Union and joined with a number of collaborators and friends (who, in part,
were also drawn from the Freudian group) , for the further investigation of
the way opened by him, the way of "Comparative Individual Psychology."

Since then the new school has more and more withdrawn from
psychoanalysis, and holds aloof from the essential theses of both the
Freudian and the Jungian schools. [It would be more correct to say it holds
aloof from many of the essential theses. In some points, as eve Wexberg
later admits, Individual Psychology owes a considerable debt to Freud. In
other ways IP is in agreement with Jung.] In particular, it rejects the
Freudian instinct doctrine, the libido theory and the allied psychoanalytic
pan-sexualism. On the (p 2) other hand, Individual Psychology has retained
the real starting point of the Freudian instinct doctrines, the thesis of
"Psychic determinism" and of the possibility of explaining all mental
expressions, including those apparently independent of the will; and,
accordingly, it avails itself of the Freudian interpretative technique in the
realm of dream psychology, of the "psychopathology of everyday life," and
of the neuroses doctrine. This doctrine of psychic determinism represents
from the point of view of the individual psychology school the really great
and imperishable achievement of Sigmund Freud, but it is otherwise with
his libido theory, which has nothing to do with the former, and which is
regarded as a mistake by the representatives of Individual Psychology. [For
the Individual Psychologist, psychic determinism applies to parapraxes,
dreams, neurosis and almost all behavior. However, the basic determinants
are not the vicissitudes of the instinctual drives, but the Life Style, which
shapes and patterns the drives. Since the Life Style differs from individual
to individual, the determini5m itself differs. Furthermore, Individual
Psychologists speak of soft determinism. A "life style" is an open system
and patterns of behavior can be changed. If the Life Style changes, new
psychic determinants (i.e., new goals) can appear. Thus. the basic
philosophic position of Individual Psychology is "indeterministic." At the
time Wexberg wrote, the concept of unconscious motives for behavior was
not yet so accepted as today.]

Individual Psychology has for its aim, besides the scientific development of
Adler's ideas, their propogation and their working out in the practice of
almost all walks of life. This movement, completely neutral in politics and
religion, is in many ways equivalent to an ethical reform tendency, although
Individual Psychology neither includes nor assumes any sort of doctrine of
morals. [Not strictly true. Adler's concepts of the "logic of social living." his
division of behavior into socially useful and useless; his concept of social
interest (gemeinschaftsgefiihl, communal feeling) and his description of the
neurotic, psychotic ana criminal as various ways of "failing" in life-all have
moralistic overtones.] Individual Psychology may with some justice be
described as a normative science, but it is normative only in the sense in
which scientific hygiene is normative when it studies the bacterial flora of
drinking water with the admitted purpose of avoiding as far as possible (p 3)
any injury to health by bad water, and accordingly prescribes how a well
"should" be situated, or a water supply constructed.

Normative in this sense every psychology must be which claims to be able

to investigate the conditions of mental disease, because from the
knowledge of the cause of the neurosis naturally follows the theory of how
to avoid it. These norms, however, are altogether relative, valid only under
the assumption that the hygienic aim of Individual Psychology is
recognized-and to this, of course, no one can be compelled. But that the
individual-psychologic norms are in many ways closely related to the
behests of every community ethic is clearly shown by this: that prophets
and founders of religions have in great part framed their revealed ethics in
harmony with an obscurely felt mental hygiene whose aim is one in
principle with that of Individual Psychology. Only, they have given their
maxims the form of categorical imperatives having a transcendental basis,
which in fact constitutes the essence of ethics as distinguished from the
mental hygiene of Individual Psychology. (p 4)

CHAPTER 15: INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPEUTICS:

NOTES FROM INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT: By Erwin

Wexberg, M.D. Translated by Arnold Eiloart, B.Sc. Ph.D., Revised by
Bernard H. Shulman, M.D. First edition published 129 and second edition
1970 by Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago.

Individual Psychology claims to have made clear the mental relation

between the human being and the world about him, and by tracing it back to
a few biological principles to have shown it to be an essential component of
the natural history of man. As above set forth, it sees in psychoneurosis
above all, a disturbance in the relations of the individual to the community.
Hence, it follows that the therapeutics based on individual psychologic data
must be an etiologic therapeutic in the proper sense of the word, so far as
the hypotheses of individual psychology are correct. Individual
psychological therapeutics aims directly at correcting the faulty community
relation of the individual.

["The individual psychological treatment of the nervous, of the discouraged

ambitious people, consists in discovering their mistakes, in diminishing
their striving for power, in increasing their community feeling" (Adler.
"Advances in Individual Psychology," Ztschr. f. Individualpsychologie, vol.
ii, p. 1, 1923) .Neuroses and psychoses are modes in which discouraged
people express, themselves. He who has realized this fact of Individual
Psychology will do well to avoid accompanying discouraged people on long
excursions into mystical psychic regions. Conjectures as to primary
psychic phenomena even if incidentally correct, would only be a welcome
excuse for them to evade important problems of life. One thing effective and
helpful which may, nevertheless, result is, as in suggestive and hypnotic
therapeutics, the encouragement which flows uncomprehended
(unconsciously? ) from the kindliness and patience of the physician. It is
only in the rarest cases that this form of partial encouragement suffices;
and it is never to be compared with our method, which creates
independence and self-confidence. because it removes the real causes of
the discouragement" ( Adler, ibid.). "The therapeutically incomparable value
of this investigation lies in the fact that it shows the patient his fictitious,
uncomprehended and logically contradictory guiding idea, and does away
with the resulting obstinate rigidity in thinking. At the same time it
cautiously draws the patient out of his irresponsible position and compels
him to take the responsibility even for his pretexts (fictions) , which are now
no longer unconscious," Adler, "Nervous Disturbances of Sleep," Ztschr. f.
Individualpsychologie, vol. i, p. 65.] (p 24)

Step by step, therefore, it pursues this fault, which manifests itself in the
neurotic symptom, to its source, i.e. to the original inferiority feeling of the
child. The first correction has to begin here.

Theoretically considered, it should not be difficult to prove the falsity of the

suppositions on which the reinforced inferiority feeling of the future
nervous patient is built up. In many respects the discouragement of the
child seen from its own perspective, appears not to lack justification. So far
as the inferiority of the child in relation to the adult is a fact, so far it cannot
be denied that the child is at a disadvantage in comparison with the healthy
people around it, the poor compared with the rich, the unprotected and
neglected child of intemperate people compared with the well-guarded and
carefully trained child of parents conscious of their responsibilities. All the
evils with which fate has burdened an unhappy childhood, as well as any
misfortune in later life, are cited to the physician by the neurotic who seeks
to justify his attitude, to show that he is right. Only, be it remembered that
these facts, in themselves incontestable, may be estimated at any
importance which the patient chooses to accord them. He will overestimate
them just in proportion as he needs them. Here the objection suggests
itself: If Individual Psychology is right in considering all those factors which
are calculated to strengthen the child's inferiority feeling as etiological
factors of the neurosis, then we are faced with a res judicata; in these
unfortunate constellations of a childhood nothing can be altered;
conditioned by these, the development to neurosis goes forward without
pause; an etiological therapeutics is impossible. In this case what individual
psychology could achieve would be only a sort of mental orthopaedics,
never a restitutio ad integrum.

This objection cannot be sustained, for the following reason: because the
first link of the etiologic chain is formed not by the objective facts of the
child's experiences, but by their subjective elaboration in the child's mind;
and because we can fix the first error as early as we please. If we consider
the course of events from without, then naturally the regression in the
series of causes will go back beyond the (p 25) subjective apperception
attitude of the child and will stop only at the objective facts-the
indeterminism of the objective view. But from within, seen from the patient's
point of view, these objective facts exist only the form of their subjective
appearance; he lacks the standard for deciding whether he has estimated
rightly or under or overestimated. In the very perception of the objective his
responsible personality is already concerned; truth and error, thus seen,
are unreal conceptions. It is the determinism of the subjective experience.':'
Thus it comes to this, that everyone might acquit the neurotic of all original
guilt and recognize the necessary course of the phenomena in the neurosis
as in all Nature-but the patient himself would not be entitled to do this. He
has no legitimate cause of complaint because he is not free of participation
in bringing about those facts which he seeks to make his excuses. For no
power in the world could have compelled him to assimilate his experiences
in precisely such a way- and not otherwise. And so in spite of everything
there attaches to him-not the ethical-the logical responsibility for a course
of life wrong from the beginning, though the error may have been
suggested to him by objectively unfavorable conditions of life. But a logical
error may have been corrected even subsequently, and all false
conclusions arising from it may be eliminated as invalid. In this sense, the
Individual Psychological treatment is to be regarded as really etiological
therapeutics. ["The causality which we find in the psychic does not consist
in a relation as of cause and effect, but we make something into the cause
and make the effects follow" (Adler, "Neurosis and Crime"). "Now, as for the
causes of the discouragement: they are always mistaken. A completely
adequate cause for discouragement does not exist. Only this error justifies
us in undertaking a radical therapeutic, of neurosis" (Adler. "Advances in
Individual Psychology") "Up to the present there is not the slightest proof
that a heredity, or an experience, or an environment must necessarily result
in neurosis, much less in a particular neurosis. This etiologic necessity,
which is never free from personal tendencies. exists rather in an
assumption of the patient, an assumption which has become petrified"
(Adler. "Life-lie and Responsibility in Psychosis," Ztschr. f.
Individualpsychologie, Year 1, p. 44, 1914).] (p 26)

The correction of these errors in apprehension of life represents, then, the

analytical part of psychotherapy. This part of the treatment is a sort of
individual psychologic instruction on life. According to the quantity of
material for study with which the patient supplies the therapist, success is
sooner or later attained in making the patient see that the individual-
psychological interpretation of his previous course of life is the only
plausible one. [Wexberg exaggerates. Even the best therapist does not
always, achieve this success. Wexberg seems to call this the "analytical
part of psychotherapy. It would seem more appropriate to consider this part
the re-educative aspect of psychotherapy.]

Here occurs the second objection: are we not perhaps imposing on the
patient a one-sided tendentious conception of his personality? One does
not need actually to distort or to suggest to the patient memories which he
never had; it is sufficient to emphasize the factors in his life which seem to
us important and to disregard the others, and already the proof of our
conception of the case is supplied - or insinuated. To this it must be replied:
the systematic application of the individual-psychologic principle is no
more an insinuation than the celebrated jest with the Columbus egg was a
swindle; it would have been so only if a definite method of standing the egg
on its end had been expressly prescribed to Columbus. But his
achievement consisted precisely in applying a method of startling novelty.
That the egg then stood on its end was, surely, no trick. It was a matter of
course. Just so the novelty of Individual Psychology consists precisely in
the "one-sided" application of the individual psychologic optics as a
heuristic principle. It admittedly employs a section taken in a quite definite
direction for the investigation of the structure of a personality; that then
everything that lies in this section is to be seen in this section, i.e. that all
the patient's experiences seen from the individual psychologic point of view
are subject to the individual psychologic interpretation is certainly not to be
wondered at. Individual psychology would be in the wrong only (p 27) if its
point of view were logically untenable, or if it attempted to deny that these
facts might be considered from other points of view, e.g. from that of the
instinct theory, of the physiology of the senses, of the psychology of
thinking, and so on. But this is by no means denied. That in the course of
individual psychologic treatment, however, the specific point of view of
Individual Psychology is explained to the patient, is a quite essential part of
the treatment. [This does not mean that the patient is taught the theory of
Individual Psychology, but is allowed to see the therapist's way of looking
at his situation. The therapist does so because he believes a new point of
view will help the patient to understand himself and correct his errors. The
Individual Psychologist believes that neurosis is error, a "faulty" relation of
the patient to the community.]

It is, in fact, an absolute necessity to convince the patient, with the aid of
the material which he himself contributes, of the significance (not of the
unique nature) of the individual psychologic standpoint. We use the most
active persuasion and dialectics where it is a question of imparting to the
patient the individual psychologic view of things. For we cannot reasonably
demand that every patient shall discover Individual Psychology anew for
himself. For good or evil we shall be obliged to impart our views to him.

It is a case of a sort of individual psychologic education where we shall not

ignore the principles of a modern pedagogy, which demands, inter alia, that
the student shall make the material to be learned his own by assimilating it.
Theoretical lectures, are here unsuitable, and where it is possible with the
help of some practical example, some experience which he has himself
related, to make plain to the patient the individual psychologic view so that
he finds it by himself, there much is gained. With advanced practitioners
this method is a matter of course. As soon as the patient understands and
appreciates the principles of the teaching he must be brought to apply it
independently to the special case as each new fact comes up for
discussion. It is in the nature of the case that only seldom will even
intelligent patients quickly become apt pupils. For it is easy to understand
that (p 28) there will be a certain resistance to the individual psychologic
view of their own experiences, even in the case of patients who can see the
mote in their neighbor’s eye and can judge it individual-psychologically just
as well as we ourselves can. We shall honor the truth and facilitate the
patient’s task if we admit to him in this respect we are ourselves not much
better; and far removed from infallibility. (p 29)

CHAPTER 16:

SUMMARY OF ADLER'S TEACHING

(Author Unknown) Second of 6 children. Adler couldn't walk until 4 years

old due to rickets. Was hit by a car at age 5. Skinny, weak, sickly, and
tormented by his older brother. Felt small, unattractive, and rejected by his
mother. Idolized his father, a personable, successful, wealthy merchant.
Was jealous of his older brother Sigmund. Felt like he was in competition
with his brother. Worked hard to overcome his handicaps and inferiorities.
Became very outgoing and social. His brother despised him because he
was different and made friends easily with everyone -- people from all group
in the multicultural neighborhood in Vienna where he grew up.

At the University of Vienna, he became an opthalmologist. He read Freud

and a criticism of Freud, and felt prompted to write a defense of Freud.
Freud wrote to him and invited him to join the Viennese Psychoanalytic
Society. Adler became one of 4 charter members of Freud's group in 1902.
For about 10 years they were good friends, until he resigned his presidency
of the Society in 1911 and broke with Freud. He came to view Freud as
inflexible in his views, a power triper, and obsessed with sex and death.

Was a doctor in the Austrian Army during World War I, wrote readable
popular books, and organized child guidance clinics in the Viennese school
system. Influenced Karen Horney (social factors), Gordon Allport (unity of
personality), Henry Murray (individual traits), E.C. Tolman (purpose), Julian
Rotter (expectancies), and Abraham Maslow (Self-actualization. Maslow,
Rollo May, and Carl Rogers all studied under Adler, and all gave him credit
for having influenced their thinking. He could be characterized as the
forerunner of humanistic psychology.

SOCIAL CHARACTER OF LIFE. Person must be seen in social situation. All

important problems and values are social problems and values. Adler's
approach was a kind of holistic social "field theory" that predated Lewin. .

Adler was not so interested in the unconscious or spirituality. Emphasis on

the social. He viewed people as mostly conscious rather than mostly
unconscious creatures

Referred to private logic -- our own inner chatterbox that tells us what to do.

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW. Like Freud, Adler gave us an all-encompassing

view of the human being. An alternative to Freud. For Adler, it was useless
to focus on drives and impulses without giving attention to how the person
creatively directs the drives.

MASCULINE PROTEST. Early in his career Adler put forth the idea of
"Masculine protest." The desire to be above, like a "real man". In so doing
he replaced biological, external, objective causal explanations with
psychological, internal, subjective causal explanation.

IN MEN: Feminine traits are carefully hidden by exaggerated masculine

wishes and efforts. This is a form of overcompensation, because the
feminine tendency is evaluated negatively in a patriarchal, masculine-
dominated culture. This can lead to setting the highest, often unattainable
goals for oneself. It develops a craving for satisfaction and triumph,
intensifies both abilities and egotistical drives, including avarice and
ambition. Defiance, vengeance, and resentment accompany it, sometimes
leading to continuous conflicts. Pathological fantasies of grandeur result
from overly strong masculine protests. The child may seek to surpass the
father in every respect and thereby come into conflict with him.

IN WOMEN. The masculine protest in women is usually covered up and

transformed, seeking to triumph with feminine means. In our culture one
may find a repressed wish to become transformed into a man. Neurotic
mechanisms such as sexual anaesthesia may result. Comments by Adler's
editors Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher: "When the striving for superiority
and overcoming replaced the masculine protest [in Adler's thinking], the
term became limited to the more restricted meaning of the preceding
paragraph. It referred to manifestations in women protesting against their
feminine role....

"When the masculine protest is increased, it produces such symptoms

as...'frigidity, few children, sometimes a late marriage, a weak husband; and
nervous disorders which are often related to the menses, pregnancy,
childbirth, and the menopause'.

But the masculine protest may also result in positive adjustment. "The
girl...develops a pronounced feeling of inferiority and pushes on vigorously.
She thus discloses a more thorough training which often gives her marked
traits of greater energy. This...can produce a vast number of both good and
bad conseqequences [including] all sorts of human excellents and
shortcomings."

Adler was still thinking of the aggressive drive as the basic dynamic
principle when he was young and striving to assert his own ideas in
opposition to Freud.

NEED FOR AFFECTION. The need for social relationships is present from
the start. If satisfaction is denied to the outgoing seeking for affection, then
the child may turn in on himself or herself in narcissistic self-love.

STRIVING FOR SUPERIORITY (OR PERFECTION): The basic dynamic force

between all human activity -- striving from a feeling of inferiority to one of
superiority. "To be a human being," he wrote, "means to feel oneself
inferior." Adler believed that inferiority feelings are the source of all human
striving. All individual progress, growth and development result from the
attempt to compensate for one's inferiorities, be they or real. For Adler,
we're all overcoming an inferiority. Feeling unattractive, or don't belong
somewhere. Not strong enough or smart enough. So everyone is trying to
overcome something that is hampering them from becoming what they
want to become. Organ inferiorities become psychologically effective
through the intervention of feelings of inferiority.

The meaning of superiority changed through the years. Later it came to

mean perfection, completion, or overcoming. Unlike at the beginning, the
frame of reference was no longer the neurotic, but the mentally healthy
individual. It came to mean not superior over, not competition. Rather it
became like self-realization.

A ceaselessness and universality of striving. The striving for perfections is

innate in the sense that it is a part of life. Throughout a person's life, Adler
believed, he or she is motivated by the need to overcome the sense of
inferiority and strive for ever higher levels of development. Inferiority
complex: When an inability to overcome inferiority feelings heightens and
intensifies them. In the mentally ill, the goal of superiority turns in the
direction of wanting to domineer over others, lean on others, leave tasks of
life unsolved in order not to suffer sure defeats. These goals contradict
reason.

FICTIONALISM (Hans Vaihinger) Vaihinger defined "fictions" as ideas, incl.

unconscious notions, which have no counterpart in reality, yet enable us to
deal with it better than we could otherwise. Ex: "All men are created equal".
It contradicts reality, yet as an idea has great practical value in everyday
life. Compare to a hypothesis: Whereas a hypophysis submits its reality test
and demands verification, the fiction is a sort of auxiliary construct. Dogma,
by contrast, refers to an idea which is considered defiantly established.

FICTIONAL FINAL GOAL. Based in subjective reality. Something we are all

trying to reach, that we strive for. we have within ourselves. Child develops
this as a safeguard to deal with the world around. Fictions are no reducible
to causes. They are mental states. A fictional final goal became for Adler the
principle of internal subjective causation of psychological events. A basic
aspect of our orientation in the world, and one aspect of compensation for
felt inferiorities.

THE "CREATIVE SELF" Known by its effects. We have freedom to act,

determine our fate, determine our personality and affect our style of life.
Creative power of the self means we consciously shape our personalities
and destinies. The creative power of the self is the essential principle of
human life. Heredity gives us "certain abilities," environment gives us
"certain impressions, These, along with the way we interpret and
experience them, make up the bricks we use in our own creative way to
construct our individual attitudes toward life and our relations to the
outside world. We consciously shape our personalities and destiny

LIFE PLAN: Our strategy to deal with the world around us. Life play and
FFG are similar, they're related. In life plan the child develops a strategy,
then tries to get a handle on what's going on around them. This becomes
the fictional final goal and ultimately the lifestyle. Adler viewed Freud as too
concerned with the past. He himself was oriented toward the future. We
look to the future, to our expectations, rather than to the past to explain our
behavior.

STYLE OF LIFE. Comparable to the psyche, personality. It is what we are,

who we are, what we want to be. The life style is usually set in motion by
age 4 or 5. It is involved in the uniqueness of each person, and that
person's unique way of striving for superiority. Includes the goal, the
person's opinion of self and world, and his or her unique way of striving for
the goal in his or her particular situation. Our basic personality, our
uniqueness and how we live our life, comes from the creative power of the
self. Heredity, environment, conscious, unconscious all contribute to this.

Everything Adler says ties into the lifestyle. For Adler, meanings are not
determined by situation, but we are self-determined by the meaning we
attribute to a situation. Style of life is equated with self or ego, a unity of
personality. Individuality is seen as th1individual form of creative activity.
There is a focus on the direction potentialities are taking. This is heavily
influenced by childhood experiences.

SUCCESS, in Adler's terms, dealt with how we fit into the environment while
being true to ourselves. You're individual, unique. If you're successful only
in doing what others want you to, you're not really successful if it doesn't fit
you personally.

SOCIAL INTEREST. Gives us basically a positive outlook on life. An interest

in furthering the welfare of others. We can all work together toward this
goal. If we don't have a faulty lifestyle, we will progress together to help
society.

IDEAL PERSONALITY: THE SOCIALLY USEFUL PERSON. Wise

socialization is achieved not through repression but through social
interest,. This is a potential to cooperate with others to achieve personal
and social goals. This became Adler's criterion for normality and maturity.
People can be trained in this direction starting in infancy. Social interest
gives us basically a positive outlook on life. An interest in furthering the
welfare of others. We can all work together toward this goal. If we don't
have a faulty lifestyle, we will progress together to help society.

SOCIAL INTEREST AND INTELLIGENCE. Adler saw social interest as an

important part of a person's intelligent functioning in a given situation. The
degree of a person's social interest determines whether his or her
intellectual solution of a problem will have general validity, that is, will be
reasonable or not. Good intellectual functioning produces solutions to
problems which make sense not only to the individual but also to the group.

GENIUS, acc. to Adler, is primarily a person of supreme usefulness. The

essence of genius lies neither in inherited qualities nor environmental
influences, but in that third sphere of individual reaction which includes the
possibility of socially affirmative action. It is only when someone's life is
recognized by others as having significance for them that we call him or her
a genius.

GOOD ADJUSTMENT. This is striving on the "commonly useful side." Poor

adjustment is striving on the "commonly useless side." Mental
disturbances are thus understood as disturbances not only in the
individual, but in the social situation as well. Adler presumes an innate
potential for social interest. Not to want to help one's neighbor is one of the
characteristics of maladjustment. The person whose social interest is
developed finds the solution to problems, feels at home in the world, and
perceives more clearly.

POOR ADJUSTMENT: The person not interested in his or her fellows has
the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. "It
is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. "

PERSONALITY PROBLEMS. Related to a faulty style of life, usually

developed in childhood.

COMMUNITY: People have always had to cooperate. A person must

cooperate with and contribute to society to realize both own and society's
goals.

ACTIVITY. To a striving for superiority and social interest, Adler later added
a third primary motive of degree of activity.

FAULTY LIFESTYLES: Three things that can interfere with social interest
are.

1. Organ inferiorities: People say, "poor kid," etc. Kid starts to think, "I'm
missing something that the other kids have. If circumstance are right for it,
these feelings will roll and roll like a big snowball. If incorrectly handled by
parents around the child, they can lead to faulty lifestyle.

2. The pampered child. Spoiled brat. "Why should I love my neighbor when
my neighbor hasn't done anything for me? I'm here for myself, nobody else.
Can get paranoid if others don't give him or her what he or she wants. This
often occurs when the parents raised the child for themselves and their own
gratification. Didn't bring him up to be a good member of, to contribute to
society.

3. The Neglected child. Also feels cheated by life. Didn't have enough love,
caring, etc. Society owes me that. I want to get it back. They cheated on me,
so I'm getting what's mine. Like the pampered child. A self-perpetuating
situation.

NEUROTIC BEHAVIOR. The neurotic overcompensates for feeling insecure

to protect self-esteem. Points to his symptom to justify lack of social
interest. Overindulged child may become self-centered, neglected child may
seek revenge against society. The safeguarding aspect. To overcompensate
for feelings of insecurity and protect his self-esteem, a neurotic can always
point toward his symptom as justification for lack of social interest.

Neurotic approaches to life include:

1) A distancing attitude

2) Detours

3) A narrowed path

4) A hesitating attitude.

The person is a victim of a wrong attitude toward life that they learned
during childhood. People push their difficulties on others and evade
realities.

A TYPOLOGY. Emerges from combining degrees of activity with social

interest. Socially useful person. High social interest and high degree of
activity. Ruling person: Low social interest and high degree of activity. Out
for own self interest, not others. Might be tyrant or despot.

Getting person: Take all and give nothing.

Recluse: Low social interest and low activity.

(I have not seen high social interest and low activity mentioned.

EARLIEST MEMORIES: In his therapeutic practice this is the first question

Adler would always ask, and use it as a basis for discovering the person's
lifestyle. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not. What's important is that
you chose those words, that incident, and vocalized it. If you're lying about
it, lying and deceit probably characterize your life.

There are no chance memories, thought Adler. We consciously choose

what we want to remember, because it will help us in some endeavor.

DREAMS.

2 functions: Problem solving

Forward moving.
Did not deal with nightmares, so far as I know.

Dreams serve as a bridge to what we want to attain. To a certain degree

they are prophetic. They keep us moving forward. Dream could be practice
for an event that is coming up. When you practice something you're moving
forward and helping solve a problem.

BIRTH ORDER: Pioneered interest in this area. Adler posited birth order as
one of the major childhood social influences from which the individual
creates a style of life. There is potentially a favorable or unfavorable
outcome from each birth order place.

OLDER CHILD. Can feel dethroned. Inferior to younger child Favorable

outcome -- feel responsibility, take care of others. Unfavorable outcome:
Insecure, overly reliant on rules.

MIDDLE CHILD. Has a model in the older child, must share attention from
the beginning. Doesn't realize until later that the older child was alone
before. Favorable outcome: Be ambitious. Want to be at least as good as
the older child. Strong social interest.

Unfavorable outcome: Rebellious and envious. Permanent tendency to try

to surpass others. Difficulty in role of follower.

YOUNGEST. Lots of attention. Often pampered.

Favorable: Much stimulation. Many chances to compete.

Unfavorable: Feel inferior to everyone..

ONLY. Gets undivided attention, often pampered, may compete with father.

PSYCHOTHERAPY: Includes

1. Understanding the specific style of life of the patient.

2). Explaining the patient to himself or herself.

3. Strengthening the social interest in the patient. In sum, Understand,

interpret, direct.

CHAPTER 17
 BEVERLY'S CASE HISTORY AND ADLER BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beverly, a 22-year-old single female who worked as a dental assistant, came

to the hospital for a skin graft to cover a large scar on her left leg. Following
high school, Beverly joined the army and spent four years on active duty.
Shortly after her release from the army, she had an accident while riding a
bicycle that was the cause of the scar on her leg. She was very self-
conscious about the scare and believed that people stared at her. She was
hurt and embarrassed by their staring at her leg. After that experience, she
would not leave her home without a bandage over the scar or she would
ware slacks. I was consulted to work with her for pain management and
self-esteem. To help her cope with her situation, I used several techniques
and appropriate scripts for pain management and increasing self-
confidence and self-esteem.

1. (PRE-SCHOOL PERIOD): Beverly was an illegitimate child who was raised

by her grand parents until she was 13 years old. Though she knew who her
mother was, she called her grandmother, "mother." She said that her
relationship with her grandfather was good but she felt closer to her
grandmother. Her grandparents were strict, setting limits and wanting to
know where she was and what she was doing. Looking back on their
concern, she felt that their limits were an indication of their love for her. "I
had the hurts and accidents of childhood but grandmother and grandfather
were always there to show me love." Beverly remembers an incident when
she was crying which made a lasting impression on her. Her grandmother
tried to get her to stop crying but she would not. Beverly' s grandmother
said, "I am leaving you in this room so you can cry as long and as loud as
you like, but no will hear you." This experience really frightened Beverly.
After that experience, she was always "very good so that grandmother
would know that I love her."

2. (ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PERIOD): Beverly looked forward to beginning

school. Throughout school, Beverly made above average grades. "I really
enjoyed learning under all my teachers except three who did not motivate
me."

Until Kay's death two years before Beverly's hospitalization for the graft,
Beverly had a very close friend, Kay, who was two years older and "like a
sister." It was Kay, rather than her grandparents, who told her about sex
and to whom she sent for sexual advice. "Grandmother never knew exactly
how to talk with me about sex so I would go to Kay with my questions."
Beverly had not been given any instructions concerning menstruation, so
she was very frightened when she first stated at age 11. Kay told her what
was happening and then everything was all right.

Beverly masturbated occasionally throughout her teenage years. It began

out of curiosity and experimentation. Referring to the first time she
masturbated to orgasm, "I did not know what was happening. It was kind of
like an explosion, but it felt good and I enjoyed it." Beverly had little guilt
when she masturbated for she considered it as a natural part of growing up.

As she began to develop, Beverly felt good because she wanted to catch
and keep up with Kay. "She was like a sister to me and I wanted to keep up
with her. I felt really grown up. It was kind of exciting. When I started to
develop, I said, "Great, now I am catching up with Kay, now everybody will
be proud of me."

4. (HIGH SCHOOL PERIOD): At the age of 13, Beverly went to live with her
mother. Due to financial reasons and the health of her grandparents, she
was forced to live with her mother and stepfather. Beverly often had
conflicts with her mother for "she was very temperamental. I was not used
to her and she scared me. She did not trust me with boys even though I
gave her no cause to be untrustful of me. I felt she was judging me by what
she had done."

Beverly had a very good relationship with her stepfather. He understood her
and she could take with him. He would take her to the movies and
swimming. "Mother would not go. She could have but would not." Beverly's
stepfather helped her and her mother adjust to one another. "I could not
have asked for a better stepfather. I felt accepted by him."

4. (POST HIGH SCHOOL PERIOD): After high school, Beverly decided to

join the army with the promise that she would be trained as a dental
assistant. After her basic and technical training, she was stationed in
Germany. She met a soldier, Tom, and this friendship developed into
intimacy. After courting for several months, she had her first sexual
experience with this soldier. "Though I enjoyed sex, it was not until the third
experience with Tom that I reached a climax. When I think of that
experience, it was like rockets going off inside me. It was a wonderful
experience."

After departed Germany, Tom and Beverly corresponded for several weeks
until he quite writing.

In addition to Beverly's normal feelings of inferiority, she had to live with

the fact that she was an illegitimate child and was deserted by her mother
as an infant. Due to the love and concern that she experienced from her
grandparents, she was able to develop without her feelings of inferiority
becoming an inferiority complex.

The scar on her leg had given her some feelings of inferiority. Though she
experiences some self-consciousness about the scar, she has adjusted well
to life with it. Beverly compensates for her scar by being the "best dental
assistant that I can be" and by wearing slacks. Her need to wear a dress
with any boy that she likes is an effort to check out his reaction to the scar.
Beverly wants the boy to know early in their relationship so that she will not
be hurt if he should reject her because of it.

Beverly's striving for superiority and her style of life is expressed in being a
good girl so that her grandparents and others will love her. She did not
strive for personal superiority but solved the problem in a way that was
useful to others as well as herself. In becoming a dental assistant, she
chose a helping professional which shows her interest in others.

Though Beverly was an only child in the home of her grandparents, they did
not spoil her. They were strict but caring and this was experienced by
Beverly as an expression of their love and concern. Beverly was able to
develop a very close relationship with a neighbor, Kay, who as like an older
sister. Through their relationship, Beverly developed a sense of cooperation
with others.

Characteristics of a second or younger child can be seen in Beverly's

relationship with Kay. Beverly refers to Kay as "being like a sister." In this
relationship, Beverly show an ambition to catch up with and perhaps go
ahead of Kay.

I believe that Beverly's greatest fear is in being deserted by those with

whom she develops a close relationship. This fear is based on her mother
deserting her at birth, her grandmother deserting her at the age of 13, Kay's
deserting her by death, and Tom deserting her after she got out of the army.
In spite of these reversals, Beverly makes friends with ease and has a great
deal of social interest. She said, "I know that I should not become so
attached to people because they can leave and hurt you, but I love people
enough to take the risk. I think that it worth the effort."

In addition to helping her with pain management, I worked with her to

improve her self-confidence, self-esteem, and feelings of self-worth.
Basically Beverly feels good about herself and has a style of life under
girded with social interest. As she has a concern for others as well as
herself, I believe that she will probably have a very satisfying life. Beverly is
a well-adjusted person who can function well in society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Alfred Adler relaxing and talking with friends)

Adler, A. Individual Psychology, Totowa, NJ. Littlefield and Adams, 1969

Adler, A. Problems of Neurosis, New York, Harper Tourchbook,1964

Adler, A. Social Interest, New York, Capricorn Book, 1964

Adler, A. Superiority and Social Interest, New York, Viking Compass Book,
1973

Adler, Alfred, The Neurotic Constitution, Good, Mead, & Co., 1930

Adler, A. Understanding Human Nature, Greenwich, CT, Faucet, 1954

Ansbacher, H. and R. The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, New York,

Basic Books, 1956

Dinkmeyer, Don, AAdlerian Theory and Practice" Conceptual Foundations

of Counseling,

Dreikus, R. Fundamentals of Adlerian Psychology, Chicago. IL, Alfred Adler

Institute, 1953

Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 1, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., N.Y., 1957.

Harper, Robert; Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,

1959.

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol 1, MacMillan Co.,

USA, 1968.

Mosak, H. Alfred Adler: His Influence On Psychology Today, Park Ridge, NJ,
Noyer Press. 1973 Munroe, Ruth; Schools of Psychoanalytical Thought,
New York, Dryden Press, 1955

Orgler, B. Alfred Adler: The Man and His Work. New York, A Mentor Book,
1956

Papanek, Helene; Current Theories of Personality and Psychopathology.

Sclesnich, Sheldon; Psychoanalytic Pioneers, (Editors-Alexander,

Eisenstein, & Groth), New York, Basic Books, 1966.

Masculine protest is a concept described by Alfred Adler. In women it gives expression

to a rejection of their feminine condition, the consequence of a devalorization of girls in
their family or cultural milieu and the choice of a masculine ideal in the formation of
their guiding fiction. In men it expresses itself as a superiority complex.
In Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind (1933/1938), Alfred Adler wrote: "When a
girl imagines that she can change into a boy, it is because the feminine role has not been
presented to her as the equal of the masculine role. She revolts against what she believes
to be a permanent perspective of inferiority for her. The Freudians have interpreted this
fact as what they call the 'castration complex."' This rejection of the feminine role is also
the consequence of the mother's preference for her son or sons, which constitutes a
paradox. Writing about one of his patients, Adler said: "Her mother, a fact that is
unfortunately very frequent, had more affection for her sons than for her daughter, which
confirms that she also accorded greater value to the male principle without, however,
giving her husband the advantage that is inherent in this mode of appreciation" (Adler,
1912/1926). This decathexis of the father facilitates father-daughter alliances. This
patient had become the absolute mistress of the house. Speaking of another patient, he
commented: "In her childhood antecedents we find a powerful feeling of inferiority,
maintained in a constant state of tension by the fact that her mother preferred her younger
brother and that he was more intelligent than she was. This patient's most ardent
conscious desire was always to be tall, very intelligent, to be a man."

A conflictual relationship with the mother exacerbates the need to compensate against the
inferiority complex through the elaboration of an ideal virile model and leads to a hostile
attitude to women. Sexual and aggressive instincts then come together either in masculine
behavior that rivals with men or in homosexual behavior where a dominant role is
assumed. When the woman becomes a mother herself, she can transpose these problems
to her relations with her children, as described by Adler in the following case: "Her
attitude of rivalry with regard to her daughter was completely unconscious and might be
said to act as a cover for an infantile attitude: the desire to surpass a sister that her parents
had spoilt to the point of excess. But this latter attitude proved in turn to be equivalent to
the fundamental attitude, namely her desire to acquire greater importance, to occupy her
brother's position" (Adler, 1912/1926).

For Adler the organization of the Self is indissociable from the history of the subject and
the subject's culture. As he wrote in Understanding Human Nature : "In civilization every
woman wants to be a man" (1927/1992). The choice of a son to express this masculine
protest could encourage delinquent or transsexual behavior. Social feeling plays an
essential role in the socialization of such behaviors, or indeed their sublimation. In men,
masculine protest becomes manifest in the cult of the superman, wherein human feelings
are considered to be a sign of feminine weakness.
One of Adler's earliest phrases was masculine protest. He noted something pretty
obvious in his culture (and by no means absent from our own): Boys were held in higher
esteem than girls. Boys wanted, often desperately, to be thought of as strong, aggressive,
in control -- i.e. "masculine" -- and not weak, passive, or dependent -- i.e. "feminine."
The point, of course, was that men are somehow basically better than women. They do,
after all, have the power, the education, and apparently the talent and motivation needed
to do "great things," and women don't.

You can still hear this in the kinds of comments older people make about little boys and
girls: If a baby boy fusses or demands to have his own way (masculine protest!), they will
say he's a natural boy; If a little girl is quiet and shy, she is praised for her femininity; If,
on the other hand, the boy is quiet and shy, they worry that he might grow up to be a
sissy; Or if a girl is assertive and gets her way, they call her a "tomboy" and will try to
reassure you that she'll grow out of it!

But Adler did not see men's assertiveness and success in the world as due to some innate
superiority. He saw it as a reflection of the fact that boys are encouraged to be assertive in
life, and girls are discouraged. Both boys and girls, however, begin life with the capacity
for "protest!" Because so many people misunderstood him to mean that men are, innately,
more assertive, lead him to limit his use of the phrase.