Individual Psychology
Theory
Alfred Adler
Biography of Alfred
Adler
 2nd of 6 siblings
 Sibling rivalry with his
older brother,
Sigmund
 1st president of
Freud’s Analytic
Society
 No deep religious
convictions
Introduction to Adlerian
Theory
- People are born with
weak and inferior bodies
that leads to feelings of
inferiority and
dependence on other
people.
- SOCIAL INTEREST
 Feeling of unity with
others.
 Standard for
psychological health.
Introduction to Adlerian
1. The one dynamic force
behind people’s behavior
is the striving for success
or superiority.
2. People’s subjective
perceptions shape their
behavior and personality.
3. Personality is unified
and self-consistent
4. Social Interest
5. The personality
structure develops into a
person’s style of life
6. Style of life is molded by
people’s creative power
Striving for Success or
Superiority
- Psychologically
unhealthy individuals
strive for personal
superiority, whereas
psychologically healthy
people seek success for all
humanity.
Striving for superiority -
people who strive for
personal superiority over
others. May hide their
self-centeredness behind
the cloak of social
concern.
Striving for success -
actions of people who are
motivated by highly
developed social interest.
Social progress is more
important.
Final Goal
shape their behavior and
create their own
personality.
Subjective Perceptions
- People strive for
superiority or success to
compensate for feelings of
inferiority, but the manner
in which they strive is not
shaped by reality but by
their subjective
perceptions of reality, that
is by their fictions, or
expectations of the future.

 Regardless of the Fictions

motivation for
- Ideas that have no real
striving, each
existence, yet they
individual is guided by
influence people as if they
a final goal.
really existed.
 Has great significance
because it unifies Ex:
personality and
Belief in God
renders all behavior
comprehensible. Karma
 Product of the
Physical Inferiorities
creative power.
- Physical deficiencies
Creative Power →
alone do not cause a
people’s ability to freely
particular style of life.
They simply provide more clearly than words
present motivation for are able to do”.
reaching goals.
- Conscious thoughts are
- Some people those that are understood
compensate for these and regarded by the
feelings of inferiority by individual as helpful in
moving toward striving for success.
psychological health and
- Unconscious thoughts
as a useful style of life,
are those that are not
whereas others
helpful
overcompensate and are
motivated to subdue or Social Interest
retreat from other people.
 GEMEINSCHAFTSGEfÜ
Unity and Self- HL
consistency of Personality  Feeling of oneness
with all humanity
- Thoughts, feelings, and
actions are all directed  An attitude of
toward a single goal and relatedness with
serve as a single purpose. humanity as well as
empathy with each
- The mind and body are other.
one, as Adler proposed in  Sole criterion of
his concept of Organ human values
Dialect.
Style of Life
Organ Dialect → body’s
organs “speak a language - It includes a person’s
which is usually more goal, self-concept, feelings
expressive and discloses for others and attitude
the individual’s opinion toward the world.
- Psychologically healthy
people behave in diverse
and flexible ways with
styles of life that are
complex, enriched, and
changing.
Major problems of life:
 Neighborly love
 Sexual love
 Occupation
We solve problems
through:
 Cooperation
 Personal courage
 Willingness to make
contribution.
Creative Power
- Adler believed that each
person is empowered with
the freedom to create his
or her own style of life.
- Their creative power
places them in control of
their own lives, is
responsible for their final
goal, determines their
method striving for that
goal, and contributes to
the development of social
interest.
Abnormal Development
 Underdeveloped
social interest.
 Set their goals too
high.
 Live on their own
private world.
 Have a rigid and
dogmatic style of life.
External Factors in
Maladjustments
 Exaggerated physical
deficiencies.
 Pampered style of life
 Neglected style of life
Safeguarding Tendencies
 Enable people to
hide their inflated
self-image and to
maintain the
current style of
life.
 Protection against
anxiety.
 Conscious and shield a Self-accusation → marked
person’s fragile self- by self-torture and guilt.
esteem from public
Withdrawal
disgrace.
- People escape life’s
Excuses
problems by setting up a
 “Yes, but” distance between
 “If only” themselves and those
problems.
- These excuses protect a
weak but artificially Moving backward →
inflated sense of self- reverting to a more secure
worth and deceive people period of life.
into believing that they
Standing Still → avoiding
are superior more than
all responsibility
they really are.
Hesitating →
Aggression
Procrastinations
- To safeguard their
Constructing Obstacle
exaggerated superiority
→by overcoming the
complex
obstacle, they protect
Depreciation → tendency their self-esteem and their
to undervalue other prestige.
people’s achievements
MASCULINE PROTEST
and to overvalue one’s
own. - In contrast to Freud,
Adler believed that the
Accusation → the
psychic life of women is
tendency to blame others
essentially the same as
for one’s failure.
that of men and that a
male dominated society is
not natural rather an
artificial product of
historical development.

- According to Adler,
cultural and social
practices influence many
men and women to
overemphasize the
importance of being
manly, a condition he
called the masculine
protest.

Applications of Individual
Psychology

 Family Constellation.
 Early Recollections.

Family Constellation
Early Recollections
- Adler insisted that early
recollections are always
consistent with people’s
present style of life and
that their subjective
account of these
experiences yields clues to
understanding both their
final goal and their
present style of life.
Analytical Psychology
Carl Jung
Biography of Carl Jung
• Birth place: Kesswil,
Switzerland
• Date: July 26, 1875
• Mother → Strict believer
in Mysticism; insecure
woman who treated his
family inconsistently.
• Father → idealistic
protestant minister, weak
• His parents are
constantly arguing and the
separation from his
mother had a profound
impact to him.
• Dream → archaeologist
• Occupation → Physician
and Psychiatrist
• He specializes psychiatry
because it provided him to
reconcile two important
opposing tendencies with
himself: an interest in
natural science and
preoccupation with
religious and philosophical
values.
• The Psychology of
Dementia Praecox
• Freud saw Jung as his
successor
•Jung became
disenchanted with Freud’s
theories and broke with
the International
Psychoanalytic Association
in 1913.
•Carl Jung 1 loved his
wife, while Carl Jung 2
loved his former patient, everyday activities of
Toni Wolfe. waking life.

•Jung’s neurotic episode – Unconscious

middle age
- Personal unconscious,
• Died in Zurich in 1961. Collective unconscious.

Nature and Structure of - Healthy individuals are in

Personality contact with their
conscious world, but they
Psyche
also allow themselves to
- It is a construct to experience their
represent all of the unconscious self and thus
interacting systems within to achieve individuation.
human personality that re
Personal unconscious
needed to account for the
mental life and behavior - All repressed, forgotten,
of the person. or subliminally perceived
experiences of one
Levels of Psyche
particular individual.
Ego
- Our personal
- one’s conscious mind, unconscious is formed by
concerned in thinking, our individual experiences
feeling and perceiving, and is therefore unique to
center of consciousness. each of us.

- It is our awareness of -Some images in the

ourselves and is personal unconscious can
responsible for carrying be recalled easily, some
out all the normal remembered with
difficulty, and still others
are beyond the reach of Archetypes
consciousness.
- Ancient or archaic
Complexes images that derive from
the collective unconscious.
- Contents of the personal
unconscious - When activated, it
expresses itself through
- Complex is an
several modes, primarily
emotionally toned
dreams, fantasies, and
conglomeration of
delusions.
associated ideas.
1. Persona
- Complexes are largely
personal, but they may - The public face or role a
also be partly derived person presents to others.
from humanity’s collective
- Although the persona
experience.
can be helpful, it can also
Collective Unconscious be harmful if we come to
believe that it reflects our
- The physical contents of
true nature. Inflation of
the collective unconscious
Persona.
are inherited and pass
from one generation to 2. Anima and Animus
the next as psychic
Anima – The feminine side
potential.
men.
- The collective
Animus – The masculine
unconscious is responsible
side of women
for people’s many myths,
legends, and religious
beliefs.
3. Shadow
- The dark side of the
personality; the archetype
that contains primitive
animal instincts.
-First test of courage.
- Also, the source of
creativity, vitality,
spontaneity, and
emotions.
- Must not be totally
repressed.
4. Great Mother
-Archetype for fertility and
destruction
5. Wise Old Man
-Archetype of wisdom and
meaning.
6. Hero
- Unconscious image of a
person who conquers an
evil for who also has a
tragic flaw.
7. Self
- Archetypes of all
archetypes.
- Represents the unity,
integration, and harmony
of the total personality.
-Striving toward the
wholeness is the ultimate
goal of life.
8. The Wise Old Man
- Derivative of Animus
- Part ng personality na
wise na tayo.
- The mentor part of
Archetype. The part of us
that are good at
mentoring other people.
Psychological Types
- Classification of people
based on two-dimensional
scheme of attitudes and
functions.
- Two attitudes of
extraversion, and
introversion and the four
functions of thinking,
feeling, sensing, and
intuiting combine to
produce eight possible
types.
Psychological Attitudes
- Source of psychic
energy.
- Predisposition to act or
react in a characteristic
direction.
1. Extraversion
- characterized by an
orientation toward the
external world and other
people.
2. Introversion
- Characterized by an
orientation toward one’s
own thoughts and
feelings.
Psychological Functions
- Irrational: Sensing and
Intuiting.
Sensing → reproduces an
experience through the
senses.
Intuiting → Relying on
hunches when dealing
with strange situations
that have no established
facts.
Rational: Thinking and
Feeling
Thinking →
understanding events
through the use of reason
and logic.
Feeling → evaluation of
events by judging whether
they are good or bad;
determines what thing is
worth to the individual.
Development of
Personality
1. Childhood
- Birth until adolescence
- Libidinal energy is
expected in learning to
walk, talk, and other skills
necessary for survival.
2. Youth
- Puberty until middle life
-Libidinal energy is
directed towards learning
a vocation, getting
married, raising a child,
community
activities. Conservative
Principle: to cling to
narrow consciousness of
childhood, thus avoiding
problems pertinent to the
present time of life.
3. Middle life
- 35 to 40 until old age
-The most important stage
- Extroversion to
introversion
-They must look forward
to the future with hope
and anticipation,
surrender the lifestyle of
youth, and discover new
meaning in middle life.
4. Old age
- Time for psychological Dream Analysis – means
rebirth. of resolving current
problems.
- Self-realization and
preparation for death. - Active imagination -
visualizing one’s dream
-Acquisition of wisdom.
again
Individuation
- Word Association Test.
- Condition of
- Painting Therapy.
psychological health
resulting from the
integration of all conscious
and unconscious facets of
the personality.

- All four functions highly

developed.

- Realizing one’s full

potential.

- Begins and achieved at

middle age.

Therapeutic Assessment
Techniques