Individual Psychology/Adlerian Psychology

- A teleological (behavior is shaped by people’s view of the future) psychological theory based on the
idea that throughout life, individuals strive for a sense of mastery, completeness, and belonging and are
governed by a conscious drive to overcome their sense of inferiority by developing to their fullest
potential, obtaining their life goals, and creating their own lifestyles.
- People are motivated by social influences and by their striving for superiority or success
- Optimistic view of people while resting heavily on the notion of social interest, the feeling of
oneness with all humankind.
- People are largely responsible for who they are and it opposes the view that human beings are
dominated by “blind,” irrational instincts operating on an unconscious level.
- Psychologically healthy people are usually aware of what they are doing and why they
are doing it.

Main tenets of Adlerian Psychology

1. Driving force: Striving for success/superiority
2. Subjective Perceptions shape personality
3. Personality is unified and self-consistent
4. Value of human activity must be seen from the point of social interest
5. Self-consistent personality structure develops into a person’s style of life/lifestyle
6. Lifestyle is molded by people’s creative power.

Description - Type Approach

Self/Personality Structure - The organization of the personality in terms of basic, enduring components
and their relationship to each other. For Adler, this was a person’s style of life.

- Personality is fundamentally unified, and each person is unique and indivisible. Thoughts, feelings, and
actions are all directed toward a single goal and serve a single purpose
- Incongruity of behaviors when viewed from the final goal are merely clever attempts to confuse
and subordinate other people. Erratic people, often successful in their attempt to gain superiority
over others, usually remain unaware of their underlying motive and may reject any suggestion
that they desire superiority over others.

Style of Life
- Includes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward the world. An
individual’s characteristic way of overcoming or compensating for feelings of inadequacy.
- There are two types: Healthy and Neurotic Styles of Life
- The products of the interaction of heredity, environment, and a person’s creative power.
- Fairly established by age 4/5, after which all of our actions revolve around our unified, yet flexible, style
of life.
- Psychologically unhealthy people lead inflexible lives that are marked by an inability to choose new
ways of reacting to their environment. Furthermore, they cannot change the way they perceive their
final goal.
- Psychologically healthy people express their interest through action, an active struggle to solve the
three major problems of life: neighborly love, sexual love, and occupation.
- Solved through cooperation, personal courage, and a willingness to help others.
- Adler believed people with a socially useful style of life represent the highest form of humanity in
the evolutionary process.

Dynamics
Pure Adaptation/Adjustment
Compensation - The substitution or development of strength or capability in one area to offset real or
imagined deficiency in another.
- Overcompensation, when the substitute behavior exceeds what might actually be necessary in terms of
level of compensation for the deficiency.
- Maybe a conscious or unconscious process.
 - Central to Adler’s theory of personality which sees all human striving as a response to feelings of
inferiority (Inferiority Complex).
- Psychologists such as Baltes & Baltes (1990) posit that selective optimization with compensation are
important components of successful aging because it reduces the negative effects of cognitive and
physical decline associated with aging.

Social interest [Gemeinschaftsgefühl]

- “The sole criterion of human values” and the ultimate standard for psychological health.
- A communal feeling based on a recognition that people live in a social context and are an integral part
of their family, community, humanity, and the cosmos itself.
- Manifests as people’s natural aptitude for acquiring the skills and understanding necessary to solve
social problems and to take socially affirmative action.
- A measure of psychological health which needs to be actively cultivated in any individual.
- Natural in the human condition as our inferiority necessitates us joining together to form societies.
- Originates in the mother-child relationship during infancy. In order for the mother to take care of
her child, she would have needed some social interest.

Cognitive Processes
Complex
- A group or system of related ideas or impulses that have a common emotional tone and exert a strong
but usually unconscious influence on the individual’s attitudes and behavior.
- Coined by Carl Jung to denote contents of the personal unconscious.
- The three Adlerian complexes:
1. Inferiority Complex - A basic feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, deriving from actual or
imagined physical or psychological deficiency, that may result in behavioral expression ranging
from the withdrawal of immobilizing timidity to the overcompensation of excessive competition
and aggression
2. Superiority Complex - An exaggerated opinion of one’s abilities and accomplishment that
derives from an overcompensation for feelings of inferiority.
3. Nuclear Complex - A central conflict or problem that is rooted in infancy such as feelings of
inferiority.

Layers of Consciousness
1. Conscious thoughts - Those that are understood and regarded by the individual as helpful in striving
for success.
2. Unconscious - Part of the goal that is neither clearly formulated nor completely understood by an
individual. These are thoughts that are unhelpful in striving for success.
- Conscious and unconscious are two cooperating parts of the same unified system.

Safeguarding Tendencies
- Largely conscious protective devices that enable people to hide their inflated self-image against public
disgrace and to maintain their current style of life.
- Safeguarding tendencies include:
1. Excuses - Expressed in the “yes, but” and “if only” format where people state what they claim
they would like to do but then follow with an excuse.
- Life Lie - The false conviction held by some individuals that their life plan is bound to fail
due to other people or to circumstances beyond their control. Postulated as a method of
freeing oneself from personal responsibility.
2. Aggression - Hostile behaviors which pin the blame of failure onto others or themselves. This
may take the form of:
a. Deprecation - The tendency to undervalue other people’s achievements and to
overvalue one’s own. This is evident in criticism and gossip.
b. Accusation - The tendency to blame others for one’s failures and to seek revenge,
thereby safeguarding one’s own exaggerated self-esteem.
 c. Self-accusation - Self-torture and guilt which may manifest as masochism, depression,
and suicide as a means of hurting people who are close to them. The converse of
deprecation.
3. Withdrawal - The tendency to run away from difficulties present in life. Manifests in one of four
modes:
a. Moving Backwards - Psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life.
b. Standing Still - Avoidance of all responsibilities, ensuring themselves against any threat
of failure.
c. Hesitating/Vacillate - Procrastination of responsibilities, destroying works in-progress,
or leaving responsibilities unfinished.
d. Constructing Obstacles - The creation of artificial obstacles in order to exemplify their
inflated sense of personal superiority. If the obstacle is too difficult, the person can resort
to excuses.

Social & Cultural Development

Masculine Protest
- Cultural and social practices, not anatomy, influence many men and women to overemphasize the
importance of being manly.
- The psychic life of women is essentially the same as that of men. However, a male-dominated society
is not natural but an artificial production of historical development.
- Boys are taught early that being masculine means being courageous, strong, and dominant.
The epitome of success for boys is to win, to be powerful, and to be on top. Conversely, women
are taught to be passive and accept inferiority.

Development
Child Development

Organ inferiority - The sense of being deficient or somehow less than others as a result of negative feelings
about any type or real or imagined abnormality of organ function or structure.
- All humans are “blessed” at birth with small, weak, and inferior bodies that ignite feelings of inferiority
only because people possess an innate tendency toward completion or wholeness.
- Even after growing and attaining superiority over their past selves, they may act as if they are
still inferior.
- The disturbance of one part of the body cannot be viewed in isolation as it affects the entire
person.
- Organ inferiority may present normal feelings of incompletion, which leads to striving for success, or
exaggerated feelings, which leads to striving for personal superiority.
- Alone, these do not cause a particular style of life; they simply provide present motivation for reaching
future goals.

Organ Dialect - The deficient organ expresses the direction of an individual’s goal
- The body’s organ speaks a language which is usually more expressive and discloses the individual’s
opinion more clearly than words are able to do.

Striving Force
- The innate, all-encompassing motivation in Individual Psychology.
- [Rejected] Initially, aggression was the dynamic power behind motivation
- [Limited Role] Masculine protest which implied will to power, domination of others. Useful in
Adler’s theory of abnormal development.
- Due to both feelings of inferiority and the basic tendency toward completion/the goal of superiority.
- Without the innate movement toward perfection, children would never feel inferior; but without
feelings of inferiority, they would never set a goal of superiority or success.
- At 4/5, children begin setting a direction to striving force and by establishing a goal either of personal
superiority or social success.
- Goals may take any form, not necessarily a mirror image of the deficiency.
- A weak bodied person will not necessarily become a robust athlete.
 -
Striving for (Personal) Superiority - Striving for
personal gain or superiority over others.
- Socially non-productive with no concern for
others.
- People create clever disguises for their
personal striving and may consciously or
unconsciously hide their self-centeredness
behind the cloak of social concern.
- Psychologically unhealthy people strive for this
- Severe examples: Murderers, Thieves, &
Conartists
APA Dictionary: The urge for superiority in the
sense of social status or domination over others
Striving for Success - Striving for highly developed
social interest.
- An individualized concept with personalized
definitions.
- Involves social interest and is aimed at
benefiting everyone
- Innate, but must be developed.
- Exists potentially and must be actualized in
their own manner.
- Provides guidelines for motivation, shaping
psychological development, and setting an aim.
- Psychologically healthy people seek success
for all humanity.
APA Dictionary: The idea that human beings are
motivated by innate, sovereign drive for realizing
their full potential. The urge for completion and
perfection.

Creative Power
- The ability to shape their behavior and establish personality as a free individual.
- Control their own lives, responsible for their final goal, determine .their method of striving, and
contributes to the development of social interest
- Each person has the power to create a personalized fictional goal based on heredity and the
environment. However, it is neither genetically or environmentally determined.
- The forces of nature and nurture can never deprive a person of the power to set a unique goal
or to choose a unique style of reaching for the goal.
- By the age of 4/5, an individual’s creative power has developed enough to set a final goal. Even infants
have an innate drive towards growth, completion, or success.
- They compensate for physical deficiencies through the goal of becoming big, complete, and
strong.

Final Goal/Life Goal

- APA Dictionary: The individual’s concept of what he or she could attain in life, seen as a means of
compensating for real or imagined inferiority.
- People strive towards fictional goals, such as a final goal of personal superiority or the goal of success
for all humankind, which reduces the pain of inferiority and points a person towards superiority or
success.
- In either case, the final goal has no objective existence.
- It has great significance since it unifies personality and renders all behavior comprehensible,
although it never becomes completely conscious.
- If a child feels neglected (to favor the father over the child) or pampered (to favor the child over
the father), their goal remains largely unconscious. However, if a child experiences love and
security, they set a goal that is largely conscious and clearly understood.
- Children will compensate for feelings of inferiority in devious ways that have no apparent
relationship to their fictional goal.
- Psychologically secure children strive toward superiority in terms of success and social
interest, and will pursue it with a high level of awareness.
- People create subgoals which are often conscious, but the connection between them and the
final goal is unknown. However, from the perspective of the final goal, they will fit into a
self-consistent pattern.
- The product of creative power.
Fictional Finalism - The belief that human beings are more strongly motivated by the goals and ideals
(realizable or unattainable) that they create for themselves and more influenced by future possibilities than by
past events such as childhood experiences.

Guiding Fiction - A personal principle that serves as a guideline by which individuals can understand and
evaluate their experiences and determine their lifestyle. In psychologically healthy individuals, this is assumed
to be realistic and adaptive. In unhealthy individuals, this is unrealistic and nonadaptive.
- As if [Als Ob] - Hans Vaihinger, in his work The Philosophy of “As If,” proposed that certain “fictions”
(things that cannot be proven), such as free will, immortality, and objective morality, should be
supported and lived as if they were true, because there is biological advantage in doing so.

Family Constellations
- The total set of relationships within a particular family, as characterized by such factors as the number
and birth order of members and their ages, roles, and patterns of interaction.
- Birth order - Adler first proposed that birth order is an important factor in personality development.
- Firstborn Children
- Likely to have intensified feelings of power and superiority, high anxiety, and
overprotective tendencies.
- For a while, they are the only child but then experience a traumatic dethronement when
a younger sibling is born, incorporating this into their previously established style of life.
- They may harbor resentment and hostility against the second-born. However, if
they form a cooperating style of life, they will eventually adopt this same
attitude to their siblings.
- Secondborn Children
- They begin in a better situation for developing cooperation and social interest.
- Partially shaped by their perception of the older sibling.
- Usually develop into moderate competitiveness, having a healthy desire to overtake the
older rival.
- Youngest Children
- Most pampered and at high risk of being problem children.
- Likely to have strong feelings of inferiority and to lack a sense of independence.
- Often highly motivated to exceed older siblings.
- Only Children
- Born into a position without competition between siblings.
- May develop an exaggerated sense of superiority and self-concept in adulthood.

There has been much psychological research into how birth order affects personal adjustment and
family status, but the notion that it has strong and consistent effects on psychological outcomes is not
supported. Today, family-structure sees birth order as an indirect variable that follows in importance more
process-oriented variables: parental discipline, sibling interaction, genetic and hormonal makeup.

Marriage and Parenthood - A task for two and may influence a child’s social interest in somewhat different
ways.
- A mother is supposed to develop a bond that encourages the child’s mature social interest and fosters
a sense of cooperation.
- She should have a genuine and deep rooted love for her child centered on their well-being, not
on her own needs or wants.
- Develops from a true caring for her child, her husband, and other people.
- A father must demonstrate a caring attitude toward his wife as well as to other people.
- The ideal father cooperates on an equal footing with the child’s mother in caring for the child and
treating the child as a human being.
- A successful father avoids the errors of emotional detachment (which leads to attachment to the
mother) and paternal authoritarianism (which leads to an unhealthy lifestyle of striving for
personal superiority).
Early Recollections
- Recalled memories yield clues for understanding a patient's style of life as they are consistent.
- Subjective accounts of these experiences yield clues to understanding both their final goal and present
style of life.

Adult Development
Abnormal Development
The one factor underlying all neurosis is underdeveloped social interest. Neurotics tend to:
1. Set their goals too high - Extravagant goals an overcompensation for exaggerated feelings of
inferiority. Lofty ambitions lead to dogmatic and rigid behavior.
2. Live in their own private world - Exaggerated and unrealistic nature of neurotics’ goals leads to
problems with friendship, sex, and occupation from a personal angle that prevents solutions.
- Their view differs from others and they possess private meaning.
3. Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life -

External Factors in Maladjustment

1. Exaggerated Physical Deficits - Whether congenital or the result of injury or disease, are not sufficient
to lead to maladjustment. They must be accompanied by accentuated feelings of inferiority.
2. Pampered Style of Life
- The heart of most neurosis.
- These kinds of people have weak social interest but a strong desire to perpetuate the pampered,
parasitic relationship they originally had with one or both their parents.
- To pamper is not an excess of love, but absence of it. To do too much and treat them as if they
are incapable of solving their own problems.
- They see the world with private vision and believe they are entitled to be first in everything.
- Characterized by extreme discouragement, indecisiveness, oversensitivity, impatience, and
exaggerated emotion (such as anxiety).
3. Neglected Style of Life
- Neglect is a relative concept, no one feels totally unloved/unwanted.
- The fact that children survived infancy is proof that someone cared for the child and seeded
social interest.
- These kinds of people have weak social interest, are generally more suspicious, and more likely to be
dangerous to others.
- They see the world as intrinsically antagonistic, alienating, and experience a strong sense of envy
toward the success of others.
- Characterized by a lack of confidence, tendency to overestimate difficulties, distrust of others, and
inability to cooperate for the common good.
Notes: Superiority vs Inferiority, this occurs when we compare ourselves with others. The answer is to choose
to be our own!

Reconstructive Psychotherapy
- Psychotherapy directed toward basic and extensive modification of an individual’s character structure
by enhancing his or her insight into personality development, unconscious conflicts, and adaptive
responses
Adlerian Therapy - A brief psychoeducational treatment based on Individual Psychology which aims to
decrease an individual’s symptoms and improve his or her functioning by emphasizing the individual’s strivings
for success, connectedness with others, and contributions to society as hallmarks of mental health.
- Used both in clinical settings with individuals, couples, families, and groups and educational settings.
- Persuasion Therapy - A type of supportive psychotherapy in which the therapist attempts to induce the
client to modify faulty attitudes and behavior patterns by appealing to the client’s powers of reasoning,
will, and self-criticism advocated by Adler

Democratic Parenting - A parenting style derived from the ideas of Adler in which the parent guides the child’s
development in an accepting but steady manner and fosters a climate in which cooperation, fairness, equality,
and mutual respect between parent and child are assumed.