Adlerian Therapy

Definition of Terms
Alfred Adler departed from his colleagues Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung because of his different views of
personality, including the following:

Holistic View - Adler stated that a person must be seen as a unified personality or “individual” for us to really
understand our client or that person.
Social Factors - Adler emphasized that a person’s social environment was a determining factor influencing
personality development.
Choice - he believed people have choices in how they approach their lives and their past does not determine
their future.
Social Motivation - he believed that people were motivated primarily by social connections, which he called
social interest. He also believed that high levels of social interest and prosocial behavior were signs of
psychological health.
Teleological and Goal Oriented - Adler believed that behavior was purposeful and goal-oriented and people
strive towards meaningful activity, success, and achievement.

View of Human Nature

∙ Focus on how the person’s perception of the past and his or her interpretation of early events has a continuing
influence.
- more inline with psychoanalytic therapy, because we also have to go back to the early events of the clients.
∙ Humans are motivated primarily by social relatedness rather than by sexual urges.
- one of the reasons why Adler detached himself from the study of Freud.
∙ The life goals unifies the personality and becomes the source of human motivation.
∙ Human behavior is not determined solely by heredity and environment.
* Adlerians recognize that biological and environmental conditions can limit our capacity to choose and create.

Key Concept
Subjective Perception of Reality
Phenomenological Approach
∙ It pays attention to the individual way in which people perceive their world.
∙ Objective reality is less important than how we interpret reality and the meanings we attach to what we
experience.
∙ More of live experiences, but we also talk about SUBJECTIVE REALITY which includes individual
perception, thought, feelings, values, beliefs, convictions, and conclusions of human being.

Unity and Patterns of Human Personality

Individual Psychology
∙ Adler’s approach that stresses understanding the whole person–how all dimensions of a person are
interconnected components, and how all of these components are unified by the individual’s movement toward
a life goal.

Unity and Patterns of Human Personality

∙ Many Adlerians use the terms Fictional Finalism to refer to an imagined central goal that guides a person’s
behavior.
∙ Guiding self-deal represents an individual’s image of a goal of perfection.

Holistic Concept
∙ Implies that we cannot be understood in parts, but all aspects of ourselves must be understood in relationships.
∙ The focus of Adlerian therapy is to understand the whole person within their social embossed context (family,
culture, school, work contexts).
* According to Adler: The moment we experience INFERIORITY we are pulled by the striving for
SUPERIORITY, although it does not necessarily mean being superior to others.

Social Interest and Community Feeling

∙ Social Interest and Community Feeling are probably Adler’s most significant and distinctive concepts.
∙ Refers to an individual's awareness of being part of the human community and to an individual's attitudes in
dealing with the social world.
∙ Social Interest
- refers to an action line of one’s community feeling and it involves the individual’s positive attitude toward
other people in the world.
- It is the central indicator of mental health because many of the problems we experience are actually related to
the fear of not being accepted by the groups that we actually value.
∙ Community Feeling
- embodies the feeling of being connected to all of humanity–past, present, and future–and to being involved
in making the world a better place.
- If belonging is not fulfilled then the result is most likely ANXIETY.

Universal Life Tasks

∙ Building Friendship (Social Tasks)
- Social tasks that we can do when it comes to interpersonal relationships with other people.
∙ Establishing Intimacy (Love-Marriage Tasks)
- Tasks that have something to do with love or marriage.
∙ Contributing to Society (Occupational Tasks)
- Tasks that are related to work or school.
* These tasks are so fundamental to human living that dysfunction in any of them is often an indicator of
psychological disorder.
* The aim of the therapy is to assist clients in modifying their lifestyles so they can more effectively navigate
one of these tasks.
∙ Two other tasks of life (Dreikurs and Mosak, 1967)
1. Getting along with ourselves (self- acceptance)
2. Developing our spiritual dimension (it could be values, meanings and life goals of individual)

Birth Order and Sibling Relationship

Adler put considerable emphasis on the socio-psychological configuration or constellation of a person’s family,
with an emphasis on birth order.

Oldest Child - begins life as the center of attention and typically learns to take the “newcomers” in stride. They
tend to relate well with adults, assume social responsibility, and develop socially appropriate forms of coping.
Second Child of only two - will typically pursue an opposite position than the first child. In some cases, the
second child strives to be number one, creating rivalry, especially if parents do not discourage the competition
and comparisons.
Middle Child - they are the one who may feel “squeezed” between the others. Many feel like they do not have a
clear or unique role to play in the family. They may be more independent, sensitive, or even rebellious, and
some may directly ask parents for reassurance of their love.
Youngest Child - “the baby of the family”; they tend to enjoy being the center of attention. If the parents
emphasize achievement, they may become the hardest working of all to prove their place and ultimate worth.
Only Child - they are much like older children except that they are never dethroned and generally do not have
the pressure to close competitors (only child = no competition).
Therapeutic Goals
∙ The main aim of the therapy is to develop the client’s sense of belonging and to assist in the adaptation of
behaviors and processes characterized by the community feeling and social interest.
∙ To assist clients to understand their unique lifestyles and help them learn to think about the self, others and the
world.
∙ The Adlerian is interested not in curing sick individuals or a sick society but in re-educating individuals and
reshaping society.
∙ Encouragement is the most powerful method available for changing a person’s beliefs, for it helps clients build
self-confidence and stimulates courage.
* In Adlerian therapy one must have the courage or willingness to act even when fearful in ways that are
consistent in the social interest.

Therapeutic Process
Phase 1: Establish the Relationship
∙ Seek to make a person-to-person contact with clients rather than with “the problem”.
∙ Help clients become aware of their assets and strengthen rather than dealing continually with their deficits and
liabilities.
∙ Provide support which is an antidote to despair and discouragement.
∙ Here, if the client feels like they are deeply understood and accepted they are more likely to focus on what
they want from the therapy and of course establish their goals with them.

Phase 2: Explore the Individual’s Psychological Dynamics

∙ Get a deeper understanding of an individual's lifestyle.
∙ Focus on the individual’s social and cultural context.
∙ 2 Interview Forms:
- Subjective Interview: the counselor helps the client to tell his/her life story as completely as possible.
- Objective Interview: describe the counselor as a “lifestyle investigator”.
∙ When we talk about this process, active listening is not enough, we have to listen for clues for purposive
aspects of client’s coping and approaches to life. (social history, how did their problem begin, medical history).

Phase 3: Encourage Self-Understanding and Insight

∙ Counselors’ help clients gain better self-understanding and promote insight (insight = refers to one’s
understanding of motivations that operate in our client’s life).
∙ The counselor offers possible interpretations of behaviors by identifying underlying motivations for problems.

Phase 4: Reorientation and Reeducation

∙ Clients are both encouraged and challenged to develop the courage to take risks and make changes in their life
(changes in behavior).
∙ Reorientation - involves shifting rules of interaction, process, and motivation
∙ Encouragement - entails showing faith in people (client), expecting them to assume responsibility for their
lives, and valuing them for who they are.

Therapist Function and Role

∙ Adlerians assume a non-pathological perspective and thus DO NOT label clients by their diagnoses.
∙ Gather information about an individual’s style of living by means of questionnaire on the client’s FAMILY
CONSTELLATION (parents, siblings, others living in the home, life tasks, early recollections).
∙ Uses Early Recollections as assessment (defined as “stories of events that a person says occurred before he or
she was 10 years of age”); we actually target a certain age when we get the early recollection of the client.
∙ Lifestyle Assessment is a process of gathering early memories. It involves learning to understand the goals
and motivations of the client.
* Family constellation - shows the individual’s early social world.
* Early recollection - the specific events that your client can actually recall along with the feelings and thoughts
that accompany this childhood incident.

Client’s Experience in Therapy

∙ Clients explore what Adlerians call Private Logic, the concepts about self, others and life that constitutes the
philosophy on which an individual's lifestyle is based.
∙ Learning how to correct faulty assumptions and conclusions is central to therapy.
* Basic Mistakes - faulty themes that develop in childhood as children make sense of their experiences, such as
loneliness, parental anger, disappointment, traumas, and loss.

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

∙ Adlerian therapist strive to establish and maintain an Egalitarian alliance and a person-to-person relationship
with their clients.
∙ Egalitarian Relationship - allow the client to maintain a sense of agency and choice.
∙ Adlerian counselors approach clients from a more humble position of having something of potential
usefulness for client’s understanding that what is offered may or may not be actually useful in the client’s
subjective world.