Individual

Psychology
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler

 Born on February 7, 1870 in a village

near Vienna
 Father: Leopold Adler – Jewish grain
merchant from Hungary
 Mother: Pauline hard-working
homemaker
Adlerian Theory

 People are born weak, inferior bodies –

conditions that leads to inferiority and
consequent dependency on other people
 Therefore a feeling of unity with others is
inherent in people and the ultimate
standard of psychological health
Adlerian Theory

1. Striving for success - One dynamic force

behind people’s behavior
2. People’s subjective perceptions shape
their behavior and personality
3. Personality is unified and self-consistent
4. Value of human activity must be seen from
view point of social interest
Adlerian Theory

5. The self-consistent personality

develops into a person’s style of life
6. Style of life is molded by people’s
creative power
Striving for Superiority
 Reduced all drives into a ONE drive –
striving for success or superiority
 Begin life with physical deficiencies – lead
towards feelings of inferiority – move a
person towards striving for
superiority/success
 Healthy individuals – seek success of all
humanity
 Unhealthy – strive for personal superiority
Weakness Final Goal
and Not Weak
Inferiority and
Not Inferior
Striving for success
Driving Force to Final Goal
Striving for Superiority
 Motivational force
 First was Aggression – then abandoned this
 Next Masculine protest – implied will to power or
domination of others as the motivational force -
abandoned this also
 Striving for superiority – as the great dynamic
force behind all motivation
 Striving for superiority – for neurotic people
 Striving for success – for healthy people (success
of all)
Final Goal

 Everyone is guided by a final goal

 Everyone strives toward a final goal
(superiority or success)
 Final goal great significance because it
unifies personality and renders all
behavior comprehensible or
understandable
Personal Superiority Success of All

Final Goal?
 Final Goal

Subgoal

a l
oSubgoal
s G
a r d
to w
Subgoal Fo r c e
i ng
r i v
D
Strategy
Compensation
Final Goal
 Everyone has the power to create a
personalized fictional goal (one
constructed by raw materials provided by
heredity and environment)
 Goal is a product of Creative Power – the
ability to freely shape their behavior and
create their own personality
 At the age of 4 to 5 one can create their
final goal
Final Goal
 If children feel neglected or pampered, their
goals remain largely unconscious
 Example of girl who was pampered set a
goal to make her parasitic relationship with
her mother permanent
 When she grew up, she looked dependent
and self-depreciating but consistent with her
goal she set at the age of 5 to become a
parasite to her mother (never leaves the
home and always depends on her mother)
Final goal

 Children who experience love and security –

goals are conscious, clear, and understood.
 Psychologically secure individuals strive
towards superiority defined in terms of
success and social interest
 Goal are not completely conscious but they
understand it and pursue it with a high level
of awareness
Final goal

 To get to final goal, people set preliminary

goals (or sub goals)
 Sub-goals are conscious but the
connection with final goal remains
unknown
 Only in looking back after the final goal is
known do we recognize the pattern of our
subgoals leading to us where we are
Theory Key Concept Stop

 Key: Final goal is made by our creative

power
 Key: Consider our inherited weaknesses
(nature) and our environment (nurture)
 Key: Final Goal – not fully conscious
 Key: Final Goal – begins at age 4 to 5
 Key: Final Goal – Not fully conscious but
we understand it
Final Goal and Subgoals
 What you should you have 30 years from
now? Personal Life, Professional Life,
Family Life, Economic Life, achievements?
 What should you have in 20 year to get to
that goal?
 What should you have in 10 years?
 What should you have in 5 years?
 What do you need to do today to get to the 5
years?
The Striving Force as
Compensation
 Striving for superiority a means of
compensation for feelings of inferiority
 People are BLESSED with an inferiority
at birth which makes them strive towards
completion and wholeness
Theory Key Concepts Stop
 KEY: Inferiority is not bad it just is
 Key: From inferiority, we strive to do
something about it
 Key: We set a Final Goal to overcome this
inferiority (completeness and wholeness)
 Key: We move towards the goal by a force
called striving force
 Key strategy: Compensation
Striving Force
 The striving force is innate but its nature
and direction are due to both feeling of
inferiority and goal to superiority
 Striving to success may be innate but must
be developed also
 At birth – there is potentiality and not
actuality
 Each person must actualize their
potentiality in his own manner
Striving Force

Striving Force
From within (innate) Final Goal
Shaped by our Potential (nature) Completenes
Shaped by our Actualize And
(environment) Wholeness
 We provide the
nurture and care
for you to be who
you are meant to Actualized
be rce Subgoal
o
I have F
ng
i
riv
potential
t
S
to be
Striving Force

 At age 4 or 5, children begin process

 Setting direction to the striving force and
by establishing a goal either of personal
superiority or social success
 Goal provides guidelines for motivation,
shaping psychological development and
giving it an aim
Striving Force

 Goal can take any form because it is the

creation of the individual
 Just because weak body, may not be a
robust athlete but could be an artist, actor
or writer.
 Success – people create their own
definition of success.
Stop

 You create your own definition of

success
 What is your definition of success?
 When you see someone who is 65 years
old, what indicators should the person
have to be seen as successful?
Striving Force
 Personality a result of creative power BUT
 Force of Heredity establishes the potentiality
(example a short person cannot strive to be a
personality of a professional basketball player)
 Environment contributes to the development of
social interest and courage (environment
nurtures the person)
 However, heredity and environment can never
deprive a person of the power to ser a unique
goal or a unique way of reaching the goal.
Stop

 You have a unique goal

 You have a unique way of reaching that
goal
 Do you know what your real goal is?
 Do you know what is your unique way of
reaching your unique goal?
Striving for Personal
Superiority
 Strive for personal superiority with little or no
concern for others
 Goals are personal ones (not social interest)
 Striving is motivated largely by exaggerated
feelings of personal inferiority
 Some are obvious (murderers, con artists,
etc.) others use clever disguises
Striving for Personal
Superiority
 Example of a college professor
 Spends time with students and great interest for
students
 Encourages vulnerable students to talk with him.
This private intelligence leads him to think that
he is the most accessible and dedicated teacher.
 Appears to be motivated by social interest but in
actuality self serving and motivated by
overcompensation for feelings of personal
superiority.
 rce Personal Superiority
gfo n
in ti o
riv By ns a
St e
mp
rc o
v e
O
Exaggerated
Personal
Inferiority
Striving for Success
 Psychologically healthy people are able to
move beyond striving for personal gain.
 Motivated by social interest and are able
to strive for success of all humankind.
 Concerned with goals beyond themselves,
capable of helping others without
demanding or expecting personal payoff,
and able to see others as people with
whom they can cooperate with.
Striving for Success
 Success – not gained at the expense of
others
 Maintain a sense of self but see daily
problems in view of society’s development
rather than a personal vantage point.
 Personal worth = contribution to human
society
 Social progress more important than
personal credit
 a positive outlook on
life.

An interest in
Social interest furthering the
welfare of others

all work together

toward this goal
we will progress
together to help
society
Subjective
Perceptions
Subjective Perceptions
 People’s subjective perceptions shape their
behavior and personality
 The manner in which they strive for superiority or
success is shaped by their perception of reality
 People are motivated more by FICTIONS or
expectations of the future than experiences of
the past
 Goal exists in people’s present perception of the
future – Subjectively perceived as the here and
now.
Fictionalism
 Personality is molded by people’s
subjective beliefs concerning the future –
FICTION (not fact)
 Most important fiction – goal of their
superiority or success
 This fictional final goal
 guides their style of life
 Gives unity to personality
 When understood, confers purpose on all
their behavior
Concept Stop

 Key: Fiction Goal – what I think the

future is like (perception of the future)
 Key: Goal – guide to my style of life
 Key: Goal – Gives unity to my personality
 Key: Goal – When understood, I
understand all my behaviors
Think about it
 At his death bed, St. John Baptist de La
Salle said: “I adore all things, the Will of
God, in my regard”
 At one point of his life he said, if I had only
known what trials I would have undergone,
I would have not said yes in the beginning.
 Only at the end of his life did he
understand his goal and the goal for God
in his life. Then it all made sense.
Fictionalism
 Fictions – ideas that have no real
existence, yet they influence people as if
they really existed – AS IF
 Consistent with Teleological view of
motivation
 Teleology – explanation of behavior in
terms of its purpose or aim
 Concerned with future goals – people are
motivated by present
Concept stop

 What is meant by fictionalism?

 How does this influence your behavior?
 Can you identify some fiction that shapes
your behavior?
 Do you understand the “As If” concept?
Organ Inferiorities

 All people begin life small, weak and

inferior
 This develops a fiction or belief system
about how to overcome these
deficiencies
 But even if they become big, strong and
superior, they may still act as if they are
weak, small, and inferior
Organ Deficiencies
 Physical handicaps have little or no importance
by themselves
 But become meaningful when they stimulate
subjective feelings of inferiority
 Some people compensate by moving towards
psychological health and useful style of life
 Others overcompensate and are motivated to
subdue or retreat from other people and to live
essentially useless style of life
Concept stop

 Key: Inferiorities are not bad, they just are.

 Key: Inferiorities are only important IF they
stimulate a feeling of inferiority
 Key: What is important is not your
inferiority but your FEELING of inferiority.
 Key: Compensation – GOOD
 Key Overcompensation - BAD
Organ Inferiorities

 Beethoven – though deaf continued to

compose music – overcoming a handicap
and making significant contribution to
society
 Physical deficiencies do not alone cause
a particular style of life, they provide
present motivation for reaching future
goals
Implication Stop
 Poverty is it connected to one’s success
or not?
 Family Disintegration is it connected to
personal success or not?
 So what is connected to one’s “personal
success”?
 What is connected with personal
failures?
Unity and Self-
Consistent
Unity and Self-Consistent

 Personality is unified and self-consistent

 Each person is unique and indivisible –
thus individual psychology insists on the
fundamental unity of personality
 Person’s thoughts, feelings and actions
are still directed towards a single goal
and serve a single purpose – all actions
become consistent and meaningful
Unity and Self-
Consistency
 People may behave erratically or unpredictably
 But when viewed from final goal, they appear as
unhealthy attempts to confuse people
 Precisely the point – if I am erratic in my
behavior, you cannot predict my behavior. If
you cannot predict my behavior, I am superior
to you and you are not superior to me.
 This may be unconscious way of finding
superiority.
Concept stop

 Key: Personality is unified and consistent

 Key: Person is unique and indivisible
 Key: Person’s thoughts, action and
feelings are directed to a final goal
 Therefore: Understand that final goal,
then you understand the thoughts,
feelings and actions of the person.
Examples of Unity

 Body Dialect
 Conscious and Unconscious
Organ or Body Dialect
 The disturbance of one part of the body cannot
be viewed in isolation.
 It affects the entire person
 Organ Dialect – deficient organ expresses the
direction of the individual’s goal
 Through Organ Dialect – body’s organs “speak
a language that is usually more expressive and
discloses the individual’s opinions more clearly
than words are able to do”
Organ Dialect
 Example of man with a rheumatoid arthritis in his
hand.
 Hand communicates “see my deformity. See my
handicap. You can’t expect me to do manual
work”.
 Hand speaks for a desire for sympathy.
 Boy who bed wets. Sending message that he
does not want to obey his parents.
 Really creative because boy speaks with his
bladder instead of his mouth.
Conscious and
Unconscious
 Unity – harmony between conscious and
unconscious actions
 Adler’s Unconscious – that part of the
goal that is neither clearly formulated nor
completely understood by the individual
 No dichotomy between conscious and
unconscious – two cooperating parts of
the same unified system
Conscious and
Unconscious
 Conscious thoughts – those that are
understood and regarded as helpful in
striving for success
 Unconscious thought – thoughts that are
not helpful in striving for success.
Conscious and
Unconscious
 “we cannot oppose “consciousness” to
“unconsciousness” as if they were
antagonistic halves of the individual’s
existence. The conscious life becomes
unconscious as soon as we fail to
understand it – and as soon as we
understand an unconscious tendency, it has
already become conscious” (Adler,
1929/1964)
Conscious and
Unconscious
 Complementary entities operating under
the dominance of a unifying style of life.
 Both have one purpose – to realize the
goal
Social Interest
Social Interest
 Gemeinschaftsgefühl – social interest but
better as “social feeling” or “community
feeling”
 An attitude of relatedness with humanity in
general as well as an empathy for each
member of the human race
 Feeling of oneness with all humanity
 Implies membership in the social
community of all people
 striving for perfection of all people
Social Interest

 Social Interest – natural condition of

human species and the cement that
binds society together
 Social interest is necessary, responsible
for our existence and survival
Social Interest Origins
 A potentiality in all people
 Must be developed before it can contribute
to a useful style of life
 Everyone has the seeds of social interest
sown by a mother who cared and nurtured
them
 Parenting is important in developing one’s
social interest
 Parenting a task for two
Social Interest - Mother

 Develops a bond that encourages the

child mature social interest & fosters a
sense of cooperation
 Love – centered on the child’s well-being
and not own needs and wants
 If mother has learned to give and receive
love – little difficulty for mother
Social Interest - Mother

 If she prefers child to father – child is

pampered and spoiled
 If she prefers husband and society – child
is neglected and unloved
 If mother demonstrates widespread social
interest, her child will learn empathy to all
ages, all genders, and all races.
Social Interest - Father

 Second important person

 Demonstrates caring attitude towards wife,
his occupation, and society
 His broad social interest must manifest
itself in relationship with the child
 Ideal father – cooperates equally with
mother in caring for child and treating child
as a human being
Social Interest - Father
 Emotional detachment
 influence child to have a warped sense of social interest
& possibly a neurotic need for the mother
 Child creates goal of personal superiority
 Authoritarianism
 May also lead to neurotic style of life
 Child learns to strive for power and personal superiority
 Both prevents growth and spread of social interest
Social Interest
 Early social environment – extremely important
 Relationship with mother and father can
smoother effects of heredity
 Adler – effect of heredity become blurred by
powerful influence of the social environment
after the age of 5
 By age 5 – environment force have been
modified or shaped nearly every aspect of a
child’s personality
Social Interest
Importance
 Alder’s yardstick for measuring
psychological health – “sole criterion of
human values”
 Gauge for judging worth of a person
 Standard to be used in determining the
usefulness of a life
 Measure for maturity – genuinely
concerned about people and have a goal
of success that encompasses the well-
being of all people.
Social Interest

 Synonymous with charity and

unselfishness
 Worth of all acts can be judged against
the criterion of social interest
 Final Goal Final Goal
Dimly Perceived Clearly perceived

Personal Superiority Success

Social Interest
Personal Gain
Normal Feelings
Exaggerated feelings of incompletion

Feelings of Inferiority

Physical deficiencies

Innate striving force

Style of Life
Style of Life
 The flavor of a person’s life
 Includes person’s goal, self-concept,
feelings for others, and attitude towards the
world.
 Product of interaction of heredity,
environment, and person’s creative power
 Analogy of music and notes and
composer’s style or unique manner of
expression
Style of Life

 Fairly established by age 4 or 5

 Healthy individuals – behave in diverse,
and flexible ways with style of life that are
complex, enriched and changing
 Many ways of striving for success and
continually create new options
 Final goal is constant but the way they
perceive it continually changes
Style of Life
 Healthy socially useful style of life –
expressed their social interest through
ACTION
 Solve three major problems: neighborly
love, sexual love, and occupation through:
 Cooperation, personal courage, and
willingness to make a contribution to the
welfare of another
 Socially useful style of life – highest form
of humanity
Creative Power
Creative Power
 Each person is empowered with the freedom to
create his or her own style of life
 People are responsible for who they are and
how they behave
 Creative power
 control of their own lives,
 responsible for their own final goal,
 determines their method of striving for that goal, and
 contributes to the development of their social interest
Creative Power

 Creative power – makes each person a

free individual
 Implies movement, movement towards a
goal, movement with a direction
Creative Power
 Each person is born with a unique genetic
makeup
 Each person has different social experiences
 People are more than just heredity and social
environment
 People are creative beings who react to the
environment, act on their environment, and
causes the environment to react to them
Creative Power

 Heredity & Environment – building blocks

for personality but architectural design is
that person’s own style
 People have no inherent good or bad
nature
 People are the way they are because of
the use they have made of their heredity
and environment (brick and mortar)
Creative Power

 Low doorway example

 Healthy individuals stoop to get through
 Neurotic people hit their head on the door
jam
 You have the creative power that permits
you to follow either action
Concept Stop
Abnormal
Development
Abnormal Development

 People are what they make of themselves

 Creative power endows people with the
freedom to be either healthy or unhealthy
and to follow useful or useless style of life
 Adler – wrote mostly about healthy
individuals than with abnormal
psychology
General Description

 Underdeveloped social interest – the

one factor that underlies all types of
maladjustment
 Neurotics tend to
1. Setting goals too high
2. Live in their own private world
3. Rigid dogmatic life
General Description
 Neurosis - lack of social interest –
overconcerned with self and little care about
others
 Maladjustment – setting goals too high to
overcompensate for exaggerated feelings of
inferiority
 Extravagant goals lead to dogmatic behavior
 Narrowing perspective & strives compulsively
and rigidly
General Description

 Exaggerated and unrealistic nature of

goals sets them apart from community of
other people
 Live in private worlds and endow their
goals with private meaning
 Problems of friendship, sex and
occupation – seen from a personal angle
and not from society
External Factors of
Maladjustment
1. Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies
2. Pampered Style of Life
3. Neglected Style of Life
Physical Deficiencies
 Normally not enough to lead to
maladjustment
 Accentuated feelings of inferiority due to
physical deficiencies
 Overcompensate for inferiority
 Over concerned with self
 Feeling of living in enemy territory, fear
defeat, desire success, and solve problems
in a selfish manner
Pampered Style of Life
 Lies in the heart of most neurosis
 Weak social interest, strong desire to be
pampered, parasitic in relationships with mother
 Expect others to look after them, overprotect
them, and satisfy their needs
 Extremely discouraged, indecisive, oversensitive,
impatient, and exaggerated emotions – especially
anxiety
 Feel they are entitled to be first in everything
Pampered Lifestyle
 Pampered children do not experience much
love
 Child - Feel Unloved, Overprotected, hovered
over, smothered, and shielded from
responsibilities
 Parents – demonstrate lack love by doing too
much, treat child as if incapable of solving
problems
Neglected Style of Life

 Other children – feel neglected, fear

separation, and when need to fend for
self, feel mistreated, left out, and
neglected
 Negative style of life – from feelings of
being unloved and unwanted
 Neglected – relative – no one feels totally
neglected
Neglected Life Style
 Abused and mistreated children – create a
neglected life style
 Little confidence in self, and tend to over
estimate difficulties connected to life’s major
problems
 Treated coldly – expect society to be the same
 Spiteful towards others, distrust self, and unable
to cooperate for common good
 Society = enemy, feel alienated, strong sense of
envy of success of others
 Similar to pampered but more suspicious and
more likely to be dangerous to others
Safeguarding Tendencies

 Neurotic symptoms – to safeguard self-

esteem
 This protects inflated self-image and
maintaining neurotic style of life
 Similar to Freud’s defense mechanism
Safeguarding Tendencies
Safeguarding Tendencies
Defense Mechanisms
 Protect self esteem
 Protect ego from from public disgrace
anxiety from instinct
 Only for neurotic
 Common to all symptoms (but we all
 Unconscious sometimes use this)
 Can be conscious or
unconscious
Safeguarding Tendencies
 Excuses
 Aggression
 Depreciation
 Accusation
 Self-accusation
 Withdrawal
 Moving backward
 Standing still
 Hesitating
 Constructing obstacles
Excuses

 “Yes but…” or “if only…” format

 They would like to do something for
others…but…
 If only something, then I would be better.
 Excuse to protect a weak sense of self
worth and deceive people to believe that
they are more superior than they really
are.
Aggression

 Use of aggression to safeguard their

exaggerated superiority complex, to
protect their fragile self-esteem
 Forms:
 Depreciation
 Accusation
 Self-accusation
Depreciation

 Tendency to undervalue others’

achievements and over value one’s own
 Sadism, gossip, envy, and intolerance
 Intention: to depreciate or belittle
another so that I am in a favorable light
Accusation

 Blaming others for one’s own failure and

to seek revenge
 Neurotics cause others to suffer more
than they do.
 Could be seen as assigning blame
Self-Accusation

 Self-torture (masochism, depression, and

suicide) – the power to hurt others by
hurting myself
 Guilt (aggressive self-accusatory
behavior)
 Self-accusation – devalue self so as to
inflict suffering on others while protecting
own magnified feelings of self-esteem.
Withdrawal

 Tendency to run away from difficulties

 Unconsciously escape from life’s
problems by setting up distance between
self and those problems.
 Modes: Moving Backwards, Standing
still, Hesitating, Constructing Obstacles
Moving Backwards
 Tendency to safeguard one’s fictional goal
of superiority by psychologically reverting
to a more secure period of life.
 Similar to Freud’s regression but for Adler,
it may be conscious and is directed at
protecting a inflated goal of superiority
 Designed to elicit sympathy, the
deleterious attitude offered so generously
to pampered children
Standing Still

 Not moving in any direction

 Avoid all responsibility – ensuring self from
failure
 Protect fictional goals because they never
do anything that will prove that they cannot
accomplish it (like mediocrity)
 By doing nothing, people protect their self-
esteem and protect self from failure
Hesitating
 Hesitate or vacillate when faced with a difficult
problem (niho-niha or dua-dua)
 Procrastinate until they have the excuse to say,
“well, its too late now.”
 Compulsions – are acts to waste time
(compulsive washing of hands, retracing steps,
excessive orderliness, destroying work already
done, leaving work unfinished)
 Hesitate because it preserves their self-esteem
Constructing Obstacles
 Some people build straw houses to show
that they can knock it down
 By overcoming obstacle, they protect their
self-esteem
 If they fail to hurdle the obstacle, they can
revert to excuse.
 By constructing a simple obstacle, one can
easily hurdle it – dream small so you can
hurdle it.
Application of
Individual
Psychology
Family Constellation

 Birth Order, the gender of their siblings,

and age spread between them.
 Perception of the situation – more
important than rank
Family Constellation

 First Born
 Likely to have intensified feelings of
power and superiority,
 high anxiety,
 and overprotective tendencies
First Born
 Dethronement Experience – Change in
world view
 Age 3 or older – incorporate into previous
established style of life
 If already developed a self centered life style –
Feeling of hostility and resentment
 If cooperating style – eventually feel hostility
and resentment
 Less than 3 – Unconscious feeling making a
more resistant to change when older
Second Born
 In a better position to develop cooperation and
social interest
 To some extent – personality shaped by their
perception of the first born attitude towards them
 If hostile and vengeful – second becomes
competitive or discouraged
 Normal second born – mature to moderate
competitiveness, having desire to overtake older
rival
 If successful – challenges authority and
revolutionary attitude
Youngest Child

 Most pampered thus high risk to be

problem children
 Likely to have strong feelings of inferiority
and lack a sense of independence
 Highly motivated to exceed older siblings
– fastest runner, best musician, most
skilled athlete, most ambitions student
Only Child
 Unique position of competing – against
parents
 Develop exaggerated sense of superiority,
inflated self-concept, and feeling world is a
dangerous place especially if parents are
over concerned over child’s health
 may lack well-developed feelings of
cooperation and social interest
 Parasitic attitude, expect others to pamper
them
Oldest Child
 Positive Traits  Negative Traits
 Nurturing and  Highly anxious
protective of others  Susceptible to
 Good organizer exaggerated feelings
of power
 Driven to fight for
acceptance
 Needing always to be
right
 Critical of others
 uncooperative
Second Born
 Positive Traits  Negative Traits
 Highly Motivated  Highly Competitive
 Cooperative  Easily discouraged
 Moderately
competitive
Youngest Child
 Positive Traits  Negative Trait
 Realistically  Pampered
Ambitious  Dependent on others
 Driven to excel in
everything
 Unrealistically
ambitious
Only Child
 Positive Trait  Negative Traits
 Socially Mature  Egotistical (or high
exaggerated feelings
of superiority)
 Uncooperative (or
low in cooperation)
 Self-absorbed
 Pampered
Early Recollections
 Early memories yield clues to understanding
patient’s style of life
 People reconstruct events to make them
consistent with a theme or pattern that runs
throughout their lives
 Highly anxious people project their current
lifestyle onto their memory of childhood
 Socially healthy people – recall memories that
include pleasant relations with other people
Dreams

 Dreams are clues to solving future

problems
 Represent the dreamer’s attempt to solve
a problem that cannot be solved by
common sense alone.
 Adler’s dream of being shipwrecked
Dreams

 Most dreams – self-deceptions – disguised

– making it difficult for dreamer to
understand
 Reaching the top – superiority
 On a person’s shoulders or being shot out
of a canon – dependent lifestyle
 Unaided flying or reaching a goal without
help – independent person
Psychotherapy
 Psychotherapy – results from lack of courage,
exaggerated feelings of inferiority, and
underdeveloped social interest
 Goal: to enhance courage, lessen feelings of
inferiority, and encourage social interest
 Patients – resist because they hold on to
existing comfortable view of self
 “What would you do if I cured you immediately?”
– forces patient to examine goals and
responsibility rested in them
Psychotherapy

 “Everybody can accomplish everything”

 What people do with what they have is
more important that what they have
 Used humor and warmth to increase
courage, self-esteem, and social interest
 Therapist warm, nurturing attitude
encourages patient – social interest in
sexual love, friendship, and occupation
Psychotherapy
 Unique method with children – treating them in
front of parents, teachers, and health
professionals.
 My problems are the community’s problems
 Enhances social interest – feeling they belong
to a community of concerned adults
 Worked to win parent’s confidence and to
persuade them to change their attitude towards
child
Psychotherapy
 Adler – active in setting the goal and
direction of psychotherapy
 Maintained friendly and permissive attitude
toward patient
 Was a congenial coworker, refrained from
moralistic preaching and placed great
value on human relationship
 Once social interest is awakened, it must
spread outside therapy