Alfred Adler

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Alfred Adler

• 1870 - 1937
• INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

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Alfred Adler

• 1902 Joined Freud's discussion group on
  neurotics
• 1910 Co-founder with Freud Journal of
  Psychoanalyses
• 1912 Separates from Freud and founds the
  Society for Individual Psychology

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Neo-Freudian

• Minimized role of psycho-sexual stages
• Culture, spirituality, society also influence
  personality and behavior
• Personality development occurs through life-span

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Freud and AdlerAgreements
Disagreements

• Symptoms have a purpose
• Dreams are meaningful
• Influence of early life on later life

• Theory of instincts
• Biological determinism
• Role of transference in therapy

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View of Human Nature

• Holistic and social view of humans
• Social beings, self-determined, decision-makers
• All behavior is purposeful
• Freedom to choose implies values and meanings
• Social interest is the most important value
• The main motivation for behavior is striving for
  significance
• Phenomenological approach

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Social Interest

• Adlers most significant and distinctive concept
• Refers to an individuals attitude toward and
  awareness of being a part of the human community
• Mental health is measured by the degree to which
  we successfully share with others and are
  concerned with their welfare
• Happiness and success are largely related to
  social connectedness

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Striving for Significance

• Compensating for weaknesses
• Attaining a unique identity
• Achieving a sense of belonging
• Security
• Competence (vs. sense of inferiority)

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Phenomenological Approach

• Adlerians attempt to view the world from the
  clients subjective frame of reference
• How life is, in reality is less important than
  how the individual believes life to be
• It is not the childhood experiences per se that
  are crucial, but our recollections and
  interpretations of these events

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Life presents challenges in the form of Life Tasks

• Society ability to share with others
• Work making a contribution to others
• Sex achieving intimacy
• Spiritual personal meaning in life, relation
  with cosmos
• Coping with oneself self-acceptance

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Family Constellation

• Primary social environment where the child,
  through exploration and observation,
• learns what gains approval and
• how to achieve significance (sense of competence
  and acceptance).

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Birth Order

• First Born
• Second Born
• Middle Child
• Youngest Child
• Only Child

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Life Style

• Conclusions about the self, others, and the
  environment based on subjective experiences with
  parents and siblings.
• Conceptualized as a cognitive structure or map
  from which we apprehend reality and interpret
  experience

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Life Style

• It is largely out of awareness and includes
  convictions about
• Self-concept Who I am
• Self-ideal Who should I be to be significant
• The World around What they demand of me
• Ethical beliefs Sense of right and wrong

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Psychologically Healthy Individuals

• Have developed social interest
• Commit self to life-tasks w/o excuses
• Have a sense of belonging
• Have positive self-esteem and feel acceptable
• Are able to accept their imperfections

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Concept of Psychopathology

• Discouragement
• Acting as if one is inferior
• Avoid life tasks
• Develop symptoms as excuses for avoiding tasks
  and save face

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Purpose of Maladaptive Behaviors (Dreikurs)

• Behavior
• Call Attention
• Power Struggle
• Revenge
• Display Hopelessness

• Feeling
• Irritated
• Challenged
• Hurt
• Hopeless

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Adlerian Therapy

• Cooperative and educational enterprise
• Goals
• Change faulty thinking and mistaken assumptions
• Foster social interest
• Decrease inferiority complex
• Overcome discouragement
• Changes in the lifestyle (mistakes, perceptions,
  goals)

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Faulty Thinking and Mistaken Assumptions (Private
Logic)

• Overgeneralizations life is dangerous people
  are mean
• False or impossible goals of security I must
  please everybody
• Misperceptions of life demands To succeed you
  must be perfect.
• Denial of self-worth
• Faulty values succeed no matter what.

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Stages of Therapy

• Establishing the Relationship
• Assessment Exploring the Individuals Dynamics
• Gaining Insight
• Reorientation

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I. Establishing the Relationship

• Collaborative relationship
• Based on trust
• Attend to subjective experience of client
• Exploration of clients issues
• Setting general goals
• Learning process

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II. Assessment

• To explore the clients life-style and how it
  affects life tasks
• Techniques
• The Life Assessment Topics
• Explore how initial concern relates to life task
• Experiences in family constellation
• Early recollections (content and associated
  affect)
• Number one priority of client (basic convictions)
• The Question to explore if symptoms have a
  psychosomatic component or not (What if?)

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III. Gaining Insight

• Help the client understand their life style and
  see how it affects their functioning in the tasks
  of life.
• Explore faulty perceptions, mistaken beliefs, and
  values
• Understand their role in creating problems
• Gain awareness of responsibility for actions

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III. Gaining Insight Techniques

• Interpretation
• Bring to awareness client's goals and beliefs and
  how they motivate their behaviors
• Focus on purposes and consequences of behaviors
• Confrontation Challenge clients with
• Discrepancies between behaviors and beliefs
• Rationalizations for behavior, mistaken beliefs,
  private goals, and unproductive behavior

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IV. Reorientation

• Action oriented phase to help clients put
  insights into practice and get the courage to
  make changes in their lives.
• Techniques
• Immediacy Acting as-if
• Paradoxical Intention Push-button technique
• Spitting on the soup Task setting
• Catching oneself

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IV. Reorientation Techniques 1/2

• Immediacy
• attending to behaviors occurring in the therapy
  relation to help clients explore their
  motivations and behaviors
• Paradoxical intention
• prescribe the symptom
• Spitting in the soup
• identify secondary gain of a given behavior or
  symptom
• Catching oneself
• to help gain control of behaviors one wants to
  change

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IV. Reorientation Techniques 2/2

• Acting as-if
• Rehearse desired behaviors
• Push button technique
• Imagine pleasant and unpleasant situations and
  attend to feelings generated
• Task setting
• Step-wise process of behavior change to assure
  success, foster feelings of encouragement, and
  increase self-esteem

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Encouragement

• Encouragement is the most powerful method
  available for changing a persons beliefs
• Helps build self-confidence and stimulates
  courage
• Discouragement is the basic condition that
  prevents people from functioning
• Courage develops when people
• Become aware of their strengths
• Feel that they belong
• Have hope for their lives

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Adlers Contributions

• Precursor of cognitive-based therapies and the
  existential approach
• Emphasis on educational and preventive aspects of
  psychology
• Adlers ideas have been applied to marriage
  counseling, family counseling and group work.
• Influential in the training of counselors for
  schools and community health services
• Emphasis on humans ability to change and focus
  on positive aspects and strengths of patients

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Neo-Freudian

• Minimized role of psycho-sexual stages
• Culture, spirituality, society also influence
  personality and behavior
• Personality development occurs through life-span

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Carl Jung 1/3

• Analytical Psychology
• Incorporates ideas from history, anthropology,
  and spirituality
• Proposed both a personal and collective
  unconscious
• Humans strive to achieve harmony between personal
  conscious and unconscious aspects

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Carl Jung 2/3

• Collective unconscious
• Inherited experiences of the species
• Contains archetypes- universal images and symbols
• Dreams
• Path to the unconscious
• Prospective help prepare for the future
• Compensatory between opposites

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Archetypes 3/3

• Persona
• public self or mask
• Shadow
• unknown, powerful and feared- negative aspects of
  the self that we project
• Animus/Anima
• masculine/feminine traits
• Self
• aspects that strive for integration, harmony and
  self-actualization (which is purpose of dreams)

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Other Neo-Freudians

• Eric From The Art of Loving
• Karen Horney The Neurotic Personality
• of our Times
• Erikson Psycho-social stages
• Sullivan Inter-personal experiences
• Otto Rank birth trauma

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Describe Ruths concerns using concepts form
Adlers theory

• Life tasks (S 8)
• Life-style (faulty thinking/strengths) (S 11,16)
• Source of inferiority feelings
• Source of guilty feelings
• Goals for Therapy (S 15)
• Specific Interventions (S 22)