HAPPY HEART’S DAY!

LET’S REVIEW! C.G. JUNG & S.

FREUD
According to Jung, which is the most important and influential part of
the psyche?

A. Ego
B. Persona
C. Personal Unconscious
D. Collective Unconscious
LET’S REVIEW! C.G. JUNG & S.
FREUD
According to Jung, which is the most important and influential part of
the psyche?

A. Ego
B. Persona
C. Personal Unconscious
D. Collective Unconscious
LET’S REVIEW! C.G. JUNG & S.
FREUD
Sarcasm, cynicism, and ridicule typify the __________ character.

A. Oral-sadistic
B. Oral-incorporative
C. Anal-expulsive
D. Anal-retentive
LET’S REVIEW! C.G. JUNG & S.
FREUD
Sarcasm, cynicism, and ridicule typify the __________ character.

A. Oral-sadistic
B. Oral-incorporative
C. Anal-expulsive
D. Anal-retentive
ALFRED ADLER:
INDIVIDUAL MODULE 4: PSY 105

PSYCHOLOGY
OVERVIEW

Individual Psychology presents

an optimistic view of people
while resting heavily on the
notion of social interest, a feeling
of oneness with all humankind.
ALFRED ADLER
• Born in Rudolfsheim, Vienna in 1870
• Second son of middle class Jewish parents
• He suffered from rickets
• Weak and sickly when he was young
• When he was 3, he saw his younger brother
die in the next bed
• He was run over in the streets twice during
his early childhood
• Nearly died of pneumonia at age 5
• Received his medical degree in 1895
ALFRED ADLER
• He is a practicing neurologist and
psychiatrist
• Published Study of Organ Inferiority and Its
Physical Compensation in 1907
• Charter member of Freud’s organization
• Rivalry with Freud led to his departure from
the group
• Founded the Society for Individual
Psychology
• Died in Scotland on May 28, 1937
• At young age, his goal in life is to conquer
death and become a physician
MAIN TENETS OF ADLERIAN THEORY

The one dynamic force

People’s subjective
behind people’s behavior Personality is unified and
perceptions shape their
is the striving for success self-consistent
behavior and personality
or superiority

The value of all human The self-consistent

activity must be seen personality structure Style of life is molded by
from the viewpoint of develops into a person’s people’s creative power
social interest style of life
DIFFERENCE WITH FREUD’S
THEORY
FREUD ADLER

• Motivation: Sex and Aggression • Motivated by social influences

• Little or no choice in shaping and striving for superiority
personality • People are largely responsible
• Present behavior is caused by for who they are
past experiences • Present behavior is shaped by
people’s view in the future
Striving for Success and Superiority

Adler reduced all motivation to a single drive—the striving for success or

superiority.

Masculine Protest – implied will to power or domination of others

Striving for superiority – single dynamic force

Regardless of the motivation for striving, each individual is guided by a final

goal.
 Each person has the power to create a personalized
final goal

According to Adler (1956), people strive toward a final goal of either

THE
personal superiority or the goal of success for all humankind. In either
case, the final goal is fictional and has no objective existence.

It is the product of the creative power, that is, people’s

FINAL ability to freely shape their behavior and create their
own personality.

GOAL If children feel neglected or pampered, their goal

remains largely unconscious.

Conversely, if children experience love and security,

they set a goal that is largely conscious and clearly
understood.
INFERIORITY FEELINGS
• Adler believed that inferiority feelings are a constant motivating force in all behavior. “To
be a human being means to feel oneself inferior,” Adler wrote (1933/1939, p. 96).
Because this condition is common to all of us, then, it is not a sign of weakness or
abnormality.
• Adler proposed that inferiority feelings are the source of all human striving. Individual
growth results from compensation, from our attempts to overcome our real or imagined
inferiorities.
• Compensation - A motivation to overcome inferiority, to strive for higher levels of
development.
• Inferiority feelings are inescapable, but more important they are necessary because they
provide the motivation for us to strive and grow.
THOUGHT TO PONDER

When was the last

time you felt
inadequate?
MARITES TIME!
UY ALAM MO BA?

• Alfred Adler had an unhappy

competition with his older
brother – Sigmund Adler!
“My eldest brother is a good industrious fellow
—he was always ahead of me . . . and he is still
ahead of me!”
INFERIORITY
COMPLEX
• An inability to overcome inferiority
feelings intensifies them, leading to the
development of an inferiority
complex.
• People with an inferiority complex
have a poor opinion of themselves and
feel helpless and unable to cope with
the demands of life. Adler found such a
complex in the childhood of many
adults who came to him for treatment.
SUPERIORITY
COMPLEX
• Whatever the source of the complex, a
person may attempt to overcompensate and
so develop what Adler called a superiority
complex.
• This involves an exaggerated opinion of
one’s abilities and accomplishments.
• Such persons may feel inwardly self-
satisfied and superior and show no need to
demonstrate their superiority with actual
accomplishments.
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.
FICTIONALISM/FICTIONAL
FINALISM
• The notion that fictional ideas guide our behavior as we strive toward a complete
or whole state of being.
• Adler believed that our goals are fictional or imagined ideals that cannot be tested
against reality
• It’s a future goal that a person aspires to achieve, and so he directs his lifestyle to
meet the goal.
• People, whether consciously or unconsciously, work to achieve fictional finalism.
So, every thought, emotion, or action of that individual pushes towards attaining
the goals.
UNITY AND SELF-CONSISTENCY
• In choosing the term individual psychology, Adler wished to stress his belief that
each person is unique and indivisible. Thus, individual psychology insists on the
fundamental unity of personality and the notion that inconsistent behavior does not
exist.
• Adler (1956) recognized several ways in which the entire person operates with unity
and self-consistency. The first of these he called organ jargon, or organ dialect.
• The deficient organ expresses the direction of the individual’s goal, a condition
known as organ dialect.
• Through organ dialect, the body’s organs “speak a language which is usually more
expressive and discloses the individual’s opinion more clearly than words are able to
do”
UNITY AND SELF-CONSISTENCY
• A second example of a unified personality is the harmony between conscious and
unconscious actions. Adler (1956) defined the unconscious as that part of the
goal that is neither clearly formulated nor completely understood by the
individual.
• Conscious thoughts are those that are understood and regarded by the individual
as helpful in striving for success, whereas unconscious thoughts are those that are
not helpful.
• Whether people’s behaviors lead to a healthy or an unhealthy style of life depends
on the degree of social interest that they developed during their childhood years.
Gemeinschaftsgefühl
• Social interest is Adler’s somewhat misleading translation of his original German
term, Gemeinschaftsgefühl.
• Roughly, it means a feeling of oneness with all humanity; it implies membership in
the social community of all people.
• A person with well-developed Gemeinschaftsgefühl strives not for personal
superiority but for perfection for all people in an ideal community.
• Social interest can be defined as an attitude of relatedness with humanity in general
as well as an empathy for each member of the human community. It manifests itself
as cooperation with others for social advancement rather than for personal gain.
MARITES TIME!
UY ALAM MO BA?

• Adler never considered Freud to

be his mentor. Although Adler
was one of the original members
of Freud’s inner circle, the two
men never shared a warm
personal relationship.
STYLE OF LIFE
• Style of life is the term Adler used to refer to the flavor of a person’s life.
• It includes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward
the world. It is the product of the interaction of heredity, environment, and a
person’s creative power.
• A person’s style of life is fairly well established by age 4 or 5. After that time, all
our actions revolve around our unified style of life.
• People with a healthy, socially useful style of life express their social interest
through action.
 Dominant type

Getting type
FOUR BASIC
STYLES OF LIFE Avoiding type

Socially useful type

CREATIVE
POWER
• Each person, Adler believed, is empowered
with the freedom to create her or his own
style of life.
• Ultimately, all people are responsible for
who they are and how they behave.
• Their creative power places them in control
of their own lives, is responsible for their
final goal, determines their method of
striving for that goal, and contributes to the
development of social interest.
TO BE
CONTINUED…
ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT
Adler believed that people are what they make of themselves. The creative power endows
humans, within certain limits, with the freedom to be either psychologically healthy or unhealthy
and to follow either a useful or useless style of life.

According to Adler (1956), the one factor underlying all types of maladjustments is
underdeveloped social interest.

Besides lacking social interest, neurotics tend to

• Set their goals too high

• Live in their own private world, and
• Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life.
 Organ inferiority
CAUSES OF
INFERIORIT
Y Spoiling
COMPLEXES
Neglect
MASCULINE
PROTEST
• According to Adler, cultural and social practices
—not anatomy—influence many men and
women to overemphasize the importance of
being manly, a condition he called the masculine
protest.
• Adler (1930, 1956) believed that the psychic life
of women is essentially the same as that of men
and that a male-dominated society is not natural
but rather an artificial product of historical
development.
THOUGHT TO PONDER

• Can females also be motivated by masculine protest?

• YES. Females, as well as males, are motivated by masculine protest

as they struggle against the constraints of the less socially valued
female role. Physical problems may result, including menstrual
difficulties, pregnancy and childbirth; or masculine protest may lead
women to become career-oriented, marry late or not at all, turn to
lesbians or become nuns as a rejection of their feminine role.
SAFEGUARDING TENDENCIES
Adler believed that people create
patterns of behavior to protect their
exaggerated sense of self-esteem against
public disgrace. These protective
devices, called safeguarding
tendencies, enable people to hide their
inflated self-image and to maintain their
current style of life.
 ADLER VS. FREUD

SAFEGUARDING TENDENCIES DEFENSE MECHANISMS

• Largely conscious and shield’s a • Operates unconsciously to

person’s fragile self-esteem from protect the ego against
public disgrace
anxiety
• Only with reference to the
• Common to everyone
construction of neurotic
symptoms
SAFEGUARDING TENDENCIES

Excuses Aggression Withdrawal

EXCUSES
• Most common safeguarding tendency
• Typically expressed in the “Yes, but”
and “If only” format
• These excuses protect a weak—but
artificially inflated—sense of self-
worth and deceive people into
believing that they are more superior
than they really are (Adler, 1956).
 You failed to submit your major
project to your professor on
time. When you asked your
classmates, all of them were
able to submit their projects.
What will be your excuse?

WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE?

 AGGRESSION

• Depreciation – undervaluing other people’s achievements

• Accusation –blaming others for one’s failures and to seek revenge
• Self-Accusation – marked by self-torture and guilt. It’s the
converse of depreciation
WITHDRAWAL

Moving Psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life; similar to Freud’s

Backward concept of regression

Standing Still They avoid responsibility by ensuring themselves against any threat of failure

Hesitating Procrastinating until it’s too late

Constructing Least severe; creating your own problems that can either rise self-esteem or
Obstacles make excuses
 Family Constellation

APPLICATION Early Recollections

OF INDIVIDUAL
PSYCHOLOGY Dreams

Psychotherapy
FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS
BIRTH ORDER CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS
FIRST-BORN First-borns typically receive their parents’ instant and
undivided attention. As a result, first-borns have a very
happy and secure existence, until the second-born
child appears.
SECOND-BORN Second born children (such as himself ) begin life in a
better situation for developing cooperation and social
interest.
YOUNGEST Adler believed, are often the most pampered and,
consequently, run a high risk of being problem
children.
ONLY CHILD Are in a unique position of competing, not against
brothers and sisters, but against father and mother;
they often develop an exaggerated sense of superiority
and an inflated self-concept.
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS
• To gain an understanding of patients’
personality, Adler would ask them to
reveal their early recollections (ERs).
• A personality assessment technique in
which our earliest memories, whether of
real events or fantasies, are assumed to
reveal the primary interest of our life.
• Recollections of improper behavior
warned against any attempt to repeat the
behavior
 • Adler agreed with Freud about the value of dreams in understanding personality
but disagreed on the way in which dreams should be interpreted.
• Adler believed that dreams should never be interpreted without knowledge of the
DREAMS person and his or her situation. The dream is a manifestation of a person’s style of
life and so is unique to the individual.
PSYCHOTHERAPY (ADLERIAN
THERAPY)
• Adlerian theory postulates that
psychopathology results from lack of
courage, exaggerated feelings of
inferiority, and underdeveloped social
interest.
• Thus, the chief purpose of Adlerian
psychotherapy is to enhance courage,
lessen feelings of inferiority,and
encourage social interest.
 CRITIQUE OF ADLER

• Adler’s theory, like that of Freud, produced many concepts that do not easily lend
themselves to either verification or falsification.
• For example, although research has consistently shown a relationship between early
childhood recollections and a person’s present style of life (Clark, 2002), these results do
not verify Adler’s notion that present style of life shapes one’s early recollections.
• Thus, one of Adler’s most important concepts—the assumption that present style of life
determines early memories rather than vice versa—is difficult to either verify or falsify.
• Terms such as goal of superiority and creative power have no scientific definition.
CONCEPT OF
HUMANITY
• Determinism vs. Free Choice
• Pessimism vs. Optimism
• Causality vs. Teleology
• Conscious vs. Unconscious
• Social vs. Biological Influences
• Uniqueness vs. Similarities
THANK YOU!