Adler: Individual Psychology
Psychology of Personality
Lecture, Chapter 3

Individual Psychology
Adler’s theory viewed people as being motivated mostly by social influences and by striving for success.
Adler believed people are largely responsible for who they are and can thus make changes in their behavior.
Adler’s theory is based on the notion that behavior is shaped by people’s views of the future.
Adler believed that psychologically healthy people do not have a large amount of unconscious activity but are aware of themselves.

Adler’s Life
Adler was the second born child of seven in a Jewish family in Vienna.
Adler had an ongoing, competitive relationship with his older brother Sigmund, who was always the more physically strong of the two.
With a near-death experience himself, as well as close proximity to his younger brother when he died in infancy, Adler was determined to “conquer death” and became a physician.
Adler was very interested in social relationships and married a strong, early feminist woman.
Like Freud, Adler’s early personal experiences appeared to shape the formation of his theory.
Because of insufficient writing skills, and lack of a solid “networking” group, Adler’s ideas are less well-known than those of other theorists.

Overview of Individual Psychology
1.The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or superiority.

2.People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality.

3.Personality is unified and self-consistent.

4.The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest.

5.The self-consistent personality structure develops into a person’s style of life.

6.Style of life is molded by people’s creative power.

Abnormal Development
Abnormal development occurs when people (a) set their goals too high, (b) live in their own private world, and (c) have a rigid and dogmatic style of life.
Contributing factors to maladjustments:
   
Safeguarding tendencies allow people to hide their inflated self-image and to maintain their current style of life.
   
Masculine protest is the idea that cultural and social practices, as opposed to anatomy, influence people to overemphasize the importance of being “manly.”
   

Therapeutic Techniques
    Early recollections

    Dreams

    Psychotherapy

Family Constellation
Birth order, according to Adler, has an influence on personality and attitude toward the world.

    Oldest child
    Second child
    Youngest child
    Only child
    Best explained by…

Conclusion
Did Adler use science in his theory development? Was his theory able to generate research, be falsified, organize data, guide action, be internally consistent, and be parsimonious?
Where does Adler’s theory fall on the basic issues concerning the nature of humanity?
    Determinism vs. free choice
    Pessimism vs. optimism
    Causality vs. teleology
    Conscious vs. unconscious
    Social vs. biological influences
    Uniqueness vs. similarities