Thoughts on Adler

Adler:Rob Thomson’s thoughts 21/06/09


This paper will look to explore Adler’s basic concepts:
1. Inferiority and Superiority Complexes
2. Masculine Protest
3. Individual Psychology
I will then summarise Adler’s position relate him to Freud and look at his assumptions and omissions.

Inferiority and Superiority Complexes
The basic drive for Adler is inferiority/superiority. We are born as children inferior in a world of adults, where adults have the power and we are dependent on them for our existence. As we grow we face other inferiorities, be they organic, for example having hearing problems, or social where we are not the cleverest child in the class. As Adler would say to “be a human being means the possession of a feeling of inferiority that is constantly pressing on towards its own conquest” (Adler,1938,p73).
There are three ways in which we can overcome this feeling of inferiority.
1. We can solve the problem, so if I’m not the best sportsman at school, I can become it. This Adler would regard as the normal, non pathological approach.
2. I can avoid the problem and use what Adler called “cheap tricks”. So instead of becoming a sportsman, I can become a hedonist, extolling the virtues of harming my body through drink and drugs and criticising those involved in competitive areas. This approach would be known as an inferiority complex.
3. I can have a vaulted opinion of my own self worth irrespective of the reality of the situation. Thus I may be very egotistical and arrogant of my own achievements, and dismissive of others, even when reality should ask for more humility. This is known as the superiority complex, and is an inversion, a compensation to the feelings of inferiority complex
You will notice that of the 3 approaches, the first is the only one that we are truly aware of, I have a problem and I solve it. The other two whilst attempted solutions don’t fully acknowledge the real problem.

Masculine Protest
Whilst inferiority can be organic, or through our perceptions of social interaction as described above, it can also be caused by bodies in power over us, for example our family or our society. Thus we can be oppressed, for example as a woman I can be restricted in what I am allowed to achieve at my place of work. I can then fight that oppression. This reaction what Adler calls masculine protest, where we look to achieve the power that we need, which functions in two ways. Firstly it overcomes our inferiority of the situation that we protest against and secondly in provides us with the power to overcome our other inferiorities. The reason why this is called masculine protest, instead of just protest, is it associates with a “masculine” set of values, power, dignity and pride. Things that in Adler’s day and less so today that are associated with men as opposed to women. As Adler remarks “Masculine protest is interpreted to be strong and powerful as a compensation for the feeling of inferiority” [1956,P145].

Individual Psychology
Individual Psychology is a paradoxical definition for Adler. “Every individual represents a unity of personality and the individual then fashions that unity. The individual is thus both the picture and the artist.” (Adler,1956,p73). The paradox lies in the word individual which usually means subjective, but for Adler is not, but rather encompasses the whole person, and the person’s society.

Individual Psychology comprises:
Holism.
Adler views the personality as a unity, thus any individual symptom would be understood in terms of the whole person’s life.

Social Interest.
Adler saw that it is only through a person’s successful social interest and interactions with society that they can be healthy “Social Interest is the barometer of a child’s normality” (1965,P14). Social interest here means the concern for society and societal goals, “making the world a better place” being a common phrase that encompasses this thought. He saw that in life “failures”, for example neurotics, drunks and perverts, all that existed was self interest.

Teleology.
Adler understood the individual as driven by a single goal, even if the individual is not aware of what that is. “The psychic life of man is determined by his goal...No human being can think, feel, will, dream without all of these activities...directed towards an ever-present objective” (Adler.P127, p29). Goals on the way for Adler were primarily sub goals, so career success, winning an essay prize were considered to be sub goals of a grander scheme, maybe to be the best, where best will be contextually understood, i.e. in any context I want to be the best.

The Creative Self.
Adler sees us as responsible for our lives, thus we choose how to overcome our inferiorities, and how to interact with our society

Style of Life.
This encompasses many of Adler’s theories, and is his sense of our way of engaging with the world, how we cope with inferiority, what our overall goal is and how we strive towards it. He sees this as set early on in life, but it can be alterable later on in life. He sees that it is accessible by earliest memories and being whilst self chosen, also influenced by our position in our family order.

Family order
The order in the family is Adler saw significant in determining Style of Life. The first born being the initial centre of attention and then the dethroned king when the second arrives. Thus they can be either attention seekers or people who cope with loss of status, which can manifest itself in a variety of ways, resentment, or by deadening activities such as drink and drugs. The second born can be very competitive as they seek to reach the standards set by their elder sibling and the last child can be very pampered and thus rather self indulgent. The only child can be handled nervously as well as extravagantly by the parents, treasuring and protecting their only progeny. The outcome here is the child can be timid in the world or in complete distinction arrogant and demanding.

Summary of Adler’s thoughts
We are driven by a need to overcome our context, we have a drive for superiority, which is subsumed under an overall purpose, our final fictional goal. The shape of both of these aspects forms along with other aspects how we view life, how we engage with society, into what is known as a Style of Life. Whilst we choose our Style of Life and at a very young age, and it can be changed. This is a very strong determinant of our behaviour, and in therapy Adler saw its understanding as crucial to be able to work effectively with people.
The concept of Style of Life, held two crucial elements, the holistic understanding of a person and the understanding of them via their social interactions. Adler saw that a person would only be well balanced if they had successful social interactions and had social interest. The second aspect was that he didn’t put primacy of one part of the human over the other, so a symptom would always be understood in the rest of the person’s life, in effect into the reification of their style of life.

Adler and his relation to Freud
So how does Adler fit into the history of psychotherapy? Looking at his links his first movement is from Freud. Originally in partnership with him, he split with him on 3 essential aspects. Firstly that we are not determined but rather choose , secondly that it is through our purpose that we should be understood not just our past and present and thirdly that it is through social interest that we are to achieve health and not merely through adjusting our individual psyche.
His connection with Freud is understandably very strong. He still valued the talking cure and the interpretative stance of the therapist. Freud the therapist was king of the dreams, of the unconscious and unintentional movement, as interpreter, and some would say definer of all. Adler loosens his grip on the psyche of the patient restricting the interpretative dominance to the act of defining the client’s Style of Life. Freud and his followers completely dominated the psyche of their patients. Their theories provided a total structure of the psyche with the id,ego and super ego. Thus the patient could be understood in mechanistic terms. From and through the id drives, desires are received by the super ego which requires satisfaction, as the id operates on the pleasure principle. The super ego inspects them for suitability and if they pass this test then they are acted on in the world and satisfied, in consciousness. If not they are repressed to a greater or lesser extent. The therapist's job is then simple if not easy. A client presents symptoms which are part of a repression. The therapist then needs to get the patient to re-experience that which was repressed but with a strengthened ego. The re-experiencing usually happens through the mechanism of transference. The bolstering of the ego can either happen naturally, as in the instance of an adult re-experiencing their childhood repression or it can happen through therapist intervention.
Adler’s world is more difficult. Every human is unique and only understood through the entirety of their being and their engagement with their world. Adler doesn’t have a psychic master plan that allows a detached third party scientific truth, rather he just wants to help people. Adler’s clients have problems and these are a failure to react to problems and inadequacies of the client's definition, derived from their ultimate fictional goal.
The last sentence is however contradicted by what Adler says about life’s failures, e.g. neurotics, drunks and homosexuals. This state’s therefore there are problems that are independently definable. I do believe Adler is not internally coherent on this matter. For him the good life is overcoming your deficiencies to superiority in your move towards your ultimate goal and that you must have social interest which effectively reduces to the emergent ultimate goals of the They. As such there are no 3rd party, independently assessable problems, rather there are the problems that I have relating to my world. My life is understood in terms of my ultimate goal and the same for societies.

Adler’s assumptions and omissions
There are as I see it a few assumptions and a few problems for Adler apart from the failures one mentioned above. Firstly why is their only one fictional final goal? Secondly what advice would Adler give to someone who had achieved their final goal? Would they get another one or sit weeping that their purpose in life has now gone? As there is only one ultimate goal is there not a paradoxical relationship to it in that I want to be driven by it but I don’t want to achieve or my life would be meaningless, so don’t we as humans now have to cope with inalienable dissatisfaction as part of our structure of life? Unfortunately Adler said nothing about that.
The other difficulty Adler gets into is with social interest. Here things get awkward for the child born in Nazi Germany or in the epicentre of the Khmer Rouge, here I would guess Adler would want to talk about the right social interest but then that begs the question about what is right.
Whilst Adler undoubtedly moves Freud forward, the key thing he misses is value and its sense of self creation. We have a final fictional goal sure, we have many and we have them because we give them value. Value doesn’t exist in the world it is created by human. You can see this through both the evolution and difference of values found in our world. Likewise for social interest sure we need to value society as it is an essentially constitutive part of me, but which society, which part of society is the question. Thus we need to understand what people value , whether those values still work for them and why they value what they value. For those answers we need to turn to the existentialists.

Adler and me
How does Adler resonate with me? The sense of inferior or superior is a strong driver for me, at my worst I can either think I'm not good enough or you're not good enough. This attitude leaves a judging relationship connecting myself to myself and to others. At better times my relation to myself is one of enjoying experiences, having experiences be they good, or paradoxically bad.
I also identify with masculine protest. As a child I felt stifled by my conservative and staid upbringing, I rebelled against this as I have done against many other groups in my life, the undercurrent being looking to find my power through escaping the tyranny of the others. For me though I only have had half the equation I knew what to escape from but not where to go after, a true reactionary! Therefore masculine protest only makes sense when you are aware of your final fictional goal otherwise your protest will be your final fictional goal.

Bibliography
Adler,A (1927)Understanding Human Nature
Adler,A (1938) Social Interest
Adler,A (1956) The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler
Robert Lundin(1989) Alfred Adler’s Basic Concepts and Implications. Accelerated Development