Question

Familiarize yourself with some key concepts of Adlerian therapy: striving for significance and superiority; style of life; childhood experiences; fictional finalism; social interest; birth order and sibling relationships; subjective perception of reality; purposefulness of behavior, basic mistakes, and faulty assumptions. What value do you see in each of these key concepts?

Answer 1

• Adler believed that people develop a unique style of living that is a movement toward and an expression of their selected goals. In this sense, we create ourselves rather than merely being shaped by our childhood experiences.
• Adler holds that the individual begins to form an approach to life somewhere in the first 6 years of living. According to Adler, humans are motivated primarily by social-relatedness rather than by sexual urges; behavior is purposeful and goal-directed.
• Adler’s theory focuses on inferiority feelings. He sees these as a normal condition for all people and as a sources of all human striving. Feelings of inferiority can be the wellspring of creativity rather than being considered a sign of weakness or abnormality. They motivate us to strive for mastery, success (superiority) and completion.
• According to Adler, at around 6 years of age our fictional vision of ourselves as perfect or complete begins to form into a life goal. The life goal unifies the personality and becomes the source of human motivation; every striving and every effort to overcome inferiority is no in line with this goal.
• A basic premise of Adlerian Individual Psychology is that personality can only be understood holistically and systemically. The individual is seen as an indivisible whole, born, reared, and living in specific familial, social, and cultural contexts. People are social, creative, decision-making beings who act with purpose and cannot be fully known outside the contexts that have meaning in their lives.
  
• All Human behavior has a purpose. Humans set goals for themselves, and behavior becomes unified in the context of these goals.
• Decisions are based on the person’s experiences, on the present situation, and on the direction in which the person is moving. Continuity is looked for by paying attention to themes running through a person’s life.
• The term fictional finalism refers to an imagined central goal that guides a person’s behavior. Adler ceased using this term and replaced it with “guiding self-ideal” and “goal of perfection” to account for our striving toward superiority or perfection.
• The guiding self-ideal represents an individual’s image of a goal of perfection for which he or she strives in any given situation. We have the creative power to choose what we will accept as truth, how we will behave and how we will interpret events because of our subjective final goal.
• From our earliest years, we recognize that we are helpless in many ways, which is characterized by feelings of inferiority. The moment we experience inferiority we are pulled by the striving for superiority.
• The goal of superiority contributes to the development of human community. “Superiority” refers to moving from a perceived lower position to a perceived higher position. People cope with feelings of helplessness by striving for competence, mastery, and perfection. The unique ways in which people develop a style of striving for competence is what constitutes individuality.
• Lifestyle is the connecting theme that unifies all our actions and our lifestyle consists of all our values and perceptions regarding self, others, and life. It is the characteristic way we move toward our life goal. This concept accounts for why all of our behaviors fit together to provide consistency to our actions.
• Experiences themselves are not the decisive factors; rather, it is our interpretation of these events that shape personality. Faulty interpretations may lead to mistaken notions in our private logic, which will significantly influence present behavior.
• All these concepts mentioned by Adler,make who we are as an individual.We develop as the person through inferiorites,through our subjective perceptions of reality,through our life styles which we form based on our experiences and family/friends interactions.
• Our inferiorities and false assumptions,make us fail and learn from them and motivate us to achieve our goals and become more determined in life.
• Our lifestyles shape our belief systems and values,and make us the individual we are,and help us understand what we hold important in our lives.They determine our behaviours and develop a purpose in life. So,every concept holds importance in our lives and developing our personality.