Question

ASSESSMENT METHOD: How is the thought process or the unconscious accessed using alfred alder's theory?

Answer 1

Adler accepted unconscious mental processes as real, although he also used the unconscious as a working hypothesis of the psychotherapist. The conscious and unconscious are considered complementary parts of the same reality. The unconscious gives stability to the personality structure and manifests itself as part of the individual's lifestyle in sleeping, dreaming, and psychosomatic disorders. The social structure of behavior, social values, cognition, and creativity all have large unconscious components. Because the child creates his/her lifestyle at a time when he/she has limited facility with words and concepts, the attitudinal aspects of the individual's personality structure remain unconscious. Social interest, although consciously acquired, comes to function unconsciously as a set. Unconscious processes may be brought to awareness through projective techniques such as early recollections, and their interpretation becomes important in psychotherapy.

Adler departed from other theorists as concerns notions of "the unconscious," and "consciousness," arguing that "the unconscious is nothing other than that which we have been unable to formulate in clear concepts" . He interpreted unknown motivation as material not yet understoodwhere understanding was not necessary to the individual's movement. Included in this material are basic convictions, biases, and guidelines formed in early childhood, useful as a framework for preferences and ready choices, together with the fundamental orientation toward a personal goal of success. Adler's un­understood is to be contrasted to Freud's hypothesis of the unconscious, thought of as if a repository of reprehensible, and so inexpressible thoughts, impulses, and intentions that the "ego" guards against acknowledging. For Adler, un-understood material is consistent with the individual style of living expressed in thought, feeling, and action.

        The unconscious is nothing other than that which we have been unable to formulate in clear concepts. It is not a matter of concepts hiding away in some unconscious or subconscious recesses of our minds, but of parts of our consciousness, the significance of which we have not fully understood

Where consciousness becomes necessary as a means of life, as a safeguard for the unity of the self and for the self-ideal, it will appear in the proper form and degree

The biological significance of consciousness as well as unconsciousness rests in the fact that these states enable action according to a self-consistently oriented life plan [life-style]

            It is a general human phenomenon to lay aside thoughts which stand in our way, and take up those which advance our position. That becomes conscious which advances us, and that remains unconscious which might disturb our argumentation.