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Subject PSYCHOLOGY

Paper No and Title Paper No 5: Personality Theories

Module No and Title Module No 11: Individual Psychology: Alfred Adler

Module Tag PSY_P5_M11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes
2. Introduction
3. Biographical Sketch
4. Adlerian Theory
5. The striving for superiority
5.1 Fictional Finalism
5.2 The Striving Force as compensation for Inferiority Feelings
6. The subjective perceptions
7. The unity and self-consistency of personality
7.1 Organ inferiority
7.2 Conscious and unconscious

PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 5: Personality Theories

Module No 11: Individual Psychology: Alfred Adler
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8. The social interest
9. The style of life
10. The creative power
11. Typology
12. The birth order
13. Evaluative comments
13.1 Criticism and controversies
13.2 Contributions
14. Summary

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Module No 11: Individual Psychology: Alfred Adler
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1. Learning Outcomes
After studying this module, you shall be able to

 Know about Alfred Adler’s individual psychology.

 Learn about an individual’s uniqueness and the social dynamics.
 Identify the role of social environment in shaping an individual’s personality.
 Evaluate the various external factors that act on an individual in contrast to Freud’s
unconscious determinism.
 Analyze what constitutes the personality make-up.

2. Introduction
The image of human nature shaped by Alfred Adler didn't describe individuals as affected by
instincts and conflicts or condemned by biological forces and by the experiences of their childhood.
He termed this approach as individual psychology as it centered the rareness of every individual.
According to Adler, Individual psychology is “a science that attempts to understand the experiences
and behavior of each person as an organized entity”. According to Adler, people are born with
inferior bodies and this leads to feelings of inferiority, which serves as a main source of human
striving. To Adler, It is not the unconscious but the conscious which is at the core of personality.
Instead of being forced by instinctual drives, individuals are actively engaged in creating
themselves and directing their future.

3. Biographical Sketch

The Life of Alfred Adler (1870–1937)

On February 7th, 1870 Alfred Adler was born in Rudolfsheim in Vienna. Adler had a stigmatized
early childhood due to illness, jealousy of his older brother and an awareness of death. He suffered
from rickets (it is a deficiency due to lack of vitamin D causing softening of the bones), not allowing
him to play with other children. His younger brother expired at the age of 3. Due to pneumonia, at
the age of 4, Adler himself was close to death. Consequently, Adler decided that the goal of his life
would be to vanquish death.

Adler envied his elder brother, who was healthier and more athletic than him, was able to indulge
in various sports and activities in which Adler could not do. As all the other children of his
neighborhood and his brother seemed healthier and more spirited, Adler felt inferior to them. So he
decided to work hard to overcome inferiority complex and his physical constraints. He gradually
gained a sense of self-worth and social acceptance and he won over his feelings of inferiority.
Although Adler fulfilled his childhood dreams of studying medicine at the University of Vienna,
he graduated with a mediocre academic score. He practiced privately as an ophthalmologist but
soon shifting to psychiatry and general medicine.

Adler's nine-year association with Freud began when in the year 1902 when Freud invited Adler
along with three other to meet once a week at his place to discuss psychoanalysis. This group

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eventually became the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Even despite being one of the members of
Freud’s inner circle, Adler and Freud never had a smooth relationship. By 1910, although Adler
was president of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society and co-editor of its journal, he was also an
increasingly vocal critic of Freudian theory. Adler voiced his opposition to the strong sexual
inclination of psychoanalysis and said that drive for superiority was a more basic motive than
sexuality. Consequently breaking all connections with psychoanalysis and developing his own
approach to personality. He also formed the society for Free Psychoanalytic Study, which was later
called as Society for Individual Psychology.

In early months of 1937, while on speaking tour in the Netherland, Adler felt chest pains and on 28 th
March, 1937 he died of heart attack.

4. Adlerian Theory
The main tenets of Adlerian theory are as follows:
 The one driving force behind the behavior of people is striving for superiority.
 The subjective perceptions that people have, is the ultimate basis for their behavior and
personality.
 People have a unified and self-consistent personality.
 The people’s style of life is the result of their self-consistent personality.
 The social interest is an innate potentiality that serves as a standard for determining the
usefulness of life.
 An individual’s style of life is formed by his or her creative power.

All these tenets will be discussed in full detail in the following sections. .. Inferiority
Feelings-The

5. The Striving for Superiority

The first tenet of Adlerian theory is striving for superiority. According to Adler the one nonstative
force motivating an individual's behavior is the striving for success or superiority. According to
Adler, every individual begins life with physical deficiencies that result in a sense of inferiority
feelings within an individual. These feelings of inferiority act as a motivation for the individual to
strive for superiority.
Earlier, Adler believed aggression to be a dynamic force behind all motivation, but he soon rejected
this term and defined masculine protest as the basic motive which meant will to power or
domination of others. Anyhow, soon he abandoned this term as well and defined striving for
superiority as the driving force behind all behaviors.

Adler considered the motivation for superiority to be the fundamental fact of life. Striving for
superiority is not an inflated opinion about an individual’s abilities and accomplishments nor is it
an attempt to be better than others. What he implied was that the striving for superiority is
instinctive. It is a basic urge in an individual comparable to Freud’s innate forces of eros and
thanatos. It is fundamental and inborn in our nature. It is the ongoing effort towards a better
adaptation between the world and man.
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This innate goal, the drive towards superiority, is oriented towards the future and is explained in
terms of future expectations. Therefore, every individual is guided by final goal.

5.1 Fictional Finalism

The term finalism was used by Adler for the notion that every individual has an aim and motivations
to strive for it. However, the goals, for which an individual strive, are not actualities but
potentialities i.e. this final goal is only a possibility and has no objective existence. Nevertheless,
this final goal makes an individual’s personality and is ample for explaining anything the individual
does, thinks, strives and feels.

Hence, to Adler, human beings constantly aim for the fictive, ultimate goal of perfection that
decreases the pain of inferiority feelings.

5.2 The Striving Force as compensation for Inferiority Feelings

Adler conceived that inferiority feelings serve as a motivating drive in any behavior. Adler wrote
“To be a human being means to feel oneself inferior,” According to Adler (1930), all humans are
“blessed” at birth with petite, weak and inferior bodies. Throughout the lives, the need to overcome
the sense of inferiority motivates people. The onset of this process is at infancy. Infants are frail
and are completely depend on adults. Consequently, the infants harvests feelings of inferiority
comparative to the bigger, stronger individuals around them. They are continuously motivated by
the desire to overcome the inferiority feelings and move towards superiority. This plus and minus
situation exists simultaneously and helps an individual to become a whole as they are two
dimensions of single force. Even though this early experience of inferiority feelings is applicable
to all during infancy, it cannot be genetically determined. Rather, is based on the role of the
environment, being same for all infants.

6. The Subjective Perceptions

The second principle given by Adler is that the humans’ subjective ideas from their personality and
behavior. An individual’s striving for superiority is not based on reality rather they are shaped by
subjective perceptions of reality. These subjective perceptions of reality are the fictions or the
expectations of the future. According to Adler, these fictions or future expectations are the ideas
have no existence in reality but still they influence the people in achieving success and guide their
lives. An instance of a fiction might be a notion that all happens for a reason. Such a notion can't
be proven but still it directs the daily lives of most of the individuals and keeps them driven. Thus,
whether right or wrong these fictions have a severe effect on people’s actions perceptions o they
are driven by present perceptions of the future.

7. Unity and Self- Consistency of Personality

According to Adler's theory, the third tenet is that an individual has a unified and a self-consistent
personality. By this Adler emphasized that each person is unique and indiscrete. There is a

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consistency of personality and the inconsistent behavior is not existant i.e. an individual is free of
conflicts and all the ideas, emotions and actions are consistent with person’s way of life.

Adler (1956) acknowledges the two ways in which an individual operates in a self-consistent and
unique manner.

7.1 Organ Inferiority

At first, influenced by his medical practice, Adler (1923/1929) referred to organ inferiority as the
source of the felt minus. Inherited inferiorities intensify “the normal feeling of weakness and
helplessness”. A child with hearing problems would feel inferior in auditory capacity.

However, in a healthy adjustment the child strives to compensate for the organ inferiority. Not
everyone with organ inferiority, of course is able to compensate for it fully. Nonetheless, the attempt
to do so directs motivation. If the compensation fails the individual may instead develop an
incapacitating sense that the inferiority cannot be overcome-hence, an inferiority complex.

7.2 Conscious and Unconscious

Another source of united personality is the synchrony between the conscious and the unconscious.
The conscious and unconscious aren't two antonyms. Adler (1956) identified the unconscious as
that part of goal that is neither clearly shaped nor completely conceived by a person. As soon as we
fully get the unconscious it turns into conscious; wherever we fail to understand conscious it
becomes unconscious. Therefore, a dichotomy between conscious and unconscious was avoided
and both are considered to be working together within a same unified person.

8. The Social Interest

The fourth principle of Adler’s theory is that “the value of all human activity must be seen from the
viewpoint of social interest”.
According to Adler, coping with others is the foremost task that an individual comes across in his
or her life. The person’s subsequent level of social adjustment influences his way to handle life’s
problems. According to Adler, the idea of social interest is an individual’s innate potential of
cooperating with others in order to accomplish personal and societal goal. Even though we people
are affected more by social than biological drives, Adler believes the ability for social interest to be
internal, restricting this approach to a biological element.

Adler affirmed that community comes before the individual life. Humans have always been in a
society, never outside of it. Social interest is similar to, at least in some part with empathy,
identification, and understanding of others, which makes us able of sympathy, friendship and love.
The ability of coping with others, the social interest is an internal ability. But in order to attain a
high degree of cooperation necessary for survival this innate potentiality must be developed far
beyond its initial stage. It originates from the mother child relationship and later on environmental
forces modifies and shapes this social interest. By providing the deep care and love to the child the
mother communicates a model of caring and nurturance to the child. Furthermore, the mother’s
care for her husband, the child’s siblings, and other friends and relatives provides a healthy model

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of social interest to the child and if the mother concentrates only on friends and relatives and not
on her children, or only on her husband but not friends and relatives, then the child’s potential for
developing social interest will be thwarted. As a result of which a child may develop an attitude
toward others in which he or she may want to dominate others, use others for their personal gain,
or avoid interactions with others.

According to Adler,” the emotional or social detachment or authoritarianism of a parent can bring
about a lack of social interest in the child.” Also the relationship between father and mother is an
important model for the child. If there is a marital discord then opportunity to develop social
interest in the child is missed. Forgiveness between husband and wife is an act of social interest
that can lead to improved relationships (McBrien, 2004). The parental relationship can affect the
overall personality of a child by having an impact on romantic relationships and overall adaptation
in later life.

In Adler's opinion, Social interest is the the sole criterion of human values. It is the standard for
determining the usefulness of life, means of measuring psychological health. If a person has little
social interest, then that person is self-centered and will lack constructive goals. Social interest is
important throughout one’s entire life. At later stages of life, promoting social interest can help in
developing meaningful lives even though individuals may no longer be working or raising families
(Penick, 2004).

The desire for superiority must be correlated with sociability and even subordinated to it. In normal
development the aiming for superiority is mingled with social interest. All these actions of
individual must be of use to the society. In striving for his end, the person is concerned for others.

9. The Style of Life

The fifth tenet of Adlerian theory is that the people’s style of life is the result of their self-consistent
personality
The style of life is defined as person’s chosen life goals and the methods used to achieve them...
No individual adjusts mechanically to his environment. The style of life is the expression of one’s
individuality, for each individual sees the goal of superiority in an individual, unique way. The style
of life is together formed by an individual’s life goal, our self-concept and the way we feel for
others and our attitude towards the external world.
The style of life controls the totality of the child’s behavior. All aspects of life become coordinated
and subordinated to this overall plan. The style of life represents the unity of personality expressed
in all aspects of the individual’s life: in his conscious and unconscious, in his thinking and feeling,
acting and resting, in sex and in social interest.
In the first four or five years of life the child absorbs the impact of his own body and environment.
Then the style of life begins and which is created by the interaction of heredity, environment and
an individual’s creative power.
According to Adler, individuals with socially useful style of life represent the highest form of
humanity in the evolutionary process making them likely to populate the world of the future.
Therefore, people who have a healthy and socially useful style of life find expressing their social
interest through action easier.

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10. The Creative Power

The final principle is that an individual’s lifestyle is formed by his or her creative power.
For Adler creative power is a changing concept that includes movement and this movement
represents the most noticeable trait of life. All psychological life involves movement towards a
goal, movement with a direction.
The person always presents himself as unique, be it in thoughts, emotions, speech or behavior. Each
is blessed with an individual creative power, considered by Adler as the third factor apart from
heredity and environment, for the creative power combines the internal capabilities and influences
of the environment into a movement toward conquering obstacles in a person's path of life.
Power and these factors, the child chooses a path in life and style of life.
"This creative power is a striving power; this creative power can be seen in different views, in the
power of evolution, in the power of life, in the power which accomplishes the goal of an ideal
completion to overcome the difficulties of life." (From "The General System of Individual
Psychology," an unpublished manuscript in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

11. Typology
In 1935, Adler introduced his own typology, using his ideas of degree of activity and social interest
as the two guiding principles in the grouping of personality types. He put forward the following
four styles of life for dealing with these problems:

 The Dominant type

-This type lacks social interest but also shows a lot of activity in pursuing his aim
-They might act in an antisocial manner because of their lack of consideration for
others.
 The Getting type
-Lacks both activity and social interest and is dependent
-Lacks consideration and initiative for others.
 The Avoiding type
-Rather than struggling for success and superiority, they remain undecided.
-They lack activity and social interest
 The socially useful one
-Complies with others and act in according to their needs.
-Such people keep up with problems within a well-formed framework of social
interest.

12. Birth Order

Adler contributed that the order of one’s birth is a major social influence in one’s childhood, from
which we create our way of life. Based on Adler’s own experience as a middle child and based on
his own clinical cases, Adler maintained that ordinal position in the family was a major determinant
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of the style of life. Although siblings have the same parents and share the same house, but their
social environments differ. Being the oldest or the youngest sibling and being exposed to different
parental behavior results in different childhood conditions which help in shaping personality.
According to Adler, interactions among siblings in childhood have important influences on an
individual. Adler’s emphasis on family constellation was an important and distinct contribution of
Adler.

He wrote about four situations:

The Eldest Born Child-

 At least for some time, first-born children are in an enviable and unique position
 Typically, these children receive their parents’ immediate and undivided attention.
Consequently, the eldest born have a happy, protected existence—until the second-born child
appears.
 They are likely to adopt the views and attitudes of authority. Therefore, they are relatively
power oriented, generally responsible and predisposed toward leadership.
 These children are harshly disciplined, not able to take their stand.
 They suffer a dethronement when a younger child is born.

The Second Born Child-

 Living in the shadow of the first born, they are likely to be especially competitive and
rebellious.
 They are much more skeptical of authority.
 To some extent, their personality is shaped by their perception of first child’s behavior
towards them.
 They are more independent, know the art of negotiation and know how to stand up for
themselves.
 Typically, the second child matures towards moderate competitiveness having a healthy
desire to overtake rivalry and if he/she is successful in his/her endeavor, he/she is likely to develop
a revolutionary attitude and feel that any authority can be challenged.

The Youngest Born-

 Last born is usually pampered by the parents, especially if the age gap is few years or more.
 Last born or the youngest children do not face the shock of being overthrown by another
child and usually are pampered by the family, particularly if the siblings are more than a few years
older.
 Motivated by the need to 8u older siblings, last born children usually develop at a
remarkably quick rate.
 Youngest children are usually high achievers but the opposite could also happen if they
start to believe that they do not have learn on their own to do something.
 As they are usually cared for and supported at every step of the way they retain the
helplessness and reliance on others as they didn’t have struggle to get something.

The Only Child-

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 Only children never lose the position of primacy and power they hold in the family; they
remain the focus and center of attention.
 Only children usually mature early and show palpable adult behavior and manners as they
spend most of their time with adults.
 Only children do not develop the habits of sharing or of competing.
 If their capabilities do not bring them enough attention and recognition, they will probably
feel extremely disappointed.

Adler did not purpose any firm rules of childhood development with his concept of birth
order. Rather, he suggested the probability that some styles of life will take form as a
function of order of birth together with one’s early social interactions.
There are lots of contradictions to this concept of birth order. The general consensus seems
to be that the situation on to which the child is born not only depends on his or her rank
order but on the sex of the older and younger siblings, the spread between family members
and subjective perceptions of self and environment also plays a crucial role in the shaping
of personality.

13. Evaluative Comments

13.1 Criticism and Controversies

Adler departed from the analytical and atomistic approach of Freudian personality theory and
developed a simpler and parsimonious theory that presented holistic account of individuals that
ties in broader social, cultural, and economic factors and incorporates people’s projected life
plans.
Although Adler's theory is a model for self-consistency, it has a lack of accurate operational
definitions because Adler did not operationally define the terms such as goal of superiority and
creative power and these concepts have no scientific definition. Therefore, the individual
psychology is somewhat considered philosophical and moralistic.

13.2 Contributions

Despite the limitations, Adler's theory has a high capability to structure an action as it serves the
teacher, the parent and the psychotherapist with guidelines of solutions to various practical
problems of everyday life. Practitioners of Adlerian theory understand an individual's way of life
by using all those specific techniques that will increase the individual's freedom of choice.
Adler’s individual psychology presents an optimistic view of people that focused on the uniqueness
of each individual. He argued that people must be understood from a social perspective and asserted
that any deterministic approach that does not consider individual’s goal is incomplete. Therefore,
he proceeded to develop a theory in which social interest and striving for superiority became two
of the most important pillars.
As an early reaction against Freudian instinctive theory, Adler’s work is of crucial importance to
personality theory. His thinking has had a severe effect on numerous later theorists such as Karen
Horney, Carl Rogers, Harry Stack Sullivan, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and others as Adler did
not establish a well structured organization to sustain his theory and many of his views were
incorporated into works of these later theorists. Adler developed his theory by evaluating the

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behavior and verbatim of people at the time of therapy sessions. His approach was more relaxed
and informal.

14. Summary
 Adler emphasized conscious striving and the creative self, in contrast to Freud’s
unconscious determinism.

 He described the fundamental motivation to strive from a felt minus to a felt plus.

 In this striving, a person is guided by fictional functionalism, the image of the goal.

 Adler viewed personality as the unity.

 A person’s unique style of life is evidenced by early memories.

 Although he thought of each person as unique, Alder listed types of mistaken styles of life:
ruling type, getting type, avoiding type. In contrast, healthy style of life is socially useful.

 Family constellation, particularly birth order influences personality development.

 Social interest is the key factor in Adlerian theory.

PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 5: Personality Theories

Module No 11: Individual Psychology: Alfred Adler