Background
Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was an Austrian psychiatrist and recognized as one of the fathers of modern psychotherapy. He was born in Vienna in 1870 and decided at an early age that he wanted to be a doctor in order to “fight death.” He was the second child in a large family and suffered from numerous illnesses as a child. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and preferred not to treat a client’s symptoms in isolation, but rather considered the whole person, including their social setting.
In 1902, Adler was asked to join a weekly psychoanalytic discussion circle and became an active member in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society; other notable members included Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. However, after nine years, he and about a dozen other members split from the society over theoretical differences. He went on to form the Society of Individual Psychology, which emphasized the role of goals and motivation in people’s behaviors. Adler developed his theory of Individual Psychology, using the word individual to emphasize the uniqueness of the personality. In the year after leaving the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, he published The Neurotic Constitution, which outlined his theory.
During World War I, Adler served in the army as a physician and became increasingly aware of the necessity for humans to live peacefully and develop social interest, in which one feels as they belong with others. After the war, Adler’s concept of Gemeinschaftsgefühl or social interest/social feeling became a central aspect of his Individual Psychology theory. He went on to develop child-guidance clinics throughout Vienna and was the first psychiatrist to apply mental health concepts to the school environment.
By the mid 1920s, the International Journal of Individual Psychology had been founded and published until 1937; it resumed publication after World War II. Between 1914 and 1933, Adler published more than a dozen books, including, The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, What Life Should Mean To You, Religion and Individual Psychology , Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind, and Cooperation Between the Sexes. Due to the rise of Nazism in Austria and similar to other Jewish people of his generation, Adler left Europe, and settled in the United States in 1935. While on a European lecturing trip, Adler died suddenly of heart attack at the age of 67.
Individual Psychology
Individual Psychology suggests that people are responsible for their own choices and the way they deal with consequences. In this theory, humans are self-determining, creative, and goal-directed. When individuals are able to understand their goal in life, they can see the purpose of their own behavior. Adler sees each individual as a unity and viewed all problems as social problems. Adler viewed the answer to life’s difficulties as social interest, or the feeling of connectedness with the whole of humanity and that each person must fully contribute to society. According to Adler, the true meaning of life is to make a contribution to the community.
In Adler’s view, religion was an expression of social interest. His theory of Individual Psychology has religious undertones in that his definition of social interest is similar to those religions that stress people’s responsibility for one another. While Adler did not believe in God or in the Bible, he did collaborate with clergyman. His book, Religion and Individual Psychology, was coauthored with Revered Ernst Jahn. Adler believed that if clergy had training in Individual Psychology, he would be able to make greater accomplishments in the arena of mental health and hygiene. Adler believed that there are many religious initiatives that try to increase cooperation, and he stated that there are many paths that lead toward the ultimate goal of cooperation.
As compared to other systems of psychology, Individual Psychology and Adlerian psychotherapy have been more open to spiritual and religious issues. The Adlerian position toward religion is most commonly positive, viewing God as the concept of complete perfection. Adler defined God as the human understanding of greatness and complete perfection. As opposed to Freud, Adler viewed God as the conceptual idea of perfection, not as an internalized parental image.
One of Adler’s most prominent ideas is that humans try to compensate for inferiorities that we perceive in ourselves. He developed the idea of inferiority complex, as well as the goal of superiority. A lack of power is often at the source of the feelings of inferiority. One way in which religion enters into this is through beliefs in God, which are characteristic of one’s attempts at perfection and superiority. In many religions, God is often considered to be perfect and omnipotent, and instructs people to also strive for perfection. The person, who is always striving, is aware that he or she cannot experience such perfection, but that having a goal defines life. By attempting to identify with God in this way, people compensate for their imperfections and feelings of inferiority. Adler believed that the idea of God inspires people to act, and that those actions have real consequences. One’s perspective on God is important because it embodies one’s goals and guides social interactions.
Numerous authors have compared Adler’s Individual Psychology to Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Native American religions. In the literature, Christianity appears most frequently cited as having similar tenets with Individual Psychology. For example, there are considerable commonalities between the basic assumptions of Christianity and Individual Psychology regarding the view of humans. Both view individuals as creative, holistic, social oriented and goal-directed and emphasize equality, value and dignity of humans. A focus within the Christian Bible is on human relationships, with God, oneself and others and provides guidelines for relationships for living with others. Humans are responsible for caring for one another, emphasized both in the Old Testament and in the teachings of Jesus. Both the Bible and Adlerian psychotherapy emphasize the relationship between spiritual-mental health and social interest. The Bible’s decree of love one’s neighbor is synonymous with the Adlerian concept of social interest.
Individual Psychology and Buddhism are both based on holism in their understanding of the human mind because they believe there are no conflicts between elements of the mind. Yet, while Buddhism applies holism to understanding the structure of the universe, Individual Psychology recognizes conflicts between the individual and the world. Individual psychology denies the idea of the self as separate from the rest of the individual; no self exists apart from the whole. Similarly, Buddhism denies the existence of the self as such.
The view of human distress, can be viewed in corresponding terms from a Buddhist and Adlerian perspective. In Adler’s Individual Psychology, an individual strives towards his or her life goal while inevitably facing specific difficulties in his or her life, referred to by Adler as life tasks. When facing difficulties, the person feels inferior; therefore striving towards one’s goals leads to feelings of inferiority or suffering. Likewise, in Buddhism, three thirsts cause suffering: the thirst for pleasure, the thirst to live and the thirst to die. In addition, in Buddhism and Individual Psychology, all conflicts are interpersonal and occur between the individual and life events; they both deny intrapsychic conflicts. Life unavoidably produces interpersonal conflicts and these conflicts make an individual suffer. In contrast to Individual Psychology, Buddhism asserts that the awakened or enlightened do not deal with conflict in the world. Through three ways of studying, a person can understand that the conflicts he or she has in life are only illusions.
See also: Buddhism, Christianity, Freud, Sigmund, Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychoanalysis
Bibliography
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Smothers, M.K. (2010). Adler, Alfred. In: Leeming, D.A., Madden, K., Marlan, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71802-6_7
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