ALFRED ADLER

ALFRED  ADLER

BIOGRAPHY :

Alford Adler was born in 1870 in a Viennese suburb, and a second son of middle class Jawish parents like Freud, Adler was a physical, and in 1902, he became a charter member of Freud’s organization. However, personal and professional differences between the two men led to Adler departure from the Vienna psychoanalytic society in 1911. Adler soon founded his own group, the society far individual psychology. Adler’s strength were  his energetic oral presentation and his insightful for understand family dynamics. He was not a gifted writer a limitation, that may have prevented him from attaining world recognition usual to that of Freud.

Self Consistency of Personality :-

Adler believed that all behavior are directed toward a signal purpose. When seen in the light of that sole purpose, seemingly, contradictory behaviours can be as operating in a self consistent manner. 

Organ Dialect :-

People often use a physical disorder to express style of life a condition Adler called organ dialect, or organ yorgon.

Conscious and Unconscious :-

Conscious and unconscious process are unified and operate to achieve a single goal. The part of our goal that is not clearly understand is unconscious that part of our goal we fail to fully comprehend is conscious.

Social Interest ;-

Human behavior has value to the extent that it is motivated by social interest, that is a feeling of oneness with all humanity.

Social Interest Style Life :-

During the early years of his theorizing when he was proclaiming the aggressive power hungry nature of humans and the idea of the masculine protest as on over compensation for feminine weakness. Adler was severely criticized for emphasizing selfish drives and ignoring social motives.

Although social interest takes in such matters as co-operation. Interpersonal and social relations. In its ultimate sense, social interest consists of the individual helping society to attain the goal of a perfect society.

Striving for superiority became socialized the ideal of a perfect society takes the place of purely personal ambition of selfish gain. By working for the common good humans compensate for their individual weakness.

Because he believed in the benefits of education. Adler devoted a great deal of his time to establishing child guidance clinics. To improving the schools, and to educating the public regarding proper method of rearing children.

For the older Adler, humans are motivated by an innately given social interest that causes then to subordinate private to public welfare. The image of the perfect person living in a perfect society blotted out the picture of the strong, aggressive person dominating and exploiting society, social interest replaced selfish interest.

This is the slogan of Adler’s personality theory. It is a recurrent theme in all of Adler’s later writings and the most distinctive feature of his psychology.

Every person has the same goal, that of superiority, but there are innumerable ways of striving for this goal. One person tries to became superior through developing the intellect.

Everything done is done with an eye to this ultimate goal. All of a person’s behavior springs from his or her style of life the person perceives, learns and retains what first the style of life and ignores everything else.

The style of life determines how a person confronts the three “life problems” of adulthood social relations. Occupation, and love and marriage. Preliminary versions of these problems during childhood focus on friendship. School and opposite sex. For she is on the “useful side of life”. It personal superiorly displaces social interest as goal. The person seeks distance from the life tasks and occupies the “useless” side of life.

The “getting” type which is “surely the most frequent”, expects to be given everything he or she needs. The “avoiding” type tries to avoid defeat in life’s problems by avoiding the problems themselves. Both the second and the third types are low in social interest and in activity.

It is interesting to note the correspondence between these types and general types proposed by other theorists. For example the ruling getting and avoiding types re roughly.

Analogous to the strategies of moving against, toward, and away from others as described by Karen Harney.

Attitude, feelings and apperceptions became fixed and mechanized at an early age. And it is practically impossible for the style of life to change thereafter. The person may acquire new ways of expressing his or her unique style of life.

Creative power Ubnormal Development :- 

Style of life is personality a product of heredity and environment the building blocks of personality but ultimately style of life is shaped by people’s creative power, that is, by their ability to freely choose a course of action.

This concept is Adler’s growing achievement  as a personality theorists. When he discovered the creative power of the self.  

The creative power of the self is hard to describe we can see its effects but we cannot see it. These abilities and impressions and the manner in which he “experiences” then that is to say, the interpretation he makes of these experiences are the bricks.

The creative self gives meaning to life it creates the goals as well as the means to the goal. The creative self is the creative principle of human life, and it is not unlike the older concept of soul.

Creative power is not limited to healthy people; unhealthy individuals also create their own personalities. Thus, each of us is free to choose either a useful or a useless style of life.

General Description

The most important factor in abnormal development is lack of social interest. In addition, people with a useless style of live tend to.

1.      Set their goals too high

2.      Have a dogmatic style of life

3.      Live in their own private world.

External Factors in Maladjustment :-

Adler listed three factors that relate to abnormal development.

a.      Exaggerated physical defects which do not by themselves cause abnormal development, but which may contribute to it by generating subjective and exaggerate feelings of inferiority.

b.      A pampered style of life, which contributes to an overriding drive to establish a permanent parasitic relationships with the mother substitute;

c.      A neglected style of life, which leads to distrust of other people.

Safeguarding Tendencies

These safe guarding tendencies maintain a neurotic life style and protect a person from public disgrace. The three principle safeguarding tendencies are

1.      Excuse

2.      Aggression

3.      Withdrawal

Masculine Protest

Both men and women sometimes over emphasize the desirability of being mantly, a condition Adler called the masculine protest. Near the end of his life. Freud was still asking what women wanted according to Adler, Freud’s attitudes toward women would be evidence of a  person with a strong masculine protest.

References

·        Theories of personality Colrins Hal Gordner Lindzey John R. Campbell

·        Introduction to personality Clifford T. Margan Richard A inc Fift edition Tata McGraw – Hill publishing company Ltd, New Delhi

·        Net materials