On Adler's Individual Psychology

Alfred Adler was the founder of Individual Psychology. His theory on personality lies on the concept of inferiority complex. According to him, our inferiority feelings are the source of our strivings. And that we compensate, or we try to overcome inferiority to strive for higher levels of development.

His theory also has put the importance of birth order in the formation of personality, the impact of neglect or pampering on child development, the notion of a "self perfecting" drive within human beings, and the idea that one must study and treat the patient as a "whole person."

He elaborated three other factors that made significant impact: "pampering", "neglect", as well as birth order. Adler emphasized one's birth order as having an influence on the Style of Life and the strengths and weaknesses in one's psychological make up. Birth Order referred to the placement of siblings within the family. Adler believed that the firstborn child would be loved and nurtured by the family until the arrival of a second child. This second child would cause the first born to suffer feelings of dethronement, no longer being the center of attention. According to Adler, first-born children are often oriented toward the past, locked in nostalgia and pessimistic about the future. They take unusual interest in maintaining order and authority. They also tend to become good organizers, conscientious, and scrupulous about detail. Also, they tend to be authoritarian and conservative in attitude. The second born child or the middle child, who never experienced powerful position, strives to catch up to and surpass the older sibling. They are more optimistic about the future and are likely to be competitive and ambitious. According to him, the youngest child are often high achievers in whatever work they undertake as adults, but if excessively pampered, retain helplessness and dependency. The only child, according to Adler, often matures early and manifest adult behaviors and attitude.

There wasn’t really a logical fashion in which Adler put through his theory on personality. There was no sequential order in which one person might undergo personality development. However, the birth ranking gives us an overview of how one person might possess some characteristics or traits in accordance with his or her rank. Also, unlike Freud’s psychosexual stages, Adler didn’t postulate definitive stages in which one person go through to explain our own behaviors and attitudes. 

His concepts are well-interrelated with each other because they follow through the same principal thought. For example, on his theory on inferiority feelings and compensation, the principal rule is that our feelings of inferiority motivate us to strive higher levels of development. If a person is unable to compensate for normal inferiority feelings, he then will have an inferiority complex. The same goes with superiority complex, which develops when a person overcompensates for normal inferiority feelings. It also goes with his theory on birth order, on “pampering” and “neglect.”

Thankfully enough, Adler used terms that are common to the English language. Though I think it wasn’t exactly the English term he had in mind, as he was Austrian. And I assume that it was only translated to English when he did his lectures in America. Still, I am thankful enough he didn’t use terms that would sound gibberish to me, that is, he didn’t invent his own words.

I would think that his terms or labels used for his concepts mean only the things that they intend to be meaning. I’m saying that they don’t have multiple meanings that could be confusing.

With regards to inferiority feelings and compensation, it may be true that there are people who are better than us in whatever we think we’re good at, I would still think that we are all special, and it shouldn’t make us less of a person. We are all good at something. People will not be better than ourselves if we don’t compare ourselves with them. I know it’s almost impossible not to compare ourselves with others, because I think it’s in our nature to do such, so I had to make an effort to remember not to compare myself to others, just like in the poem “Desiderata.” And I was thinking, there is no such thing as the most beautiful woman because if there was, people would covet the same face. If there was a standard beauty, then all the others who don’t follow are ugly. I had to laugh out loud, I could just imagine.

I think it’s most helpful in understanding my own and other people’s strivings to be good if I take a look at Adler’s theory on inferiority and compensation. And explain why some people would put up a façade of someone greater than themselves, and where is that inferiority come from.

On Analytic Approach

The theory of psychoanalysis that was developed by Carl Jung, focuses on the concept of the collective unconscious and the importance of balancing opposing forces within the personality. He defined the unconscious to include both the individual's own unconscious and as the inherited, partly in the form of archetypes, from his or her ancestors (the "collective unconscious"). He classified people into introvert and extravert types and further distinguished them according to four primary functions of the mind — thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition — one or more of which predominated in any given person.

Libido, according to Jung, is the psychic energy that propels us to perceiving, thinking, feeling, and wishing, that strongly influences one’s life. He developed three principles that would explain one’s behaviors, these are: the Principles of the Opposites, Equivalence, and Entropy. Principle of the Opposites is the influencing our decision in thinking the opposite way. And that the primary motivator of our behavior is the opposite of the wishes that we have. The Principle of Equivalence lies on the basis that if the psychic value in our life weakens or disappears, that psychic energy is transformed elsewhere in the personality. While the Principle of Entropy works on the exchange of energy that occurs within the personality that results into homeostasis from the stronger to the weaker, to which eventually, the stronger wins.

The collective unconscious according to Jung is the storehouse of ancestral experiences since the dawn of time and common to all humans. It is something that is shared by all humans, and that we encounter them through symbols in all aspects of our lives like in dreams, art, and religion among all others. Contained in the collective unconscious are the archetypes, these are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. The theory’s foundation is on the collective unconscious that all humans experience since the beginning of time. According to Jung, there are things that we all humans share, like traditions, arts, religion, and architecture. I have read an article about Carl Jung and his childhood. It was stated in the article that when he was young, he performed a ceremonial act that is similar to other culture in other parts of the world like the collection of soul-stones near Arlesheim or tjurungas of Australia, which has inspired him on his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.

The concepts well interrelate with one another but is distinct from each one, just like his concept on the archetypes and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, to which I would agree, he said that human psyche is religious in nature. The male and female principle, or the anima or animus, is something that is innate. Just like God is, He could be as punishing like a man, but very compassionate as a woman. Just like what the Bible says, man and woman are created in his Likeness. So, it is only likely that we, as humans, share both these qualities of male and female.

The theory also shares to us concepts and terms like extraversion and introversion to which we are all familiar. Along with those concepts are his concept of the collective unconscious and archetypes, libido, and ego. Libido according to Jung is different from that of Freud. In Jung’s theory, libido is the psychic energy that leads us to perceiving, thinking, feeling, and wishing, that strongly influences one’s life. His concept on ego is also a little bit different from Freud’s and common people. To Jung, ego is the center of consciousness, or our awareness of ourselves, while Freud’s is on libido being the psychic energy that propels us to pleasurable things. Their use of terms serves and supports their own theories. On the other hand, ego in layman’s term is self-esteem.

His concept on the types of personality and its function on thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting, gives us a good prediction of how might a person deal with a situation. All persons belong to one or another class and these differences are assumed to be inborn. If we can successfully tell a person whether he or she is introverted or extraverted, we would then know how a person might think in a situation and how he would react to it.

The Myers-Briggs type Indicator is based on Jung’s theory on the two types of attitudes, the introverted and the extraverted type. The success of this test tells us that Jung’s concept on introversion and extraversion can be tested quantitatively, and would make a good prediction of a person’s behavior.

Delving into the unconscious mind is rather quite difficult and cannot be tested emperically. And we cannot use direct approaches into understanding the human psyche. What Jung proposed is to look at dreams, folklore, and myths into better understanding the human psyche. And what his theory could offer us, is a hypothesis on healing and personality development.

Jung is considered to be an influential thinker and the founder of analytic psychology. It has inspired many psychologists into employing dream analysis on clinical work. After Freud’s theory on the psychosexual development, Jung’s theory is a breath of fresh air.

The theory is most useful to laypersons, especially on his concept of introversion and extraversion. With this, we can understand how a person close to us, like a friend maybe, may have reacted to a specific situation, or his thoughts and opinions on a subject by finding out which is his major attitude type. And although he isn’t the first one to analyze dreams, he has been known to be the pioneer in the field of dream analysis. His theory on the collective unconscious instigates us towards dream analysis and understanding folklores. 

On the Psychoanalytic Approach

The psychoanalytic theory is centered on the thought that humans are controlled by the unconscious mind.  The concepts of the unconscious mind, defense mechanisms, the id, ego, and the superego are Freud’s. The unconscious mind is the part of a person’s mental life that the person is unaware of. The id resides in the unconscious mind, and operates according to the pleasure principle in which the goal is the immediate reduction of tension and the maximization of satisfaction. The ego strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world. It operates according to the reality principle. The superego is the aspect of the personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society.

Freud proposes that the underlying motivation to human development is a dynamic, psychic energy, which he calls libido. According to Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, the personality develops in five stages from birth to adulthood.  The libido changes its location of emphasis within the body from one stage to another. Therefore, a particular body area has special significance to a client at a particular stage. If the individual does not achieve a satisfactory progression at each stage, the personality becomes fixated at each stage.  Fixation is immobilization or the inability of the personality to proceed to the next stage because of anxiety.

             If we follow Freud’s thinking, that human development lies on sexuality, which constitutes his theory on psychosexual development, then everything he says perfectly makes sense. The very foundation of his theory is unshakable and coming from that theory, then all else that follows sounds logical. However, the theory only looks at one aspect of man --- that is, man as a sexual being. Probably the reason why a lot of people find Freud’s theory hard to accept. Because of people’s religious beliefs on sexuality, accepting Freud’s theory won’t very easy to come. So, if you’re a person who believes that man is a sexual being, then the theory would sound sensible, otherwise, it wouldn’t.

            In the psychoanalytic perspective, it says that humans are controlled by the unconscious mind. And with that thought, Freud came up with three distinct sub-divisions of the theory: the Theory of Personality Structure, the Theory of Personality Development, and the Theory of Personality Dynamics. And all these concepts of the human personality came from the thought of the ruling of the unconscious mind. So, yes, the concepts are well-interrelated as these concepts support one another.

            The three concepts of personality on the psychoanalytic level by Freud are distinct of  one another. According to the theory, our personality can be explained in three aspects --- that is, in its structure, development and dynamics. In its structure, it has been clearly defined how our conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind work together that constitutes our own personality. In the theory on personality development, we are able to see how our personality develops by looking at our nature as a sexual being. And by personality dynamics, we are looking at the very basic of man’s nature to survive as a being and a species that drives us to be who we are now.

            The labels being used by Freud are clear and distinct. Each concept has its precise meaning. They are very distinct that it’s hard not to remember these terms and concepts. The libido, id ego, or superego are easily distinguished as Freud's. 

           The concepts by Freud have been most interesting to all people and quite helpful in better understanding ourselves. Although at first, a person might find the concepts a little too bizarre, but it’s probably the intrigue that keeps us wanting to know more of. It may be quite misleading to some. So, one has to keep an open mind.