Sunny's AP Psychology Blog

Some ideas from Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler postulates a single "drive" or motivating force behind all our behavior and experience, the striving for perfection. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, to come closer and closer to our ideal.
While Freud tended to explain people in terms of parts, such as the id, ego, and superego, Adler was influenced by holism, the idea that in order to understand people, we have to understand them more as unified wholes than as a collection of bits and pieces, and we have to understand them in the context of their environment, both physical and social.
Freud theorized that we are all driven by our past. Adler saw motivation as a matter of moving towards the future, not a mechanical drive by the past. We are drawn towards our goals and ideals. This is called teleology. Life isn’t a set sequence, and you can change your future as you change you goals or ideals.
Adler thought there that as human beings, we are possessed of social interest, in the sense of caring for family, for community, for society, for humanity, even for life. Social concern is a matter of being useful to others. Adler defined mental illnesses as a lack of social concern.
Adler says that when we are overwhelmed by our inferiority, we come to lack social interest, and fall far short of self-actualization. We focus all our attentions on ourselves and our problems when we feel incompetent and lacking. Everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another, whether it is simple organ inferiority (physical) or psychological inferiority (being told that we are dumb or weak, so we believe it). Some respond to these inferiorities through compensation, overcoming the problem or becoming good at those areas we perceive ourselves to be weak in. Adler noted that children have a natural sense of inferiority due to their small size.
If you are overwhelmed by the forces of inferiority, you develop an inferiority complex, a form of neurosis. You become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on. You begin to rely on people to carry you along, even manipulating them into supporting you: "You think I'm smart / pretty / strong / sexy / good, don't you?"
Some respond to inferiority by developing a superiority complex. The superiority complex involves covering up your inferiority by pretending to be superior (e.g. bullies, show offs, Hitler). More subtle examples are attention-seeking drama queens, the ones who feel powerful when they commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc. etc. Even more subtle still are the people who hide their feelings of worthlessness in the delusions of power afforded by alcohol and drugs.

posted by 미카 @ 3:38 AM