Transcript Slide 1

The Psychoanalytic Perspective: Chapters 8 & 9
The Neoanalytic Perspective: Chapter 10
Theories of Personality
March 14, 2003
Class #8
Guess what Dr. Freud it wasn’t penis
envy after all. Rather it was…????
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Horney (1967)
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Womb envy
Perterson (1980)
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Vagina envy
GETTING IT OFF YOUR CHEST
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One of Freud's great contributions was his
emphasis on the unconscious
Today, it is generally accepted in clinical
psychology and psychiatry that certain
emotions and motives are so repulsive or
upsetting that we may suppress or repress
these scary, disgusting, embarrassing
feelings into our unconscious
Freudian Theory
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Many therapists believe that unconsciously
repressed emotions cause a variety of major
problems: neurotic and psychotic behaviors,
interpersonal conflicts, psychosomatic
disorders, etc.
Some people become overwhelmed by their
emotions; others hold in their feelings and
don't even know they are there
Catharsis... Venting... Discharging...
Expressing Emotions...
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Holding in our feelings causes mental and physical
stress. And, stress can be very destructive. Often
suppressing and hiding "awful" thoughts actually
results in uncontrollable obsessions about the very
thing we are trying to hide
So, maybe its better to let all our vile feelings spew
out to the guy down the block who is happily
watering his lawn on a summer day?
Catharsis: Good or Crazy?
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Well, maybe that’s going too far but…
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Venting or discharging emotions involves vigorously
expressing the emotion--fear, sadness, anger,
dependency--so completely you feel "drained." Then,
according to Freud, the strength of the emotion is
markedly reduced or eliminated. And you feel better.
Are healthier.
So is it healthy or abnormal to punch a hole in the
wall after you bomb that big psych test???
It worked when we were kids…
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We all knew how to throw a temper tantrum
at age 3…it worked back then. Usually made
us feel better I think
One of the goals of psychotherapy, then, is to
make unconscious conflict conscious and
provide relief through catharsis
Other forms of Catharsis?
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Sharing our secrets often provides relief
Freud’s Defense Mechanisms
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Freud believed we protect ourselves from anxiety by using
these:
 Repression
 Denial
 Projection
 Rationalization
 Intellectualization
 Reaction Formation
 Regression
 Displacement
 Sublimation
Recovered Memories vs. False Memory Syndrome
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Is it possible to repress traumatic incidents
and then recover these memories many
years later?
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Hochman (1994)
Feels that thousands of patients (mostly
women) in the United States are undergoing
treatment for a non-existent memory disorder
 Feels that recovered memories are nothing
more than false memories
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Hochman's Theory
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A woman is seeking relief for a variety of emotional
complaints
She hears about recovered memories on an afternoon
talk show
Now motivated for memory recovery so she goes and
sees her therapist
Her therapist informs her that she may have been
molested as a child and does not know it – this could
explain her symptoms
The therapist then may refer the client to a "survivor
recovery group"
Complications
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Patients start out with the hopes that life will get better but it
usually becomes far more complicated
 She becomes estranged from the "perpetrator" (often her father
or step-father or uncle)
 If she has children they become off-limits to the perpetrator
 Relationships with other family members is contingent on
whether or not they challenge these allegations
 Patients may file belated crime reports and may try to sue the
perpetrator
 Preoccupied with all these things, the patient may come to
ignore more pressing problems (marriage, family, school, career,
etc.)
 Often the time demands and expense of the therapy itself
become a major life disruption
Hochman (1994)
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Is Hochman's theory correct???
Or should recovered memories be
believed???
No such thing as an accident?
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Parapraxes
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According to Freud:
 Memory lapses, slips of speech or pen,
dreams, humor, etc. all provide insight into a
person’s true desires
 Unconscious seeping into conscious
The royal road to the unconscious…
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Dreams
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Manifest Content
 Sensory images of a dream
Latent Content
 These are the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and
wishes that are apparent in the manifest content
Symbolism
 Unacceptable latent content is expressed
symbolically in manifest content
Psychoanalysis: Be careful of transference…
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A set of displacements from the patient onto the
therapist is possible
Very possible that the client will fall “in love” with the
therapist
This is a defense mechanism on the part of the
client
Can cause many problems including the client being
caught up in what they are feeling towards the
therapist
Therapist needs to find out where the displacement
has originated from
Interesting Note…
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Wilhelm Fliess was a good friend of
Freud’s…
 Fliess believed that he had discovered a
'nasal reflex neurosis‘ associated with a wide
variety of somatic symptoms, including pains
in various parts of the body and disturbances
in the functioning of the sexual organs
 He related some of these symptoms to a
'genital spot' within the nose, and claimed to
remove them temporarily by the application of
cocaine
And you thought Freud’s theories
were a bit strange…
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Longer-lasting remission of symptoms was
supposedly achieved by cauterization of this
“genital spot”
In a few cases, such as that of Emma Eckstein,
Fliess performed a surgical procedure involving
the removal of a bone within the nose
The operation had almost fatal consequences
for Eckstein
Chapter 10: Ego Psychology
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Shifting the Emphasis From Id to Ego
If Freud had lived longer, indications are that
he may have modified his theory a bit
 He may have put more emphasis on the ego
as did some of his followers
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Freud’s Unconscious
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Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make
the unconscious conscious. He certainly made
that the goal of his work as a theorist
But he makes the unconscious sound very
unpleasant
 A bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous
cravings
 A burial ground for frightening experiences
which nevertheless come back to haunt us
 It doesn't sound like anything I'd like to make
conscious!
Jung’s Unconscious
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A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to
make the exploration of the unconscious his
life's work
He was equipped with a background in
Freudian theory and with an apparently
inexhaustible knowledge of mythology,
religion, and philosophy
Carl Jung
(1875 – 1961)
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Jung was born in the small
Swiss village of Kessewil
He was surrounded by a fairly
well educated extended family,
including quite a few clergymen
His father started Carl on Latin
when he was six years old,
beginning a long interest in
language and literature -especially ancient literature
Besides most modern western
European languages, Jung
could read several ancient ones,
including Sanskrit, the language
of the original Hindu holy books.
Jung’s Background
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Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who
didn't care much for school, and especially
couldn't take competition
He went to boarding school in Basel,
Switzerland, where he found himself the
object of a lot of jealous harassment
He began to use sickness as an excuse,
developing an embarrassing tendency to faint
under pressure
Jung’s Background
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Although his first career choice
was archeology, he went on to
study medicine at the University
of Basel
While working under the famous
neurologist Krafft-Ebing, he
settled on psychiatry as his
career
After graduating, he took a
position at the Burghoeltzli
Mental Hospital in Zurich under
Eugene Bleuler, an expert on
schizophrenia
In 1903, he married Emma
Rauschenbach
He also taught classes at the
University of Zurich while having
a private practice as well
Instant friends…
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Long an admirer of Freud, he met him in Vienna
in 1907
The story goes that after they met, Freud
canceled all his appointments for the day, and
they talked for 13 hours straight, such was the
impact of the meeting of these two great minds!
Freud eventually came to see Jung as the crown
prince of psychoanalysis and his heir apparent
In 1911, the two teamed up to do a series of
lectures in the United States
But not lifetime ones…
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Around that time their relationship began to
cool…
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They were entertaining themselves by
analyzing each others' dreams, when Freud
seemed to show an excess of resistance to
Jung's efforts at analysis
Freud finally said that they'd have to stop
because he was afraid he would lose his
authority! Jung felt rather insulted
The two soon broke apart…
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One fundamental reason was that Jung did
not subscribe to Freud's thought that all
aspects of one's personality stemmed from
his or her own sexuality
Jung saw no real proof for this theory
Carl, being headstrong and a true individual,
could not be controlled or overly influenced
by Freud
Finally, in 1912, all ties between the two were
severed
Jung’s Background
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In the latter stages of his life, Jung traveled widely,
visiting tribal people in Africa, America, and India
Jung's adulthood saw much accomplishment and
rewar
He studied, wrote, thought, and theorized
He took time off of his work and thought
introspectively
He lectured worldwide with his influence reaching
farther than his travels
He retired in 1946, and began to retreat from public
attention after his wife died in 1955
He died on June 6, 1961, in Zurich
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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Levels of the Psyche
 Jung saw the human psyche as being divided into a conscious
and an unconscious level, with the latter subdivided into a
personal and a collective unconscious
The Conscious
 Images sensed by the ego are said to be conscious. The ego
thus represents the conscious side of personality, and in the
psychologically mature individual, the ego is secondary to the
self.
The Unconscious
The unconscious refers to those psychic images not sensed by
the ego. Some unconscious processes flow from our personal
experiences, but others stem from our ancestors' experiences
with universal themes.
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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The Personal Unconscious
 Repressed, forgotten, or subliminally perceived experiences
make up the personal unconscious, a concept analogous to
Freud's notion of an unconscious. Contents of the personal
unconscious are called complexes, or emotionally toned groups
of related ideas.
The Collective Unconscious
 Ideas that are beyond our personal experiences and that
originate from the repeated experiences of our ancestors
become part of our collective unconscious.
 Collective unconscious images are not inherited ideas, but rather
they refer to our innate tendency to react in a particular way
whenever our personal experiences stimulate an inherited
predisposition toward action.
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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Jung dreamt a great deal about the dead, the land of the
dead, and the rising of the dead
These represented the unconscious itself -- not the
"little" personal unconscious that Freud made such a big
deal out of, but a new collective unconscious of
humanity itself
 This was an unconscious that could contain all the
dead, not just our personal ghosts.
Jung began to see the mentally ill as people who are
haunted by these ghosts
He felt that if we would understand these ghosts, we
would become comfortable with the dead, and heal our
mental illnesses
Criticism
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Critics have suggested that Jung was ill
himself when he developed this theory
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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Archetypes
 Contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes.
 Jung believed that archetypes originate through repeated
experiences of our ancestors and that they are expressed in
certain dreams, fantasies, delusions, and hallucinations
 Several archetypes acquire their own personality, and Jung
identified these by name
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The persona
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The side of our personality that we show to others.
The shadow or dark side of our personality
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To reach full psychological maturity, Jung believed, we
must first realize or accept our shadow
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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A second hurdle in achieving maturity is for men to accept
their anima, or feminine side, and for women to embrace
their animus, or masculine disposition
Other archetypes include the great mother (the archetype of
nourishment and destruction); the old wise man (the
archetype of wisdom and meaning); and the hero, (the image
we have of a conqueror who vanquishes evil, but has a
single fatal flaw
The most comprehensive archetype is the self; that is, the
image we have of fulfillment, completion, or perfection
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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Sex and the life instincts in general are, of course,
represented somewhere in Jung's system. They are a
part of an archetype called the shadow
It derives from our prehuman, animal past, when our
concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and
when we weren't self-conscious
It is the "dark side" of the ego, and the evil that we are
capable of is often stored there
The shadow is amoral -- neither good nor bad, just like
animals. An animal is capable of tender care for its
young and vicious killing for food, but it doesn't choose
to do either
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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It just does what it does
It is "innocent"
But from our human perspective, the animal
world looks rather brutal, inhuman, so the
shadow becomes something of a garbage
can for the parts of ourselves that we can't
quite admit to
Jung: Analytic Psychology
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The persona represents your public image.
The persona is the mask you put on before you
show yourself to the outside world.
Although it begins as an archetype, by the time
we are finished realizing it, it is the part of us
most distant from the collective unconscious
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
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Adler became a
charter member of
Freud's organization
and its first president
However, personal
and professional
differences between
the two led to Adler's
departure from the
Vienna
Psychoanalytic
Society in 1911
Adler soon after
founded his own
group, the Society
for Individual
Psychology
Adler’s Biography
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Adler was born in Vienna, Austria
During the early decades of this century he originated
the ideas which, to a large extent, have been
incorporated in the mainstream of present-day theory
and practice of psychology and psychopathology
The second of six children, Adler spent his childhood in
the suburbs of Vienna
He remembered that when he was about 5 years old,
gravely ill with pneumonia, the physician told his father
that he doubted the child would recover
It was at that time that Alfred decided he wanted to
become a doctor so that he might be able to fight deadly
diseases. He never changed his mind, and in 1895 he
acquired his M.D. degree at the University of Vienna.
The invite from Freud…
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In 1902, when Adler was one of the few who reacted
favorably to Freud’s book on dream interpretations
Freud sent him a hand-written postcard suggesting
he join the circle which met weekly in Freud's home
to discuss newer aspects of psychopathology
At that time Adler had already started collecting
material on patients with physical handicaps,
studying both their organic and psychological
reactions to them
Only when Freud had assured him that in his circle a
variety of views, including Adler's, would be
discussed did Adler accept the invitation
No longer invited…
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Five years later, in 1907, Adler published his book on organ
inferiority and its compensation
From then on, the difference between Freud's and Adler's views
became steadily more marked
Adler had never accepted Freud's original theories that mental
difficulties were caused exclusively by a sexual trauma, and he
opposed the generalizations when dreams were interpreted, in each
instance, as sexual wish fulfillment
After prolonged discussions, during which each of the two men tried
to win the other over to his point of view--attempts doomed to failure
from the start-- Adler left Freud's circle in 1911 with a group of eight
colleagues and formed his own school
After that, Freud and Adler never met again
Adler’s Biography
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In 1918, Adler started founding several child guidance clinics in
Vienna
In 1926 Adler was invited to lecture at Columbia University, and from
1932 on he held the first chair of Visiting Professor of Medical
Psychology at Long Island College of Medicine
During these and the following years he spent only the summer
months, from May to October, in Vienna, and the academic year
lecturing in the States. His family joined him there in 1935.
Adler's lectures were overcrowded from the beginning, and he
communicated as easily with his audiences in English as he did
when using his native German tongue
On May 28, 1937 while in Scotland to deliver a series of lectures at
the University, he suddenly collapsed while walking in the street and
died from heart failure within a few minutes
Individual Psychology
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Striving for Success or Superiority
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According to Adler, the sole dynamic force
behind all our actions is the striving for
success or superiority
Individual Psychology
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Another Adlerian personality concept:
striving for superiority
Although striving for superiority does refer to
the desire to be better, it also contains the idea
that people want to be better than others,
rather than better in their own right
Adler later tended to use striving for superiority
more in reference to unhealthy or neurotic
striving
Individual Psychology
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Striving for perfection was not the first phrase
Adler used to refer to his single motivating force
His earliest phrase was the aggression drive--the reaction we have when other drives (e.g., the
need to eat, be sexually satisfied, get things
done, or be loved) are frustrated
The aggression drive: might be better called the
assertiveness drive
Individual Psychology: Compensation
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We all have problems, short-comings, inferiorities of one
sort or another
Adler felt that our personalities could be accounted for
by the ways in which we do -- or do not -- compensate or
overcome those problems
Later, however, Adler rejected compensation as a label
for the basic motive, because compensation makes it
sound as if it is people’s problems that cause them to be
what they are
Another word Adler used to refer to basic motivation was
compensation, or striving to overcome.
Individual Psychology: Compensation
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People respond to psychological inferiorities with
compensation
Some compensate by becoming good at what they
feel inferior about
More compensate by becoming good at something
else, but otherwise retaining their sense of
inferiority.
And, some just never develop any self esteem at all
Individual Psychology: Inferiority
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If people are overwhelmed by the forces of
inferiority -- whether it is their body hurting, the
people around them holding them in contempt, or
just the general difficulties of growing up -- they
develop an inferiority complex
An inferiority complex is not just a little problem--it
is a neurosis, a psychological problem
Individual Psychology: Superiority
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People can respond to inferiority by
developing a superiority complex
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A superiority complex involves covering up
one’s inferiority by pretending to be superior
Bullies, braggarts, and petty dictators
everywhere are the prime example
Even more subtle: people who hide their
feelings of worthlessness in the delusions of
power afforded by alcohol and drugs
Individual Psychology: Neurosis
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Adler: all neurosis is a matter of insufficient
social interest…
Three types can be distinguished:
 The first is the ruling type
 The second is the learning type
 The third type is the avoiding type
The Ruling Type
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From childhood on, they are characterized by a
tendency to be rather aggressive and dominant over
others
The strength of their striving after personal power is so
great that they tend to push over anything or anybody
who gets in their way
The most energetic of them are bullies and sadists;
somewhat less energetic ones hurt others by hurting
themselves, and include alcoholics, drug addicts, and
suicides
The Learning Type
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They are sensitive people who have developed a shell
around themselves which protects them
They have low energy levels and so become
dependent
When overwhelmed, they develop neurotic symptoms:
phobias, obsessions and compulsions, general anxiety,
hysteria, amnesias, and so on----depending on the
specific details of their lifestyle
The Avoiding Type
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These have the lowest levels of energy and
only survive by essentially avoiding life -especially other people.
When pushed to the limits, they tend to
become psychotic, retreating finally into their
own personal worlds.
Individual Psychology: Masculine Protest
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One of Adler's earliest phrases was masculine
protest
In many cultures boys are often held in higher
esteem than girls are
In fact, males in many cultures often do have the
power, the education, and the talent and
motivation needed to do "great things," and
women do not
Individual Psychology: Masculine Protest
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Adler: Men's assertiveness and success in the
world is not due to some innate superiority
 Rather, boys are encouraged to be assertive in
life, and girls are discouraged
 Both boys and girls, however, begin life with the
capacity for "protest!"
 People want, often desperately, to be thought of
as strong, aggressive, in control (i.e.
"masculine”) and not weak or passive or
dependent (i.e. "feminine”)
Individual Psychology
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Adler: We should see people as wholes rather than
parts-- “individual psychology”
Adler did not want to talk about a person's
personality in the traditional sense of internal traits,
structures, dynamics, and conflicts
Instead, Adler preferred to talk about
style of life --- "lifestyle"
Life style: how people live life, how they handle
problems and interpersonal relations
Individual Psychology: Human Motivation
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Adler felt that motivation is a matter of moving
towards the future, rather than being driven,
mechanistically, by the past
Humans are drawn towards goals, purposes,
and ideals
This approach to psychology is called teleology
Individual Psychology: Human Motivation
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Adler believed that ultimate truth would always
be beyond us, but that, for practical purposes,
we need to create partial truths…
 Adler called these partial truths fictions
 We use these fictions in day to day living
 We behave as if we know the world will be
here tomorrow, as if we are sure what good
and bad are all about, as if everything we see
is as we see it, and so on
 Adler called this fictional finalism
Individual Psychology: Social Interest
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Second in importance only to striving for
perfection is the idea of social interest
Adler felt that social concern was not simply
inborn, nor just learned, but a combination of
both
Social Interest is based on an innate disposition,
but it has to be nurtured to survive
Babies and small children often show sympathy
for others without having been taught to do so
Individual Psychology: Social Interest
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One misunderstanding Adler wanted to avoid
was the idea that social interest was somehow
another version of extraversion
Adler meant social interest in the broad sense
of caring for family, for community, for society,
for humanity, and even for life
Social interest is a matter of being useful to
others
Individual Psychology: Social Interest
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“Social failures” are failures because they are
lacking in social interest -- including
neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards,
problem children, suicides, and perverts
Their goals involve personal superiority, and
their triumphs have meaning only to
themselves
Individual Psychology: Childhood
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Adler, like Freud, saw personality or lifestyle
as something established quite early in life
Adler felt that there were three basic
childhood situations that most contribute
to a faulty lifestyle…
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See next slides
Individual Psychology: Childhood
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Childhood feelings of inferiority…
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Most will go through life with a strong sense of
inferiority
A few will overcompensate with a superiority
complex
Only with the encouragement of loved ones
will some of these truly compensate
Individual Psychology: Childhood
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Pampering also contributes to a faulty
lifestyle…
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Many children are taught, by the actions of
others, that they can take without giving
Their wishes are everyone else's commands
This sounds like a pretty good situation but…
Individual Psychology: Childhood Pampering
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The pampered child fails in two ways:
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First, they do not learn to do for themselves,
and discover later that they are truly inferior
Secondly, they do not learn any other way to
deal with others than the giving of commands.
Adler felt that society responds to
pampered people in only one way: with
hatred
Individual Psychology: Childhood
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The third situation concerns neglect…
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A child who is neglected or abused learns
what the pampered child learns, but learns it in
a far more direct manner:
 They learn inferiority because they are told
and shown every day that they are of no
value
 They learn selfishness because they are
taught to trust no one.
Individual Psychology: Childhood
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A neglectful childhood contributes to a
faulty lifestyle:
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If the neglected child has not known love, s/he
often do not develop a capacity for it later
The neglected child includes not only orphans
and the victims of abuse, but the children
whose parents are never there, and the ones
raised in a rigid, authoritarian manner
Individual Psychology: Birth Order
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Adler is credited as the first theorist to include
a child's brothers and sisters as an early
influence on the child
If You’re An Only Child…
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The only child is more likely than others to be
pampered with all the ill results we’ve already
discussed…
 Parents of the only child are more likely to take
special care (sometimes anxiety-filled care) of their
first born
 They may feel like “they have all their eggs in one
basket”
 If the parents are abusive, on the other hand, the only
child will have to bear that abuse alone
If You’re The First Born…
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The first child begins life as an only child,
with all the family attention to themselves
However, the second child arrives and
"dethrones" the first born
First born children often battle for their lost
position
Some become disobedient and rebellious,
others sullen and withdrawn
First children are more likely than any other to
become problem children
First Borns
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More positively, first children are often
precocious
They tend to be relatively solitary and more
conservative than the other children in the
family
If You’re #2…you try harder???
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Tend to become quite competitive, constantly
trying to surpass the older child
They often succeed, but many feel as if the race
is never done, and they tend to dream of
constant running without getting anywhere
 Other "middle" children will tend to be similar
to the second child, although each may focus
on a different "competitor"
If You’re The Youngest…
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Likely to be the most pampered in a family with
other children
 They are never dethroned!
Youngest children are the 2nd most likely
source of problem children ( just behind 1st)
Youngest may also feel incredible inferiority,
with everyone older & "therefore” superior
But, the youngest can also be driven to
exceed all of their older siblings
Note: Several slides on Jung’s biography and pictures prepared by Dr. C. George
Boeree (http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/jung.html) and
http://web.bentley.edu/students/g/grdina_jack/adulthood.html.
Note: Several slides on Adler’s biography and picture prepared by
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hstein/adler.htm