Adler

Front 1

Striving for Success or Superiority

Back 1

The sole dynamic force behind people's actions is the striving for success or superiority.

Front 2

The Final Goal

Back 2

The final goal of success or superiority toward which all people strive unifies personality and makes all behavior meaningful.

Front 3

The Striving Force as Compensation

Back 3

Because people are born with small, inferior bodies, they feel inferior and attempt to overcome these feelings through their natural tendency to move toward completion. The striving force can take one of two courses—personal gain (superiority) or community benefit (success).

Front 4

Striving for Personal Superiority

Back 4

Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal superiority with little concern for other people. Although they may appear to be interested in other people, their basic motivation is personal benefit.

Front 5

Striving for Success

Back 5

In contrast, psychologically healthy people strive for the success of all humanity, but they do so without losing their personal identity.

Front 6

Subjective Perceptions

Back 6

People's subjective view of the world—not reality—shapes their behavior.

Front 7

Fictionalism

Back 7

Fictions are people's expectations of the future. Adler held that fictions guide behavior, because people act as if these fictions are true. Adler emphasized teleology over causality, or explanations of behavior in terms of future goals rather than past causes.

Front 8

Physical Inferiorities

Back 8

Adler believed that all humans are "blessed" with physical inferiorities, which stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority and move people toward perfection or completion.

Front 9

Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality

Back 9

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

Front 10

Organ Dialect

Back 10

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

Front 11

Conscious and Unconscious

Back 11

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

Front 12

Social Interest

Back 12

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

Front 13

Style of Life

Back 13

The manner of a person's striving is called style of life, a pattern that is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of age. However, Adler believed that healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior and that they have some limited ability to change their style of life.

Front 14

Creative Power

Back 14

Style of life is partially 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.

Front 15

people with a useless style of life tend to

Back 15

(1) set their goals too high, (2) have a dogmatic style of life, and (3) live in their own private world.

Front 16

External Factors in Maladjustment

Back 16

Adler listed three factors that relate to abnormal development: (1) exaggerated physical defects, which do not by themselves cause abnormal development, but which may contribute to it by generating subjective and exaggerated feelings of inferiority; (2) a pampered style of life, which contributes to an overriding drive to establish a permanent parasitic relationship with the mother or a mother substitute; and (3) a neglected style of life, which leads to distrust of other people.

Front 17

Safeguarding Tendencies

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(1) excuses, which allow people to preserve their inflated sense of personal worth; (2) aggression, which may take the form of depreciating others' accomplishments, accusing others of being responsible for one's own failures, or self-accusation; and (3) withdrawal, which can be expressed by psychologically moving backward, standing still, hesitating, or constructing obstacles

Front 18

Masculine Protest

Back 18

Both men and women sometimes overemphasize the desirability of being manly, a condition Adler called the masculine protest. The frequently found inferior status of women is not based on physiology but on historical developments and social learning.

Front 19

firstborns

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have strong feelings of power and superiority, to be overprotective, and to have more than their share of anxiety.

Front 20

Secondborn children

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likely to have strong social interest, provided they do not get trapped trying to overcome their older sibling. Youngest children are likely to be pampered and to lack independence, whereas only children have some of the characteristics of both the oldest and the youngest child.

Front 21

Early Recollections

Back 21

Adler believed that early memories are templates on which people project their current style of life. These recollections need not be accurate accounts of early event, but true or false, they have psychological importance because they reflect a person's current view of the world.

Front 22

Critique of Adlerian Theory

Back 22

Individual psychology rates high on it ability to generate research, organize data, and guide the practitioner. It receives a moderate rating on parsimony, but because it lacks operational definitions, it rates low on internal consistency. It also rates low on falsification because many of its related research findings can be explained by other theories.

Front 23

Concept of Humanity Adler

Back 23

Adler saw people as forward moving, social animals who are motivated by goals they set (both consciously and unconsciously) for the future. People are ultimately responsible for their own unique style of life. Thus, Adler's theory rates high on free-choice, social influences, and uniqueness; very high on optimism and teleology; and average on unconscious influences.