Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian therapy, named for its founder, Alfred Adler, is in the

psychodynamic field of therapy. Adler was a colleague of Freud for several
years, but their paths diverged, and Adler developed a different approach to
therapy. Adlerian therapy assumes that humans are socially motivated and
that their behavior is purposeful and directed toward a goal. Adler believed
that feelings of inferiority often motivate people to strive for success, and he
emphasized the conscious over the unconscious. Adlerian therapy affirms
biological and environmental limits to choice, but it is not deterministic.
Adlerian therapy recognizes the importance of internal factors, such as
perception of reality, values, beliefs, and goals. It has a holistic concept of
persons, taking into account both the influence of society on the client and
the client's influence on society.

Adler held that people have a guiding self-idealin essence, an image of

perfection toward which they striveand he sought to understand a
persons behavior through a knowledge of his goals. Adler held that ones
lifestyle (the way he or she moves toward the self-ideal) is mostly formed at
a young age but is affected by later events. Birth order is seen as relevant
to lifestyle. Who we are depends more on our interpretation of experience
than on the experiences themselves. Therefore, identifying and reframing
faulty perceptions is an important part of Adlerian therapy.

Adler emphasized social interest and community feelinghow one

interacts with the world based on an awareness of the larger human
community. To Adler, social interest is a sign of mental health. When people
feel connected to others and are actively engaged in a healthy, shared
activity, their sense of inferiority decreases.

Adler also talked of life tasks: friendship (social), intimacy (love-marriage),

and societal contribution (occupational). Each of these tasks requires a
capacity for friendship, self-worth, and cooperation.

Adlerian therapy begins by investigating a client's lifestyle and identifying

misperceptions and misdirected goals. Clients are then reeducated with the
hope they will have an increased sense of belonging and a higher level of
social interest. In short, an Adlerian therapist encourages self-awareness,
challenges harmful perceptions, and admonishes the client to act to meet
his or her life tasks and engage in social activities. Counselors teach,
guide, and encourage.

The theory and application of Adlerian Psychology have as their lynchpins

seven critical ideas:

1. Unity of the Individual: Thinking, feeling, emotion, and behavior can

only be understood as subordinated to the individual's style of life, or
consistent pattern of dealing with life.
2. Goal Orientation: There is one central personality dynamic derived
from the growth and forward movement of life itself
3. Self-Determination and Uniqueness: A person's fictional goal may be
influenced by hereditary and cultural factors, but it ultimately springs
from the creative power of the individual, and is consequently unique.
4. Social Context: we meet the three important life tasks: occupation,
love and sex, and our relationship with other people -- all social
challenges. Our way of responding to our first social system, the
family constellation, may become the prototype of our world view and
attitude toward life.
5. The Feeling of Community: Social interest and feeling imply "social
improvement," quite different from conformity, leaving room for social
innovation even through cultural resistance or rebellion.
6. Mental Health: A feeling of human connectedness and a willingness
to develop oneself fully and contribute to the welfare of others are the
main criteria of mental health. When these qualities are
underdeveloped, feelings of inferiority may haunt an individual, or an
attitude of superiority may antagonize others.

Treatment
Adlerian individual psychotherapy, brief therapy, couple therapy, and family
therapy follow parallel paths. Clients are encouraged to overcome their
feelings of insecurity, develop deeper feelings of connectedness, and to
redirect their striving for significance into more socially beneficial directions.
Through a respectful Socratic dialogue, they are challenged to correct
mistaken assumptions, attitudes, behaviors, and feelings about themselves
and the world. Constant encouragement stimulates clients to attempt what
was believed impossible. The growth of confidence, pride, and gratification
leads to a greater desire and ability to cooperate. The objective of therapy
is to replace exaggerated self-protection, self-enhancement, and self-
indulgence with courageous social contribution.
Birth Order and Sibling Relationships:
Adler is unique in giving special attention to the relationships between
siblings and the psychological birth position in ones family. Actual birth
order itself is less important than the individuals interpretation of his or her
place in the family.) Birth order and the interpretation of ones position in
the family have a great deal to do with how adults interact in the world.
Individuals acquire a certain style of relating to others in childhood and form
a definite picture of themselves that they carry into their adult interactions.
In Adlerian therapy, working with family dynamics especially relationships
among siblings, assumes a key role. He identified five psychological
positions:
1. The oldest child somewhat spoiled as the center of the attention.
Depends to be dependable and hard working. Strives to keep ahead.
When a newcomer to the family arrives seen as an intruder who will
rob them of the love they are accustomed to receiving.
2. The second child from the time of birth shares the attention with
another child. Behaves as if they were in a race and is generally
under full steam at all times. The competitive struggle between the
first two children influence the later course of their lives. The second-
born is often opposite to the first-born.
3. The middle child often feels squeezed out. May become convinced
of the unfairness of life and feel cheated. May develop a poor me
attitude and can become a problem child. In families characterized
by conflict, the middle child may become the switchboard and the
peacemaker, the person who holds things together. If there are four
children in a family, the second child will often feel like a middle child
and the third will be more easygoing, more social, and may align with
the firstborn.
4. The youngest child always the baby of the family. Tends to be the
most pampered one. Youngest children tend to go their own way.
They often develop in ways no others in the family have thought
about.
5. The only child shares some of the characteristics of the oldest child
(high achievement drive). May not learn to share or cooperate with
other children. Will learn to deal with adults well. May become
dependently tied to one or both of them. May want the center stage
all of the time, and if their position is challenged will feel it is unfair.
THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
Therapeutic Goals:

Adlerian counseling rests on a collaborative arrangement between the

client and the counselor. This includes forming a relationship based on
mutual respect and identifying, exploring, and disclosing mistaken goals
and faulty assumptions within the persons style of living. This is followed
by a reeducation of the client toward the useful side of life. The main aim
of therapy is to develop the clients sense of belonging and to assist in the
adoption of behaviors and processes characterized by community feeling
and social interest. This is accomplished by increasing the clients self-
awareness and challenging and modifying their fundamental premises, life
goals, and basic concepts.

Adlerians do not see clients as being sick and in need of being cured.
They view clients as discouraged. Symptoms are attempted solutions.

The counseling process focuses on providing information, teaching,

guiding, and offering encouragement to discouraged clients. The loss of
courage, or discouragement, results in mistaken and dysfunctional
behavior. The counselor provides clients with a new cognitive map, which
is a fundamental understanding of the purpose of their behavior.

Therapists Function and Role:

Clients can become discouraged and function ineffectively because of
mistaken beliefs, faulty values, and goals in the useless side of life.

Therapists tend to look for major mistakes in thinking and valuing such as
mistrust, selfishness, unrealistic ambition, and lack of confidence. A major
function of the therapist is to make a comprehensive assessment of the
clients functioning.

Therapists gather information by means of a questionnaire on the clients

family constellation (parents, siblings, and others living in the home). This
gives a picture of the individuals early social world. The therapist is able to
get a perspective on the clients major areas of success and failure and on
the critical influences that have had a bearing on the role the client has
decided to assume in the world.
Early recollections are also used as a diagnostic tool. These are single
incidents from childhood that we are able to reexperience. These
memories provide a brief picture of how we see ourselves and others and
what we anticipate for our future. Early recollections are summarized and
interpreted, The therapist then identifies some of the major successes and
mistakes in the clients life. This process is called a lifestyle assessment.
When this process is completed, the therapist and the client have targets
for therapy.

Clients Experience in Therapy:

A persons style of living serves the individual by staying stable and
constant. It is predictable. However, it is also resistant to change
throughout most of ones life.

Generally, people fail to change because:

-they do not recognize the errors in their thinking or the purposes of
their behaviors,
-do not know what to do differently, and
-are fearful of leaving old patterns for new and unpredictable
outcomes.

In therapy, clients explore private logic the concepts about self, others,
and life that constitute the philosophy on which an individuals lifestyle is
based. Clients problems arise because the conclusions based on their
private logic often do not conform to the requirements of social living. The
core of the therapy experience consists of clients discovering the purposes
of behavior or symptoms and the basic mistakes associated with their
coping. Learning how to correct faulty assumptions and conclusions is
central to therapy.

Relationship Between Therapist and Client:

Adlerians consider a good client-therapist relationship to be one between
equals that is based on cooperation, mutual trust, respect, confidence, and
alignment of goals. The place special value on the counselors modeling of
communication and acting in good faith. The client-counselor relationship
is seen as two persons working equally toward specific, agree-upon goals.

At the outset of counseling, clients should begin to formulate a plan, or

contract, detailing:
 -what they want,
-how they plan to get where they are heading,
-what is preventing-them from successfully attaining their goals,
-how they can change nonproductive behavior into constructive
behavior, and
-how they can make full use of their assets in achieving their
purposes.

The therapeutic contract sets forth the goals of the counseling process and
specifies the responsibilities of both therapist and client.

APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

4 phases not linear and do not progress in rigid steps can best be
understood as a weaving that leads to a tapestry:

1. Establishing the proper therapeutic relationship.

2. Exploring the psychological dynamics operating in the client (an
assessment).
3. Encouraging the development of self-understanding (insight into
purpose).
4. Helping the client make new choices (reorientation and reeducation).

1. Establishing the Relationship: Working with clients is based on a sense

of deep caring, involvement, and friendship. Adlerian therapists seek to
make person-to-person contact with clients rather than starting with the
problem. The initial focus should be on the person, not the problem.
Therapists start by helping clients become aware of their assets and
strengths, rather than dealing continually with their deficits and liabilities. A
positive relationship is created by listening, responding, demonstrating
respect for clients capacity to understand purpose and seek change, and
exhibiting faith, hope and caring. Adlerians pay more attention to the
subjective experiences of the client than they do to using techniques. They
fit their techniques to the need of each client. During this phase, the main
techniques used are attending and listening with empathy, following the
subjective experience of the client as closely as possible, identifying and
clarifying goals, and suggesting initial hunches about purpose in client
symptoms and actions. They attempt to access the core patterns in the
clients life.
2. Exploring the Individuals Dynamics: The 2nd phase consists of two
interview forms: the subjective interview and the objective interview.
The subjective interview the counselor helps the client to tell their story
as completely as possible. The Adlerian counselor is listening for clues to
the purposive aspects of the clients coping and approaches to life. The
subjective interview should extract patterns in the persons life, develop
hypotheses about what works for the person, and determine what accounts
for the various concerns in the clients life. The objective interview (a)
how problems in the clients life began (b) any precipitating events (c) a
medical history (d) a social history (e) the reasons the client chose therapy
at this time (f) the persons coping with life tasks (g) a lifestyle assessment.
The family constellation Factors such as cultural and familial values,
gender-role expectations, and the nature of interpersonal relationships are
all influenced by a childs observation of the interactional patterns within the
family. Assessment includes an exploration of the clients family
constellation, including the clients evaluation of conditions that prevailed in
the family when the person was a young child, birth order, parental
relationship, family values, and extended family and culture. Early
recollections Asking the client to provide their earliest memories,
including the age of the person at the time of the remembered events and
the feelings or reactions associated with it. Personality priorities people
rely on a number-one priority, a first line of defense that they use as an
immediate response to perceived stress or difficulty. Each priority involves
a dominant behavior pattern with supporting convictions that an individual
uses to cope. (a) superiority striving for significance through leadership,
or accomplishment (b) control looking for guarantees against ridicule a
need for complete mastery of situations (c) comfort wanting to avoid
stress or pain at all costs (d) please avoiding rejection by seeking
constant approval and acceptance. Integration Integrated summaries of
the data are developed and presented to the client for discussion. Mosak
(2000) common basic mistakes (1) overgeneralizations (2) false or
impossible goals (3) misperceptions of life and lifes demands (4)
minimization or denial of ones basic worth (5) faulty values

3. Encouraging Self-understanding and Insight: Adlerians believe almost

everything in human life has a purpose. When speaking of insight,
Adlerians are referring to an understanding of the motivations that operate
in a clients life a special form of awareness that facilitates a meaningful
understanding within the therapeutic relationship and acts as a foundation
for change.
4. Helping with Reorientation: The action-oriented phase helping people
discover new and more functional alternatives. People need to be
reoriented to the useful side of life. The useful side of life involves a sense
of belonging and being values, having an interest in others and their
welfare, courage, the acceptance of imperfection, confidence, a sense of
humor, a willingness to contribute, and an outgoing friendliness.
Encouragement is the most distinctive Adlerian procedure and
Commitment is an essential part of this process. Adlerian practitioners
focus on motivation modification more than behavior change and
encourage clients to make holistic changes on the useful side of living.

Areas of Application:
Adler anticipated the future direction of the helping professions by calling
upon therapists to become social activists by addressing the prevention
and remediation of social conditions that were contrary to social interest
and resulted in human problems. Individual Psychology is based on a
growth model and is applicable to many areas: child guidance, parent-child
counseling, marital counseling, family therapy, group counseling, individual
counseling, cultural conflicts, correctional and rehabilitation counseling,
substance abuse programs, combating poverty and crime.

ADLERIAN THERAPY FROM A MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Adler introduced notions with implications toward multiculturalism that have
as much or more relevance today as they did during Adlers time. Adlerian
therapists tend to focus on cooperation and socially oriented values as
opposed to competitive and individualist values. For example, Native
American clients tend to value cooperation over competition. Adlerian
therapy is easily adaptable to cultural values that emphasize community.
Adler was one of the first psychologists at the turn of the century to
advocate equality for women.

Limitations: The Adlerian approach tends to focus on the self as the locus
of change and responsibility. This primary emphasis on changing the
autonomous self may be problematic for some clients. Many clients who
have pressing problems are likely to resent intrusions into areas of their
lives that they may not see as connected to the struggles that bring them
into therapy. Members of some cultures may believe it is inappropriate to
reveal family information.
Contributions of the Adlerian Approach: Flexibility and its integrative
nature. Adlerian therapists can be both theoretically integrative and
technically eclectic. The Adlerian therapy approach tends to lend itself to
short-term formats. One of Adlers most important contribution is his
influence on other therapy systems. Many of his basic ideas have found
their way into other psychological schools: family systems approaches,
Gestalt therapy, learning theory, reality therapy, rational emotive behavior
therapy, cognitive therapy, person-centered therapy, existential therapy,
and the post-modern approaches to therapy.

Limitations and Criticisms: A large part of the theory still requires empirical
testing and comparative analysis. Adlerian theory is of limited use for
clients seeking immediate solutions to their problems and for clients who
have little interest in exploring early childhood experiences and memories.