0.3 Alfred adler and harry stack sullivan  (Page 6/37)

Adler’s influence within the psychodynamic field has been widely recognized, if not adequately advertised. When he split with Freud, nearly half of the psychoanalytic society left with him. His emphasis on social interactions and culture provided a framework within which theorists such as Karen Horney and Erich Fromm flourished. Adler’s emphasis on child guidance, and including school teachers as being just as important as parents, must have had an important influence on Anna Freud (though she would never have admitted it). Within the child guidance centers, Adler was one of the first (if not the first) to utilize family therapy and group psychotherapy, as well as school psychology. It was within such an environment, influenced also by Maria Montessori, that Erik Erikson evolved into the analyst and theorist he became.

Adler’s influence also extended well beyond the psychodynamic realm. His scheme of apperception set the stage for the cognitive psychology and therapies that are so popular (and effective) today. He is recognized by many as the founder of humanistic psychology, though it was Rogers, Maslow, and the existentialists Viktor Frankl (Frankl worked closely with Adler for a time) and Rollo May who clearly split from psychodynamic theory into new schools of psychology.

Given this extraordinary influence, it is surprising that Adler is not widely recognized as belonging amongst the greatest theorists and clinical innovators in the history of psychology and psychiatry. The honor is certainly well deserved.

Adler’s Individual Psychology

Adler developed the concept of Individual Psychology out of his observation that psychologists were beginning to ignore what he called the unity of the individual :

A survey of the views and theories of most psychologists indicates a peculiar limitation both in the nature of their field of investigation and in their methods of inquiry. They act as if experience and knowledge of mankind were, with conscious intent, to be excluded from our investigations and all value and importance denied to artistic and creative vision as well as to intuition itself. (pg. 1; Adler, 1914/1963)

To summarize Individual Psychology briefly, children begin life with feelings of inferiority toward their parents, as well as toward the whole world. The child’s life becomes an ongoing effort to overcome this inferiority, and the child is continuously restless. As the child seeks superiority it creatively forms goals, even if the ultimate goal is a fictional representation of achieving superiority. Indeed, Adler believed that it is impossible to think, feel, will, or act without the perception of some goal, and that every psychological phenomenon can only be understood if it is regarded as preparation for some goal. Thus, the person’s entire life becomes centered on a given plan for attaining the final goal (whatever that may be). Such a perspective must be uniquely individual, since each person’s particular childhood feelings of inferiority, creative style of life, and ultimate goals would be unique to their own experiences (Adler, 1914/1963).