Adler Flashcards
The Single Drive of Human
Motivation
Striving for success or superiority
Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive
for personal superiority, while…
psychologically healthy people seek success
for all humanity.
Implied will to power or a
domination of others
Masculine protest
people’s ability to freely shape their
behavior and create their own
personality)
Creative power
Why do people strive for superiority or success?
as a means of
compensation for feelings of
inferiority or weakness.
People strive for
success/superiority through
their subjective perceptions of
reality or
Fictions (expectations of the future)
the deficient organ expresses the direction
of the individual’s goal
Organ dialect
The part of the goal that is neither clearly
formulated nor completely understood by the individual
Unconscious
understood and
regarded by the individual as
helpful in striving for success
Conscious
Gemeinschaftsgefühl
Social interest or social feeling/ means a feeling of oneness with all humanity;
it implies membership in the social community
of all people
*the flavor of a person’s life
*includes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings
for others, and attitude toward the world
Style of life
3 major problems of life
—neighborly love,
sexual love, and occupation
is a dynamic concept implying movement,
and this movement is the most
salient characteristic of life
Creative power
According to Adler the one factor
underlying all types of
maladjustments is
Underdeveloped social interest
enable people to hide their inflated self-image and to maintain their current style of life/shield a
person’s fragile self-esteem from
public disgrace
Safeguarding tendencies
Their view of the world is not
in focus with that of other
individuals and they possess
what Adler called
Private meaning
most common safeguarding
tendency
* typically expressed in the “Yes,
but” or “If only” format.
Excuses
is the tendency to undervalue other people’s
achievements and to overvalue one’s own
Depreciation
tendency to blame others for one’s
failures and to seek revenge
Accusation
marked by self-torture and guilt
Self-accusation
safeguarding through distance
Withdrawal
is the tendency to safeguard one’s fictional goal of superiority by psychologically reverting to a
more secure period of life
Moving backward
simply do not move in any direction; thus,
they avoid all responsibility by ensuring themselves against any threat of failure
Standing still
procrastinations eventually give the
excuse “It’s too late now.”
Hesitating
Adler believed that most compulsive
behaviors are attempts to
Waste time
- least severe of the withdrawal
safeguarding tendencies
Constructing obstacles
That is, their birth order, the gender of
their siblings, and the age spread
between them
Family constellation
Recollections of their earliest
memories
Early recollection
