Adlerian Key Terms

Question 1

What is Adlerian Brief Therapy?

Answer 1

An intervention that is concise, deliberate, direct, efficient, focused, short-term, and purposeful.

Question 2

What are Basic Mistakes?

Answer 2

Faulty, self-defeating perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that may have been appropriate at one time but are no longer useful.

Question 3

What is Birth Order in Adlerian psychology?

Answer 3

Adler identified five psychological positions from which children tend to view life: oldest, second of only two, middle, youngest, and only.

Question 4

What is Community Feeling?

Answer 4

An individual’s awareness of being part of the human community, embodying the sense of connection to all humanity.

Question 5

What are Early Recollections?

Answer 5

Childhood memories (before the age of 9) of one-time events that are considered as capsule summaries of a person’s present philosophy of life.

Question 6

What is Encouragement in therapy?

Answer 6

The process of increasing one’s courage to face life tasks, used throughout therapy to counter discouragement.

Question 7

What is Family Atmosphere?

Answer 7

The climate of relationships among family members.

Question 8

What is Family Constellation?

Answer 8

The social and psychological structure of the family system, including birth order, sibling characteristics, and parental relationships.

Question 9

What is Fictional Finalism?

Answer 9

An imagined central goal that gives direction to behavior and unity to personality.

Question 10

What is Goal Alignment?

Answer 10

Congruence between the client’s and counselor’s goals and the collaborative effort of two persons working equally toward agreed-upon goals.

Question 11

What is the Holistic Concept?

Answer 11

The idea that all aspects of a person must be understood in relation to each other.

Question 12

What is Individual Psychology?

Answer 12

Adler’s term for his approach to understanding the whole person, emphasizing interconnected dimensions.

Question 13

What are Inferiority Feelings?

Answer 13

The early determining force in behavior; the source of human striving and creativity.

Question 14

What is Insight in therapy?

Answer 14

Awareness that facilitates meaningful understanding within a therapeutic relationship.

Question 15

What is Interpretation in therapy?

Answer 15

Understanding clients’ underlying motives for their behavior in the present.

Question 16

What are Life Tasks?

Answer 16

Universal human challenges, including friendship, work, and intimacy.

Question 17

What is Lifestyle?

Answer 17

Core beliefs and assumptions organizing one’s reality, forming a conceptual framework.

Question 18

What is Lifestyle Assessment?

Answer 18

The process of gathering early memories to understand a client’s goals and motivations.

Question 19

What is an Objective Interview?

Answer 19

An assessment gathering basic information about a client’s life for lifestyle analysis.

Question 20

What is the Phenomenological Approach?

Answer 20

Focus on how people perceive their world, emphasizing interpretation over objective reality.

Question 21

What is Private Logic?

Answer 21

Basic convictions and assumptions underlying a client’s lifestyle, explaining behavioral patterns.

Question 22

What is Reorientation in therapy?

Answer 22

Helping clients adopt a more functional perspective and encouraging changes in their lives.

Question 23

What is Social Interest?

Answer 23

A sense of identification with humanity, belonging, and concern for the common good.

Question 24

What is Striving for Superiority?

Answer 24

The inclination toward competence, self-improvement, and perfection.

Question 25

What is Style of Life?

Answer 25

An individual’s way of thinking, feeling, and acting; their personality framework.

Question 26

What is a Subjective Interview?

Answer 26

The process where a counselor helps clients narrate their life story comprehensively.

Question 27

What is The Question in therapy?

Answer 27

Used in initial assessment to explore the purpose of symptoms, asking about life without the symptom.