Adlerian Psychotherapy

Question 1

What type of clients should you use Adlerian Therapy with?

Answer 1

Parent training in groups and parenting education with individuals and couples, or analyzing sibling relationships, family transitions, school based concerns, and adult difficulties dealing with difficulties and anxieties pertaining to social relationships

Question 2

What are some axioms of Adlerian Therapy?

Answer 2

1. All behaviour is purposive and goal oriented.
2. We use emotions and specific emotional consequences creatively to facilitate reaching personal goals.
3. Motivations may be on an unconscious level and may effectively hide a person’s goals from consciousness.
4. Behaviour and life-style are determined by and consistent with each person’s unique system of private logic.
5. Different behaviours comprise and reinforce the life-style, and the life-style in turn ostensibly substantiates one’s private logic.
6. Behaviours, life-style and private logic - in concert as they must by definition be - can occlude a person’s awareness of alternative possibilities.
7. This lack of awareness confirms the private logic and leads to delusions and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Question 3

What are the 3 C’s that people want to achieve?

Answer 3

1. To belong and to be CONNECTED
2. To grow and improve, to feel CAPABLE
3. To feel significant, to COUNT

Question 4

If children feel cannot achieve the 3 C’s what happens?

Answer 4

They may try to avoid responsibility and to blame or punish others for their perceived inferior positions (inferiority complexes)

Question 5

What happens when you draw conclusions about the 3 Crucial C’s?

Answer 5

They become your life-styles. Once they are established they will behave consistently, filtering all new info and experiences through their schemas and behaving in ways that bring about already-expected results.

Question 6

Convictions about “what is”

Answer 6

a) the self concept, which includes
1. the body sense (what is me?) basic body adequacy
2. Self identity (Who am I?) location via reference points
3. Self image (what am I? (evaluation of self worth)

b) the environmental evaluation or “world image” which includes
1. the image of the physical cosmos (life is…)
2. The image of the social world (people are….)

Question 7

Ideals

Answer 7

a. The significant issues of life (what is important?)

b. Moral judgements (what should I do/not do? Same for others)

Question 8

Conclusions about behaviour (the therefores)

Answer 8

a. The goald (what to do)
1. Be on top
2. Be taken care of
b. the methods (how to do it)
1. impress with power, or be best in everything or if not best be the worst
2. charm them into loving me, show weakness, win sympathy or associate only with protectors

Question 9

14 Lifestyles

Answer 9

1. The getter
2. The driver
3. the controller
4. Needs to be right
5. The needs to be superior person
6. The person needs to be liked
7. Needs to be good
8. opposes everything
9. the victim
10. The martyr
11. The baby
12. the inadequate person
13. Avoids feelings
14. excitement seeker

Question 10

What is the overall process of Adlerian Psychotherapy?

Answer 10

1. establishment of cooperative relationships with clients (trust and encouragement)
2. analysis and assessment of the life style (interview and early recollections)
3. Interpretation resulting in inisight (increased client awareness of life stytle)
4. Reorientation phase (consider alternate attitudes, beliefs and actions

Question 11

Family Orientations

Answer 11

1. Only child: never had a rival, people are curiosities not competitors, may have never learned to share
2. First born child: had it all to themselves, would like to be first and foremost
3. Second child: started late and has to catch up
4. Middle Child: surrounded and squeezed. Feels endanger of losing his portion.
5. Youngest child: the trails is well spoken for and he/she is never dethroned. Has a great deal of ground to overcome.

Question 12

Parent-Child Interaction

Answer 12

1. overprotection and overindulgence: prevents child from learning and taking responsibility for themselves
2. rejection: discourages children about their worth
3. excessive standards: discourages children about their abilities
4. inconsistent discipline: leads children to believe that life is arbitrary and unpredictable
5. Authoritarian behaviour: leads children to depend upon the power and opinions of others for their places and must either placate the powers or defeat them.

Question 13

Family Athosphere

Answer 13

1. Harmony vs conflict
2. democratic, autocratic or anarchic
3. close or distant?
4. Help with each other or ignore each other?
5. confusing and contradictory or clear and consistent?
6. secretive? Hostile? Gloomy? Despondent?
7. Initiative encouraged or discouraged?
8. tragic, comic or dramatic theme?
9. Oppresive standards hang like clouds so everyone feels like failures?

Question 14

Family values

Answer 14

good human relations

material gain

intellectual accomplishments

social prestige

propriety

morality

rugged masculalinity

delicate femininity

Question 15

If children cannot live up to these family values, the following may develop:

Answer 15

rebellion
surface submission and inner rebellion
rationalization or other devices for preserving self-worth in the face of ideals

Question 16

Available roles and sibling alliances and rivalries

Answer 16

good student
helpful domestic
black sheep
mother/father's favourite
sibling closes in age is usually fiercest competitor
Special sibs (special needs)
dead siblings (deals)
elder siblings (parenting roles