Adlerian Therapy Flashcards
social relatedness
primary human motivator
human behavior
purposeful & goal directed
inferiority feelings
normal condition of all people. source of human striving; wellspring of creativity
life goal
unifies the personality and becomes source of human motivation; every striving and every effort to overcome inferiority is now in line w/ this goal
how people change
through social learning
Focus of Adlerian Theory
reeducating individuals and reshaping society
individual psychology
unity and indivisibility of the person. person must be understood as a whole w/in context of his or her life. all dimensions of a person are interconnected components, and all these components are unified by individual’s movement toward a life goal.
holistic conept
all aspects of ourselves must be understood in relationship to the socially embedded contexts of family, culture, school, work. more emphasis on interpersonal relationships than on the individual’s internal psychodynamics
Social Interest & Community Feeling
refer to the individual’s awareness of being part of the human community and to individuals’ attitudes in dealing with the social world
social interest
the action line of one’s community feeling. involves being as concerned about others as one is about oneself. involves capacity to cooperate and contribute to something bigger than oneself. requries that we have enough contact w/ the present to make a move to a meaningful future. give and take relationship w/ world
central indicator of mental health
social interest
community feeling
embodies the feeling of being connected to all of humanity – past, present, and future – and to being involved in making the world a better place.
3 Universal Life Tasks
- social
- love-marriage
- occupational
so fundamental that impairment in any one of them is often an indicator of a psychological disorder. more often than not, people seeking therapy are struggling unsuccessfully to meet one or more of the life tasks.
Therapeutic Process
- forming relationship
- holistic psychological investigation or lifestyle assessment
- disclosing mistaken goals and faulty assumptions
main aim of therapy
develop client’s sense of belonging and to assist in the adoption of behaviors and process characterized by community feeling and social interest
growth model of personality
emphasizes health and prevention, not remediation (as opposed to a medical model)
encouragement
most powerful method available for changing a person’s beliefs
Comprehensive Assessment of Client’s Functioning
major task for the therapist. gather info about style of living by means of a questionnaire on the client’s family constellation.
early recollections
stories of events that a person says occurred before age 10. these are specific incidents.
private logic
concepts about self, others, and life that constitutes the philosophy on which an individual’s lifestyle is based.
Four Central Objectives
- establish proper therapeutic relationship.
- explore psychological dynamics in client (assessment)
- encourage development of self-understanding (insight into purpose)
- help client make new choices (reorientation and reeducation)
Adlerian Brief Therapy (ABT)
minor psychotherapy developed by dreikurs
initial sessions
develop relationship, provide structure, provide a wide-angle perspective that will eventually help the client view his or her world differently
assessment phase
focus on understanding client’s idenity. proceeds from 2 itnerview forms: subjective and objective interviews
Subjective Interview
counselor helps client tell life story as completely as possible. empathic listening and responding. therapist must express wonder, fascination, interest. therapist listens for clies to the purposive aspects of client’s coping and approaches to life
the question
what would you do if you were quite well?
objective interview
seeks to discover info about how problems began, precipitating events, medical history, social history, reason client chose therapy, client’s coping w/ life tasks, lifestyle assessment
lifestyle assessment
seeks to develop a holistic narrative of the person’s life, to make sense of the way the person copes w/ life tasks
family of origin
central impact on individual’s personality
why are early recollections important?
to a large extent, what we selectively attend to from the past is reflective of what we believe, how we behave in the present, and our anticipation of the future. from the thousands of experiences we have before age 10, we tend to remember only 6 to 12 memories.
three memories
minimu required to assess a pattern
early recollections
projective technique to assess convictions about self, others, life, ethics, assess client’s stance in counseling, verify client’s coping patterns, assess individual strengths and interfering ideas
insight
understanding of the motivations that operate in a client’s life
phase 3: encourage self-understanding and insight
interpretation, creating awareness. interpretations are suggestions presented tentatively in form of open-ended questions
phase 4: reorientation and reeducation
action oriented phase. putting insights into practice. reorientation involves shifting rules of interaction, process, motivation facility through changes in awareness.
encouragement process
encouragement is the most distinctive Adlerian procedure; central to all phases of therapy. literally means “to build courage.”
discouragement
basic condition that prevents people from functioning.
change and search for new possibilities
during reorientation phase, clients encouraged to act “as if” they were the people they wanted to be, and “catch themselves” repeating old patterns. real change happens between sessions, not in therapy itself.
motivation modification
Adlerians focus on this more than on behavior change
push-button technique
goal of this technique is to help clients become aware of their role in contributing to their unpleasant feelings. typically, clients are asked to re-create an unpleaseent memory, which is then followed by recalling a pleasant memory. recognizes that “contral” is a major theme in depression. this intervention is designed to help the client regain a sense of control over the negative feelings that seem overwhelming.
basic goal of the adlerian approach
help clients identify and change mistaken beliefs about self, others, and life
Contemporary Adlerian theory
integrative approach, combining cognitive, constructivist, existential, psychodynamic, relational, and systems perspectives
Adlerian brief therapy: 5 characteristics for an integrative framework
- time limitation
- focus
- counselor directiveness
- symptoms as solutions
- assignment of behavioral tasks
clients who are mentally ill are…
discouraged rather than sick
individual psychology
Each person is unique and indivisible. Everybody can accomplish
everything when the drive is sufficient (except for limitations set by
heredity).
human behavior
People are to be viewed holistically as a creative, responsible,
“becoming” individuals moving toward “fictional” goals within their
phenomenal fields (more on this is in a moment).
erratic behavior
Erratic or unpredictable behavior is designed to confuse and put
others on the defensive, which gives them the upper hand in the
relationship.
a focus of therapy
The therapy focuses on encouraging the individual to activate social
interest, and develop a new lifestyle through relationship, analysis,
and action methods.
fiction
People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and
personality. He calls this “fiction”.
personality
Personality is unified and self-consistent.
style of life
Style of Life is molded by the person’s creative power and
creativity means a person is not bound by the past.
fiction as motivation
People are motivated more by fictions (expectations of the
future) than by experiences of the past, not by what is true,
but what they perceive as true.
organ dialect
Parts of the body speak for the person. This
gives excuses or enables a person to avoid doing something. An
example includes a woman who develops laryngitis in stressful
situations so she would not have to talk about it. This is a very
important issue in Gestalt Therapy.
conscious and unconscious
There is no dichotomy
between the two. They are cooperating parts of the same system;
conscious and unconscious are both in the service of the
individual and he uses them to further his goals.
family constellation
The general hypothesis is that birth
order influences the development of personality. This has become
popular in addiction counseling and other counseling schemes.
Adler’s taught that the situation into which a person is born is
more important than the order.
sex
a successful person needs to define sex roles and learn to
relate to the other (not the opposite) sex. The other is not the
enemy but a fellow interdependent person with whom we learn
to cooperate. Remarkable for his age-a forerunner of women’s
equality.
4. SPIRITUALITY
coping w/ self
there is an objective self and a subjective
self. Good relations have to be established between the “I” and
“Me” and between the “I” and “Others.”
change
There comes a time in therapy when analysis must be
abandoned and the patient is encouraged to act instead of talking
and listening. Insight has to give way to decisive action for change
to take place.
therapist as model
The therapist must be real, fallible, able to laugh at himself,
and caring—a model for social interest.
task setting
The tasks are relatively simple and are set at a
level at which the patient can sabotage but cannot not fail and
then scold the therapist. This became the foundation for most
action orientated approaches to planning.
a. One form of task setting was later developed into paradoxical
intention to which you will exposed later in this course
creating images
Imaging is an important tool in
psychotherapy, and it is used by many self-help approaches from
dieting to sports psychology. Adler once asked a man, who was
experiencing impotence, if he had ever seen an impotent dog. The
man replied he had not, and Adler told him at the next attempt at
sexual intercourse he should smile and say inwardly, “Bow wow.”
The following week he informed members of his group, “I bow
wowed!”
push-button technique
Adler would tell a client he
(the client) had a button in his hand which can control emotions.
The client was to push the button when bothered by an unwanted
emotion and concentrate on that process until the emotion went
away. Adler also taught patients to create feelings by deciding
what he would think. This gave the patient power for selfdetermination.
Can you see how this has influenced cognitive
behavioral and other action orientated theories?
“aha” experience
These are the moments of acute
awareness. They generate self-confidence and optimism in
dealing with life problems. Adler was careful to point out these
moments to clients if they did not see it themselves.
post-therapy
The goal of therapy is making the therapist
superfluous. The patient can implement his newly acquired
learning in his own service and that of humankind.
dreams
Adler’s concept of dreams was probably the weakest
point of his theory. To Adler dreams were merely another
CEDU 624 Module 3 8
expression of a person’s lifestyle. Every dream serves the purpose
of evasion, not sexual urges or wish- fulfillment. A dream supports
the secret goals of a person’s life, i.e. a person who wishes to
avoid an unpleasant task may dream of missing a train or be
coming paralyzed. Adler claimed to have stopped dreaming once
he understood what dreams were about. He claimed strong,
successful, people rarely dreamt.
11. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY Psychopathology comes
psychopathology
Psychopathology comes from lack of
courage, overstated feelings of inferiority, and underdeveloped
social interest. Adler believed that pathology is merely an excess
of what all people are experiencing. The excess makes it more
notable and easily recognized. Neurotic people strive for
superiority and are motivated largely by feelings of personal
inferiority.
