Alderian Therapy

Question 1

Key Figures in Alderian Therapy?

Answer 1

Alfred Adler; significant developer: rudolf dreikurs (responsible for transplanting Alderian principles to the US and applying to eduction, child guidance, and group work)

Question 2

Individual Psychology

Answer 2

a term Adler used to describe his emphasis on the uniqueness and unity of the individual, which began in europe in the early 1900’s under Adler’s leadership

Question 3

What is the center of personality according to Alderian Therapy?

Answer 3

The consciousness, not the unconsciousness, is the center of personality.

Question 4

What does the Alderian approach stress?

Answer 4

The Adlerian approach based on a growth model stresses the individual’s positive capacities to live fully in society. It is characterized by seeing unity in the personality, understanding a person’s world from a subjective vantage point, and stressing life goals that give direction to behaviour.

Question 5

What are humans motivated by according to the Alderian approach?

Answer 5

Humans are motivated by social interest, or a sense of belonging and having a significant place in society. Feelings of inferiority often serve as the wellspring of creativity, motivating people to strive for mastery, superiority, and perfection.

Question 6

Therapeutic Goal of Alderian therapy?

Answer 6

Alderians are concerned with challenging clients’ mistaken notions and faulty assumptions, which helps them develop on the useful side of life. Work with clients to develop socially useful goals, like fostering social interest, helping clients overcome feelings of discouragement, changing faulty motivation, restructuring mistaken assumptions, and assisting clients to feel a sense of equality with others.

Question 7

Therapeutic Relationship in Alderian Therapy

Answer 7

Based on mutual respect; both parties are active; not passive; relationship between equals. Through this collaborative partnership, clients recognize that they are responsibly for their behaviour. The focus is on examining the client’s lifestyle, which is expressed in everything the client does. Therapists frequently interpret this lifestyle by demonstrating a connection between the past, the present, and the client’s future strivings. Without initial trust and rapport, the difficult work of changing one’s style of living is not likely to occur.

Question 8

Techniques and Procedures in Alderian Therapy

Answer 8

Variety of cognitive, behavioural, and experimental techniques. Therapists are concerned about needs of the clients, rather than squeezing clients into one theoretical framework. Therapists have creative liberty. Examples: attending, encouragement, confrontation, paradoxical intention, summarizing, interpretation of the family constellation and early recollections, suggestion, and homework assignements. Most were originally developed by Adler.

Question 9

Applications of Alderian Theory

Answer 9

Helping people reach their full potential. Principles have been applied to a broad range of human problems and to alleviating social conditions that interfere with growth.
The theory has been widely adopted in elementary education, consultation groups with teachers, child guidance work, parent education groups, parent-child counselling, individual therapy, and social work. Being grounded in the principles of social psychology, it is ideally suited for working with groups, couples, and families.

Question 10

Contributions of Alderian Therapy

Answer 10

The model is a forerunner of most current approaches to counselling. It has a psychoeducational focus, a present and future orientation, and is a brief or time-limited approach. Adler’s influence has extended into the community mental health movement. The interpersonal emphasis is most appropriate for counselling culturally diverse populations. Adlerian theory addressed social equality issues and social embeddedness of humans long before multiculturalism assumed central importance in the counselling profession.

Question 11

Limitations of Alderian Therapy

Answer 11

some concepts are vague and not precisely defined, and therefore difficult to validate them empirically. Possible oversimplification of complex human functioning and is based too heavily on a commonsense perspective.

Question 12

Personality Priorities

Question 13

Private Logic

Question 14

Mistaken goals

Question 15

Faulty Assumptions

Question 16

Re-orientation

Question 17

Re-education

Question 18

Acting “as-if”

Question 19

Basic inferiority

Question 20

belonging

Question 21

birth order

Question 22

style of life

Question 23

lifestyle assessment

Question 24

teleological explanation of behaviour

Question 25

Basic Mistakes

Answer 25

Faulty, self-defeating perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs, which may have been appropriate at one time but are no longer. These are myths that are influential in shaping personality. Examples include denying one’s worth, an exaggerated need for security, and setting impossible goals

Question 26

Community Feeling

Answer 26

An individual’s awareness of being pat of the human community.

Question 27

Convictions

Answer 27

Conclusions based on life experiences and the interpretation of such experiences

Question 28

Courage

Answer 28

The willingness to move forward in life even when fearful; the willingness to take appropriate risks

Question 29

Early recollections

Answer 29

Childhood memories (before the age of 9) of one-time events. People retain these memories as capsule summaries of their present philosophy of life. From a series of early recollections, it is possible to understand mistaken notions, present attitudes, social interests, and possible future behaviour.

Question 30

Encouragement

Answer 30

The process of increasing one’s courage to face life tasks; used throughout therapy as a way to counter discouragement and to help people set realistic goals

Question 31

Family Constellation

Answer 31

The social and psychological structure of the family system; includes birth order, the individual’s perception of self, sibling characteristics and ratings, and parental relationships. Each person forms his or her unique view of self, others, and life through the family constellation

Question 32

Fictional Finalism

Answer 32

An imagines central goal that gives direction to behaviour and unity to the personality; an image of what people would be like if they were perfect and perfectly secure

Question 33

Goal alignment

Answer 33

A congruence between the client’s and the counselor’s goals and the collaborative effect of two persons working equally toward specific, agreed-on goals

Question 34

Guiding self-ideal

Answer 34

Another term for fictional finalism which represents an individual’s image of goal of perfection

Question 35

Holism

Answer 35

Studying people as integrated beings with a focus on the ways in which they proceed through life; a reaction against separating personality into parts

Question 36

Inferiority Feelings

Answer 36

The early determining force in behaviour; the source of human striving and the wellspring of creativity. Humans attempt to compensate for both imagined and real inferiorities, which helps them overcome handicaps

Question 37

Insight

Answer 37

A special form of awareness that facilitates a meaningful understanding within the therapeutic relationship and acts as a foundation for change

Question 38

Lifestyle

Answer 38

The core beliefs and assumptions through which the person organizes his or her reality and finds meaning in life events

Question 39

Life Tasks

Answer 39

Universal problems in human life, including tasks of friendship (community), work ( a division of labor), and intimacy (love and marriage)

Question 40

Phenomenological Approach

Answer 40

Focus on the way people perceive their world. For Alderians, objective reality is less important than how people interpret reality and the meanings they attach to what they experience

Question 41

Priorities

Answer 41

Characteristics that involve a dominant behaviour pattern with supporting convictions that an individual uses to cope. Examples are superiority, control, comfort, and pleasing

Question 42

The Question

Answer 42

Used in an initial assessment to gain understanding of the purpose that symptoms or actions have in a person’s life. The question is, “How would your life be different, and what would you do differently, if you did not have this symptom or problem?”

Question 43

Social Interest

Answer 43

A sense of identification with humanity; a feeling of belonging; an interest in the common good

Question 44

Striving for superiority

Answer 44

A strong inclination toward becoming competent, toward mastering our environment, and toward self-improvement. The striving for perfection (and superiority) is a movement toward enhancement of self

Question 45

Style of Life

Answer 45

An individual’s way of thinking, feeling, and actions; a conceptual framework by which the world is perceived and by which people are able to cope with life tasks; the person’s personality

Question 46

Teleology

Answer 46

The study of goals and the goal directedness of human behavior. Humans life by aims and purposes, not by being pushed by outside forces