Chapter 5: Adler Flashcards
Define: Basic Mistakes
Faulty belief systems or ways of understanding the world that limit our self expression. They may have been helpful at a particular time but now they negatively impede on our personality.
Define: Convictions
The root of basic mistakes. Our interpretations of life events.
How are early recollections deemed significant in Adlerian therapy?
They can shape basic mistakes and determine possible future behaviour.
What is fictional finalism?
An imagined central goal that serves as motivation to achieve what they consider is the ultimate pinnacle of safety and happiness.
What are considered the major life tasks?
Community, labor, love.
What is ‘the question’?
‘How would your life/your behaviour be differently if you did not have this problem/symptom?’
Define: teleology
The study of how goals shape human behaviour.
Describe Adler’s perspective on the role that childhood experiences plays in determining adult behaviour.
He believes our early experiences and family dynamics shape our basic mistakes, fictional finalism and feelings of inferiority, and striving for superiority. He stands for encouragement in the therapy relationship, to engage the client’s insight into their own patterns of behaviour and beliefs and believes in re-education of new ways of thinking and acting that help to facilitate positive community engagement in ways that challenge those experiences of early childhood that may have caused us to develop self limiting beliefs. Not a deterministic view like Freud though.
Adler believed that how a person thinks (i.e., the person’s attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions) affects, to a large extent, that person’s feelings and behaviour. How does this assumption about human nature influence the therapeutic goals that Adlerians establish with clients?
Discuss Adler’s concept of “style of life”. Defend the assertion that the most influential force arises not from one’s actual childhood experiences but from the attitude one holds towards those early events.
Thoughts about one’s self and others of them, patterns and habits, behaviours, level of community engagement, ability to achieve love, community and job successfully. Beliefs are laid in early childhood due to interpretation of events that shape the way we perceive the world around us. This is a phenomenological approach.
What type of role does an Adlerian therapist assume? What implications does this type of client-counsellor relationship have for the counselling process?
The therapist assumes the role of an encourager. It is believed that discouragement is largely responsible for those ‘on the wrong side of life’ and that with encouragement, clients are supported to access their own personal insight, assessment, and goal-orientation to be ‘on the right Side of life.’ An active listener, an equal and supporter, and facilitative of personal awareness. Educator.
What are the contributions and limitations of this approach for working with individuals, families, or groups from culturally diverse populations?
It’s a positive perspective of human nature, with open-minded views of human potential, regardless of past experiences. Does attempt to understand the individual on singular bases, and may overlook collective influences. Can be culturally devoted in seeking to understand the elements associated with each individual, but its very foundation of interest in family dynamics can be conflicting with many cultures.
