HUMANISTIC THEORIES

Humanistic Theory

Individual Psychology

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Creator: Alfred Adler

Theory: Individual Psychology

“The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reaches upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.”

Postulates: Single "drive" or motivating force behind all our behavior and experience.

He called the motivating force Striving for Perfection.

It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, to come closer and closer to our ideal.

It is very similar to the more popular idea of self-actualization.

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Humanistic Approach

Follows established principles created by Abraham Maslow Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Air and food, safety, security, community, success, self-actualization

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Freud’s Theory is a reductionistic one Alfred Adler’s theory is a holistic one:

Individual = un-divided

In order to understand a person we have to see the whole person and their environment, not just their brain.

Adler sees motivation as a matter of moving towards the future, rather than being driven, mechanistically, by the past.

We are drawn towards our goals, our purposes, our ideals.

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Philosophy of “As If”

Defined: Fictions that we use to direct, mold, and control our life, motivation, and direction.

Adler pointed out that we use these fictions in day to day living as well.

We behave as if we knew the world would be here tomorrow.

As if we were sure what good and bad are all about.

As if everything we see is as we see it.

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Adler called this Fictional Finalism:

Example:

Many people behave as if there were a heaven or a hell in their personal future.

Of course, there may be a heaven or a hell, but most of us don't think of this as a proven fact.

That makes it a "fiction" in Adler's sense of the word.

Finalism refers to the teleology of it: The fiction lies in the future, and yet influences our behavior today.

Adler added that, at the center of each of our lifestyles, there sits one of these fictions, an important one about who we are and where we are going.

Even an atheist view can be represented as a fiction that regulates your life.

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Psychological Inferiorities:

Adler states that we are also motivated by our organic inferiorities. We are in a perpetual state of compensation.

You can make the weaker organ stronger, strengthen another organ to compensate, or develop an inferiority complex.

Nonetheless our inferiorities according to Adler have a powerful influence on our behavior in life.