The Development of Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology: Theory of Personality, Psychopathology, Psychotherapy (1912–1937)

By Gisela Eife

The intention of this book is to give an overview of Alfred Adler's fundamental ideas tracing the development of his theory of psychotherapy during the years between 1912 and 1937: the compensation of inferiority feeling and the founding of the concept of community feeling in emotional experience, in body and mind and in the philosophy of life. Adler doesn't adopt an objectifying external perspective; he doesn't see the overall context from outside from a reflective distance, but rather looks from his experience of human society onto the contingency of human life. All of his theoretical concepts are bound up in this holistic approach. Adler's theoretic development shows that the basic concepts of Individual Psychology are not only descriptive labels; they grow out of inner experience. Adler expresses harsh criticism of all forms of community governed by the "will to power" and pleads for a cooperation in terms of real social interest or community feeling.
This E-Book is a revised edition of the introduction to the third volume of the Alfred Adler study edition published in 2010. A new chapter has been added: »The relational dimension of Individual Psychology«. The step-by-step development of Alfred Adler's thinking is described following lectures and papers collected in the study edition. The quotations are taken from the original versions of Adler's papers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Release date: May 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9783647998916

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Gisela Eife

The Development

of Alfred Adler’s

Individual Psychology

Theory of Personality, Psychopathology, Psychotherapy (1912–1937)

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek:

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de.

© 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen

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Cover image: Alfred Adler, around 1935/akg-images/Imagno

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ISBN 978-3-647-99891-6

Table of Contents

Preface

The Dual Dynamic: the Core of Adler’s Theory

1Compensation

1.1The Neurotic Form of Compensation – The Inferiority-Compensation-Dynamic

Digression 1: Trauma as a Cause of Neurosis?

Digression 2: The Negativity of Neurosis

1.2The General Form of Compensation

2Communality

2.1The Developmental Line of Movement (1926–1933)

2.2The Developmental Line of Emotional Experience (1923/1926–1933)

2.3The Developmental Line of Community Feeling (1923–1933)

3The Junction of the Dual Lines: Compensation and Communality

3.1The Unconscious Life Style as the Ego

3.2The Immanent Characteristics of Life

3.3The Configuration of Life Force in the Dual Dynamic

4Treatment Instructions

4.1Treatment Instructions from the Individual Psychological Treatment of Neurosis (1913a)

4.2Treatment Instructions Between 1926 and 1931

Prospect: The Relational Dimension of Individual Psychology

1The Generation of Experience

1.1The Mind-Body-Processing of Experience

1.2The Experience of Co-Movement and Affect Attunement

1.3The Experience of Wholeness

2The Intersubjective Development of the Life Style

3The Interaction of Life Styles and the Meeting of Therapist and Patient

References

The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler Studienausgabe (Study Edition)

Adler’s Writings

Scientific Literature

Preface

This book is a revised edition of my introduction to the third volume of the German Alfred Adler Study Edition¹ Persönlichkeitstheorie, Psychopathologie, Psychotherapie (Adler, 2010). A new chapter has been added: The relational dimension of Individual Psychology.

The starting point of Alfred Adler’s psychotherapeutic theory is well documented in his major work The Neurotic Character (Adler/Stein, 1912a/2002a)². The further elaboration is made accessible particularly in the third volume (Adler, 2010a) of the German Alfred Adler Study Edition and in Henry Stein’s The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler (Volume 1–9). Substantial aspects can also be taken from Der Sinn des Lebens (Adler, 1933b). In summary, the following concepts present the essentials of the development of Adler’s theory: the compensation of inferiority feeling and the concept of community feeling anchored in emotional experience, in body and mind and in the philosophy of life.

Many influences, impulses and stimulations contributed to the production of this book. I would like to thank all my colleagues who encouraged my individual psychological development. Conversations with my partner, a psychoanalyst and a researcher of Master Eckhart’s writings, Karl Heinz Witte, enriched and inspired me. I myself have translated the German version of this e-book and owe heartfelt thanks to Caroline Murphy for her supervising and correcting my English. Also, I want to thank Corina Gogalniceanu, Erik Mansager, a Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapist (CADP), and Paola Prina-Cerai, a member of the editorial board of the UK Adlerian Year Book, for their interest and support. And finally, I want to thank my lector Ulrike Rastin for her kind cooperation and helpfulness.

1Starting in 2007, an Alfred Adler Study Edition has been published in German, edited by Karl Heinz Witte.

2Starting in 2002, a new English translation of Adler’s writings has been published in English, edited by Henry Stein. Most of Adler’s quotations are taken from Stein’s edition; a few quotations are only published in the German Study Edition. The small letter behind the year of publication is part of the German classification of Adler’s papers.

The Dual Dynamic: the Core of Adler’s Theory

Adler’s theory discusses the modality whereby the human being masters his or her³ life in the world. He sees the life of the individual as well as that of the masses as a compensation process, attempting to overcome felt or alleged ‘inferiorities’ in a physical or psychological manner (Adler/Stein, 1937g, p. 215).

For Adler, the feeling of inferiority is a chance and necessity for the human being, the onset, the impetus for human development (Adler, 1926k, p. 258)⁴. It is a stimulus (Adler, 1933l, p. 568)⁵ and an incentive (Adler, 1926k, p. 258) for the compensation process, the striving for a goal of security and superiority. Thus, Adler bases his concept of neurosis in a higher-ranking motive, that is the goal-orientation of the human being, instead of a partial motive (Libido) or a system of several motives.

At the beginning, Adler called this compensation process the life plan, starting in 1926, he used the term life style. As a result of his experience during the First World War, in which he felt the lack of a common ground for humanity, Adler introduced the term community feeling⁶ in 1918.

The introduction of community feeling manifests a change in the development of Adler’s theory. He discovered that psychic health cannot be achieved by a correction of psychic disorders. A patient’s health depends on the degree of his or her community feeling. Since the introduction of community feeling Adler’s theory is a value psychology, community feeling serves as a corrective and a criterion.

In 1918, Adler also realized a dual relatedness of Dostoyevsky’s heroes: "Our feeling of dual personality [Adler uses dual relatedness]⁷ is inherent in every character and fixed on two points that we can sense. Every Dostoyevsky hero moves assuredly in an area that, on the one hand, is limited by an isolated heroism, within which the hero transforms himself into a wolf and, on the other hand, the hero is contained behind a line drawn by Dostoyevsky where there is love of one’s fellow human beings. This dual personality [dual relatedness] gives strength and security to his characters and anchors them firmly in our minds and feelings (Adler/Stein, 1918c, p. 121). Countering his demand for power […] is the experience of the overwhelming necessity for the community’s aspirations" (Adler/Stein, 1918h, p. 132).

Each character is related to two fixed points in which Adler sees the contrast: isolated heroism versus brotherly love. These two tendencies in human life resemble Melanie Klein’s concept of the depressive and paranoid-schizoid position (Klein, 1944/1975, p. 317), but for Adler these concepts gain a foundation in his philosophy of life.

At the moment when Raskolnikov changes from one relatedness to another, he wants to cross the line laid down by his life thus far, fashioned on the basis of his social feeling and his life experiences (Adler/Stein, 1918h, p. 115). This line can be a turning point of the life-movement, a way out of the compensation dynamic into a life determined by community feeling. Adler did not pursue these thoughts at that time. Not before 1929 did he coin the term dual dynamic for these two tendencies in human life. He never gave a definition, but many thoughts went in this direction in his investigation of human life (see chapter 3).

In 1918, Adler recognizes, how the human being is related to these two fixed points: isolated heroism versus brotherly love. At that time, he does not yet dissolve these points into movement – a phenomenon that he will conceptualize towards the end of the 1920s. The remarkable thing is that he speaks about relatedness referring to the relationship of two characters and, later on, only about forms of movement. Firm structures are also dissipated in quantum physic (Görnitz a. Görnitz, 2008); only relations or movements are left. Adler knew about the new scientific findings of that time.

In 1914, he criticized the outmoded and antiquated natural science with its rigid systems. Such an approach eliminates the application of subjective thought and empathy with the patient, which in fact firmly establishes the connection. This kind of science today has universally been replaced by a view that […] seeks to understand life and its variations as a unity (Adler/Stein, 1914h, p. 26).

In 1926, Adler again refers to this dual relatedness, this striving for superiority […] and the devotion to community that relates this individual to others (Adler/Stein, 1926m, p. 165). In 1929, Adler is able to concisely formulate the dual dynamic which captures the two kinds of relatedness as movements and which, above all, sees both movements in every phenomenon: It is hence possible to detect "that the ways of expressing social interest [Gemeinschaftsgefühl] and the