Adler Individual Personality

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Alfred Adler was the innovative creator of Individual Psychology. During his childhood, Adler experienced a lot of sicknesses and illnesses that prevented him from experiencing life the way he wanted. Individual Psychology was inspired by Adler’s childhood, life experiences and his own accounts of feeling inferior. Adler was the second child out of seven. Adler felt like he was overshadowed by his oldest brother, Sigmund. Adler mainly viewed people holistically. He mentioned that individuals are unique, creative; goals oriented, and are responsible for their own destiny. “Individual Psychology is a growth model that emphasizes the holistic, phenomenological, and theological aspects of human functioning” (Leak & Leak, 2006). Adler knew that an individual’s genetics or what a person is born into doesn’t create personality; instead, it is the decisions and choices they make that matters and that the individual is not driven by its instincts. He also emphasized the importance of individual social interactions. Society plays an important role in an individual’s life because people like our family, help us stay alive (survive) due to our inferiority. Since we are born inferior the individuals strive to become superior or in other words become perfect. “Adler used the term "lifestyle" to refer to an individual's basic concept of self, others, and basic life goals” (Gfroerer, Kern, Curlette, White, & Jonyniene, 2011). Lifestyle is the way individuals adapt, overcome, and solve difficulties or problems in their lives. In other words, it is the ways they defeat their inferiority. According to Adler, lifestyles begin in early stages of childhood and would be established by the age of 6 and these lifestyle expressions can be s... ... middle of paper ... ...of life and life’s demands, minimization or denial of one’s worth and faulty values. These basic mistakes are hard for an individual to correct due to safe guarding processes. Individuals are not aware of most of their personal mistakes because they are unconscious and at times interrelated. Through therapy individuals can learn to recognize most of their mistakes. In conclusion, Adler created Individual Psychology because of his life experiences. Adler viewed the world in a holistic way. He believed that humans are made up by our thoughts, feeling, and behavior and they cannot coexist without one another. Individual psychology is formed by concepts such as birth order, lifestyle and social interest which mirrors and influences today’s society. People can identify themselves with all of the Adlerian concepts and use them for the betterment of their life.

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