Introduction
"Alfred, do not believe anything"
Adler's father advising his son (1)
When we see that throughout his life, Adler would always challenge statements until he felt that they could be categorically accepted beyond any reasonable doubt, it is perhaps not hard to understand why he was always so fond of recalling his father's words.
Alfred Adler (1870 - 1937) was a giant of the psychoanalytic movement, yet he remains almost completely unknown outside it. This is a great pity, for his theory of personality, his scientific faith in humankind and his views on society's origins should be of great interest and relevance to us all. Far better known are the ideas of fellow Austrian and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856 -1939) Freud believed that society arose out of sexual repression and formulated his Oedipus Theory to illustrate it.
Both viewpoints will be discussed in detail. We will also consider Adler's Individual Psychology and views on social behaviour and their relevance to modern society before looking at the criticisms and comparisons of both Freud and Adler's theories. We will conclude by attempting a decision as to which theory has the most validity.
Adler and Individual Psychology
Adler was a sickly child. He was unable to walk until he was four and almost died of pneumonia before reaching his fifth birthday - experiences that later inspired him to take up a career in medicine. He became an ophthalmologist before turning to psychiatry, eventually joining the psychoanalytic discussion group centred on the theories of Freud, who was impressed with Adler and held him in high regard. Yet anyone who deviated from the revelations of Freud's psychoanalytic thought process would eventually incur his wrath, and Adler was no exception.
Their falling out was caused, in large part, by two papers that Adler had written on aggressive instinct and, in particular, children's feelings of inferiority, which suggested that Freud's sexual notions be taken more metaphorically than literally. Adler and a number of his supporters left Freud's organisation at this point to form the Society for Free Psychoanalysis (later Individual Psychology) in 1911. He never met Freud again.
Freed from the constraints of his influence, Adler set about refining his concept of the human individual as a unique and non-repeatable being who must be valued according to his individuality.
Central to Adlerian thinking is the striving for perfection, a single, motivating force behind all our behaviour and experiences. It is the desire we all have to fulfil our potentials, to come closer and closer to our ideal, and resembles the more widely known idea of selfactualization. 'The striving receives its specific direction from an individually unique goal or self-ideal" which, though influenced by biological and environmental factors, is ultimately the creation of the individual. "Because it is an ideal, the goal is a fiction which is only dimly envisaged by the individual, meaning that it is largely unknown to him and not understood by him. This is Adler's definition of the unconscious: the unknown part of the goaL" (2)
There has been considerable confusion in relation to Adler's theory of a single motivating force stemming from the fact that Adler could not make up his mind as to which term to use when actually describing it. He first called it the aggression drive, referring to the reaction we have when other drives, such as our need to eat, be sexually satisfied, get things done, or be loved, are frustrated. Another word he used was compensation - the striving to overcome. "Since we all have problems, short-comings, inferiorities of one sort or another, Adler felt that our personalities could be accounted for by the ways in which we do, or do not, compensate to overcome those problems" (3) Although this idea still plays a major role in his theory, Adler later rejected it as a label for the basic motive because it makes it sound as if it is our problems that cause us to be what we are. Before finally settling on striving for perfection, Adler used the term "striving for superiority" which contains the idea that, as well as humans wanting to be better in themselves, they also wanted to be better than others. He later tended to use this phrase more in reference to unhealthy or neurotic striving.
Adler took the concept of holism very much to heart. As far as he was concerned, holism reflected the idea that we should see people as wholes rather than parts. Individual psychology was the term that he used to describe this process. Inspired by the idea of holism, "Adler, instead of talking about a person's personality with the traditional sense of internal traits, structures, dynamics, conflicts and so on, preferred to talk about lifestyle". (4) This refers to how we live our life and how we handle problems and interpersonal relations. He saw 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 - a process he called teteology.
Adler's experiences as a physician in the Austrian army during the Great War, and the terrible carnage that he witnessed at first hand, lead him to devote the rest of his life exploring, understanding and articulating the deep-rooted causes of our social behaviour, and it is to these causes that we now turn.
Social behaviour
Adler traced society's origins back to the dawn of man. From the very beginning, human life
was social. Only the joint efforts of several humans could enable them to kill beasts, to gather food and to keep fires burning. They had to co-operate. When people first learnt to grow their own food and to store it there was a complete transformation of social life - called by archaeologists the Neolithic Revolution. "Communal living became a necessity because the community, and the division of labour through which every individual subordinated himself to the group, ensured the continued existence of the species." (5)
It is from the very beginnings of civilization that we see in man the natural instinct to be sociable, to have a feeling of community. Adler envisaged human beings to be capable of profound co-operation in living together and striving for self improvement, self fulfilment and contribution to the common welfare: "Adler predicted that if we did not learn to co-operate, we would run the risk of annihilating each other" (6)
Yet in society there will always be failures - people who lack any type of social concern, and Adler felt that it was experiences in these people's childhoods that were mostly to blame. He identified three key areas: organ inferiority, negative physical characteristics such as short stature, weak eyesight, persistent illness etc; pampering, the child learning to take and not to give with the shock in later life in discovering that others respond in a very negative light to this characteristic and neglect - feeling inferior, they develop a deep complex and become highly selfish, trusting no one.
We need look no further than two of history's most brutal tyrants, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. to test Adler's thoughts on the consequences of what could happen as a result of a negative childhood. Both had drunken, violent, sadistic fathers and weak, submissive, doting mothers.
When they were not being regularly beaten, they were usually completely ignored or neglected. Hitler was painfully thin and almost permanently ill. Stalin was badly pockmarked. Both attempted to strive for their own senses of superiority and both were happy to sacrifice 50,000,000 human lives in the process. Yet at the same time, and with some relief, there are also those, Franklin D Roosevelt, Albert Einstein or, more recently Professor Stephen Hawking who overcame extremely difficult childhood circumstances to go on and make great contributions to the societies in which they lived.
Essentially, Adler believed that we were social beings. Expressed differently: " The human being and all his capabilities and forms of expression are inseparably linked to the existence of others" (7)
When we look at cultural phenomena, we see Adlerian theory come to life. The concept of culture, argues Tomasello (1994) was specifically formulated to describe group differences in human behaviour and, thus, behavioural traditions of humans provide the proto-typical case of cultural transmission. This idea of cultural transmission can be supported by a range of social processes comprising of the motivation to integrate into one's immediate community, recognising and offering social support, attending mutually supportive institutes of learning, abiding by a set of community-determined guidelines, and the pursuit of an individually gratifying, yet communally beneficial objective - the Adlerian "goal".
Adler concluded that a social person is "much closer to happiness than the isolated person striving for superiority" (8)
Freud on the origins of society
The beginnings of religion, morals, society and art all converge in the Oedipus Complex Sigmund Freud - Totem and Taboo (9)
Freud used, with some ingenuity and not a little imagination, Sophocles' telling of the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother, to explain his theories behind society's development. The Oedipus Complex designates attraction on the part of the child toward the parent of the opposite sex, and rivalry and hostility toward the parent of its own. It occurs during the phallic stage (at around five years) of the psycho-sexual development of the personality. The hostility that the five year-old child feels can turn to thoughts of murder and incest, but these feelings cannot be realised. Instead, they are repressed.
Repression occurs in males because of the fear of castration by their fathers and so their feelings are hidden in the unconscious to enable the male child to appease his father by identifying with his outlook, values and principles. In females, repression obviously takes a different form as the five year-old girl believes she has already been castrated and blames her mother for the fact. For her, the Oedipus Complex (sometimes called the Electra Complex, although Freud hated the term) results in desire for the father and fear of the mother, leading to repression of the desire for the father and hatred of the mother. "Freud considered this complex and it's resultant repression as the cornerstone of the superego and the nucleus of all human relationships" (10)
In 1913, Freud published Totem and Taboo, which set about tracing the Oedipus Complex back to the origins of humanity.
Taking the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith's (1846 - 1894) hypothesis of the "totem meal" as his starting point, Freud surmised that the oldest form of sacrifice was that of animals, a public ceremony celebrated and shared by God and his worshippers. The sacrificial feast was an occasion in which individuals "rose joyously above their own interests and stressed the mutual dependence existing between one another and their God" (11)
He believed that the totem animal was a substitute for the father: ''This tallies with the Contradictory fact that, though the killing of the animal is, as a rule, forbidden, it's killing is a festive occasion - it is killed yet it is mourned". This ambivalent emotional attitude, which characterizes to this day the father-complex in children that often persists into adult life, "seems to extend to the totem animal in its capacity as substitute for the father." (12)
The "primal horde" theory of Charles Darwin (1809 -1882) is now called into play, where in primitive tribes a violent and jealous father keeps all the females for himself by driving away his sons as they grow up. Switching back to Freud, the brothers who have been driven out come together to kill their father. Being savages, Freud assumed that they would resort to cannibalism. The violent primal father had been both feared and envied, and by devouring him, they would have accomplished their identification with him, with each of them taking a part of his strength. Returning in triumph to the tribal clan, they would inevitably procreate with its female members including the mother - an act that had previously been denied them. Eventually, tribal laws would become established against murder and incest so that the community could stabilise and increase.
Freud saw this as a monumental event in history, "the beginning of so many things - of social organisation, of moral restrictions and of religion" (13)
Criticisms
Freud himself could see that there might be difficulties with his conclusions, taking as the basis of his whole position the existence of a collective mind and, in particular, the supposition that an emotional process "such as might have developed in generations of sons who were ill treated by their father, has extended to new generations which were exempt from such treatment for the very reason that their father had been eliminated" (14)
General criticisms point to Freud's pessimistic view of personality and the inferior status he gives to women who, in his conclusions, end up being castrated in both mind and body. It could be said that Freud based his entire theory of the Oedipus Complex on the fantasies of wealthy, middle-class female Viennese clients yet, as social anthropologists would argue, the family is viewed much differently in other cultures. E. James Lieberman, writing in the influential Harvard Mental Health Newsletter states that, despite the importance of Freud's theory about incest and patricide in 20th Century intellectual history, it lacks a sound biological basis, there is no anthropological evidence whatsoever to back its claims, it does not describe the principal dynamics of most families, and it stretches the Oedipus myth considerably to fit the psychodynamic mold. "Freud challenged and enlightened his contemporaries with a dynamic and useful psychology. But his Oedipal theory presumes a powerful, innate sexual and aggressive drive in the child and completely ignores paternal behaviour" (15)
CV Valentine discusses, in his groundbreaking work The Psychology of Early Childhood, what he describes as the absurdity of Freudian thought in relation to the alleged sexual impulses of young children. "The evidence of direct observation of the existence, among normal children, of sex impulses towards the parent is, to say the least, of the flimsiest nature" (16)
Another question is that of personality development, which the Oedipus Complex and its resultant theory of repression suggests, reaches its peak in children at the age of five years. Yet many physical and social skills develop after this age. Humanists such as Carl Rogers (1902 -1987) have absolute faith in an adult's capacity for change and growth and they see Freud's views as completely contradicting this process.
Adler has less of a rough ride in terms of the criticism of his theories, though this may be due in no small part to the fact that because he assumed less than Freud, he had less about which he could be wrong.
Criticisms of Adler tend to involve the issue of whether or not his theory is scientific. Many of the details of his theory are too anecdotal. They may be true in particular cases, but do not necessarily have the generality that Adler claimed for them. It could also be said that his ideas are too simplistic, too superficial, too idealistic and too difficult to prove. How, for example, do you measure striving for perfection? Or compensation? Or feelings of inferiority? Or social interest? The mainstream of psychology today is experimentally oriented. Adler's theory, some say, has a long way to go before becoming successfully measurable and, indeed, provable.
Differences of opinion
"I have never been psychoanalysed. I have never attended one of (Freud's) lectures, and when his group was sworn in to support Freudian views, I was the first to leave" (17)
No love lost, then. It is perhaps not so difficult to understand why Adler's relationship with Freud deteriorated. "It became clear that his emphasis on unity of the personality, selfresponsibility and striving for superiority, was incompatible with (Freud's) orthodox psychoanalytic preoccupation with inner conflict, determinism and libidinal drives." (18) Adler described Freud's Oedipus Complex theory as "the outraged logic of human society" and thus "just one of the many forms that appear in the life of the pampered child" (19) Freud, on the other hand, saw Adler's theories on social behaviour as proof that his former favourite had a far too simplistic and naIve understanding of human nature.
Adler opposed the Freudian doctrine of universal sexuality especially "when the attempt is made to relate all modes of human action to sexuality" (20) Adlerian theory treats people holistically, compared to Freud's reductionist approach in partitioning the mind into the id, the ego and the superego. Adler believed that, ultimately, our personalities are changeable whereas Freud thought they were fixed in childhood.
Their views on human nature were also diametrically opposed. Adler's view was highly optimistic, Freud's was somewhat pessimistic. Adler became "more and more influenced by social and psychological factors whereas Freud's system had more of a biological emphasis" (21)
Yet there were some similarities. Both agreed that childhood was a major factor in a person's social development and they both recognized the importance of dreams. Freud's notion of the Death Instinct closely mirrors Adler's theory of aggression and they both agreed that the origins of our social thought and experiences lay in mankind's historical foundations.
But most important of all, though they had increasingly divergent theories about the causes of neurosis, they both had a desire to combat distress by helping people to understand the basis of their struggles.
Conclusion
Freud's pioneering insights into the human mind changed our perceptions of who we are and why we feel and act the way we do. This is a precious gift that he has bestowed on all mankind and he will rightly live on as one of history's great thinkers.
Yet he could on more than a few occasions be wrong, and his stubbornness did him no favours. Once he settled on a particular viewpoint, he was loath to move from it. The Oedipus Complex, and its relevance to our social origins is, as we have seen, a concept that is difficult to accept. It is such a bold theory that it needs, much more so than Adler's, solid evidence to support it's validity and it is this evidence that does not, alas, exist.
Adler believed that mankind held great potential. Some say this makes him na"ive. Yet naivety is often confused with optimism and Adler was an optimist. We must side with his theory of social development as, some would say, it is our only hope of understanding how we can somehow change the world for the better. In an age filled with conflict and uncertainty his theories, now perhaps more than at any other time, need to be known, understood and appreciated.
Some of Adler's followers despair at the obscurity of his profile in the modern world, and get frustrated that too few people are aware of him. They need not worry. His time will come.
Notes and references
1. Stein.H (2000) Biographical Sketch of Alfred Adler Alfred Adler Institute of San Francisco www.oneworld.compuserve.com
2. Ansbacher. H, Ansbacher Reds (1964) The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler New York/Harper & Row pg 10
3. Boeree.G (1997) Introducing Adler Great Personalities Series/Shippenberg University Press
4. Ibid pg 11
5. Adler.A (1927/1992) Understanding Human Nature Oxford/Oneworld pg 36
6. Stein.H, Edwards.M Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice Alfred Adler Institute of San Francisco
7. Adler.A (1924) Clinical Considerations on the Meaning of Life Alfred Adler Institute of Washington Archives
8. Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler pg 299
9. Freud.S (1913) Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud Vol13 London/Alien & Unwin
10. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopaedia 6th Edition 2005 - Columbus University Press
11. Totem and Taboo Pg 194/195
12. Ibid pg 201
13. Ibid pg 203
14. Ibid pg 220
15. Harvard Mental Health Newslwtter Issue 7. Volume 12 June 1991
16. Quoted in Eysenck.H (1985) The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire New YorkIViking
Penguin pg 96
17. Handlebauer.B (1998) The Freud-Ad/er Controversy Oxford/Oneworld pg 186
18. NCHP Stage 2 Notes: Adler pg 2
19. Adler.A (1938/1998) Socia/ /nterest Oxford/Oneworld pg 73
20. Ibid pg 43
21. lbid pg 9
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