1. Adlerian Therapy

2. View of Human Nature
Stress choice and responsibility, meaning in life, and the striving for competence or perfection.
Focus on inferiority feelings---motivate to strive for success (superiority)
Focus on subjective experiences

3. Adler’s Theory of Personality
Lifestyle
Social interest
Birth order
Inferiority and Superiority

4. Lifestyle
The lifestyles are based on social interest and degree of activity and energy.
Four types of lifestyles
the Socially useful type
the Ruling type
the Getting type
the Avoiding type

5. Social Interest
Social interest: a sense of identification and empathy with others.
Parent-child relationship as a model of social interest
Community feeling: a sense of social connectedness
Many problems are related to the fear of not being accepted by the groups we values. Then, anxiety is the result.

6. Birth Order Oldest child Second of only two Middle Youngest
receives more attention, spoiled, center of attention
Second of only two
behaves as if in a race, often opposite to first child
Middle
often feels squeezed out
Youngest
the baby
Only
does not learn to share or cooperate with other children

7. Inferiority and Superiority
The striving for superiority or competence is nature, whereas the superiority complex is not.
superiority was a means of inflating one’s self-importance in order to overcome inferiority feelings.
People may try to present themselves as strong and capable to maintain their mistaken feelings of superiority, when actually they are feelings less capable than others.

8. Therapeutic Goals Building a Collaborative relationship
Develop a sense of belonging
Encouragement is the most powerful method for a person to change
Changing the patterns of basic mistakes (private logic)

9. Therapist’s function and role
Identify the patterns of basic mistakes
Lack of confidence, mistrust, unrealistic ambition
Conduct an assessment
Gather information through family constellation, early recollections, or lifestyle assessment
Focus on clients’ interpretation of experiences
Develop alternative options

10. Client’s Experience in Therapy
Are not aware of the basic mistake
Help to discover the motivation of basic mistake
Do not know what to do differently
Fear of letting go the old patterns for unpredictable new alternative options
Cling to old patterns even though it is maladaptive

11. Relationship b/w Therapist & Client
Cooperation, mutual trust, respect
Making a contract with clients
Detail what they want
What is preventing them from reaching goals
How to change unproductive behavior into constructive behavior
How to make use of their strengths

12. Therapeutic Techniques & Procedures
1. Establishing the relationship
Deeply care and involve
Identity personal issues
Focus on person not the problem
Increase the awareness of strengths
Focus on subjective experiences and core patterns (basic mistake or private logic)

13. Therapeutic Techniques & Procedures
2. Exploring the individual’s dynamics
Client tells his or her story; clients as experts
The motivation behind basic mistakes
through
Family dynamics and Constellation
Early Recollections
Dream
Personality priorities
Basic mistake or private logic

14. Basic Mistake (Private Logic)
Overgeneralizations
There is no fairness in the world
Impossible goals
I must please everyone in order to feel loved by others
Misperceptions of life and life’s demands
Life is very difficult for me
Minimization or denial of one’s basic worth
I am basically stupid.
Faulty values
I must get to the top, regardless of who gets hurt in the process

15. Personality priorities (see handout)
Superiority (or significance)
Control
Comfort
Pleasing

16. Therapeutic Techniques & Procedures
3. Encouraging self-understanding and insight
Insight: an understanding of motivations that operate in a client’s life
Disclosure and interpretations are techniques that facilitate the process of gaining insight.

17. Therapeutic Techniques & Procedures
4. Helping with reorientation
Putting insights into practice
Increasing a sense of belonging and being valued
Decreasing withdrawal from life tasks or self-protection

18. Therapeutic Techniques & Procedures
4. Helping with reorientation
Encouragement
No intervention is more important than encouragement
Help clients identify self-defeating patterns
Make use of assets, strengths, and resources
Search for new possibilities
Making a difference

19. From multicultural perspectives
Contributions to multicultural counseling
Social equality, sensitive to cultural and gender issues
Focusing on a person in a social context
Social interests, sense of belonging, cooperation (instead of competition)
Focus on family
Subjective experience (unique world of a person)

20. From multicultural perspectives
Limitations to multicultural counseling
Self as the locus of change and responsibility may be problematic for some clients
Detailed explorations of one’s early family experiences may violate some cultural value
Some clients may expect therapists to provide them with solutions to the problems