Adler and Jung were followers of Freud, yet each established their own unique version of psychoanalysis. Although neither Adler or Jung were pupils of Sigmund, their ideas were all related. I think of them as Freud’s sons. At one point, they were very closely tied to Sigmund but, as children do, they grew up and went off on their own.
And, as often happens, if you don’t accept your children as adults, there is a falling out. In the case of Adler and Jung, they never really reconciled with Freud. With Freud, you were either in or out.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Adler believed that being born second, being sick as a child or being pampered (or neglected) can lead to feelings of inferiority. He spoke from personal experience. The second child of six children of a wealth grain merchant, Adler had rickets as a child and was pampered by his parents. He was frail and unathletic and resented the way his mother doted on his strong older brother.
Born in Penzing, Austria (near Vienna), Adler attended the University of Vienna, receiving his MD in 1895. In 1902, Adler became Sigmund Freud’s most prominent follower. Freud was 14 years older, already famous and like an older, wiser brother. But in 1911, Adler’s had developed his own ideas (some would say had grown up) and they had a falling out. Adler formed his own circle of followers, founded his own journal and, beginning in 1921, established a chain of 30 child-guidance clinics. In 1926 Adler moved to the US. He died on a lecture tour to Scotland.
Adler was the founder of “individual psychology” and coined the term “feelings of inferiority.” In individual psychology, people’s primary motivation is striving for superiority. In light of Adler’s emphasis on inferiority, it would be easy to misconstrue superiority as meaning trying to be more valuable than another. But Alder used superiority as moving higher in rank toward completeness, as getting closer to perfection. Obviously, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority can interfere with reaching our full potential. Although compensation for feeling inferior is good, overcompensating can result in a lifestyle that take unfair advantage of other people. Adler also believed that people have an innate drive for “social interest” (the urge to work with others and be cooperative). Consequently, the goal of Adler’s therapy was for people to become socially useful and emotionally mature.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was born and raised near Vienna. Although he grew up in a wealthy family, his childhood was not without difficulty. Alfred had rickets (a a vitamin D deficiency that causes soft bones). He also was quite lonely.
His father was busy being a grain merchant, and his mother was busy with six children (Alfred was the second oldest).
Adding to his childhood trouble, Alfred always lived in the shadow of his older brother (Sigmund); Sigmund Adler.
Adler & Freud
The other Sigmund in Alfred Adler’s live was Sigmund Freud. Freud was 14 years older than Alfred, and it’s hard for me to imagine that their relationship wasn’t somehow brotherly (including sibling rivalry). Freud certainly was fond of Adler, inviting him to join Freud’s “Wednesday Evening Discussions,” and later supporting his becoming the president of the Vienna Analytic Society. Apparently, you were either on Freud’s good or bad list but never in between. Disagreement with Freud was treated as disloyalty.
And Alder did disagree with Freud. He disagreed with Freud’s interpretations of dreams. Adler liked the idea of analyzing dreams but not Freud’s assumptions. In classical Freudian psychoanalysis, people are pushed by instincts and drives. Adler preferred to focus more on an individual’s goals. Although he didn’t dismiss the importance of genetics, environment and personal experience, Adler was less concerned about where people came from and more interested in where they were headed. Adler’s approach, called Individual Psychology, tried to understand and treat a person in a broader context.
Three Gates
For Adler, there were three “entrance gates” to understanding a person’s mental life.: birth order, early memories and dream analysis. Although each family is different, Adler found that people’s attitudes about their family often fit in predictable patterns. For example, only children often feel like they have no one to rely on. Their parents may be more anxious than those with several children, so an only child might receive special care (pampered or anxious attention). Similarly, the first born child was an only child before being “dethroned.” The first born might battle for position by being precocious, sullen or rebellious.
As you can see the theory doesn’t predict well. If there are three possible outcome to a single condition (precocious, sullen or rebellious), you’re not much better off than saying you have no idea what a first born child will do. But Adler didn’t worry about prediction; he was more concerned with attitude. If a first born acts like a second born, it makes little difference for Adler’s purpose. He was looking for a gate to discover attitudes; whatever the attitude is.
The second gate is early memories. What’s your earliest memory? If it involves aggression, you might still be battling for position in your family of origin. Maybe you’re competing with your siblings. If your earliest memory is about hiding, perhaps you felt neglected or inferior. For Adler, these early memories help reveal the underlying themes of your life.
The third gate is dreams. As a reflection of your inner life and goals, it doesn’t matter if they are real dreams or fantasies. Adler’s concern is discovering your style of life.
Inferiority Complex
Alfred Alder is probably best known for coining the term “feelings of inferiority.” When we are inferior, we compensate for our weakness. This is a good thing. If you hurt one arm, you use the other more. When you break a leg, you use a crutch.
Stories of compensation abound. Demosthenes (384-322 BC) compensated for his stammering by putting pebbles in his mouth, running and reciting poetry until he could speak clearly. And, of course, he became a famous orator. Annette Kellerman could barely walk as a child, so she took to swimming. She became the mother of synchronized swimming, and the inventor of the one-piece bathing suit. The heroes in the stories always overcome great obstacles by compensating.
But overcompensating is bad. It’s bad to take advantage of other people because you’re trying to cover up your weakness. When you find yourself being less than truthful on your resume, you’re probably overcompensating. When you’re exaggerating the size of the fish you caught that too is overcompensation.
In contrast, superiority is moving toward completeness and perfection. Superiority is not being more valuable than another. It is reaching one’s own full potential. Alder’s superiority is similar to Maslow’s self actualization.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Jung was born and raised in Switzerland, along the shore of Lake Constance, where his father pastored a small Swiss Reformed Church. Jung received his MD from the University of Basel in 1900, and spent the next nine years working in a psychiatric clinic associated with the University of Zurich.
Freud wanted Jung to succeed him, and so in 1911, over the protests of many others, Freud managed to get Jung elected as the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. By 1912, however, their relationship had cooled, and was finally severed in 1914.
Jung accepted Freud’s insistence on a dynamic psychology of psychic energy and internal motivation. Like Freud, he was deterministic but unlike Freud, Jung incorporated aims, goals, and decisions into his model. Although he distinguished between the conscious and the unconscious, Jung’s unconscious included instincts, cultural knowledge and a basic life urge.
Like Freud, Jung believed in the importance of the unconscious mind, but he subdivided it into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. According to Jung, emotionally charged collections of private attitudes are called complexes. In contrast, archetypes are universal thought forms (e.g., hero, mother, wise old man, etc.) are called archetypes. The most important of these archetypes are formed into systems (i.e., self). For Jung, the self involved striving for unity and wholeness, and was symbolized by a mandala, pearl, diamond, circle, or any object with central point.
Jung proposed 8 personality types, a combination of two personality orientations (extroversion and introversion) and four psychological functions (thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting). Since the self is multifaceted, it shows different sides at different times. Sometimes the self presents its public personality (persona). At other times it reveals its ability to understand the opposite sex (anima and anius), or its darker (shadow) self.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was the first outsider to join Freud’s inner circle. Jung was not Jewish, not born in or around Vienna, and wasn’t even Austrian. Carl Jung was born and raised in Switzerland. He was an only child who was not good at relationships but did well in school. Carl was a loner, didn’t like competition, and was teased by his peers (he tended to faint under pressure).
Mother
Jung felt closer to his mother but he described her as having two personalities: humorous and unpredictable. Some suggest Jung’s interest in psychiatry was because his mother was schizophrenic. His mother may have been hospitalized when he was three but there is little evidence that it was for schizophrenia.
Was Jung Schizophrenic?
Carl Jung was certainly weird. But whether that weirdness was genius or mental illness is a matter of opinion. There are proponents on each side of the issue. Jung’s ideas are very scattered, which can be seen as artistic or symptomatic.Adding to the controversy, Jung referred to himself as having two personalities: the one in this life and the one from a previous century in which he was an old man. Similarly some see creativity or pathology in the breadth of his concepts and the incorporation of occult and mythology imagery.
There is no question that Jung was imaginative. He tended to see the world and himself in a larger context. Even his autobiography, which was published after his death, was as much mythology as historical truth. Jung had a vision of a “monstrous flood” that would cover most of Europe, though not the mountains of Switzerland. The vision was followed by several weeks of recurring dreams about rivers and floods of blood. This was not a child’s dream; Jung was 38 at the time, but very vivid. When WWI began, Jung viewed his vision as having been a prediction. I like the idea of predicting the future. If you have a dream on Tuesday and something happens on Thursday, it’s interesting. But Jung’s vision was in the fall of 1913, and the start of WWI was in July of 1914 (August of 1916 for America). For me, 9 months of so ruins the illusion.
Diversity
Jung was pursued many arts. He painted, sculpted, drew and wrote. Although he explored many fields, he was always looking for themes and commonalities. For Jung, everything had a meaning. One of his therapeutic techniques (amplification) involved expanding every detail of a dream into associations. Instead of Freud’s free association (jumping from thread to thread), Jung preferred to elicit multiple associations from the same item. The more associations that can be made, the easier it was to discover underlying themes. And the more themes that can be discovered, the easier it is to find archetypes (overriding, universal themes that impact behavior).
Archetypes
One pair of archetypes Jung repeatedly encountered was persona (outward image) and shadow (inner self). Jung maintained that people protect themselves and influence others by presenting a persona that is more presentable than the reality in which they live. Although we don’t intentionally lie, we do try mask the realities of our inner pain. We do this, of course, unconsciously.
Freud
Jung differs from Freud on what is unconscious. For Jung, people have both a personal unconscious (undiscovered personal experiences) and a collective unconscious (undiscovered universal experiences). The collective unconscious is a repository of all human knowledge, including our pre-human experiences. It is filled with primordial images: memories from out ancestral past. For Jung, the goal of life, and much of the fun and pain of life, is the discovery of what the universe is trying to tell us through this collection of symbols and images.
Personality Types
Also open to discovery is our personality types. Jung proposed four basic functions (sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling) that can be combined with two primary attitudes (introversion and extroversion) to create eight personality types. There are several personality tests based on Jungian assumptions, including the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Rorschach inkblot test, and the more recent Myers-Briggs. These tests, like Jung’s theory, are quite creative and broad. Although critics point out the terrible test-retest reliabilities of the instruments, supporters point to the wealth of creative data they produce.
Mind Map
Notes
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
- Life
Born in Penzing, Austria (near Vienna)
Frail & sickly (rickets)
2nd child of six
Father was a wealthy grain merchant
Mother favored his older brother: Sigmund Adler
1895, MD from U of Vienna
1902, Freud invited him to join
“Wednesday evening discussions”
Sigmund was 14 years older
Like an older, wiser brother
Competition
1910, Adler become president of Vienna Analytic Society
1911, complete break with Freud
1916-18, Drafted into army
WWI, physician on the Russian front
“War is not the continuation of politics with other means,
but the greatest social crime against the solidarity of humanity.”
1921, opened chain of 30 child-guidance clinics
1926, visit US (extended stay)
1934, moved from Vienna to Long Island
1937, died on a lecture tour to Scotland
Heart attack at Aberdeen University - Founder of “individual psychology
- Coined the term “feelings of inferiority”
- Not more valuable than another
- Moving higher in rank toward completeness
- Getting closer to perfection
- Reaching our full potential
- Compensation
- Compensation is good
- Make up for weakness
- Demosthenes
- 384-322 BC
- Speech impediment; stammered
- Compensated:
- Put pebbles in his mouth
- Recited verses while running
- Became Greek’s greatest orator
- Annette Kellerman
- Mother of synchronized swimming
- Creator of 1-piece swim suit
- Began swimming because of childhood illness; barely able to walk
- Overcompensating is bad
-
- Take advantage of other people
- Try to cover up a weakness
- Six distinctively-Adlerian concepts:
- a. Family constellation
position within the family
sibling rivalry - b. Pampered child
Spoiled and protected
Greatest curse of childhood
Deprived of right to be independent - c. Inferiority complex
unfulfilled, overwhelmed by inferiority
organ inferiorities
some body parts stronger
circus performers
psychological inferiorities
concentrate only on what good at
math phobia - d. Superiority complex
pretending to be superior
exaggerate own importance - e. Compensation = striving to overcome
- f. Life lie
self-deception
mistaken style of life
- a. Family constellation
- More Adlerian concepts:
- Masculine protest
- Demands to have his own way
- Normal for boys
- Boys are encouraged to be assertive in life
- Boys and girls begin life with the capacity for “protest!”
- Girls not encouraged to be assertive
- Woman act & dress like man to compensate
- Demands to have his own way
- Masculine protest
- Three situations that make a faulty lifestyle
- 1. Organ inferiorities & childhood diseases
“Overburdened”
Tend to be focus on themselves
Most = strong sense of inferiority
Some = overcompensate: superiority complex
Few truly compensate; need the encouragement of loved ones - 2. Pampered child
Taught by the actions of others
Can take without giving
Their wish is everyone else’s command
Pampered child fails in two ways
1. doesn’t learn to do for himself; discovers later that he is truly inferior
2. doesn’t learn any other way to act; always gives commands
Society responds with hatred - 3. Neglect
Told they are of no value
Taught to trust no one
Learn inferiority
Orphans, victims of abuse, parents are never there or rigid rules
- 1. Organ inferiorities & childhood diseases
- Style of life = how live your life
- Teleology = moving towards the future
- Fictional finalism
Behave “as if” (philosopher Hans Vaihinger)
as if knew world will be here tomorrow
as if were sure what is good and bad
as if everything we see is as we see it
“as if” heaven & hell real
“fiction” = can’t be proven
“finalism” = won’t know until future; but it influences our behavior today
Psyche = ultimate finalism - Social interest
originally called Gemeinschaftsgefuhl
“community feeling”
can’t exist or thrive without others
social animals - Self-guarding tendencies = to not feel inferior
- Neuroses = unrealistic life goals
- Adler’s 3 “entrance gates” to mental life
- a. Birth order
Only child
pampered, special care, parents more anxious, no one to rely on
1st child
begins as an only child, dethroned, battle for lost position
act like the baby
disobedient and rebellious
sullen and withdrawn
most likely to be problem children
more conservative
precocious
2nd child
has first child to be “pace-setter”
tries to surpass the older child, competitive
tend to dream of constant running without getting anywhere
Other “middle” children are similar to second child;
each may focus on a different “competitor”
Youngest child
most pampered
only one who is never dethroned
second most likely problem children
incredible inferiority; everyone older & “therefore” superior;
can be driven to exceed all of them - b. Earliest memory
Concerned with the theme
If involves security & attention, might be pampered
If recall aggressive competition with your older brother, “ruling” personality
If involves neglect or hiding, it might mean severe inferiority and avoidance - c. Dreams
Includes daydreams
An expression of your style of life
Reflect your goals
If can’t remember any dreams, fantasize
- a. Birth order
- Personality Types
- 3 styles have no social interest
Differ on amount of energy use - Ruling
dominates people
lots of energy - Leaning
also called “getting” type
rather get than give
some energy - Avoiding
try to escape
no energy - Socially useful
4th type has both social interest & energy
- 3 styles have no social interest
- Therapy
Client caught in dark room & can’t find an exit
Mirror Technique = looks at self in mirror
Favorite questions
“And why do you feel like that?”
“What purpose does your illness serve?”
“What do you think is the reason for your reacting that way?”
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
- Life
Born in Kessewil, Switzerland; July 26, 1875
Father (Paul Jung) was a minister
Mother (Emilie Preiswerk Jung)
Didn’t care for school
Kept to himself
Didn’t like competition
Boarding school in Basel, Switzerland
Teased by others
Tended to faint under pressure
First career choice was archeology
MD, University of Basel ; work under famous neurologist Krafft-Ebing - 1913, in the fall, has a vision
- “Monstrous flood”
Engulfing most of Europe
Comes to mountains of Switzerland
Thousands drown & civilization crumble; waters turned into blood
Followed by several weeks of dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood
- “Monstrous flood”
- 1914, July, WWI began in Eurpose
- 1916, August 1, World War I began for US
- 1918-1928, self-exploration
- Wrote down his dreams, fantasies & visions
- Drew, painted, and sculpted them
- Common threads
- Formed into ‘persons’
- wise old man = spiritual guru
- little girl = “anima”: the feminine soul; his medium with his unconscious
- leathery dwarf guards the unconscious; the shadow
- Lots of dreams about death
- dead people
- the land of the dead
- the rising of the dead
- Represented the unconscious itself
Not the “little” personal unconscious
Collective unconscious of humanity
Contain all the dead, including our personal ghosts
Mentally ill are haunted by ghosts
Personal ghosts
Collective unconscious
- Formed into ‘persons’
- 10 characteristics of Jung:
- a. Amplification
Different from free association
Focus repeatedly on same element
Give multiple associations - b. Persona = social role
- c. Shadow = un-social feelings & thoughts
Opposite side of persona - d. Anima-Animus
Anima = feminine side of male
Animus = masculine side of female - e. Archetype = universal themes affect behavior
- f. Synchronicity = meaningful coincidences
- g. Transcendence = integration of self systems
- h. Primordial images
Memory traces from ancestral past
Including pre-human - i. Collective unconscious = composed of primodial images
- j. Personal unconscious = stores personal experiences
- a. Amplification
- Other characteristics of Jung:
- Complexes = an organized group of thoughts and feelings about something
So preoccupied influences most behavior
Mother - Self = the central archetype
- Constellating power = attracts new ideas into it and integrates them
- Transpersonal = extends across persons
- Mandala = the symbol of self; self striving for wholeness
- Compensatory function = speak for the unconscious
- Psychic birth
Starts in adolescence
Psyche shows definite form
Personality grows throughout life
Big changes in middle years (35-40) - Teleology
Moving toward future; like Adler - Causality = relative causality
- Synchronicity
- Complexes = an organized group of thoughts and feelings about something
- Jung’s 4 basic functions
a. sensation
b. intuition
c. thinking
d. feeling - 8 Personality Types
4 basic functions
Sensation-intuition = how deal with facts and reality
Thinking-feeling = logic, value and attitudes
2 primary attitudes toward reality- introversion
inward to subjective world
direct psychic energy more inwardly focused - extroversion
outward to objective world
direct psychic energy towards the things in external world
- introversion
- Jungian Assessments
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
- Word association test
- Active imagination
- Rorschach ink blots
- Myers-Briggs
16 different 4-letter combinations
EI Extroversion-Introversion
SN Sensing-Intuition
FT Feeling-Thinking
JP Judgement-Perception
Sensation (S) seeks fullest possible experience of what is immediate and real
Intuition (N) seeks the broadest view of what is possible and insightful
Thinking (T) seeks rational order and plan according to impersonal logic
Feeling (F) seeks rational order according to harmony among subjective values
Terms
Adler
- avoiding personality
- birth order
- compensation
- dreams
- earliest memory
- family constellation
- fictional finalism
- individual psychology
- inferiority
- inferiority complex
- leaning personality
- life lie
- masculine protest
- mirror Technique
- organ inferiority
- pampered child
- ruling personality
- social interest
- socially useful personality
- style of life
- superiority complex
- three entrance gates
Carl Jung
- amplification
- anima
- animus
- archetypes
- collective unconscious
- complexes
- constellating power
- extroversion attitude
- feeling function
- introversion attitude
- intuition function
- mandala
- persona
- personal unconscious
- primordial images:
- psychic birth
- self
- sensation function
- sensation-intuition
- shadow
- synchronicity
- thinking function
- thinking-feeling
- transcendence
- transpersonal
Quiz
1. Adler said the Oedipus Complex, if it exists at all, is the result of:
- a. the collective unconscious
- b. systematic desensitization
- c. being pampered
- d. phrenology
2. For Adler, one’s position in a family is called:
- a. family constellation
- b. temperament
- c. conditioning
- d. locomotion
3. According to Jung, the opposite of persona is:
- a. personal unconscious
- b. Broca’s area
- c. simplicity
- d. shadow
4. In contrast to Freud, Jung proposed the:
- a. incorporation of classical conditioning
- b. collective unconscious
- c. family constellations
- d. modeling
5. Who introduced “individual psychology:”
- a. Shakespear
- b. Freud
- c. Adler
- d. Jung
1. Adler said the Oedipus Complex, if it exists at all, is the result of:
- a. the collective unconscious
- b. systematic desensitization
- c. being pampered
- d. phrenology
2. For Adler, one’s position in a family is called:
- a. family constellation
- b. temperament
- c. conditioning
- d. locomotion
3. According to Jung, the opposite of persona is:
- a. personal unconscious
- b. Broca’s area
- c. simplicity
- d. shadow
4. In contrast to Freud, Jung proposed the:
- a. incorporation of classical conditioning
- b. collective unconscious
- c. family constellations
- d. modeling
5. Who introduced “individual psychology:”
- a. Shakespear
- b. Freud
- c. Adler
- d. Jung
Summary
