ON SOCIAL FEELING
ALFRED ADLER
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"The truth is often a terrible weapon
of aggression. It is possible to lie, and
even to murder with the truth. " "Every
individual acts and suffers in accordance
with his peculiar teleology, which has all
the inevitability of fate, so long as he
does not understand it."
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Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870, Mariahilfer
Straße 208, Rudolfsheim, Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus[1]
- May 28, 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor,
psychologist and founder of the school of
individual psychology. In collaboration with
Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's
colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders
of the psychoanalytic movement as a core
member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
He was the first major figure to break away
from psychoanalysis to form an independent
school of psychotherapy and personality theory.
This was after Freud declared Adler's ideas
as too contrary, leading to an ultimatum
to all members of the Society (which Freud
had shepherded) to drop Adler or be expelled,
disavowing the right to dissent (Makari,
2008). Following this split, Adler would
come to have an enormous, independent effect
on the disciplines of counseling and psychotherapy
as they developed over the course of the
20th century (Ellenberger, 1970). .
He influenced notable figures in subsequent
schools of psychotherapy such as Rollo May,
Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow and Albert
Ellis. His writings preceded, and were at
times surprisingly consistent with, later
neo-Freudian insights such as those evidenced
in the works of Karen Horney, Harry Stack
Sullivan and Erich Fromm. Adler emphasized
the importance of equality in preventing
various forms of psychopathology, and espoused
the development of social interest and democratic
family structures for raising children. His
most famous concept is the inferiority complex
which speaks to the problem of self-esteem
and its negative effects on human health
(e. g. sometimes producing a paradoxical
superiority striving). His emphasis on power
dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche.
Adler argued for holism, viewing the individual
holistically rather than reductively, the
latter being the dominant lens for viewing
human psychology. Adler was also among the
first in psychology to argue in favor of
feminism making the case that power dynamics
between men and women (and associations with
masculinity and femininity) are crucial to
understanding human psychology (Connell,
1995). Adler is considered, along with Freud
and Jung, to be one of the three founding
figures of depth psychology, which emphasizes
the unconscious and psychodynamics (Ellenberger,
1970; Ehrenwald, 1991). wikipedia.
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Alfred Adler (1931)
"The truth is often a terrible weapon
of aggression. It is possible to lie, and
even to murder with the truth. "
ON SOCIAL FEELING
ALFRED ADLER
Every individual acts and suffers in accordance
with his peculiar teleology, which has all
the inevitability of fate, so long as he
does not understand it. We cannot judge a
human being except by using the concept of
social feeling as a standard, and measuring
their thought and action by this standard.
We must maintain this point of view because
every individual within the body of human
society must subscribe to the oneness of
that society. We have to realize our duty
to our fellow human beings. We are in the
very midst of a community and must live by
the logic of communal existence. This logic
determines the fact that we need certain
known criteria for the evaluation of our
fellows. The degree to which soical feeling
has developed in any individual is the only
universally valid criterion of human values.
We cannot deny our psychological dependency
upon social feeling. No human being is capable
of ignoring her social feeling completely.
For we all know we have a duty to our fellow
human beings. Our social feeling constantly
reminds us of the fact. This does not mean
that social feeling is constantly in our
conscious thoughts; but it does require a
certain amount of determination to deny it
and set it aside. Furthermore, social feeling
is so universal that no one is able to begin
any activity without first being justified
by it. The need for justifying each act and
thought originates in our unconscious sense
of social unity. At the very least it is
the reason why we seek extenuating circumstances
to excuse our actions. Interestingly enough,
social feeling is so fundamental and important
that, even if we have not developed this
ability to consider others as fully as most
people have done, we still make efforts to
appear as if we had done so. This means that
the pretence of social feeling is sometimes
used to conceal the antisocial thoughts and
deeds that are the true expressions of a
personality. The difficulty lies in differentiating
between the false and the genuine; it is
this very difficulty that raises the understanding
of human nature to the plane of a science.)
Understanding Human Nature, pages 139, 140
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