ON SOCIAL FEELING - ALFRED ADLER- ALFRED ADLER (1931) - ATHENAEUM LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY < meta content=educational name=education>

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ON SOCIAL FEELING
ALFRED ADLER




ON SOCIAL FEELING

ALFRED ADLER


"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."

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.



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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