Adler's View of Psychopathology Adler's view of psychopathology is deceptively simple. He conceived of psychological disturbances generally occurring in the presence of two conditions: an exaggerated inferiority feeling and an insufficiently developed feeling of community. Under these conditions, a person may experience or anticipate failure before a task that appears impossible and may become "discouraged." Adler tended to use this term as opposed to terms such as "pathological" or "sick." When individuals are discouraged, they often resort to fictional means to *relieve* or mask--rather than overcome--their inferiority feelings. What they are attempting to do is bolster their feelings of self by "tricks," while they avoid actually confronting their seemingly impossible difficulties. These tricks may give them a comforting but fragile feeling of superiority. A man who was pampered a child may give up looking for work, become depressed, and then depend on parents or public assistance for support. Forcing others to provide for him may yield a secret feeling of power and superiority that compensates for his feelings of inferiority. Unprepared for the normal challenges that might lead to failure, he pays the price for his painful depression, but uses it to maintain his passive self-indulgence and protect himself from a real test of his capacities. A woman who was abused by her father as a child may choose to reject and depreciate all men as vile creatures and never engage in a satisfactory love relationship. She may feel lonely, but she can always feel morally superior to all abusive males who are punished by her rejection. She would rather punish all men for the sins of her father, than conquer her fears and develop the ability to love one man. At a more extreme level, a profound and devastating feeling of inferiority might lead to a grandiose psychotic delusion of being God. What all of these situations have in common are adults whose inferiority feelings seem so overwhelming and in whom the feeling of community is so underdeveloped that they retreat to protect their fragile yet inflated sense of self. They employ what Adler called safeguarding devices to do this (Ansbacher and Ansbacher 1956, 263-280). Individuals can use safeguarding devices in attempts both to excuse themselves from failure and depreciate others. Safeguarding devices include symptoms, depreciation, accusations, self-accusations, guilt, and various forms of distancing. Symptoms such as anxiety, phobias, and depression, can all be used as excuses for avoiding the tasks of life and transferring responsibility to others. In this way, individuals can use their symptoms to shield themselves from potential or actual failure in these tasks. Of course, individuals may be able to do well in one or two of the tasks of life and have difficulties in only one, e.g., in work, community, or love. Depreciation can be used to deflate the value of others, thereby achieving a sense of relative superiority through aggressive criticism or subtle solicitude. Accusations attribute the responsibility for a difficulty or failure to others in an attempt to relieve an individual of the responsibility and to blame others for the failure. Self-accusations can stave off criticisms from others or even elicit comforting protestations of value from them. Guilt may create a feeling of pious superiority over others and clear the way for continuing harmful actions rather than correcting them. Distancing from tasks and people can be done in many ways including procrastination, avoiding commitments, abuse of alcohol and/or drugs, or suicide. These safeguarding devices are largely unconscious and entail very real suffering on the part of individuals who employ them. For them, however, the protection and elevation of the sense of self is paramount, and they prefer to distress themselves or others rather than reveal their hidden exaggerated feeling of inferiority. There are three categories of influences that might stimulate the development of these exaggerated inferiority feelings in children: (1) physical handicaps, (2) family dynamics, and (3) societal influences (Adler 1992a). Children can either be born with or develop physical handicaps (e.g., deformity, illness) with which they may feel overburdened. The care and attention given to them because of their difficulties may result in their expectation that others should always make their lives easy and keep them the center of care and attention. They may never test their own strengths. The pity or scorn they might also receive may negatively influence their self-evaluations. In any case, their inferiority feelings are likely to become exaggerated. Family dynamics, including parenting styles and position in the family constellation, is the second category of influences on the development of the inferiority complex. Parenting styles that cause trouble for children are divided into two main categories: pampering, and neglect and abuse. Children who have been pampered have come to expect being the focus of attention and having others serve their whims. They have been trained to take rather than to give and have not learned how to face and overcome problems by themselves. As a result, they have become very dependent on others and feel unsure of themselves or unable to face the tasks of life. Thus, they demand undue help and attention from others. These demands may be expressed through aggression (e.g., commands) or through weakness (e.g., shyness), by positive (e.g., charm) or negative (e.g., anger) means. Furthermore, when pampered children grow up and others no longer do their bidding, they may interpret this refusal as aggression against them, which may lead to their taking revenge on these others. Children who have been neglected, rejected, or abused have not experienced love and cooperation. They do not know what it means to feel a positive connection to others and, as a result, often feel isolated and suspicious. When faced with difficulties, they tend to overrate these difficulties and to underrate their own abilities. To make up for what they did not receive as children, they may feel entitled to special consideration or compensation. They may want others to treat them well but do not feel an obligation to respond in turn. Remarkably, both pampered and neglected or abused children may have similar expectations as adults. The first group expects the familiar pampering to continue; the other demands pampering as compensation. Both may feel entitled to everything and obligated to nothing. In addition to the influences of the parents, Adler was one of the first to recognize that children's positions in the family constellation of siblings could affect their development in critical ways (Adler 1992b, 126-132). Being a significant member of the family is important and children may become discouraged if they think they have a disadvantageous position. For example, oldest children's experience of being "dethroned" by their younger siblings may stimulate them to decide that regaining their power is the most important thing they could do. Later in life, the pattern of striving for pre-eminence may continue at work, where they control subordinates excessively, and at home where they may become domestic tyrants. Second children, experiencing their older siblings as pacemakers, may respond by continually striving to surpass and conquer them. If this appears to be too difficult, these children may give up and withdraw from the competition. Youngest children have many pacemakers and can become quite ambitious and accomplished, or they may not develop the courage necessary to realize his or her ambitions and remains helpless babies. Only children tend to spend their lives in the company of adults, frequently as the center of attention. As a result, these children may fail to learn how to cooperate with peers. Of course, Adler realized that the examples listed above are only a few of many possible outcomes. The objective position of the child is not the influencing factor; instead, it is the *psychological* position and the *meaning* that the child gives to that position. Thus, two children born several years apart may grow up in ways that are quite similar to those of only children. On the other hand, if parents help their children cope with the unique demands of their positions in the family constellation, and if there is a cooperative rather than a competitive home atmosphere, the children are likely not to develop the characteristics associated with each of the positions. The third category of influence is the societal factors outside the family that also shape how individuals develop their views of themselves and the world. Adler recognized the school as a dominant influence and spent much of his time training teachers and establishing child guidance clinics attached to the schools throughout Vienna. Social discrimination on the basis of poverty, ethnicity, gender, religion, or educational level can also exacerbate inferiority feelings. Adler emphasized that it was not just the objective facts or influences that had an impact on the child, but the interpretation the child gives to them. Children who are discriminated against because of physical deformities or socio-economic status, for example, may find maintaining a positive sense of self difficult. But doing so is possible if someone provides sufficient contact, understanding, and encouragement. Finally, in a way that was far ahead of many others of his day, Adler recognized the destructive influence of our culture's archaic view of men and women. He observed that women were typically devalued and this was a major influence in their exaggerated feelings of inferiority. But he also realized that men, too, were adversely affected. The over-valuing of men often leads to extremely high expectations, and when men begin to see that they cannot meet these expectations, their inferiority feelings also increase. Adler felt that the healthiest arrangement is a recognized equality of value between men and women, which would then result in a higher level of cooperation between them (Adler 1980). Early experiences, both inside and outside the family, in combination with hereditary attributes and physiological processes, are used creatively by children to form an impression of themselves and life. A final goal of success, significance, and security is imagined and a style of life is adopted to prepare for that goal. Individuals who are not self-pampering or discouraged hold opinions of themselves and the tasks of life that are reasonably close to what Adler called "common sense." These individuals feel connected to one another and have developed their ability to cooperate. People who do not feel connected to others and have not developed the ability to cooperate will develop a private logic that becomes increasingly more skewed from common sense. This private logic involves an *antithetical scheme of apperception* that the person uses rigidly to classify self, others, and experience. In child development, an antithetical scheme is related to children's need for security. They quickly slot their perceptions into very simple categories, often based on whether the stimulus is considered "good" or "bad." Under normal conditions of development, however, children gradually develop the ability to perceive the subtle gradations of qualities in themselves and others. Disturbed individuals, however, because of their heightened feelings of insecurity, remain at the more primitive level of an antithetical scheme of apperception. They may, for example, see only the antithetical extremes of absolute stupidity or total brilliance. Thus, if others do not recognize their brilliance, they assume that others think they are stupid. If they are not adored by all, they may feel neglected or humiliated. If they are not totally powerful, then they must be totally powerless. While the scheme limits the person's ability to make realistic judgments, it does serve the purpose of protecting the person's choice of a final goal and life style. If an individual feels totally powerless, then it is perfectly logical (from the point of view of his private logic) and is seemingly in his best interests to compensate by grabbing all the power he can, even if this harms others. The person ignores or justifies this harm because of his feeling of being totally powerless. In reality, however, he is not *totally* powerless. But if he recognized this, he would lose the justification or motivation to strive in the direction of the final goal. Discouraged individuals may function relatively well for some time. Their functioning, however, is based on a pretense of value or significance that emerges from their private ideas which do not hold up in reality. Eventually, their private views clash with reality and lead to a shock -- e.g., difficulties in work, friendships, love relationships, or family -- which may lead to the development of symptoms. These symptoms, however, are not the main focus of an Adlerian understanding of psychological difficulties. What is important is how individuals *use* their symptoms. Symptoms are actually the smoke covering the fire of inferiority feelings. The symptoms create a detour around and distance from the threatening tasks of life, protecting the pretense. Three factors distinguish mild psychological disorders from severe disorders: the depth of the inferiority feelings, the lack of the feeling of community, and the height of the final goal. In focusing too much on the symptoms, per se, we run the risk of neglecting what underlies the symptoms -- the inferiority feelings. Unless the severity of these inferiority feelings is diminished, the client will continue to use the symptoms like a crutch for an injured, unhealed limb. And until this process is uncovered and resolved, the person may just substitute one symptom for another. (From Chapter: "Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice", by Henry T. Stein, Ph.D. and Martha E. Edwards, Ph.D.; from _Psychoanaltyic_Versions _of_the_Human_Condition:__Philosophies_of_Life_and_Their_Impact_on_ Practice_, edited by Paul Marcus and Alan Rosenberg: 1998, New York University Press. This entire chapter can be found on the World Wide Web at address: ). File "Psychopathology(Adler).txt" entered 8/12/2001, D.Eisenstein.