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Video Description
Most of our suffering does not come from what life throws at us — it comes from the shortcuts we take to dodge it. That was the core insight of Alfred Adler, and this lecture from Academy of Ideas brings his practical psychology back into the light. Adler mapped the hidden machinery behind our behavior: the self-ideal we chase, the lifestyle we build to get there, and the inferiority complex that grows when we keep making excuses. He saw two roads ahead of every hard moment — face it with courage, or hide behind ‘safeguarding behaviors’ that only look like safety. The video ends where Adler always did: on the courage to act despite an unknown outcome.
Full Video Transcript
It would not be easy to find another author, wrote Henry Ellenberger in The Discovery of the Unconscious, from which so much has been borrowed from all sides without acknowledgement than Alfred Adler.
While Alfred Adler was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, he is greatly overshadowed by two of his contemporaries, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
Adler’s approach to understanding human behavior, however, has an appealing aspect which these two other men sometimes lack.
He is extremely practical.
He relied on a common sense approach to explain why people behave as they do
and how they can best go about changing their behavior to live more flourishing lives.
One of the overriding themes of his work is that often the source of our suffering
is not to be found in the way life challenges us,
but in the solutions we adopt in the face of such challenges.
And in this video, we will provide an overview of Adler’s psychology in order to flesh out this idea.
According to Adler, if we are to understand why a person behaves as they do,
we must first recognize that humans have a tendency to strive after self-created goals.
The first thing we discover in the psychic trends is that the movements are directed toward a goal.
This teleology, this striving for goals, is innate in the concept of adaptation.
Each of us holds a multitude of goals with respect to different aspects of our life.
Our choice of these goals, according to Adler,
is structured by a higher order goal called our self-ideal.
Our self-ideal represents the ideal type of person we would like to become,
and its formation begins early in childhood.
How can we best find our place in this world, we wonder,
and the way we answer this question forms our self-ideal.
Our self-ideal, in other words, shapes the course of our life in that it points to
the future and pulls us toward what could be,
what might be. Our self-ideal plays a crucial role in our development
in that it influences our striving for superiority,
which according to Adler, is the fundamental drive behind human behavior.
We are, in other words, naturally driven to improve our perceived lot in life,
to gain a more advantageous position, or as Adler put it,
the material of life has been constantly bent on reaching a plus from a minus situation.
While the striving for superiority is innate,
the specific manifestations of this striving are determined by the content of our self-ideal.
We strive for superiority, in other words, by seeking to actualize our self-ideal.
As we go through life, we learn what type of behaviors and thought patterns move us closer to our self-ideal and which hinder us.
In the process, we develop what Adler called our lifestyle,
which is the subjective, unarticulated set of guidelines individuals develop and use to move them through life and toward their goals.
Adler was insistent that we cannot, in an a priori manner, judge a lifestyle as healthy or unhealthy, normal or abnormal.
Rather, we can only observe it in action and see what success it brings.
For Adler, there was no normal lifestyle.
Every lifestyle was adequate until life presented it with a task for which it was not prepared.
It was at those times that its weak points emerged.
The weak points of our lifestyle frustrate us in our pursuit of superiority and trigger feelings
of inferiority. Feelings of inferiority are based on the subjective evaluations we make of ourselves
or the conclusions we draw with respect to our ability to reach our goals. Inferiority feelings
are often triggered by what are called objective inferiorities, which are inferiorities that are
based on some measurable criteria in comparison to another. For example, we may be objectively
inferior in terms of our strength or height, the amount of money we earn, or our skill
at a certain activity.
An objective inferiority, however, only triggers feelings of inferiority if it is somehow important
to our striving after superiority.
If for example someone is poor, but money is not an important part of their self-ideal,
their lack of wealth will not trigger inferiority feelings.
On the other hand, feelings of inferiority can arise in the absence of objective inferiorities.
Very often people perceive themselves to be inferior in ways which have no basis in reality.
How we react and adapt to our inferiorities strongly impacts our psychological health
and the overall quality of our life.
Adler suggested there are two primary ways people deal with feelings of inferiority.
Either we see the circumstances which produce them as challenges to be confronted and so
make use of coping behaviours, or we view them as problems to be avoided and resort
to safeguarding behaviours.
Coping behaviors can be divided into two types, direct problem solving and compensation.
When we believe we can directly address the cause of our inferiority feelings, we adopt
a problem solving approach.
If we lose a job, we look for another one.
If our skills are inadequate in a certain endeavor, we spend time improving them.
If on the other hand, direct problem solving is impossible, we may resort to the coping
behavior called compensation.
We look for ways to make up for our inferiority by excelling in a manner which can compensate
for our deficit.
For example, someone who loses their hearing may compensate by cultivating the ability
to read lips.
Many people, however, are unwilling to address their issues in this manner and so turn to
safeguarding behaviors.
Safeguarding behaviors are used in the attempt to convince oneself and others that the reason
they have failed to address their inferiorities and moved closer to their goals is because
certain obstacles, which they claim lie outside of their control, are impeding their progress.
Adler likened safeguarding behaviors to the sideshows seen at a circus, as they are used
to distract attention away from the most pressing issues of one’s life, and to direct it instead
to issues which are relatively trivial.
Safeguarding behaviors take a variety of forms.
Some people develop physical issues, such as headaches or chronic tiredness, which are
then used as excuses for why they cannot face up to their challenges.
Others develop anxiety disorders which are used in a similar manner.
They use their fears as a justification for why they cannot take the actions needed to
move them closer to their goals.
At other times, instead of relying on excuses and symptoms, people turn to the safeguarding
behavior that Adler called distance seeking.
This entails procrastination, or only taking the tiniest of steps forward before falling
back into one’s comfort zone.
While we all make use of safeguarding behaviors to one degree or another, problems arise when
the use of them goes on for too long.
For as Ellenberger noted in The Discovery of the Unconscious, Adler saw those who rely
on safeguarding behaviors as pitiful individuals who made use of transparent tricks in order
to escape life’s duties.
Safeguarding behaviors eventually lose their effectiveness.
We can only rely on certain excuses for so long before others see through them.
this happens, we have two options. We can begin to address our issues head on, or we
can completely withdraw from the challenge, thus developing what Adler called an inferiority
complex. To avoid this fate, we must cease relying on safeguarding behaviors and learn
to directly face up to our challenges. Adler believed that sometimes the reason people
struggle to do this is because they have adopted a self-ideal which is unconducive to a healthy
existence. Perhaps our self-ideal is overly perfectionist or too reliant on the pursuit of
such things as wealth, status, power, fame, or beauty. In other words, our self-ideal is so
unrealistic that we are forever thwarted in our attempts to achieve our goals, and so we resort
to safeguarding behaviors not knowing what else to do. Therefore, becoming more aware of what we
are striving for and adjusting our self-ideal, if necessary, is a crucial step towards self-improvement.
In the end, however, even with a more realistic self-ideal, we will only change if we learn to be more courageous.
Adler believed that the most basic concern of psychotherapy should simply be to help people cultivate a more courageous attitude toward life.
Courage, wrote Adler, is not an ability one either possesses or lacks.
Courage is the willingness to engage in a risk-taking behavior, regardless of whether the consequences are unknown or possibly adverse.
We are capable of courageous behavior provided we are willing to engage in it.
Given that we cannot expect life to cease challenging us, we have a choice.
Either we cultivate a courageous attitude and learn to coexist with the uncertainty and discomfort
this will invite into our life, or we doom ourselves to waste away our days,
receding further and further into the misery of our comfort zone.
Source: Academy of Ideas