Sublime

What counts, though, isn’t that the therapist has developed an accurate diagnosis but that the patient is allowed to recognize it for themselves, by a process of carefully designed prompts, in a way that they can absorb without fear, in their own time. That is why therapists tend to proceed via gentle questions—“I wonder how it felt when Mom went

Adler is saying that the pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are not diseases but stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. If it is not used in the wrong way, the feeling of inferiority, too, can promote striving and growth.

If Adler’s way of thinking is hard to accept, it is because it is a compilation of antitheses to normal social thinking, and because to understand it one must put it into practice in everyday life. Though his words are not difficult, there may be a sense of difficulty like that of imagining the blazing heat of summer in the dead of winter, but I

Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions, too. You already have the goal of wanting to be praised when you start picking up litter.

The habit here is to shift attention away from the self and internal resources and toward others and external resources. This pattern develops in response to a feeling of deprivation during the nursing stage, when the child is so young that she1 actually has very few internal resources and really does need others to do everything for her.

Take a moment to articulate your own Adaptive Child’s losing strategy profile. Then try your hand at your partner’s. When you are in the right mood, this makes for a good parlor game. Share with each other what you think, then compare notes. How well did you get each other?

Adlerian psychology is a psychology for changing oneself, not a psychology for changing others. Instead of waiting for others to change or waiting for the situation to change, you take the first step forward yourself.