Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian Therapy 

Therapy Focus
● Importance of the feelings of self (ego) that arise from interactions and conflicts.
● The sense of self, or The Ego is the core individuality/personality of a person
● Adlerian therapy got its start from psychoanalysis.
● It places emphasis on motivation and social interaction
● A phenomenological approach
● Social interest is stressed
● Study of birth order and sibling relationships.
● Purpose of therapy is teaching, informing, and encouraging.
● Basic mistakes of client logic
o Overgeneralization
o Exaggerated need for security
o Misperceptions of life
o Denial of ones worth
o Faulty values
● The therapeutic relationship is a collaborative partnership.
● Focus on the importance of each person’s:
o Unique motivations
o Perceived niche in society
o Goal directedness

Phenomenological Approach
● Adlerian's attempt to view the world from the client’s subjective frame of reference.
● Belief in how life in reality is less important than how the individual believes life to be.
● Belief that it is not the childhood experiences that are crucial, but rather our present interpretation of these events.
● Belief that unconscious instincts and our past do not determine our behavior.

Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Therapy

Techniques

■ The experiment in Gestalt therapy
o To assist clients self awareness of what they are doing and how they are doing it
o Expanding awareness of client
o Opportunity to “Try on” new behavior
o Experiments bring struggles to life, inviting client to enact them in the present
o Major emphasis on preparing clients for experiments though trusting relationship

■ Confrontation
o Imposing stance
● Therapist meets own agenda for the client
● Acts as expert, power and control in therapist
o Competing stance
● Therapist promotes rugged individualism with lots of negotiation compromise and confidence
o Confirming stance
● Acknowledging the whole being of client
● Client’s needs and experience center of relationship
● Ideal type of confrontation
● Invites client to look at incongruities in verbal and nonverbal language, in words
versus action.

■ Internal Dialogue
o Identifies the struggle for control in a person, fragmented between controller and controlled, through Introjection of aspects of others
o Between top dog and underdog
o Between critical parent should and oughts and passive recipient without responsibility and with excuses
o Empty chair
● Shift client into two chairs for dialogue role lay.
● Experiences conflict

■ Reversal technique
o Role play the opposite of symptoms and behaviors client suffers
o Client tries the very thing fraught with anxiety, therefore submerged and denied
o Help clients to accept personal attributes that they have tried to deny

■ Rehearsal exercise
o Behavioral rehearsal: role play a planned for new behavior with a person or people in client’s environment.
o Reduce stage fright, anxiety or fear
o Encourages spontaneity and willingness to experiment with new behaviors

■ Exaggeration Technique
o Exaggerate movement or gesture repeatedly to intensify feelings attached by behavior to make inner meaning clear
o Trembling hands or feet, slouched posture, bent shoulders, clenched fists, tight frowning etc.

■ Staying with Feelings
o Keep client from escaping fearful stimuli and avoiding unpleasant feelings
o Encourage to go deeper into feeling or behavior they wish to avoid
o Facing, confronting, and experiencing feeling makes them able to unblock and make way for new levels of growth
● Takes courage and pain.

Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian Concepts

■ Basic Mistake- faulty, self defeating perceptions attitudes and beliefs, personal myths
■ Fictional Finalism- imagined central goal that gives direction to behavior and unity
■ Holism- study of humans as integrated beings
■ Insight- special form of self awareness
■ Style of Life- individual’s ways of thinking feeling and acting
■ Complexes
o Inferiority complex- normal feelings of incompetence exaggerated, feeling its impossible and hopeless to reach goals
o Superiority complex- very high opinion of self, bragging, quick to argues often
■ Organ Inferiority- everyone is born with some physical weakness, this motivates life choices
■ Aggression Drive- reaction to perceived helplessness or inferiority, lashing out against the inability to achieve or master
■ Masculine Protest- kids work to become independent from adults and people in power.
■ Perfection striving- people who are not neurotically bound to an inferiority complex spend their lives trying to meet fictional goals
o Elimination of perceived flaws
o “As if” philosophy
o Gives motivation and focus
■ Social responsibility and understanding of social issues o Occupation tasks
● career,
● self worth
o Societal tasks ● Creating friendships
● Social networks
o Love tasks ● Life partner
■ Positive and Goal Oriented Humanity o People striving to overcome weakness to function productively
o Urge to contribute to society