Become A Psychologist

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Admin
Become A Psychologist

Become A Psychologist

In Austria 1870, Alfred Adler was born into a life of hardship and illness. He was unable to walk, due to the crippling effects of rickets. Equally, he found it excruciating to play and live as young boy. At the age of 3, his only younger brother died in a bed right next to him. This only served as a dangerous foreshadowing for young Adler as he was stricken with pneumonia the following year. Fighting for his life and battling against a 19th century illness equivalent to modern cancer, Alfred only felt more hardship when he became distanced from his parents due the arrival of another child. With feelings of rejection and looming sickness and inability, Adler began his journey into the discipline of psychology at that moment, like a seedling breaking through the cold-clad earth to reach the morning sun.

Overview of Alfred Adler’s Psychological Perspectives and Theories

Alfred Adler is preponderantly recognized for founding the school of individual psychology. Individual psychology can be described as the counter to the previously conventional psychoanalytic, Freudian school of thought for the 19th century. In many ways, Adler’s individual psychology marked the advent of a neopyschoanyltic approach and revolutionized psychotherapy. His approach separated from the belief that humans were unaware beings who have fallen prey to the forces of unconsciousness and biological instinct. Adler was much more optimistic and growth oriented in his psychology, and believed that no matter the childhood we have had, we are capable of creating our own future.

Adler's view of the interconnectedness of all living beings, and their natural proclivities toward cooperation has been echoed by anthropologists, and biologists. His concept of the style of life - where one central theme is reflected in every psychological expression - suggests the concept in physics of the hologram wherein each part of a whole is an enfolded image of that whole. His concept of the final goal, a fictional future reference point that pulls all movements in the same direction, is similar to that of a strange attractor in chaos theory, a magnetic end-point that pulls on and sets limits for a process. He believed in the fundamental creative power of individuals and their freedom to choose and change their direction in life. This is very similar to the biological process called autopoesis, which is the autonomous, self-renewing, and self-directing nature of all life forms (Stein & Edwards, 1998)