AlfredAdler-WebsterUniversity.pptVIP

Alfred Adler Personality Theory * * Biography * Born to a well to do middle class Jewish family in Vienna * Middle child (second son) * Converted to Christianity * Unhealthy as a child “I remember sitting on a bench bandaged up on account of rickets, with my healthy elder brother sitting opposite me. He could run, jump and move about quite effortlessly, while for me, movement of any sort was a strain and an effort. Everyone went to great pains to help me and my mother and father did all that was in their power to do.” “In the joy over my recovery, there was talk for a long time about the mortal danger in which I was supposed to have been. From that time on I recall always thinking of myself in the future as a physician. This means that I had set a goal from which I could expect an end to my childlike distress, my fear of death. Clearly, I expected more from the occupation of my choice than it could accomplish: The overcoming of death and the fear of death is something I should not have expected from human but only from divine accomplishments. Reality, however, demands action, and so I was forced to modify my goal by changing the conscious form of the guiding fiction (life-goal) until it appeared to satisfy reality. So I came to choose the occupation of physician in order to overcome death and fear of death.” “I remember that the path to the school led over a cemetery. I was frightened every time and was exceedingly put out at beholding the other children pass the cemetery without paying the lest attention to it, while every step I took was accompanied by a feeling of fear and horror. Apart from the extreme discomfort occasioned by this fear I was also annoyed at the idea of being less courageous that the others. One day I made up my mind to put an end to this fear of death. Again, I decided upon a treatment of hardening. I stayed at some distance behind the others, placed my schoolbag on the ground near the wall of the cemetery and ran across it a