alfred adler on religion

33 Pages·2015·0.99 MB·English

Chapter V
ALFRED ADLER ON RELIGION
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was a Jew and spent much of
his early life in Vienna. Like Freud, he too entered the field
of psychology through psychiatry. He was very much interested
in the Freudian doctrines and joined Freud's discussion circle
in 1902, wherefrom# he started regarding himself as a junior
colleague rather than a Freudian disciple. A charter meatoer
of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, he became its president
and one of its foremost original thinkers. Encouraged by
Freud, Adler engaged in those original investigations in
psychoanalysis, which led to his gradual but unmistakable
departure from Freudian thought and to his resignation in 1911
from the society. He founded a new school - 'Individual
Psychology' and in 1935 this school began to pistolish its own
organ, "International Journal of Individual Psychology".
Following world War I# Adler became interested in the
psychology of children and instituted child guidance clinics
in Vienna.
Adler calls his school 'Individual* because it
stresses the uniqueness with which each individual person
develops his own style of life. The word 'individual' is
derived from the Latin word 'individuum', which literally
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Means 'undiVided', 'indivisible'. Individual psychology
emphasizes not only the uniqueness of each individual but
also the organic wholeness of the human personality. As
Adler says* "Individual Psychology tries to see Individual
lines as a whole and regards each single reaction* each
movement and impulse as an articulated part of an individual
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attitude towards life
From the very outset* Freud's theories appealed to
Adler, who had for sometime been interested in the capacity
of the body to condensate for organic change. This was a
known fact among physicians that damage to certain organs in
the bedf was sometimes followed by a compensatory reaction*
which from teleological point of view might be regarded as
the organ's attempt to overcome its defect. Adler believed
that it was possible to observe similar reactions to organic
defects in the psychological sphere. Such ebservatlons made
it reasonable to suppose that it mis the very inferiority of
the functions which stimulated the individual to overcome his
defects* te such good effect that ence inferior function
became the superior one. So far Adler's thesis* presented in
his book "A Study of Organic Inferiority and Its Psychical
Compensation" (1967} was readily acceptable to Freud and his
followers as a unique contribution to ego psychology* but the
1. Adler* A** The Science of Living* p. 31
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next four years made it apparent that Adler was developing
his concept, not merely as an interesting sideline, but as a
key to the understanding ef the whole Mental life. According
to him, to be a human being means to possess a feeling of
inferiority that is constantly pressing on towards its own
conquest.
The science of Individual Psychology develops out of
the effort to understand that mysterious creative power of
life - that power Which expresses itself in the desire to
develop* to strive and to achieve - and even to compensate for
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defects in one direction by striving for success in another.
This power is teleological ~ it expresses itself in the
striving after a goal and in this striving bodily movement and
mental condition cooperate. It is thus absurd to study
bodily movements and mental conditions abstractly without
relation to an individual whole. The important thing is to
understand the context - the goal of an individual*s life,
which marks the line ef direction for all his acts and
movements. This goal enables us to understand the hidden
meaning behind the various separate acts - we see them as parts
ef a whole. And When we study the parts - provided we study
them as parts of a whole - we get a better sense of the whole.
2. Adler* A.* Understanding Human Mature, p. 19
2C?
Adler differs from Freud In several respects, most
noticeably at first by his emphasis @n ego rather than lifcico,
as the great motivating force in life and source of neurotic
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difficulties. Both Freud and Adler accept the importance o‘
infantile period as moulding the character and behaviour of
human being. The “infantile sexuality" which is so much
stressed by Freud, seems to Adler a strained interpretation
of the little child's behaviour. Much more obvious and
fundamental in Adler's view are the child's resistance to
domination and eagerness to dominate. The child is actually
weak and inferior in many ways to those around him and at
times feels inferior, but he combats this feeling by assert!no
himself as far as possible and by aspiring to grow up and be
superior. Everyone, Adler says, has a fundamental will for
power, an urge towards dominance and superiority, if an
individual feels himself inferior in some respect, he is
driven by his feeling of inferiority toward a goal of
superiority. He strives to make himself superior or at least
to put up a pretense of superiority. He is driven towards
compensation of one kind or another.
All human action, all human progress can be
explained in terms of this striving to overcome the inferiority.
Man finds himself exposed without protection to the forces ol
3. Adler, A.# 'Individual Psychology' in Murchison, C. (ed
Psychologies of 1930, p. 398
203
nature and is forced to provide for his safety. Naturally mor­
al ways searches for safety and protection. This feeling
inferiority drives him to make his position higher and better .
This is the goal of human behaviour towards which he directs
his striving. As he says* “The impetus from minus to plus
never ends* The urge from below to above never ceases.
Whatever premises all our philosophers and psychologists drear*
of - self-preservation, pleasure principle, equalization - al]
these are but vague representations, attempts to express the
great upward drive.* Thus for Adler, the striving for
superiority is innate, an intrinsic necessity of life. It is
the basic dynamic principle. There are no separate drives,
for each drive receives its power from this basic urge, in
short, Adler regards the “self-assertive impulse" rather thar
the sex impulse as the major drive, and as the drive most
likely to generate hostility toward competitors, anti-social
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attitudes and the maladjustments of neuroses and psychoses.
Adler is very much opposed to psychic determinism.
He believes in mind’s free play. As he says, "what we
perceive of mental movement is itself a movement which i-
directed towards a goal .. .. we cannot imagine a mental
and emotional life without a goal .. .. No human being
can think, feel, will, dream without all these activities
4. Ibid.
5. Woodworth, R.S., Contemporary Schools of Psychology, p. 194
204
being determined, continued, modified and directed, toward ar
ever-present objective," For Adler, this very idea that a
man is constantly striving towards a goal furnishes the way of
understanding a man's mental life. Thus, we find that Adler'?
thought moves outwards towards the problems of man's
adaptation to the external world, while Freud's thought tends
to ignore the external, to concentrate inwards. Adler
emphasizes the forward orientation, whereas Freud has laid
emphasis on backward orientation.
The principal feature of Adler's theory lies in Its
emphasis on the -teleological character of human striving.
Individual's life is always marked, in all direction by the
goal. Whether a person is having the normal way or the
neurotic way of life, the clue is ever the goal. Man is
motivated more by his expectations of the future than by his
experiences of the past. It is a crusade against mechanistic
psychology on behalf of a teleological psychology. Such a
view runs counter to prevalent opinion regarding the
scientific respectability of the concept of teleology. As a
concept it has theological connotations stemming from medieval
teaching regarding god's purposes in directing the course of
mundane events by supernatural intervention. Ansbachers
observe, "It was in Vaihinger's idealistic positivism that
6. Adler, A., Understanding Human Nature, p. 19
205
Adler now found for his subjectivistic and finalistic
psychology foundation which was acceptable, encouraging and
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stimulating."
Hans Vaihinger’s book, "The Philosophy of 'As if' '*
appeared in 1911, the same year in the beginning of which
Adler withdrew from the Freudian circle. Adler was highly
influenced by Vaihinger's fictionalism in his concept of goal.
Hans Vaihinger was one of the most acute and careful of
Kant's commentators. Kant showed that our ideas of reason
like soul, world as a whole and god do not represent any
objective realities which we can possibly know, but, we are
nevertheless aided in our enquiries in different fields o*
psychology, cosmology and theology if we proceed as if there
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were objects like soul, world as a whole and god. Kant
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called them "neuristie fictions". Vaihinger's main insicht
was suggested by this 'as if* justification of the ideas o*
reason. Adler takes over this philosophical doctrine o*
idealistic positivism and bends it to his own design. He
combines the concept of fiction with that of the goals. The
goal does not exist in the future as a part Of some
teleological design, but it exists subjectively here and no**
7. Ansbacher, H.L. and Ansbacher, R.R. (eds.), The Individual
Psychology of Alfred Adler, p. 88
8. Kant, I*, Critique of Pure Reason, Trans. Smith, N.K.,
pp. 307-308
9. Ibid., p. 332
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as a striving for an ideal which affects present behaviour.
Woodworth therefore says, "By reducing the goal to an idea]
operating in the present, the objection against teleological
causality was eliminated."The fictional goal is thus a
device of the individual to free himself from inferiority
feeling. On the basis of this combination of 'fiction' and
'goal* Adler understands the concept of 'God' in religion as
a mere idea and not an independent spiritual reality. At the
same time he opines that such an idea is a necessary goa] of
human beings, because it is the very idea of superiority and
perfection to the highest possible degree, which every human
being is striving to achieve and which is inherent in man's
thinking and feeling since the time of his creation.
But, how can this individualistic aggressive
tendency of mankind be held in check so that community life
may be at all possible? Adler, no less than Freud, is forced
to provide a polarity of motives though he is disinclined to
appeal to heredity and innate drives. The child has at least
a native capacity for friendly, loving response, and this germ
will develop into a loyal co-operative spirit if the child i.^
properly treated in the first few years. Along with the
important role of mother, the entire family situation with
which the child has to cope in his first few years stimulates
10. Woodworth, R.S., op.cit., p. 301
207
him to develop a certain attitude towards life - a certain
"style of life" in Adler's well-known phrase. Each individual
adopts his style early in life and maintains it as he meets
the problems of life. Thus, Adler, no less than Freud, but in
a very different way, lays great stress on the family
situation as formative of the individual's character.
Thus Adlerian Individual Psychology points out that
every child is born as an individual with the potentiality o*
sociability and as he grows up, as a result of his oonstunt.
interaction with the external environment and with the help of
the mother's co-operation this inherited potentiality is
developed into proper social feeling and then he gradually
moves towards socialization. So, an individual's socialization
is not anything from the non-social to the social but from
potentiality to actuality. All human judgments of value,
success, meaning and religion are founded vqpon this social
nature of man. All that we ask of conduct, of ideals, of
goals, of action, of traits of character is that they should
serve towards human co-operation. We shall never come across
a man who has no social feeling. It is the community which
gives meaning to the "value" and "life" of an individual. To
quote Adler, "Human beings live in the realm of meanings. We
experience reality through the meaning we give to it, nof as
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it is set, but as something interpreted."
11. Adler, A., What Life Should Mean You?, p. 3
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Adler observes that the primal energy, which M s
established regulative religious goals, is no other than that
of social-feeling. The fundamental idea of religion is "love
thy neighbour", whose successful accomplishment is possible
only by the fullest development of social feeling. Normal
development in all the fields consists in a perfect balance
between the striving for superiority and social interest.
When this spontaneous social feeling is instilled into the
upward strivings of the self, it heightens the feeling ot
worth and value and gives courage and optimism. A ll mal­
adjustments are the result of an inadequate social interest,
of a restricted sense of belonging,
Adler stands firmly on the ground of evolution and
regards all human striving as a striving for perfection. The
highest effective goal is called God - the goal o f overcomine.
Probably the strongest step towards this perfection of men is
taken when he accomplishes his unification with God as the
total release from all evils - evils of self-aggression,
evils which arise due to lack of social feeling. The mar i n
whom the social feeling has not been properly developed is
confronted with many difficulties and it is interesting to
note that these troubles produce in him the 'belief in lod*,
with this consolation in mind that he would be able to ft nc3
or achieve his actual goal of life in the hereafter, because
for him the existence on earth is a very superfluous