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First Contact with Adlerian Therapy

December 3, 2024

I have been reading a chapter on Adlerian therapy from the textbook “Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy” by Gerald Corey.

Even though Adler was Freud’s psychoanalysis protege, they eventually went their separate ways. Adlerian therapy became wildly different to psychoanalysis.

I found it helpful to simply read about Adlerian therapy. For example it made me think for the first time about how which number sibling someone is can mean they have a very different experience growing up (which leads to a different personality).

Adler’s emphasis on peoples’ motivation for social connectedness (or social interest as it’s called in Adlerian therapy) was refreshingly new.

Adlerian perspectives predict my own life experiences quite well. For example:

  • My social interest has an excellent proxy for how well I have been in general.
  • My life has very much been about going from feeling inferior to feeling superior
  • I have always felt that i had a “life-task”, which was very much related to my place in the world relative to others

Adlerian therapy could be a good option if you feel that you don’t know your place in the world or that you fit in with other people.

Adlerian therapy has some refreshing ideas that I have found helpful to think about – so it’s like bibliotherapy.

I would like to see an Adlerian psychotherapist one day because I feel that this approach to psychotherapy could be helpful – in part because it is such a novel framework.