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June 1 - June 19, 2025
First of all, people enter this world as helpless beings. And people have the universal desire to escape from that helpless state. Adler called this the “pursuit of superiority.”
Everyone is in this “condition of wanting to improve” that is the pursuit of superiority. One holds up various ideals or goals and heads toward them. However, on not being able to reach one’s ideals, one harbors a sense of being lesser.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the state of this kind of feeling of inferiority. There are, however, people who lose the courage to take a single step forward, who cannot accept the fact that the situation can be changed by making realistic efforts.
At base, “complex” refers to an abnormal mental state made up of a complicated group of emotions and ideas, and has nothing to do with the feeling of inferiority.
As Adler says, the feeling of inferiority can be a trigger for striving and growth. For instance, if one had a feeling of inferiority with regard to one’s education, and resolved to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I’ll just have to try harder than anyone else, that would be a desirable direction.
The inferiority complex, on the other hand, refers to a condition of having begun to use one’s feeling of inferiority as a kind of excuse. So one thinks to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, or I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married.
The real issue is how one confronts that reality. If what you are thinking is, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, then instead of I can’t succeed, you should think, I don’t want to succeed.
It’s simply that it’s scary to take even one step forward; also, that you don’t want to make realistic efforts. You don’t want to change so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the pleasures you enjoy now—for instance, the time you spend playing and engaged in hobbies.
Food.
Feelings of inferiority are something that everyone has, but staying in that condition is too heavy to
Again, it’s thinking, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed. And it’s implying your capability by saying, “If only I were well educated, I could be really successful.” That “the real me,” which just happens to be obscured right now by the matter of education, is superior.
I don’t know much about fashion, but I think it’s advisable to think of people who wear rings with rubies and emeralds on all their fingers as having issues with feelings of inferiority, rather than issues of aesthetic sensibility. In other words, they have signs of a superiority complex.
“The one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.”
So though one would think from the sound of the words that inferiority complex and superiority complex were polar opposites, in actuality they border on each other?
But as long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be “special,” one will always need that misfortune.
When we refer to the pursuit of superiority, there’s a tendency to think of it as the desire to try to be superior to other people; to climb higher, even if it means kicking others down—you know, the image of ascending a stairway and pushing people out of the way to get to the top. Adler does not uphold such attitudes, of course. Rather, he’s saying that on the same level playing field, there are people who are moving forward, and there are people who are moving forward behind them. Keep that image in mind. Though the distance covered and the speed of walking differ, everyone is walking
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YOUTH: So life is not a competition? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. It’s enough to just keep moving in a forward direction, without competing with anyone. And, of course, there is no need to compare oneself with others.
A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.
Look, all of us are different. Gender, age, knowledge, experience, appearance—no two of us are exactly the same. Let’s acknowledge in a positive manner the fact that other people are different from us. And that we are not the same, but we are equal.
It does not matter if one is trying to walk in front of others or walk behind them. It is as if we are moving through a flat space that has no vertical axis. We do not walk in order to compete with someone. It is in trying to progress past who one is now that there is value.
You think of interpersonal relationships as competition; you perceive other people’s happiness as “my defeat,” and that is why you can’t celebrate it. However, once one is released from the schema of competition, the need to triumph over someone disappears. One is also released from the fear that says, Maybe I will lose. And one becomes able to celebrate other people’s happiness with all one’s heart. One may become able to contribute actively to other people’s happiness. The person who always has the will to help another in times of need—that is someone who may properly be called your comrade.
When you are able to truly feel that “people are my comrades,” your way of looking at the world will change utterly. No longer will you think of the world as a perilous place, or be plagued by needless doubts; the world will appear before you as a safe and pleasant place. And your interpersonal relationship problems will decrease dramatically.
When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction. That is the only thing we can do.
The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing all on its own.
It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like “I just snapped” or, “He flew into a rage.” We end up relying on anger to communicate.
I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from “the rightness of the assertions” to “the state of the interpersonal relationship.”
Because of one’s mind-set of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people.
First, there are two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
Okay, I can see that it is a crucial subject: to be self-reliant as an individual while living in harmony with people and society. It seems to tie in with everything we’ve been discussing.
And these objectives can be achieved by facing what Adler calls “life tasks.”
Adler made three categories of the interpersonal relationships that arise out of these processes. He referred to them as “tasks of work,” “tasks of friendship,” and “tasks of love,” and all together as “life tasks.”
No, please think of this solely in terms of interpersonal relationships. That is, the distance and depth in one’s interpersonal relationships. Adler sometimes used the expression “three social ties” to emphasize the point.
The interpersonal relationships that a single individual has no choice but to confront when attempting to live as a social being—these are the life tasks. They are indeed tasks in the sense that one has no choice but to confront them.
If you change, those around you will change too. They will have no choice but to change. Adlerian psychology is a psychology for changing oneself, not a psychology for changing others. Instead of waiting for others to change or waiting for the situation to change, you take the first step forward yourself.
Adler does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.
love, even if there is passion. When one can think, Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love.
One can be in a calm and quite natural state, without having feelings of inferiority or being beset with the need to flaunt one’s superiority.
You must not run away. No matter how distressful the relationship, you must not avoid or put off dealing with it. Even if in the end you’re going to cut it with scissors, first you have to face it. The worst thing to do is to just stand still with the situation as it is.
One shifts one’s responsibility for the situation one is currently in to someone else. One is running away from one’s life tasks by saying that everything is the fault of other people, or the fault of one’s environment.
Adlerian psychology is not a “psychology of possession” but a “psychology of use.”
Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage, and at the same time it is a psychology of use…
We humans are not so fragile as to simply be at the mercy of etiological (cause-and-effect) traumas. From the standpoint of teleology, we choose our lives and our lifestyles ourselves. We have the power to do that.
Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others.
There is no need to be recognized by others. Actually, one must not seek recognition. This point cannot be overstated.
Why is it that people seek recognition from others? In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education.
When one seeks recognition from others, and concerns oneself only with how one is judged by others, in the end, one is living other people’s lives.
Wishing so hard to be recognized will lead to a life of following expectations held by other people who want you to be “this kind of person.” In other words, you throw away who you really are and live other people’s lives.
If you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. Someone might not act the way you want him to, but it doesn’t do to get angry. That’s only natural.
If, for example, the main point of your job turns out to be satisfying other people’s expectations, then that job is going to be very hard on you. Because you’ll always be worried about other people looking at you and fear their judgment, and you are repressing your “I-ness.”
task of studying, for instance, in Adlerian psychology we consider it from the perspective of “Whose task is this?”
In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically.
