More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 1 - June 19, 2025
Adlerian psychology does not recommend the noninterference approach. Noninterference is the attitude of not knowing, and not even being interested in knowing what the child is doing. Instead, it is by knowing what the child is doing that one protects him. If it’s studying that is the issue, one tells the child that that is his task, and one lets him know that one is ready to assist him whenever he has the urge to study. But one must not intrude on the child’s task. When no requests are being made, it does not do to meddle in things.
In Adlerian psychology counseling, for instance, we do not think of the client’s changing or not changing as the task of the counselor.
YOUTH: The counselor does not change the client’s life? PHILOSOPHER: You are the only one who can change yourself.
YOUTH: Then, suppose your own child had shut himself in, what would you do? Please answer this not as a philosopher but as a parent. PHILOSOPHER: First, I myself would think, This is the child’s task. I would try not to intervene in his shut-in situation, and I would refrain from focusing too much attention on it. Then I would send a message to him to the effect that I am ready to assist him whenever he is in need. In that way, the child, having sensed a change in his parent, will have no choice but to make it his own task to think about what he should do. He’ll probably come and ask for
...more
Though the child is one’s own, he or she is not living to satisfy one’s expectations as a parent.
Look, the act of believing is also the separation of tasks. You believe in your partner; that is your task. But how that person acts with regard to your expectations and trust is other people’s tasks.
Intervening in other people’s tasks and taking on other people’s tasks turns one’s life into something heavy and full of hardship. If you are leading a life of worry and suffering—which stems from interpersonal relationships—learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.
But how to come to terms with the emotion of “not approving” is your parents’ task, not yours. It is not a problem for you to worry about.
All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgment do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about.
What another person thinks of you—if he or she likes you or dislikes you—that is that person’s task, not mine.
That is what separating is. You are worried about other people looking at you. You are worried about being judged by other people. That is why you are constantly craving recognition from others.
Now, why are you worried about other people looking at you, anyway? Adlerian psychology has an easy answer. You haven’t done the separation of tasks yet. You assume that even things that should be other people’s tasks are your own.
First, one should ask, “Whose task is this?” Then do the separation of tasks. Calmly delineate up to what point one’s own tasks go, and from what point they become another person’s tasks. And do not intervene in other people’s tasks, or allow even a single person to intervene in one’s own tasks.
One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the person’s territory. It is important to maintain this kind of moderate distance.
Earlier you said that the separation of tasks is something that treads on the other person’s goodwill. That is a notion that is tied to reward.
When reward is at the base of an interpersonal relationship, there’s a feeling that wells up in one that says, “I gave this much, so you should give me that much back.” This is a notion that is quite different from separation of tasks, of course. We must not seek reward, and we must not be tied to it.
For the busy mother, it is certainly faster to tie them than to wait for him to do it himself. But that is an intervention, and it is taking the child’s task away from him. And as a result of repeating that intervention, the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face his life tasks.
Adler says, “Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”
Does one choose recognition from others, or does one choose a path of freedom without recognition? It’s an important question—let’s think about it together. To live one’s life trying to gauge other people’s feelings and being worried about how they look at you. To live in such a way that others’ wishes are granted.
Now, why are you choosing such an unfree way to live? You are using the term “desire for recognition,” but what you are really saying is that you don’t want to be disliked by anyone.
If one is living in a such a way as to satisfy other people’s expectations, and one is entrusting one’s own life to others, that is a way of living in which one is lying to oneself and continuing that lying to include the people around one.
An adult, who has chosen an unfree way to live, on seeing a young person living freely here and now in this moment, criticizes the youth as being hedonistic. Of course, this is a life-lie that comes out so that the adult can accept his own unfree life.
Now, if one were to say that living like a stone tumbling downhill and allowing such inclinations or desires or impulses to take one wherever they will is “freedom,” one would be incorrect. To live in such a way is only to be a slave to one’s desires and impulses. Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below.
As I have stated repeatedly, in Adlerian psychology, we think that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. In other words, we seek release from interpersonal relationships. We seek to be free from interpersonal relationships. However, it is absolutely impossible to live all alone in the universe.
“What is freedom?” should be clear. YOUTH: What is it? PHILOSOPHER: In short, that “freedom is being disliked by other people.”
It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.
If possible, one would like to live without being disliked by anyone. One wants to satisfy one’s desire for recognition. But conducting oneself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and is also impossible. There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.
Not wanting to be disliked is probably my task, but whether or not so-and-so dislikes me is the other person’s task. Even if there is a person who doesn’t think well of me, I cannot intervene in that.
The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.
Adler was opposed to any kind of dualistic value system that treated the mind as separate from the body—reason as separate from emotion, or the conscious mind as separate from the unconscious mind.
In Adlerian psychology, physical symptoms are not regarded separately from the mind (psyche). The mind and body are viewed as one, as a whole that cannot be divided into parts. Tension in the mind can make one’s arms and legs shake, or cause one’s cheeks to turn red, and fear can make one’s face turn white.
Certainly it is true that the mind and the body are separate things, that reason and emotion are different, and that both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind exist. That said, however, when one flies into a rage and shouts at another person, it is “I as a whole” who is choosing to shout. One would never think of emotions that somehow exist independently—unrelated to one’s intentions, as it were—as having produced that shouting voice.
When one separates the “I” from “emotion” and thinks, It was the emotion that made me do it, or The emotion got the best of me, and I couldn’t help it, such thinking quickly becomes a life-lie.
Please do not think of the separation of tasks as something that is meant to keep other people away; instead, see it as a way of thinking with which to unravel the threads of the complex entanglement of one’s interpersonal relations.
If other people are our comrades, and we live surrounded by them, we should be able to find in that life our own place of “refuge.” Moreover, in doing so, we should begin to have the desire to share with our comrades, to contribute to the community. This sense of others as comrades, this awareness of “having one’s own refuge,” is called “community feeling.”
When Adler refers to community, he goes beyond the household, school, workplace, and local society, and treats it as all-inclusive, covering not only nations and all of humanity but also the entire axis of time from the past to the future—and he includes plants and animals and even inanimate objects.
Adler himself acknowledged that the community he was espousing was “an unattainable ideal.”
People who are incapable of carrying out the separation of tasks and who are obsessed with the desire for recognition are also extremely self-centered.
How much do others pay attention to you, and what is their judgment of you? That is to say, how much do they satisfy your desire? People who are obsessed with such a desire for recognition will seem to be looking at other people, while they are actually looking only at themselves.
The fact that there are people who do not think well of you is proof that you are living in freedom.
A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centered lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the “I.”
Feeling that one has one’s own place of refuge within the community, feeling that “it’s okay to be here,” and having a sense of belonging—these are basic human desires.
Whether it is one’s studies, work, or friendships, or one’s love or marriage, all these things are connected to one’s search for places and relationships in which one can feel “it’s okay to be here.”
In Adlerian psychology, however, a sense of belonging is something that one can attain only by making an active commitment to the community of one’s own accord, and not simply by being here.
One has to stand on one’s own two feet, and take one’s own steps forward with the tasks of interpersonal relations. One needs to think not, What will this person give me? but rather, What can I give to this person? That is commitment to the community.
A sense of belonging is something that one acquires through one’s own efforts—it is not something one is endowed with at birth.
The community Adler speaks of goes beyond things we can see, like our households and societies, to include those connections that we cannot see.
A community that you can break relations with by simply submitting a withdrawal notice is one that you can have only so much connection to, in any case.
Once you know how big the world is, you will see that all the hardship you went through in school was a storm in a teacup. The moment you leave the teacup, that raging storm will be gone, and a gentle breeze will greet you in its place.
When we run into difficulties in our interpersonal relations, or when we can no longer see a way out, what we should consider first and foremost is the principle that says, “Listen to the voice of the larger community.”
