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June 1 - June 19, 2025
Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.
Do not cling to the small community right in front of you. There will always be more “you and I,” and more “everyone,” and larger communities that exist.
When one person praises another, the goal is “to manipulate someone who has less ability than you.” It is not done out of gratitude or respect.
The reason Adlerian psychology is highly critical of reward-and-punishment education is that its intention is to manipulate children.
One wishes to be praised by someone. Or conversely, one decides to give praise to someone. This is proof that one is seeing all interpersonal relationships as “vertical relationships.” This holds true for you, too: It is because you are living in vertical relationships that you want to be praised.
Adlerian psychology refutes all manner of vertical relationships and proposes that all interpersonal relationships be horizontal relationships. In a sense, this point may be regarded as the fundamental principle of Adlerian psychology.
If one can build horizontal relationships that are “equal but not the same” for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge.
It is necessary to offer assistance that does not turn into intervention.
That’s right, one neither praises nor rebukes. This kind of assistance, which is based on horizontal relationships, is referred to in Adlerian psychology as “encouragement.”
When one is not following through with one’s tasks, it is not because one is without ability. Adlerian psychology tells us that the issue here is not one of ability but simply that “one has lost the courage to face one’s tasks.” And if that is the case, the thing to do before anything else is to recover that lost courage.
The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability.
When receiving praise becomes one’s goal, one is choosing a way of living that is in line with another person’s system of values.
The most important thing is to not judge other people. “Judgment” is a word that comes out of vertical relationships. If one is building horizontal relationships, there will be words of more straightforward gratitude and respect and joy.
If receiving praise is what one is after, one will have no choice but to adapt to that person’s yardstick and put the brakes on one’s own freedom. “Thank you,” on the other hand, rather than being judgment, is a clear expression of gratitude. When one hears words of gratitude, one knows that one has made a contribution to another person.
in Adlerian psychology, a great deal of emphasis is given to “contribution.”
Well, what does a person have to do to get courage? In Adler’s view, “It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage.”
If one is able to feel one has worth, then one can accept oneself just as one is and have the courage to face one’s life tasks. So the issue that arises at this point is how on earth can one become able to feel one has worth?
It is when one is able to feel “I am beneficial to the community” that one can have a true sense of one’s worth.
Instead of feeling judged by another person as “good,” being able to feel, by way of one’s own subjective viewpoint, that “I can make contributions to other people.”
If you consider things at the level of being, we are of use to others and have worth just by being here. This is an indisputable fact.
They treat the idealized image as one hundred points, and they gradually subtract from that. This is truly a “judgment” way of thinking. Instead, the parents could refrain from comparing their child to anyone else, see him for who he actually is, and be glad and grateful for his being there.
Suppose your shut-in child helped you wash the dishes after a meal. If you were to say then, “Enough of that already—just go to school,” you would be using the words of such parents who detract from an image of an ideal child. If you were to take such an approach, the child would probably end up even more discouraged. However, if you can say a straightforward thank you, the child just might feel his own worth and take a new step forward.
“Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.”
Does one build vertical relationships, or does one build horizontal relationships? This is an issue of lifestyle, and human beings are not so clever as to be able to have different lifestyles available whenever the need arises. In other words, deciding that one is “equal to this person” or “in a hierarchical relationship with that person” does not work.
If you are building even one vertical relationship with someone, before you even notice what is happening, you will be treating all your interpersonal relations as vertical.
YOUTH: So I am treating even my relationships with my friends as vertical? PHILOSOPHER: That is correct. Even if you are not treating them in a boss-or-subordinate kind of way, it is as if you are saying, “A is above me, and B is below me,” for example, or “I’ll follow A’s advice, but ignore what B says,” or “I don’t mind breaking my promise to C.”
It is certainly important to respect one’s elders. In a company structure, it is only natural for there to be different levels of responsibility. I am not telling you to make friends with everyone, or behave as if you are close friends. Rather, what is important is to be equal in consciousness, and to assert that which needs to be asserted.
You are just thinking there is no space to refuse so that you can avoid the conflict of the associated interpersonal relations and avoid responsibility—and you are being dependent on vertical relationships.
Adlerian psychology is engaged in a thorough inquiry into interpersonal relationships. And the final goal of these interpersonal relationships is community feeling.
Concretely speaking, it’s making the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest) and gaining a sense of community feeling. Three things are needed at this point: “self-acceptance,” “confidence in others,” and “contribution to others.”
To put it more simply, say you’ve got a score of 60 percent, but you tell yourself, I just happened to get unlucky this time around, and the real me is 100 percent. That is self-affirmation. By contrast, if one accepts oneself as one is, as 60 percent, and thinks to oneself, How should I go about getting closer to 100 percent?—that is self-acceptance.
YOUTH: Affirmative resignation? PHILOSOPHER: This is also the case with the separation of tasks—one ascertains the things one can change and the things one cannot change. One cannot change what one is born with. But one can, under one’s own power, go about changing what use one makes of that equipment. So in that case, one simply has to focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance.
Accept what is irreplaceable. Accept “this me” just as it is. And have the courage to change what one can change. That is self-acceptance.
We do not lack ability. We just lack courage. It all comes down to courage.
Resignation has the connotation of seeing clearly with fortitude and acceptance. Having a firm grasp on the truth of things—that is resignation. There is nothing pessimistic about it.
It is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others. Even if one does not have sufficient objective grounds for trusting someone, one believes. One believes unconditionally without concerning oneself with such things as security. That is confidence.
Adlerian psychology is not saying “have confidence in others unconditionally” on the basis of a moralistic system of values. Unconditional confidence is a means for making your interpersonal relationship with a person better and for building a horizontal relationship. If you do not have the desire to make your relationship with that person better, then go ahead and sever it. Because carrying out the severing is your task.
If one can simply accept oneself as one is, and ascertain what one can do and what one cannot, one becomes able to understand that “taking advantage” is the other person’s task, and getting to the core of “confidence in others” becomes less difficult.
Contribution to others does not connote self-sacrifice. Adler goes so far as to warn that those who sacrifice their own lives for others are people who have conformed to society too much.
In other words, contribution to others, rather than being about getting rid of the “I” and being of service to someone, is actually something one does in order to be truly aware of the worth of the “I.”
The most easily understood contribution to others is probably work. To be in society and join the workforce. Or to do the work of taking care of one’s household. Labor is not a means of earning money. It is through labor that one makes contributions to others and commits to one’s community, and that one truly feels “I am of use to someone” and even comes to accept one’s existential worth.
But there are people who have so much money that they could never use it all. And many of these people are continually busy with their work. Why do they work? Are they driven by boundless greed? No. They work so they are able to contribute to others, and also to confirm their sense of belonging, their feeling that “it’s okay to be here.” Wealthy people who, on having amassed a great fortune, focus their energies on charitable activities, are doing so in order to attain a sense of their own worth and confirm for themselves that “it’s okay to be here.”
For the sake of convenience, up to this point I have discussed self-acceptance, confidence in others, and contribution to others, in that order. However, these three are linked as an indispensable whole, in a sort of circular structure.
It is okay to lose your way or lose focus. Do not be dependent on vertical relationships or be afraid of being disliked, and just make your way forward freely.
People with neurotic lifestyles tend to sprinkle their speech with such words as “everyone” and “always” and “everything.” “Everyone hates me,” they will say, or “It’s always me who takes a loss,” or “Everything is wrong.” If you think you might be in the habit of using such generalizing statements, you should be careful. YOUTH: Well, that does sound rather familiar. PHILOSOPHER: In Adlerian psychology, we think of this as a way of living that is lacking in “harmony of life.” It is a way of living in which one sees only a part of things but judges the whole.
In the teachings of Judaism, one finds the following anecdote: “If there are ten people, one will be someone who criticizes you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close friends with them. The remaining seven people will be neither of these types.” Now, do you focus on the one person who dislikes you? Do you pay more attention to the two who love you? Or would you focus on the crowd, the other seven? A person who is
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But if one is lacking in harmony of life, one will focus only on that person and end up thinking, Everyone is laughing at me.
When one’s interpersonal relations do not go well, it cannot be blamed on a stammer or a fear of blushing or anything of the sort. Even though the problem is really that one has not attained self-acceptance or confidence in others, or contribution to others, for that matter, one is focusing on only one tiny part of things that simply should not matter and from that trying to form judgments with regard to the entire world. This is a misguided lifestyle that is lacking in harmony of life.
People who suffer from stammering are looking at only a part of things but judging the whole. With workaholics, the focus is solely on one specific aspect of life. They probably try to justify that by saying, “It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.” But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern oneself with everything, from household chores and child-rearing to one’s friendships and hobbies and so on. Adler does not recognize ways of living in which certain aspects are
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“Work” does not mean having a job at a company. Work in the home, child-rearing, contributing to the local society, hobbies, and all manner of other things are work. Companies and such are just one small part of that.
