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February 9 - February 21, 2025
This is the difference between ‘aetiology’ (the study of causation) and teleology (the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause).
Yet those who take an aetiological stance, including most counsellors and psychiatrists, would argue that what you were suffering from stemmed from such-and-such cause in the past, and would then end up just
consoling you by saying, ‘So you see, it’s not your fault.’ The argument concerning so-called traumas is typical of aetiology.
self being determined not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them.
We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.
Even supposing that your friend actually thinks I can’t fit into society because I was abused by my parents, it’s still because it is his goal to think that way.
If I stay in my room all the time, without ever going out, my parents will worry. I can get all of my parents’ attention focused on me. They’ll be extremely careful around me, and always handle me with kid gloves. On the other hand, if I take even one step out of the house, I’ll just become part of a faceless mass who no one pays attention to.
Every one of us is living in line with some goal. That is what teleology tells us.
Don’t you see? In a word, anger is a tool that can be taken out as needed.
She is simply using the anger to overpower her daughter with a loud voice, and thereby assert her opinions.
Freudian aetiology that denies our free will, and treats humans like machines.
Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; they’re of no value.
In Adlerian psychology, we describe personality and disposition with the word ‘lifestyle’.
Yes. Lifestyle is the tendencies of thought and action in life.
How one sees the world. And how one sees oneself. Think of lifestyle as a concept bringing together these ways of finding meaning. In a narrow sense, lifestyle could be defined as someone’s personality; taken more broadly, it is a word that encompasses the worldview of that person and their outlook on life.
Adler is thought to be the first to use the term ‘feeling of inferiority’ in the kind of context in which it is spoken of today.
But the issue is really what sort of meaning I attribute to that height; what sort of value I give it.
subjective interpretations rather than objective facts?
We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes.
‘feeling of inferiority’ is a term that has to do with one’s value judgement of oneself.
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’.
No, that’s not a feeling of inferiority—that’s an inferiority complex.
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. For instance, there’s Freud’s Oedipus complex, which is used in the context of discussing the abnormal attraction of the child to the opposite-sex parent.
A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others, but from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.
fact that other people are different from us. And that we are not the same, but we are equal.
the language of logic.
Adlerian psychology, clear objectives are laid out for human behaviour and psychology.
two objectives for behaviour: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviours are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
Adler calls ‘life tasks’.
self-reliant mentally, of course, and self-reliant in a social sense
‘tasks of work’, ‘tasks of friendship’ and ‘tasks of love’, and all together as ‘life tasks’.
solely in terms of interpersonal relationships.
but I don’t get a word of thanks? I guess I’d probably lose my motivation.
This is the danger of the desire for recognition. Why is it that people seek recognition from others? In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education.
If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions, too.
you’ll either be indignant, or decide that you’ll never do such a thing again. Clearly, there’s something wrong with this situation.
we are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations.
if you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?
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.
you throw away who you really are and live other people’s lives.
please remember this: if you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations.
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 judgement, and you are repressing your ‘I-ness’.
Adlerian psychology known as ‘separation of tasks’.
all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on.
first, 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.
SO IMPORTANT - Mental clutter
‘You’re the only one who’s worried how you look.’ Her remark drives right to the heart of the separation of tasks. What other people think when they see your face—that is the task of other people, and is not something you have any control over.
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. This is a specific and revolutionary viewpoint that is unique to Adlerian psychology and contains the potential to utterly change one’s interpersonal
Separating one’s tasks is not an egocentric thing. Intervening in other people’s tasks is essentially an egocentric way of thinking,
Kant, the giant of modern philosophy, called this desire ‘inclination’.
