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PHILOSOPHER: That is Adler’s life-lie again. I can’t do my work because I’ve been shunned by my boss.
If you are angry, nothing will sink in.
There is no need to cosy up to him, or to yield to him to the point of bowing down. You should think, What I should do is face my own tasks in my own life without lying.
PHILOSOPHER: He was a Macedonian king, who lived in the fourth century before Christ. When he was advancing on the Persian kingdom of Lydia, he learned of a chariot enshrined in the acropolis. The chariot had been secured tightly to a pillar in the temple by Gordias, the former king, and there was a local legend that said, ‘He who unravels this knot shall be master of Asia.’ It was a tightly wound knot that many men of skill had been certain they could unbind, but no one had succeeded. Now, what do you think Alexander the Great did when he stood before this knot?
PHILOSOPHER: No, that’s not how it happened. As soon as Alexander the Great saw how tight the knot was, he pulled out his sword and sliced it in half with one stroke.
PHILOSOPHER: Then, it is said that he declared, ‘Destiny is not something brought about by legend, but by clearing away with one’s own sword.’
This is the famous anecdote known as the Gordian knot.
PHILOSOPHER: For instance, when reading a book, if one brings one’s face too close to it, one cannot see anything. In the same way, forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. When the distance gets too small and people become stuck together, it becomes impossible to even speak to each other.
Parents force their children to study; they meddle in their life and marriage choices. That is nothing
other than an egocentric way of thinking.
PHILOSOPHER: In short, that ‘freedom is being disliked by other people’.
PHILOSOPHER: What I am saying is, don’t be afraid of being disliked.
But if I can think, I brought out the memory of being hit because I don’t want my relationship with my father to get better, then I will be holding the card to repair relations. Because if I can just change the goal that fixes everything.
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. Many people think that the interpersonal relationship cards are held by the other person. That is why they wonder, How does that person feel about me?, and end up living in such a way as to satisfy the wishes of other people. But if they can grasp the separation of tasks, they will notice that they are holding all the cards. This is a new way of thinking.
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. In other words, it is the smallest possible unit, and therefore cannot be broken down any further. Now, what is it exactly that cannot be divided? 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.
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.
In fact, Adler’s proposal of the concept of community feeling drove many people to part ways with him.
but the entire axis of time from the past to the future—and he includes plants and animals, and even inanimate objects.
PHILOSOPHER: The majority of those who hear this have similar doubts. This is not something one can comprehend immediately. Adler himself acknowledged that the community he was espousing was ‘an unattainable ideal’.
YOU ARE NOT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD
PHILOSOPHER: Think of what I said earlier—that you are not the centre of the world — as being the same thing.
You are a part of a community, not its centre.
But why do I have to be aware of the fact that I’m not the centre of the world?
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.
Take, for example, a man who, on reaching retirement age and stopping work, quickly loses his vitality and becomes depressed. Abruptly cut off from the company that was his community and bereft of title or profession, he becomes an ‘ordinary nobody’. As he is unable to accept the fact that he is now ‘normal’, he becomes old practically overnight. But all that really happened to the man is that he was cut off from the small community that is his company. Each person belongs to a separate community. And when it comes down to it, all of us belong to the community of the earth, and the community
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YOUTH: Take animal training, for example. When teaching animals to do tricks, you can make them obey with a whip. This is the typical ‘raising by rebuke’ way. On the other hand, it’s also possible to get animals to learn tricks by holding up rewards of food or saying kind words.
In Adlerian psychology, we take the stance that in childrearing, and in all other forms of communication with other people, one must not praise.
PHILOSOPHER: Exactly. In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being ‘the passing of judgement by a person of ability on a person of no ability’.
YOUTH: So, you’re saying that one praises in order to manipulate?
PHILOSOPHER: 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.
‘You’re not bringing in any money, so I don’t want to hear it’ or ‘It’s thanks to me that there’s food on the table.’ And I’m sure you’ve heard this one before:
YOUTH: So, in a sense, they are getting into a superiority complex in which
they are trying to make a show of their abilities?
PHILOSOPHER: So it seems. In the first place, the feeling of inferiority is an awareness that arises within vertical relationships. If one can build horizontal relationships that are ‘equal but not the same’ for all people, there w...
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THE ENCOURAGEMENT APPROACH
YOUTH: What is the difference between intervention and assistance?
PHILOSOPHER: 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’.
PHILOSOPHER: 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.
PHILOSOPHER: Shall I repeat myself? The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability. Please do your best to remember this.
PHILOSOPHER: 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. Looking at your life until now, aren’t you tired of trying to live up to your parents’ expectations?
PHILOSOPHER: It’s quite simple. 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. This is the answer that would be offered in Adlerian psychology.
PHILOSOPHER: That’s what it means to be grateful on the level of being.
EXCESSIVE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS STIFLES THE SELF
‘The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.’ Do you remember this?
To put it more simply, say you’ve got a score of sixty per cent, but you tell yourself I just happened to get unlucky this time around, and the real me is one hundred per cent. That is self-affirmation. By contrast, if one accepts oneself as one is, as sixty per cent, and thinks to oneself, How should I go about getting closer to one hundred per cent?—that is self-acceptance.
PHILOSOPHER: Here, I use the term ‘affirmative resignation’.
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. 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.
Having a firm grasp on the truth of things—that is resignation. There is nothing pessimistic about it.
The attitude of ‘we will lend it to you on the condition that you will pay it back,’ or ‘we will lend you as much as you are able to pay back,’ is not one of having confidence in someone. It is trust.
