Techniques In Adlerian Psychology

Jon Carlson, Steven Slavik

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781560325550
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135893958
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

Presenting a collection of classic and recent papers reprinted from the Journal of Individual Psychology and Individual Psychology that represent the purpose, methods and spirit of techniques in Adlerian psychology. The editors have prefaced the text with a statement of the goasl of Alderian theory, as well as the goals of the techniques presented.

SECTION III
INDIVIDUAL ADULT COUNSELING AND THERAPY TECHNIQUES

EDITORS’ COMMENTS

Adlerian psychology is based on the principle that all behavior has a goal or purpose. This fundamental tenet is rooted in the early learning experiences and social context of the individual. Adler believed that each individual develops a “lifestyle” or characteristic/unique way of living based upon these experiences. The lifestyle promotes a goal or purpose of life. The format is

I am …
Life is …
Others are …
Therefore …

For example,

I am weak.
Life is scary.
Others are there to take care of me.
Therefore, I must live very carefully.

Adlerians assess recollections, early experiences, birth orders, and dreams to understand the individual’s cognitive explanations about life.

The master psychotherapist, Harold Mosak, discussed a meeting he had with a woman named Ann. The lifestyle assessment is described. This technique helps Ann learn her beliefs about herself, the world, and how she must live her life. Mosak makes the process look deceptively simple. The simplicity is the result of his clear principles about human behavior.

One important component of the lifestyle or personality assessment is the family constellation. Mosak showed how important this was to how Ann lived her life. Shulman provided a more in-depth look at Adler’s ideas about the family constellation. The family constellation interview guide provides a good outline of the important ingredients for personality diagnosis. In the case example, Pearl described her “subjectively perceived early environment” and her choice of reaction to it.

Forer described how birth order affects life, both in and out of the therapy session. This knowledge clearly affects an individual’s personality structure, as Shulman discussed. Additionally, it provides important information for the therapeutic process. With this knowledge, the therapist can reduce therapeutic resistance and increase cooperation and collaboration with the client.

Mosak highlighted the unity or consistency of the personality. He showed how our early memories reflect our lifestyle. The content and the pattern of the memories are important. The therapist can learn to predict quickly the client’s response generally to therapy and specifically to the therapist.

Papanek’s classic paper clearly shows how early recollections (ERs) are collected and interpreted. Two cases are presented to show the process in action. Papanek believed that ERs help both the therapist and client understand the client’s lifestyle in order to make healthier behavior possible.

ERs contain faults or mistaken beliefs that limit an individual’s potential. After the mistaken beliefs are identified, how can they be changed? Sometimes insight or awareness is all that is needed. In other cases, the pattern is too ingrained and not readily accessible to change. Lingg and Kottman described the creative use of visualization to help individuals examine their basic convictions. Lew and Bettner described how ERs can be used as a basis for problem-directed therapy. Their eight-step process, called Connexions Focusing Technique, is presented and enhanced through case study examples.

Dream analysis is another important skill used for both assessment and intervention. Slavik showed how dreams can serve as the basis in short-term solution-focused treatment. In Adlerian analysis, dreams are seen as purposeful rehearsals for future situations. The symbols are not universal, as Freud suggested, but are chosen directly to fit the individual’s private logic.

Adlerians use a variety of techniques in the counseling and therapy process. The Adlerian interview has been viewed as both diagnostic and therapeutic, or what Sperry called “interventive interviewing.” In this brief paper, Sperry described the basic interviewing questions and their purposes.

Shulman’s two papers describe the active movement by the therapist leading to confrontation. This technique forces the client to provide an immediate response, make an immediate change, or do immediate examination of a social issue. Confrontation techniques are therapeutic challenges designed to force the client to face and change troublesome goals and beliefs. Shulman described 11 categories where confrontation can be used: moods and feelings, hidden reasons, biased apperceptions and private logic, private goals, mottos, responsibility for the responses of others, self-defeating behavior, existing alternatives, responsibility for change, and time factor.

Metaphors, fables, and parables are useful techniques in therapy, as they allow clients to grasp personally difficult concepts. These procedures offer both implicit and explicit pathways to teach lessons. Pancner showed how parables and fables can be used to create meaningful change. Mosak used religious allusions to help clients with spiritual, existential, and religious problems. He believed that these procedures have messages and usefulness with all clients, not just those presenting with “religious issues.”

The “as if” technique was created by Adler as an intervention in which the client anticipates, pretends, and/or enacts a future event, belief, or desired behavior. Carich presented several variations of this technique including role-play, imagery, fantasy/daydreaming, implosion, metaphors, paradoxical prescription, reframe, and non-strategic task assignments.

Many therapists believe that humor as a therapeutic technique has great value; however, proving this has been elusive. There does not appear to be any exact “technique.” Humor can assist the client/therapist relationship, however, as well as assist in the client’s diagnosis, interpretation, and reorientation. Rutherford (1984) provided an overview of the use of humor in therapy as well as several examples. McBrien extended the use of humor as an explicit encouragement technique in couples counseling.

The use of paradox in therapy has been a hallmark of the Adlerian approach. This idea seems almost absurd—prescribing the very symptom the client is hoping to have disappear! This procedure however, is therapeutically solid in that the therapist does not oppose his/her client but rather joins him/her while exhibiting a warm, accepting relationship.

The creative therapeutic genius, Ray Corsini, took paradoxical techniques a step further with the relapse technique. This procedure prevents behavioral relapse by prescribing the relapse. West, Main, and Zarski built on the work of Jay Haley and offered an eight-step model for implementing paradoxical prescriptions. Kopp and Kivel showed that paradoxes can be used as a means of understanding therapeutic resistance and resolving impasses. A case example highlights a four-phase process of “traps and escapes.”

Sperry offered five hypnotherapy methods. These techniques do not require the induction of a formal trance. The five techniques have been found very useful in insight-oriented therapy. Fairfield showed how hypnosis techniques can be used to reorient the individual and create lifestyle change, while Sperry and Carlson described a multi-modal treatment program including hypnosis to create habit change. In this paper, the procedure is applied to smoking cessation.

Prinz encouraged Adlerians to work with substance abusers. He believed that the Alderian approach and techniques are particularly well-adapted to this population. Cooley described techniques for overcoming resistance in working with substance abuse clients, while Arkin, Lewis, and Carlson described treatment strategies for use with couples with alcohol problems. They categorized treatment into three general types: alcohol intervention, general marital improvement strategies, and relapse prevention.

In the final part of this section, Mosak used the “pushbutton” technique to disrupt depressive thinking. Once this occurs, the goal of depression can be assessed and a treatment plan formulated.

REFERENCE

Rutherford, R. (1984). Humor in psychotherapy. Individual Psychology, 50(2), 207–222.

LIFE STYLE ASSESSMENT: A DEMONSTRATION FOCUSED ON FAMILY CONSTELLATION^1,2

Harold H. Mosak

A clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago. He is currently president of the Alfred Adler Institute there, and is also engaged in writing, teaching, and consulting.

The phrase, life style, is currently used in many ways which Adler never intended. As Adler used it, life style refers to the “unity in each individual—in his thinking, feeling, acting; in his so-called conscious and unconscious, in every expression of his personality. This unity we call the style of life of the individual” (3, p. 175). While we agree with this definition of life style, we prefer one somewhat more limited, namely, a person’s central convictions which, to oversimplify, describe how he views himself in relation to his view of life.

We formally assess a life style by interviewing the person regarding his family constellation and his early recollections, as Adler had emphasized the importance of birth order position and early recollections (3, p. 328). The family constellation part was described first by Dreikurs (4) and then by Shulman (7); the early recollections part has been described by this author (5). In an actual case we give equal importance to the two parts. In the present demonstration early recollections are merely touched upon during the last few minutes, while the emphasis is on the investigation of the family constellation. Dreikurs outlines the significance of this procedure in the following:

The family constellation is a sociogram of the group at home during the person’s formative years. This investigation reveals his field of early experiences, the circumstances under which he developed his personal perspectives and biases, his concepts and convictions about himself and others, his fundamental attitudes, and his own approaches to life, which are the basis for his character, his personality (4, p. 109).

Some comments are in order regarding variations from our usual clinical procedure. At a demonstration such as the present, time is limited. Therefore, (a) we could not complete the assessment nor write the summary we ordinarily undertake in clinical practice, (b) we interpreted for the client as we proceeded whereas in actual practice the interpretive summary is postponed until data collection is complete, (c) the result is not necessarily a model of good interviewing. We also wish to mention that at a demonstration we use a blackboard to enter the main facts obtained through the interview as we go along, so that the audience may keep these before their eyes.

At the present session the client was a high school student, Ann, whom I had never met before, and about whom I did not have any information. Her high school counselor, who attended the workshop, had invited her to serve as a subject for this demonstration before an audience, and she had agreed.

At the beginning of the interview we established that Ann was 17 years old, one of five children, with an older sister, Debbie, age 19; a younger brother, Sam, age 13; and a pair of twins, Marty and Mary, age 10. One can start formulating hypotheses immediately. Thus I said, looking at this information, my best guess at this point is that Debbie, Ann and Sam form one subgroup and the twins, a second subgroup.

Dr. M.: How do you feel about this, Ann?

Ann: It’s right.

Dr. M.: To confirm this, let me ask, who played with whom?

Ann: I played with Debbie. Sam usually played by himself, and Marty and Mary played together.

Here Ann may be suggesting that my guess of a two-group family was wrong, that it was actually a three-group family, 2-1-2. We shall keep this in mind and see which it might be. To help ascertain I shall ask:

Dr. M.: Who fought with each other?

Ann: Debbie and I fought constantly, and Sam and Debbie fought constantly.

Dr. M.: And who else fought?

Ann: The twins fought.

“Sam and Debbie fought constantly” would suggest that they are in the same subgroup. At this point I could ascertain more information about the subgroups, but I shall not go into that. These questions, and most of those which I shall ask can be found in the Dreikurs paper to which I have referred (4).

Regarding subgroups, psychologists have a difficult time with families beyond three children. They can more or less accurately describe an oldest, a middle, or a youngest child; but the fourth child is not described and the fifth certainly not. However, by dividing families into subgroups of children, it is possible to determine the psychological position of each child within the family. Sometimes, just on the basis of what we have so far here on the blackboard we can already begin to formulate some hypotheses, some alternatives.

Dr. M.: What kind of child was Debbie when you were growing up?

Ann: She was very studious all the time…. Well, from my point of view, she was a goody-goody.…. It’s hard to talk about your own sister.

Dr. M.: Especially if you have to say such nice things about her.

Ann: No, she was very reliable and very responsible.… and very talkative.

Dr. M.: Did she get into trouble at school for that?

Ann: Occasionally.

Dr. M.: So, while she was a goody-goody, she still got into trouble occasionally. She wasn’t quite perfect. What else was she like?

Ann: Well, she always tried to please my parents. And she was very sensitive. You know like she cried very easily. … that’s about all.

Dr. M.: I’m going to invite you, Ann, to look at all of this on the blackboard. If you had one word to describe your sister, what word would you use? Let me give you an incomplete sentence. She was …

Ann: Responsible, I guess.

Dr. M.: That’s a good word.

Ann: I can’t do it in one word.

Dr. M.: I can. Would you like to hear my one word?

Ann: Yes.

Dr. M.: She was very … (Audience laughter.) How does that sound?

Ann: Very good. (Ann and audience laughter.)

She was not just very studious, but very studious all the time. She always tried to please the parents. Even though Ann does not use the word “very” each t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Section I. Introduction
• Section II. General Techniques
• Section III. Individual Adult Counseling and Therapy Techniques
• Part A. Early Recollection Analysis
• Part B. Questioning and Confrontation Techniques
• Part C. Use of Stories, Fables, Aphorisms
• Part D. Acting “as if”
• Part E. Humor
• Part F. Paradox and “Spitting in the Soup”
• Part G. Hypnosis
• Part H. Substance Abuse
• Part I. Miscellaneous
• Section IV. Child Counseling
• Section V. Couple and Family Counseling and Therapy Techniques
• Index
• List of Contributors
• About the Editors