Other Adlerian Concepts (Page 2)

6. Compensation and Over-compensation

Behavior aimed at overcoming minus feelings through increased effort or achievement in a different area. Over-compensation is exaggerated behavior, aimed toward an ideal solution, a fictional plus.

It appears Freud borrowed this concept from Adler, who used it to explain behaviors, including extreme behaviors, aimed at overcoming inferiority. For Adler, to compensate was a "balancing act" to restore balance by "making up" in one area what one lacked in another. In the case of feeling hurt, by revenge and "hurting back as I’ve been hurt." In the case of feeling behind, of "catching up, drawing even, getting ahead."

Origins of compensatory behaviors are in the self-ratings of "minus" which arise from being compared with others by parents, siblings, playmates, teachers, etc., and take the form, "Not as good as _______ ." A child who is "not as good" at athletics or academics may compensate by being seeking success in another arena, such as art or music. Some children, unable to satisfy others’ standards, compensate by becoming "the best at being worst," as with juvenile delinquency.

Over-compensation is exaggerated behavior aimed at becoming superior in a situation of imbalance. The idea is not merely to "catch up" or "get even" but to "get ahead," often by any means possible, based on a goal of perfection or an imagined ideal. For example, in trying to Belong in the family, a child may first seek attention by reasonable, acceptable means. If unsuccessful, the child may try unreasonable, unacceptable means such as being noisy, picking on others, etc. these exaggerated behaviors say "Look at me!" Punishment for such activities can be converted into evidence of success: "At least they noticed me!" This, of course, has implications for life-long behavior.

7. Complexes

Note that the term "complex" (as a noun, used in psychiatry/psychoanalysis to describe a combination of elaborately interconnected or interrelated impulses, ideas, emotions, related to a particular activity or object, was not introduced by Freud or Jung, as has been claimed, nor by Adler, but, as Freud himself pointed out, by someone else (cited in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, volume 2.)

Adler said complexes serve Life Style movement toward the Ideal Goal. Everyone has such "patterns" of thought, behavior, and attitude; they are universal to the process of goal-seeking: "There is no person whose attitudes cannot be resolved into complexes" (Ansbachers, 1964, p. 74). He described several:

Oedipus Complex: Freud said a boy of three or so desires his mother sexually and fears that his father would cut off his penis as punishment (castration anxiety). Adler said the proper interpretation is that the child has been pampered by the mother and does not want to give her up, which he called "an error in upbringing" (p. 74).

Redeemer Complex: "Those who take an attitude that they must save or redeem somebody, finding superiority in the success of solving the complications of others" (p. 74). Such a person may feel chosen to cure the evils of mankind. The Individual Psychologist will look for how such an attitude and related activities represent a solution to the individual’s own problems. (But see Berne’s alternative, page 63, where the goal is not success but failure, as in the pay-off to the Game, "See, I told you so.")

Proof complex: Those who need to prove they have a right to exist by having no faults. Their underlying fear of committing errors leads them to seek perfection in themselves and others. Their conversation seems to beg for approval. They may over-strive (the "workaholic") to show that they are bending every effort. Yet they never seem at peace, nothing they do satisfies their high standards, and so they appeal to extenuating circumstances which prevent their success.

Polonius Complex: Taken from the conversation between Hamlet and Polonius in Shakespeare’s play:

Hamlet: See yonder cloud; ‘tis almost in the shape of a camel.
Polonius: Yes, and ‘tis a camel indeed!

The fact is, it is a cloud, and NOT a camel. But sometimes we all see things that aren’t there, and believe that something looks like something else. A pattern in a rug can look like a face, just as a cloud can look like a camel. Such finding of patterns (even, or especially, when they aren't there!) is the basis for projective tests, such as the Rorschach inkblots. And it’s what we do when we want to believe things despite evidence to the contrary! As a complex, it is needing to seeing things that aren’t there.

Exclusion Complex: "Used as a crutch by the insecure person" (p. 76), this involves the individual who seeks to reduce their sphere of action by removing ("excluding") all problems. It is used by the person who seeks superiority, yet by the easiest route. In the related maneuver of denial, one pretends there are no problems by denying them, and so does not have to deal with them.

Predestination Complex: Such persons believe themselves to have been created as special; therefore, the rules that apply to others do not apply to them. Adler said this often results from pampering, where the child is led to believe a life of superiority is "preordained." Others (see "Overburdening situations") may feel doomed to lives of pain and suffering, and arrange their lives to get what they think they deserve. For example, there is a common belief that a battered spouse seeks partners who will abuse them. Adler also suggests a positive side to predestination, in which the individual is self-assured and feels "completely rooted in the facts of this earth, presenting itself as courage" (p. 77).

Leader Complex: Found among some first-borns and second-borns, for differing reasons, this is the need to be in the vanguard, to win and not lose. Adler saw this resulting from childhood choices about not wanting to be a follower (in an inferior position) but a trail-blazer. Such children are never satisfied with not leading.

Deprecation Complex: Adler noted that, as part of the striving for superiority in the compulsion neurosis, a certain type of person seeks "god-likeness" and employs for this a depreciation of others. Feeling anxiety in the face of his inferiority to others, "The compulsion neurotic endeavors to overcome this anxiety, and tries to represent himself in the form to which he originally aspired—as a demigod, who exalts himself above humankind and who depreciates everyone else and puts them in the shade. He covers over his inferiority complex with a superiority complex and thus appears magnificent enough in his own eye." (In Ansbachers, 1964, p. 117) Adler saw this approach as "one of a thousand subtle variations on the theme of seeking ascendancy over others," that is, to raise oneself by lowering others, sometimes by sadistically putting them down.

Spectator Complex: An attitude in which the individual sits on the sidelines watching life, without acting or taking part in it. Such children may grow up to be passive adults who have trouble making decisions and prefer to be "just part of the crowd." The Adlerian therapist encourages such people to a greater involvement, so they can become participants rather than only onlookers.

"No" Complex: The presence of an attitude in which one seeks confrontation and opposition. "There are people who have a ‘no’ on their lips even before someone has opened his mouth" (p. 79). Common examples include negative theater critics and other "nay-sayers," fault-finders, and antagonists, and others who are "looking for a fight."

8. Compulsion Neurosis

The term itself is from earlier work by Janet in France and Kraft-Ebbing, and Westphal in Austria (Ansbachers, 1956, p 307). It forms the central idea in what is now called obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD. Adler and others wrote extensively about it. According to the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, "Obsessions are defined as recurrent, persistent ideas, thoughts, images, or impulses viewed by the subject as ego-alien. They are not experienced as voluntarily produced, but rather as ideas that invade the field of consciousness. Compulsions are behaviors not experienced as the outcome of the patient’s own volition, but accompanied by both a sense of subjective compulsion and a desire to resist. (DSM-III Table 20.3-1. Italics added).

Freud’s approach grew out of his need to adjust his explanations of conversion reactions in the light of conflicting clinical evidence. He saw three factors at work: Isolation as a defense mechanism to protect the individual from anxiety-provoking circumstances, undoing, a defensive mechanism aimed at reversing the consequences of obsessional thoughts or impulses, and reaction formation, resulting in specific character traits and behaviors, usually highly exaggerated and inappropriate.

For Adler, the compulsion neurosis was not so much the result of psychogenic causes as the means to an end, that is, useful ways of thinking and behaving with a goal in mind. He called the process "Tilting at windmills" (from the image in Cervantes’ story about Don Quixote), in which the individual, needing to put a distance between himself and the basic tasks of adult living, creates false mental connections. On these connections rest repetitive thought or action patterns which enable him to avoid real life and its problems. The activity is useless, however, because it stalls rather than enables forward movement. Elsewhere, Adler described obsessions and compulsions as taking place "at a secondary theater of operations," an arena apart from "the real world" where one actually lives. "One can always establish that there is actually a lack of preparation for the solution of the life probl4ems and that this lack—whether it really exists or is "believed" only in imagination—prevents him from advancing, so that he lapses into the hesitating attitude. It is this that the compulsion neurotic turns to the secondary theater of operations, and we must establish that such an evasion can happen only when one is afraid of defeat." (in Ansbachers, 1964, p. 115) We note elsewhere forms that such activities can take: depreciation complex, Polonius complex, as well as the conflict neurosis (below) The point of such actions is to move oneself from minus to plus, to being inferior to being superior, even godlike.

Adler warns against divorcing thought processes from the totality of personality in trying to understand the compulsion neurosis: "Whenever one conceives an idea, one arouses in himself also a series of corresponding feelings and emotions, not only because he realizes that the idea should connote these emotions, but because he actually transports himself into a sphere of thought which is affected and altered by the idea." (in Ansbachers, 1964, p. 124) It is clear that this idea found fertile ground in the later work of Ellis (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) and Beck (Cognitive Therapy), and serves as something of a touchstone in modern psychological counseling.