Other Adlerian Concepts (Page 4)

16. Guiding Line
The direction or line of movement of life, based on the guiding fiction, which describes actions and methods to reach the Guiding Goal. As seen elsewhere, Dreikurs suggested that one could take specific events and see how, like "points on a line," they could trace both the origins of the Life Style in childhood and predict the future course of one’s pursuit of the fictive goal.

This may seem a bit mechanistic, however, as if one’s life is a certainty from beginning to end. LEAP and therapy clients who complete the LifeCourse Scroll (described in the "MAP" Session of the LEAP material) see, however, that tracing the movement of their major life events and seeing the patterns they follow can result in insights which enable them to revise those patterns.

17. Gender Guiding Lines
Adler said self-definitions as female or male create a line of movement based on gender roles. Much of this is related to how we experienced our parents in such roles: parental (as mother/father), marital (wife/ husband), and sexual (man/woman). The child internalizes sex role definitions and behaviors by accepting some, rejecting others, and changing or adapting still others, resulting in a childhood ideal of male or female, which is carried into adult performance as a man or woman.

18. Guiding Fiction
This is the mistaken belief that there is only one road that can lead to success, and only one action that can achieve the desired goal. The image is of an idealized future position of safety, success, or worth. It is fiction because it can not exist in reality (being perfect) and guiding because much of adult life is based on it. One way or another, the last line of this personal fairy tale will be ". . . happily ever after."

The Guiding Fiction supports one’s Guiding Line throughout life, justifying the Guiding Goal and the actions one takes to achieve it. Private Logic may be used to justify socially-useless behavior in the pursuit of the Goal, through such attitudes as, "I’ll do whatever takes to get ahead," or "To Hell with anyone who gets in my way!" Adler suggested that such attitudes summarized the entire fantasy of one’s life, a fantasy based on the illusion that there is one goal which, attained, will solve all one’s problems.

19. The Iron Law of Communal Life *
Community pre-exists the Individual and makes absolute demands for a person to be a member of society. Adler called it an Iron Law because no one can escape the community’s shaping influences, and one cannot be said to be a complete human being without also being a responsible member of society.

Problems arise when individuals set themselves apart from, or over against, the community. This is the case when Private Logic is used to overrule the community’s Common Sense. With his introduction of Social Interest to his system, Adler believed even more strongly that the individual cannot exist apart from the human community, and has responsibilities to its improvement which cannot be avoided.

* The phrase " iron law" was common enough in Adler's day, usually referring to the immutable forces of nature (the "iron law" of Gravity (don't try to challenge it!), of Time (no person can harness or use it for his own purposes), etc. Adler's use was unique in his day, however, in large part because psychology, as a new science, was still largely influenced by philosophy and religion. Psychology was the study of the individual. Another new science, sociology, studied society and culture, as did anthropology. It took Adler to combine these several disciplines with the phrase "Iron Law of communal life," placing the individual squarely within society in terms of the community's shaping influence on personality and the responsibility of the individual to the community. Hence, what we have noted elsewhere as "social embeddedness."

20. Masculine Protest
Freud believed, following Plato, that a woman’s problems (psychological, that is to say, neurotic) in Freud's time) result from having a uterus. (Uterus from the Greek hysteria, which also gives us Easter [equating to the Latin vernalus, "spring"] and estrus, "the periodic sexual excitement in female mammals. ) Thus, a woman is neurotic because she is a woman. In this attitude, Freud also followed the dominant cultural view of his time, which defined women as "shadows" or "reflections" of men, rather than complete persons.

Adler, however, viewed women as equals with men. He believed female neurotic behaviors resulted from a woman's trying to balance social definitions of womanhood by society's dominant males in, with the need to be a woman in her own right. He called this tension, and its resulting behaviors, the masculine protest. This became the basis for his debates with Freud. That is, he put forth the idea of the masculine protest among women as another (that is, non-libidinous) explanation of psychological problems in women. He saw that problems arise when society defines one as "second-class," preventing the belonging that is necessary for complete participation. To protest such treatment is as necessary for groups as it is for individual children placed in inferior positions. Adler was almost alone in his day in stressing sexual equality and that the inequality of dominance makes for poor relationships.

In later years Adler expanded the concept to include both men and women as having psychological problems, or at least sociological tensions, when society's definition of men and women resulted in confusions about self-definition. Thus we see that "who I am" is related to who others say I am, as a male (or female). This is not a matter of masculinity in the sense of "he-man" nor of femininity in the sense of "sexy beauty." Although Adler did not seem to extend this idea to other groups, it seems we could, today, extend it to include society's limiting definitions of race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, etc., and "protests" by members of such groups to seek or achieve equal standing in society.

21. Mistaken Thinking
This includes all the ways an individual may think illogically or erroneously through Private Logic, Guiding Fiction, Antithetical Thinking, exaggerations, confusions (of feelings with facts and thoughts with feelings, for example), absolutism, denial, minimizing, over-generalization, etc.

Albert Ellis speaks of irrational beliefs, e.g., "I must be loved by everyone for everything I do," and Aaron Beck speaks of automatic thoughts which seem to take over and control the cognitive processes. In this, they follow Adler’s earlier lead.

22. Neurotic types of movement
Adler spoke of three phases of Neurotic movement (which is contrasted with "courage in striving"): mental (compulsion neurosis), emotional (anxiety), and motor (hysteria). The conceptualization is from 1932, but his four major "types of neurotic movement" are suggestive for any time:

The distance complex involves individual attempts to safeguard the self by moving emotionally or physically from a threatening situation or problem by, for example, fainting, indecision, over-doubting, second-guessing, etc.

The hesitating attitude involves advances which are made only hesitatingly in a sort of "stutter-step" manner. Such tentative actions alternate with periods of fatigue, uncertainty and self-doubts, postponement, paralyzing phobic reactions, etc.

The detour moves the neurotic either around the problem (side-stepping it, as if it doesn’t exist) or to some other arena of lesser importance where solutions may be simpler. One is reminded of the story of the man looking for something on his hands and knees under a street light. A passerby says, "Lose something?" The man says, "Yes, over there," pointing to a place in the dark. The passerby asks, "Then why are you looking here?" The man responds, "Because the light is better over here." Or one is reminded of the woman who, rather than admit to herself that her husband is having an affair, decides to have her hair done instead.

The narrowed path of approach. Here the individual accepts only a small part, or one part, of the over-all solution to a problem. The person may "Yes-but" unacceptable solutions, especially those that are the most pertinent or most likely to succeed. Adler notes that, in some cases, a narrowed focus can result in great achievements, bringing to mind the "absent-minded scientist" who neglects his personal life and hygiene, but creates a spectacular invention or discovers an important theory. People with such a singleness of vision and purpose may lead them to great things.