Introduction

Adlerian therapy originated from Alfred Adler, a major contributor in psychodynamic approaches to treatment. Adlerian therapy was introduced after Adler’s death in 1937 by Rudolf Dreikur, and it was applied in education, counseling, and group therapy. Adler differed from Freud approach in therapy. Adler believed that people are motivated socially, and their behavior is directed toward a particular goal. Adlerian therapy was founded on the feelings of inferiority faced by Adler in his early life. Despite being destined to shoe making, Adler managed to excel in school and taught at university level. From this experience, he believed that humans were both creators and creations of their own.

Adlerian therapy stresses a lot in social psychology and positive view of human nature. Unlike Freud, Adler believed that humans are motivated by social relatedness rather than by sexual urges. He also believed in the concept of consciousness rather than unconsciousness and that people are in control of their fate rather than victims of fate. Choice and responsibilities are critical in defining our destiny.  Childhood experiences are insignificant in creating a lifestyle that starts at early years.  Nevertheless, past experiences are also essential in determining the present.

Adlerian therapeutic goals

According to Adlerian, a client is not considered sick. Therefore, Adlerian therapy is geared towards re-educating and reshaping individuals. Hence, Adlerians concentrate on teaching, guiding, and offering encouragement. This is through giving their clients courage. Additionally, Adlerians help their clients to view things from a new way, helping them to come up with alternative living. The theory is based on the feelings of inferiority and aims at helping clients rediscover their unleashed potential. The therapeutic process is concerned with helping people identify and correct their mistakes on their beliefs about others, self, and life.

It is imperative to understand that the therapeutic process do not dictate changes to their clients. The objective of the therapeutic process is to offer guidance to the clients in making self-defined goals. Through collaborative means, the process enables clients to develop socially useful goals and making necessary changes essential in shaping their destiny.  For instance, the process aims at fostering social interest, help clients reduce feelings of inferiority or discouragement; assist clients feel the sense of equality with others and restructuring mistaken assumptions (Adlerian, 2015). Adlerian therapy aims at changing individuals and the society as a whole for better co-existence. Clients are taught on new ways of viewing themselves, others and life. In essence, the therapy aims at assisting clients in modifying their lifestyles in such a way that they can be able to face daily challenges with confidence. The therapy does not view the client as a sick person but rather a discouraged fellow. Therefore, the objective of the process is to cultivate a sense of belonging characterized with community feeling and social interest.

The roles of Adlerian

Adlerian helps their clients to realize their value and understand their mistakes in life. This is through helping clients identify feelings of mistrust, low self-esteem, selfishness, and over ambitious. Adlerians use questionnaires to gather client’s information. This helps them to understand what their clients are going through. They also use ER or the early recollections to understand client’s life at childhood (Jon & Patricia, 2011). By gathering extensive information regarding the client, the therapist can make a comprehensive assessment of the client’s functioning.

The questionnaires will help the therapist understand the client’s family constellation. Essential family information such as the parents, siblings and other members of the nuclear family is critical to the therapeutic process.  This information helps the Adlerian get an idea of the client’s early social life. The Adlerian also has an obligation of interpreting and analyzing, summarizing and interpreting early recollections to understand the client’s lifestyle. Lifestyle assessment helps the Adlerian set the target for the therapy.

Client’s experience in Adlerian therapy

At this point, Adlerians relation and experience with the client is explained. This is through exploring private logic, where issues of self, others, and life are assessed, to understand the individual lifestyle. This process enables the client discover the purpose of behavior or symptoms and the basis mistakes associated with their coping. Clients should be able to identify their mistaken ideas about life after a successful lifestyle assessment. It is the prerogative of the therapist to help the clients identify such mistakes and guide them in making viable decisions for self and societal development.

The therapeutic process will assist the client in discovering that he or she has resources and alternatives to draw on in dealing with crucial life issues and life tasks.

Relationship between Adlerian therapist and client

Adlerians believe in a mutual relationship with the clients. This is through taking into consideration mutual trust, respect, collaboration, confidence, and aligning personal goals. Besides mutual respect, clients and counselors are also expected to be active in the therapeutic process. The relationship requires equal contribution from all the concerned parties to get positive results (Heinrich, 2015).  Clients can recognize that they handle their behavior through a collaborative partnership with their counselors. Adlerian must be very attentive in examining the client’s lifestyle, and this is clearly expressed by everything that the client does. The relationship must enable the therapist to connect with the past, present and the future client’s concerns. Trust, rapport and sustained attention in the therapeutic process are critical in defining an acceptable action plan aimed at im[proving self and social life of the client.

Applications of Adlerian therapy

1. Establishing proper therapeutic relationship

The client and therapist must engage in a fruitful relationship to yield the desired results. The two parties are expected to work collaboratively, be caring, involved and supportive of one another. Having personal contact rather than starting with addressing the problem will be essential in achieving s desirable therapeutic relationship.

2. Exploring individual psychological dynamic

Establishing a proper therapeutic relationship will be instrumental in exploring individual psychological dynamics. A fruitful therapy should be able to determine the clients’ feelings to enable him or her make important decisions for future development. The exploration process requires getting essential information from the client to enable Adlerian in lifestyle assessment and is carried out through different interviewing processes.

A therapist may opt to use the subjective interview. This is a form of interview where active listening by the therapist is inevitable. Interview of this kind also requires a sense of wonder, fascination and interest to enable the therapist get as much information as possible from the client. On the other hand, the therapist may decide to use an objective interview to understand the client’s dynamics. This interview is concerned with understanding how the client’s problems began, medical history, precipitating events, coping skills, medical history life assessment and reasons for choosing the therapy (Oberst & Stewart, 2003). Unlike the subjective interview, the objective interview has distinct questions that the therapists are greatly determined to find answers.  Family constellations and early recollections are also essential in determining the clients’ dynamics as they help the Adlerian in lifestyle assessment.

3. Encouraging self-understanding and insight

After understanding the clients’ dynamics, the therapy session is expected to offer a solution to the client. The therapeutic process is ought to help the client understand the motivations in their life, understand how they contribute to their problem and to make a change to correct the challenges.

4. Reorientation and re-education.

This is the last phase in the therapeutic application. It is the stage where the realization of the therapeutic goals manifests themselves. The insights from the therapeutic process should be put in practice and help clients rediscover their sense of belonging in the society. Clients should be engaged in an extensive encouragement process to improve their self-esteem and remove the feelings of inferiority previously prevalent in the client’s life.  The therapeutic process should also be able to suggest essential changes and search for new possibilities aimed at changing the clients’ lifestyle for the better.  Adlerian must ensure that positive change and promotion of the clients’ lifestyle becomes the primary objective.

Application of Adler’s therapy

Adlerian therapy is concerned with helping people unleash their full potential. It is primarily based on growth and individual development which has made it applicable to solving a broad range of human problems and dealing with issues that interfere with growth. The therapy has been applicable in different fields such as education, couples counseling, group counseling and parent education just to mention a few.  Its application in various areas is briefly discussed below;

Application to Education

Adler’s model has been widely used in schools and other learning institutions. School counselors have an obligation of helping the pupils develop a positive lifestyle and social interest. From our understanding of the therapy, it is essential in establishing self-esteem that is critical to children. Creating a sense of belonging among the learning population is vital for proper development of the students. This will enable children learn advanced social skills that will help them belong to a particular group.  Collaboration between students and students, students and educators, and students and counselors is essential for valuing cooperation and not competition. School counselors should engage in Adler’s therapeutic relationship with the students to enable them deal with self-defeating behaviors.

Parent Education

The model has also been widely applied in parent education. Being grounded in the principles of social psychology, the model becomes essential in parent education. Counselors should be able to employ this model to help parents have a peaceful co-existence with their children and the society as a whole. The therapy should be able to make everyone equal and have something to contribute towards societal development.

Couple counseling

The therapy has also been extensively applicable in couple counseling.  Most of the disagreements prevalent with couples are as a result of feelings of inferiority among the couple. Marriage counselors must establish an Adlerian therapeutic relationship to be able to determine target problems and goal alignment (Corey, 2013). A subjective interview is always essential in gathering important information necessary for corrective measures to problems in a marriage set up.

Family counseling

One of the significant contributions of the therapeutic process is its role in family counseling. Adlerian therapy acknowledges the family as a basic unit of the society. The theory believes that the family contributes much to the lifestyle of individuals and is also significant to social interests of the individuals. The therapeutic process should be able to understand the feelings of every family member and offer guidance on how to make important decisions in life.

Conclusion

Adler theory is based in teaching individual psychology. This makes Adlerian therapy flexible and easily to integrate. Therefore, Adlerian therapy can be applied in various ways. This is in cognitive, emotive, behavioral therapy, and in experiential. This therapy is driven towards giving the client the best experience, and this allows application of this therapy in various settings (Carlson, Watts & Maniacci, 2006). The therapeutic process is mainly concerned with doing what is best for the client rather than forcing them into a theoretical framework. Clients in this model are not mentally sick but are discouraged. It is, therefore, the obligation of the Adlerian to help the client identify and change their ill-perceived beliefs of self, others, and life thus giving them a sense of belonging in an equal society.  Its major contributions in elementary education, family therapy, group counseling and parent education have made the development of the model very effective.

Reference

Adlerian.us,. (2015). Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://www.adlerian.us/theoprac.htm

Alfredadler.edu,. (2015). Alfred Adler: Theory and Application | Adler Graduate School. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://alfredadler.edu/about/theory

Carlson, J., Watts, R., & Maniacci, M. (2006). Adlerian therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Carlson, J., Watts, R., & Maniacci, M. (2006). Adlerian Therapy: Theory and Practice. American Psychological Association, 2(3), 313.

Corey, G. (2013). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth

Heinrich, E. (2015). Adlerian Collection | Adler Graduate School. Alfredadler.edu. Retrieved 22 June 2015, from http://alfredadler.edu/library/adlerian-collection

Jon, C., & Patricia, R. (2011). An Integrative Adlerian Approach to Family Counseling. Journal Of Individual Psychology, 67(3), 232.

Oberst, U., & Stewart, A. (2003). Adlerian psychotherapy. Hove [England]: Brunner-Routledge.

Sherman, R., & Dinkmeyer, D. (1987). Systems of family therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

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