Alfred Adler and his theory of Personality

Alfred Adler and his theory of Personality

Introduction

The paper is a comprehensively focusing on Alfred Adler's theory, addressing a fictional case study. The case study is based on a 19 years old Japanese girl Gina, who has a complete family that includes two brothers, father and mother including herself. She is an average student with a depression problem she feels under estimated and is concerned about self-esteem. Main causes of her depression are her attractive personality, some of her family members especially her brother and other people. At he age of 17 Gina was sexually assaulted by her brother, she told her parents about the assault but they didn't responded. She is an attractive girl and has a well-endowed large breasts because of it she feels her body causes men to pursue her. She believes that she is always being approached by boys and men because of her body but not her personality and she feels like they never see her; they just see her breasts. She is punished by her parents whenever she doesn't follow the rules. For sexual assault she told her parents but they said they would talk to her brother about it told her that it was between her family so she was forced to keep it as a secret and not to discuss it with anyone else.

Alfred Adler's theory of Personality

In such cases Alfred Adler's theory is at once a model of personality, a theory of psychopathology, and in many cases the foundation of a method for mind development and personal growth. Adler wrote, "Every individual represents a unity of personality and the individual then fashions that unity (Betz, 2008). The individual is thus both the picture and the artist. Therefore if one can change one's concept of self, they can change the picture being painted." His Individual Psychology is based on a humanistic model of man. Among the basic concepts are:

Holism. The Adlerian views man as a unit, a self-conscious whole that functions as an open system, not as a collection of drives and instincts (Shaffer, 2006, 422-452).

Field Theory. The premise is that an individual can only be studied by his movements, actions and relationships within his social field.

Teleology. While Adler's name is linked most often with the term 'inferiority-complex,' towards the end of his career he became more concerned with observing the individual's struggle for significance or competence ...