Emotions in Adlerian psychotherapy and counseling

Emotions in Adlerian psychotherapy and counseling

Individual psychology views the individual as a unit as opposed to a collection of personality traits that add up to an overall personality. The individual strives to overcome a perceived minus or inferiority by establishing a goal and a direction of movement. The individual is an indivisible whole, a body-mind unity that itself strives to belong to the larger units of humanity and the cosmos. In this context, if the Adlerian premise is correct, emotions and feelings should occur as an aspect of the individual's striving rather than as an independent force within the personality.

However, subjectively to the individual it usually appears different. He is “overwhelmed by emotions,” “dominated by emotions,” “speechless by emotions.” He may see emotions as having such a power over him that he “couldn’t help it,” “my anger overcame me and drove me there.” Emotions allow individuals to reject responsibility for their own actions and see themselves as victims of irrational forces that are beyond their control but reside within them.

Appearances are misleading. Ultimately, we cannot understand human behavior and character unless we accept that the individual is indivisible and responsible. The alternative view of viewing personality as a mere sum of inputs dissolves the individual into independent forces. In fact, there can be no indivisible and responsible personality unless the individual is a self-directing, goal-setting, choosing and self-determining entity.

What purposes do emotions serve in human life? They appear to mobilize the individual in movement towards a goal. It is interesting that the etymology of the word emotion alludes to a feeling of movement: e = out, movere = move. There is a feeling of movement in it, a movement from one point to another or a movement in one direction. Sometimes this movement can be a push against movement, to stand still or to hesitate. Sometimes it can be a bearish movement.

Adler places the individual in his social environment, without which the individual is actually unthinkable. The individual is born, develops and matures in a social sphere. The meaning or direction of this social field, which behaves like an omnipresent social gravity, is Adler's sense of community, social interest, social consciousness or sense of community. It is striking that Adler identifies this as a feeling, feeling. The individual's goal is revealed emotionally and expressed in action. In extreme cases, this behavior can be completely consistent with social interest. at the other extreme, it can be diametrically opposed to social interest. The former could be considered subjunctive and the latter disjunctive.

I believe that it would be wrong to classify the emotions themselves as conjunctive or disjunctive. They only have meaning or purpose as a part or aspect of the person's overall movement. It would be tempting to see love and admiration as a subjunctive in itself, but what about love and admiration for the leader and a violently pursued ideal of racial purity? Obviously this love carried with it hatred and aggression. And would it be disjunctive to hate injustice and oppression and mobilize forces against them? Our actions, emotions and goals can only be evaluated by the “absolute truth” of the sense of community.

Emotions must always be present in everything the individual does, even if it is not always obvious. The emotions express our assessment of our situation and our intended reaction. As such, we can expect emotions to be felt particularly when lifestyle is under environmental pressure. A person whose priority is avoiding stress and failure reacts emotionally to impending danger. His emotions will heighten his awareness of his danger, focus his entire being on dealing with the situation, and mobilize all the necessary internal forces for this purpose. At the same time, awareness is closed to other aspects of the environment that seem irrelevant.

The individual is a unity of mind and body, and emotions directly express the connection between mind and body, as if they were thoughts expressed in the body. This is Adler's organ dialect, or what we would today call body language. We often talk about being moved by experiences. Memories can also have this effect. A thought can be felt in its physical effects. We know we are in touch with a meaningful experience when we feel it in our body. This can be an acceleration of the pulse, a start, nervous tension and increased consciousness. But even a threatening experience can make us feel cold. This can leave us feeling like we have no control over our emotions, and in a sense this is true. However, it is certain that we only caused our own emotions out of consciousness. Lifestyle and its overarching network of goals have been vigilant in the largely unconscious activity of securing our existence. We are just surprised that we can be mobilized in our own defense so quickly and without our conscious intervention.

Adler once said that all character traits, including the full range of possible emotions, are present from the beginning of our lives and that lifestyle selection represents a subset of them as the most promising for the conduct of one's life. In this sense, lifestyle is the more or less rigid concentration of one's own inner forces, a form of psychological sclerosis or inflexibility. This also applies to the range of emotions of the individual. Adler noted that as a person grows older, he acquires the face that he has created through the emotions that usually play in his facial features. The misanthropic will focus on pessimistic and aggressive moods, which are prolonged emotions over time. He will dwell in such moods and shape his face and even his entire body to express them. For this reason, when we become an experienced judge of character, we can read the characters of those around us. It also raises the possibility that a movement in the opposite direction may take place: awareness of, for example, a stiff posture or fixed facial expressions can reveal to the individual deeply ingrained habits of thought and posture and stimulate him to reflect on how he produces them.

This possibility seems to me to be offered by practices such as the Alexander Technique and certain martial arts. It is possible to become aware of mood by reading your own body language. It is common knowledge that it is possible to bring about changes in one's emotional state by making changes in one's body, for example through exercise, country walks, and so on. David K ​​​​Reynolds tells how he used to have to be professionally classified as mentally ill in order to evaluate the treatment of patients in US psychiatric facilities. He was able to transform himself into such a depressed person by changing his posture and physical posture that he was admitted to these facilities as a real case and passed a professional evaluation. As he tells it, he was actually a real case and had to act on himself in the opposite sense at the end of the exercise to become the real David K ​​Reynolds again.

Of course, emotions play a very important role in Adlerian and all other counseling and psychotherapy, as they always have to be present. The Tricuric Recognition Reflex itself is the emotional jolt the client feels when a deep truth about themselves is felt at their inner core. The emotional reaction shows what is really felt. We know we are in touch with the customer's soul when we can feel the customer's emotions. By recounting their early memories and other important material clients, they always reveal their emotional attitudes that emphasize their private logic, biased perceptions, and value systems. In addition, the client also feels this: he recognizes through his own reaction to what he says that these things have a special meaning for him. And by asking a client to retell an early memory, we can get the client to revisit emotional states. A particular client of mine did not understand how much he resented his childhood treatment from his mother until certain events and situations were revisited in this way. When he felt that resentment again, he had to acknowledge that this feeling had been with him throughout his life since childhood. Adler speaks of the task of psychotherapy to enable the client to feel the living truth. This truth can never be just an idea. It is only a truth when it is felt.

Sometimes we describe psychotherapy and counseling as the cure of speaking, as if it were just rational dialogue. The entire process is permeated and mediated by emotions. It is the emotion that connects the shared activity of client and therapist. It is the emotion that underpins the client's transference and the therapist's countertransference.

Every significant event in psychotherapy is an emotional event. The relationship between therapist and client, when successful, is based on emotional bonds of trust and acceptance.

Adler also said that feelings are not arguments. Clients and people in general who need to free themselves from responsibility for their own actions like to identify their feelings as independent of their will. In reality, they are not independent of our will, but seemingly independent of our conscious control. They appear to our consciousness as clouds that have blown in to darken our inner sky. But the mind created them and the mind can blow them away by taking back responsibility. Feelings fade. If they don't seem to fade, it's because we keep them alive and feed their fire because they suit our purposes. I am thinking of a client who has maintained a deep resentment against his mother because it justified his lack of achievement and failure to mature. It supported his system of self-pity and sacrifice, which freed him from the responsibility of playing his full role in life. He might receive special consideration from the world at large. It was only when he felt this resentment that he understood its toxic effects. As he moves on from this old position, this client becomes visibly freed from the need to continually produce and reinforce the feelings of resentment and self-pity.

Recently a client gave me an early memory that reminded her of her childhood and not wanting to go to a party and face the possible humiliation of rejection from other children hiding under a bed. Their sadness and misery were palpable. A nagging feeling of missing something led me to revisit this early memory a week later and feel a deeper purpose. The purpose of hiding was to be found, comforted, and helped. The client smiled when she realized this - and also remembered her childhood disappointment when her father came into the room and didn't notice her!

Lifestyle can be viewed as a security system that recognizes the major dangers of life and sets up the defensive measures that must be taken to keep the person safe. Part of this system is constant perimeter monitoring to detect approach to danger. The person shows this in the irritations to which he is exposed. The person feeling a loss of control must respond when their sense of control is threatened. The person who needs to feel meaningful must respond when his inferiority is at risk of being exposed. The enjoyer must avert any feeling of rejection or non-acceptance. The emotion underlying all of this is a deep existential fear that leaves the person eternally vigilant and vulnerable. At the other end of the spectrum is the person who feels at peace with the world, is accepted and self-accepting, and whose basic emotion comes closest to the full development of a sense of community.

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