WHAT ADLERIAN THERAPY IS LIKE
Adlerian therapists try to help people change unfulfilling patterns of living in several ways.
First, and perhaps most important, is the belief that therapy should do more than help clients with immediate problems. It should help them develop an adequate philosophy of life, encourage them to cultivate an approach to living that is self-sustaining, positive, and inherently social in focus. The paradox of inferiority and low self-esteem is that the suffering they cause disappears once people can forget themselves and begin living to some extent for others. Adler would remind his clients to "consider from time to time how you can give another person pleasure."[[6]] Adlerian therapy stresses the importance of social goals. For Adler, we are foremost social creatures; our individual identities can be developed and our problems resolved only in a social context.
[[6]] Alfred Adler, Problems of Neurosis (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 101.
Since Adler believed that most emotional difficulties we experience result from feelings of inferiority that have led to discouragement, the second goal of Adlerian therapists is to offer encouragement. They are as much concerned with mirroring clients' strengths as they are with analyzing their problems. Adlerian therapists will devote a good deal of attention to identifying and encouraging the personal assets of each client.
Adler suggested several techniques that have also come to be used by other schools of psychotherapy:
Acting "As If"
Frequently, clients express a wish to begin acting in new ways—to be more assertive, to make an effort to break out of confining patterns of living, to conquer certain fears. However, they usually feel that the new behaviors are phony, so they are reluctant to try. Adler suggested that clients try a new behavior for the next week only as they would try on new clothing: they need only act as if. Adler found that, as clients began to act differently, they would begin to feel differently. When their feelings were positive, they tended to make new ways of behaving part of themselves. (Behavior modification, described in the next chapter, builds on this idea.)
Paradoxical Intention