Theorist That Has Influenced My Beliefs

Theorist that has influenced my beliefs

Alfred Adler postulates a single drive or motivating force behind all our performance and knowledge. When his theory had gelled into its most mature form, he called that motivating force the striving for perfection. It is the yearning we all have to fulfill our potentials, to come closer and closer to our superlative. It is, very similar to the more accepted idea of self-actualization. Flawlessness and superlative are troublesome words, though. On the one hand, they are very positive goals and yet, they are often given a rather negative connotation. Faultlessness and superlative are, practically by definition, things you can't reach. Many people, in fact, live very sad and painful lives trying to be perfect! (Boeree, 2006).

Motivated for perfection was not the first phrase Adler used to refer to his single motivating force. His earliest phrase was the belligerence drive, referring to the reaction such as our need to eat, get things done, or be loved, are frustrated. It might be better called the forcefulness drive, since we tend to think of belligerence as physical and unconstructive. Another word Adler used to refer to basic motivation was compensation, or striving to overcome. Since we all have problems, short-comings, inferiorities of one sort or another, Adler felt, earlier in his writing, which our personalities could be accounted for by the ways in which we do or don't recompense or conquer those problems. (Boeree, 2006).

One of Adler's earliest phrases was masculine protest. Boys were held in higher esteem than girls. Boys wanted, often desperately, to be thought of as strong, aggressive, in control -- i.e. "masculine" -- and not weak, passive, or dependent -- i.e. "feminine." The point, of course, was that men are somehow basically better than women. They do, after all, have the authority, the instruction, and apparently the aptitude and inspiration needed to do "great things," and women don't. You can still hear this in the kinds of comments older people make about little boys and girls: If a baby boy fusses or demands to have his own way (masculine protest!), they will say he's a natural boy; If a little girl is quiet and shy, she is praised for her femininity; If, on the other hand, the boy is quiet and shy, they worry that he might grow up to be a sissy; Or if a girl is assertive and gets her way, they call her a "tomboy" and will try to reassure you that she'll grow out of it! (Boeree, 2006).

But Adler did not see men's forcefulness and accomplishments in the world as due to some innate superiority. He saw it as a reflection of the fact that boys are encouraged to be assertive in life, and girls are discouraged. Both boys and girls, however, begin life with the capacity for protest! The last phrase he used, before switching to striving for perfection, was striving for superiority. Although striving for superiority does refer to the desire to be better, it also contains the idea that we want to be better than others, rather than better in our own right. (Boeree, 2006).

Alder's influences on society and the workplace

While Adler had played a key role in the development of psychoanalysis, he was also one of the first major figures to break away to form his own school of thought. He was quick to point out that while he had been a colleague of Freud's, he was in no way a disciple of the famous Austrian psychiatrist. (Cherry, 2012)

In 1912, Alfred Adler founded the Society of Individual Psychology. Adler's theory suggested that every person has a sense of inferiority. From childhood, people work toward overcoming this inferiority and asserting their superiority over others. Adler referred to this as 'striving for superiority' and believed that this drive was the motivating force behind human behaviors, emotions and thoughts. (Cherry, 2012) As individuals we all have the need to be control of and manage groups of people. As a on-line student I have been in several learning groups and for the most part the experience have been positive, yet there are those rare occasions where personalities to clash. These clashes cause disturbances amongst the group, in which different individual's personalities start to work against each other. If I were to take that same aspect and apply it to my experiences at work, the theory will still be acceptable and apply.

Although at my work place I'm surrounded by different