Institute Blog

Erik Mansager draws a detailed parallel between Alfred Adler's theory of the lifestyle and Dan Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology, exploring how both theorists account for the early formation of perception, purpose, and psychological movement.

Erik Mansager makes the case that educating Adlerian practitioners requires both thoroughness and structure — a developmental approach that builds mastery progressively rather than treating Adlerian training as a collection of techniques.

A report on a NASAP convention presentation by Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy practitioners, weaving together three practitioners' stories to offer a window into how CADP moves from theory into clinical action.

Prompted by a former student's enthusiastic account of working with Polyvagal Theory and somatic approaches to trauma, Erik Mansager asks the question Adlerian theory puts at the center of all healing: what purpose does the symptom serve?

In appreciating Dr. Dan Siegel's work in The Mindful Therapist, Erik Mansager offers an Adlerian perspective on Interpersonal Neurobiology and what's involved in "rewiring" our brains.

Erik offers a perspective on the usefulness of this rich construct in better understanding our clients' characteristic movements and ultimate goal.

A reflection on the relationship between creative power and active encouragement in Adlerian clinical work.

Erik Mansager examines therapeutic encouragement not as a technique but as an art — one that must be reinvented for each client, rooted in authentic care and the therapist's careful attention to unnoticed progress.

Erik Mansager examines a subtle but consequential mistranslation in the Dreikursian literature — the rendering of Adler's schöpferische Kraft (creative power) as "the creative self."

Erik Mansager responds to a mischaracterization of Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy in a widely circulated Adlerian textbook — addressing the claims that CADP is European, psychoanalytic, and exclusively long-term.

Rowena Ripin Ansbacher writes from personal memory of her first encounters with Alfred Adler — offering a rare and intimate portrait of the man himself, wholly congruent with his own psychology and possessed of a naturally therapeutic way of being.

A report from the 2019 NASAP conference in Tucson, recapping three workshops and capturing Henry Stein's reflections on what is missing in current Adlerian training.

The sixth and concluding installment of the "Adler in-Depth (and breadth)" column, reflecting on the series as a whole and closing with Adler's own words on cooperation and the plurality of healing methods.

Erik Mansager takes up a reader's suggestion to reframe Adlerian Individual Psychology around its psychodynamics rather than its constructs — surveying the global landscape of Adlerian thought from North America to Europe.

Erik Mansager turns from the broad therapeutic aims of CADP to its specific clinical tools — the more than twenty clinical constructs drawn from the Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler.

Erik Mansager turns to what Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy actually aims for in practice — and the answer goes further than most Adlerian approaches.

Erik Mansager and Jane Griffith revisit a 30-year-old debate on a foundational question: did Adler and Dreikurs actually agree on the primary motivation of human beings? The article makes the case that acknowledging their theoretical differences is not only historically accurate but clinically important.

The second installment takes up the question of what "classical" actually means in Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy, tracing the rich body of literature from Adler and his close associates that forms its foundation.

The inaugural installment of Erik Mansager's "Adler in-Depth (and breadth)" column, introducing its purpose — to dispel the idea that Adler's contribution has been exhausted — and previewing the topics ahead.