Respecting Differences: Adler and Dreikurs
Respecting Differences: Adler and Dreikurs
Presentation
Individual Psychology in the Current World: Best Practices Hosted by: International Association of Individual Psychology November 19th, 2018
About this Presentation
As part of the inauguration of the annual International Conference of Individual Psychology (https://individualpsychology.net), the authors were invited to revisit a 30-year-old published discussion on the psychological tenet of primary human motivation: whether Alfred Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, and Rudolf Dreikurs, one of his well-known students and expositors, agreed on this tenet. The article makes several contributions to the theoretical discussion. It provides context for reintroducing the original discussion and its assertion that a substantial theoretical difference exists between Adler and Dreikurs. It highlights the published denials of this difference, and it offers a methodology for supporting or refuting the denial of any difference between the two men. The authors briefly explore why acknowledging Dreikursian formulations as different from Adlerian formulations is important and clinically useful.
Thirty years ago, a dispute arose among North American Adlerians about Alfred Adler's position on the primary motivation of human beings. This dispute was published from 1987 to 1988 in sequential issues of Individual Psychology Reporter (IPR), the quarterly newsletter of the Americas Institute for Adlerian Studies. Over the course of the discussion, Adler's stated position—that the primary motivation for "a striving from a felt minus position towards a plus situation" (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956, p. 1)—was contrasted to that of Rudolf Dreikurs: that "the basic social motivation of each human being is the desire to belong" (e.g., Dreikurs, 1971, p. 116). The outcome of the dispute, as presented in IPR, was that Adler and Dreikurs disagreed on this basic motivation and that the difference should be acknowledged.
The current authors' interest in this topic revolves around several puzzling circumstances, primary among them the lack of awareness of this important discussion along with its well-supported outcome. We are interested in exploring this again, because with the publication of The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler and other developments in the international Adlerian world, several demonstrable variances between Adler and Dreikurs (regarding theory, therapy, training, and even their personalities) have become apparent.
Practically none of these has received attention within the North American Adlerian discourse. When they are raised, room for another opinion has not been offered. Alternately, those wishing to discuss the findings are sometimes thought to be defending an assumed Adlerian orthodoxy and/or to be hunting for heretics (e.g., reviewers' comments on the first draft of this article).
To look at the publication record in Journal of Individual Psychology since the IPR dispute shows three published accounts, one interview, and at least one international presentation, all written or presented by the same author, coming after the original debate on differences, none of which mention the original debate or acknowledge the outcome of it. Instead, the author's accounts state that Dreikurs's position on motivation was in line with Adler's position; that Adler changed his understanding of the primal motivation from striving from minus to plus to that of belonging. The author maintains this by creating references to three stages of Adler's motivation theory development. Also puzzling is that none of the published accounts shows where Adler actually said this or unambiguously intended a shift away from striving in favor of belonging. Instead, the author offers partial quotes selected from Adler's writings on Gemeinschaftsgefühl, which are used to transform one basic human need (belonging) into the primary motivating force of every individual and the species.
The authors intend to revisit the discussion in as clear a manner as we can by raising interlocking questions across three main topics: the alleged difference between Adler and Dreikurs, the denial of these differences, and the impact of the difference between Adler and Dreikurs on the provision of Adlerian psychotherapy. Let us share some of our questions with you.
Can the claim that there are real, demonstrable, and legitimate differences between Adler and Dreikurs be supported? Is it somehow wrong to show that the men differed, sometimes fundamentally? Have efforts been made to grasp what these differences mean in the practice of Individual Psychology? Who benefits when legitimate differences are detected and discussed?
What can we know about the denial that there are any differences between Adler and Dreikurs? Is the rhetoric around the denial a helpful critique; a correcting course? Are there any drawbacks to denying obvious differences? Is it ever appropriate to cover up differences or declare that they do not exist or do not matter? Who benefits when they are denied?
Can the congruence of Adler's theory and style of therapy be maintained in the face of theoretical differences? What happens to a theory's congruence when differences become "additions," or when the differences are portrayed as "advances"? Does it matter if Dreikurs's differences have an impact on the congruence of Adler's theory?
In raising awareness about the original finding that Adler and Dreikurs fundamentally disagreed on the primary motivation of the human person—and the subsequent denial of their differences—we mean to initiate a study of the impact of Dreikurs's modifications of Individual Psychology and its therapeutic implications.
The Alleged Difference
For now, let us reacquaint you with the original discussion that brought the differences between Adler and Dreikurs to initial prominence.
Setting
Over a 9-year period, Jane Griffith and Bob Powers, via their newsletter Individual Psychology Reporter, offered informative news articles, current and classic, along with commentary and discussions. IPR was their brainchild and labor of love.
In the late 1970s, as a young Dreikursian, the first author relished hearing his major professor, Oscar (Chris) Christensen, regale students with stories of Dreikurs and how he and his Chicago school regularly upset the established order of the New York school. He found the IPR issues stimulating as a print forum for the American Adlerian therapeutic community.
As he remembers Chris telling it, Dreikurs wanted to keep Adlerian thought alive and vibrant and felt that the New York group was too tied to tradition and altogether too cautious among their psychoanalytic counterparts. Dreikurs, it was said, liked to shake things up. So 10 years later, in the late 1980s, he was impressed to see Dreikurs's ghost still able to shake things up. But this time the IPR did it by offering an authentic inquiry about the workings of Adler's theory.
It was late 1987 when IPR came out with the hint that something was brewing. Griffith reported that in her recent seminar, participants found themselves with widely different understandings of how Adler expressed the character of human striving. That set the stage for a debate that extended into five more issues of the IPR (Vol. 5, Nos. 2–4; Vol. 6, Nos. 1–2).
Writings
The discussion was first proposed in this way: In 1988 Stanley Dubelle, the editor of a NASAP interest-section newsletter, reprinted an observation made by Griffith in 1987 about basic motivation within Individual Psychology. Griffith and Powers included Dubelle's comment on the matter in their IPR in the spring of 1988:
Adlerians appear divided on the question as to whether "belonging" or "superiority striving" is the basic motivator according to Individual Psychology's understanding of human being. . . . [M]any of those who were trained by Rudolf Dreikurs follow him in support of belonging as the primary goal, while others advocate the striving for superiority (or as variously stated by Adler, the striving for perfection, totality, completion, or success as any of these is privately envisioned by the individual). . . . There is a vast difference between these two [interpretations]. We do a disservice to those to whom we try to communicate the tenets of I[ndividual] P[sychology] when we unthinkingly interchange the two or, worse yet, don't even [refer to] the striving for superiority. (p. 1)
That was the gauntlet.
Next, the Griffith–Powers team took it upon themselves to review the most available and popular books of Adler (seven of them) and Dreikurs (six of them) to see what they could find out about the two men's positions. Their findings: (a) While "belongingness" was referenced in Adler's discussion of Gemeinschaftsgefühl, there are no references to belonging as the primary motivator in any of the Adler books; (b) similarly, there were surprisingly few references to belonging in the Dreikurs books, and (c) both Adler and Dreikurs seemed aligned in affirming "Adler's striving for superiority (or significance) as the basic motivator and goal" (Griffith, 1988a, p. 3).
This was puzzling, because it did not explain clearly Dreikurs's well-known position on belonging. So, Griffith and Powers took a closer look at Dreikurs's publication dates to track revisions to subsequent editions of his earlier texts. As a result, they suspected it was Dreikurs's position on belonging as prime motivator—rather than Adler's on striving from minus to plus—that was under development in Dreikurs's books that Griffith and Powers reviewed. Quite a puzzle.
Conclusion Drawn
What they uncovered by their closer reading of Dreikurs's books—comparing his earlier and later texts—seemed to confirm the notion of Dreikurs's developing his position on belonging. It is still striking to read the IPR conclusion:
A genuine difference in Dreikurs's understanding of human striving separated him from Adler as early as . . . 1933 [i.e., in Dreikurs's Fundamentals of Adlerian Psychology]. It was a difference perhaps too unclearly stated for either Dreikurs or Adler to have remarked upon at the time, since Dreikurs used many of the same terms that Adler had used, but in a different context of assumption and emphasis. . . . [I]n the late 1940s . . . Dreikurs made his difference with Adler increasingly clear. . . . What he did not do was acknowledge this difference, for reasons that we are not able to find, and about which one can only speculate. (Griffith, 1988b, p. 3)
The gloves came off at that point, and the fall 1988 issue of IPR featured seven in-depth commentaries about the previous issue, along with the Griffith and Powers responses. The other contributors—including Heinz Ansbacher, Ray Corsini, Guy Manaster, and others—offered stimulating insights into the discussion. Eva Dreikurs Ferguson, in disagreement with the Griffith–Powers conclusion, asserted that there was no difference between Dreikurs and Adler. "Dreikurs confirmed, and did not differ from, Adler's thinking when he wrote Fundamentals of Adlerian Psychology," she insisted (Ferguson, cited in Griffith, 1988c, p. 3). Griffith and Powers responded to each commentary in kind without believing that the comments altered their already stated conclusion in IPR (Griffith, 1988b):
According to Dreikurs . . . "[each] individual tries to get himself accepted by the community." . . . In cases where children are subjected to faulty parenting, this effort is not experienced as successful, and an erroneous self-assessment ensues in the form of an inferiority feeling, which "impels [the child] to strive for significance" as a compensatory effort "to obtain power of some kind in order to cancel the supposed superiority of other people." . . . In other words, the inferiority feeling is not an ever-present spur (as Adler construed it); rather, for Dreikurs it emerges as a consequence of disappointment, defeat, failure, and frustration; and, as such, it is always neurotic. (pp. 3–6)
Aftermath
After 30 years, does the matter still have legs? By that we mean, might the issue still deserve a balanced discourse? Until now, all the known references to the disagreement mention Dreikurs as having discerned Adler's non-self-acknowledged change. According to Ferguson:
What Dreikurs wrote about . . . was fully congruent with Adler's thinking and writing in the 1930s. . . . [B]y the early 1930s, Adler clearly identified from an evolutionary perspective that the fundamental motivation was "belonging." That is, as a species, the human in evolution moved from minus to plus; at the individual level, belonging was foremost. When the individual mastered a task, then striving was from minus to plus, but within the broader striving for belonging. (Griffith, 1988c, p. 3)
Ferguson pointed the interested reader to her 1984 work, Adlerian Theory: An Introduction, to better understand "the stages of growth in theory in Adler's own thinking and writing" (Ferguson, as cited in Griffith, 1988c, p. 3). And the following year, in the first post-IPR publication in 1989, Ferguson expanded her response, saying that Dreikurs discerned over the course of Adler's career that Adler's theory about motivation went through three stages, which she delineates as follows:
The first stage was less sharply crystallized as a motivation theory and emphasized organ inferiority, while the second (middle) stage emphasized striving for power and superiority as the fundamental human motivation. In the third stage, Adler made it explicit that humans as a species strive to belong and that the goal, dictated by evolution, is to contribute to human welfare. (p. 354)
Ferguson stated that the final result of Adler's motivation theory was that feeling inferior was not a universal motivator. As she was to say in 2016, to believe that the inferiority feeling was a motivator for everyone was an error made and propagated by Heinz Ansbacher, whom she characterizes as "a stockbroker who got therapy from Adler" (Ferguson, 2016, p. 19). "Ansbacher got stuck in the 2nd stage," she said; "He got stuck in believing that inferiority feelings were inevitable and part of psychic life" (Ferguson, 2016, p. 20). Opposing this view, Ferguson (2016) continued, was Dreikurs: "My father got it. I just added to what my father thought. . . . He didn't put it in those terms because he wasn't trained as an experimental psychologist, which I was" (p. 20). It was, she said, by means of her own rigorous experimental psychological training that she has been more capable of explaining Adler's third-stage thinking: While people of all ages can feel inferior about their level of task completion, any actual suffering from "inferiority feelings about one's self identity" only inflicts people who have not been raised by democratic means (Ferguson, 2016, p. 20).
This argument is made in all the post-IPR publications (Ferguson 1989, 2000, 2010, 2016) as if it were an established fact. It seems that an attempt at developing a scholarly consensus, or any commentary or rebuttal, is missing. Ferguson implies that every Adler expositor other than Dreikurs had overlooked the evolution of Adler's motivational theory. Another consistent aspect of her argumentation is that she does not quote Adler directly on the matter—nor do any of the authors of publications that accept the notion of Adler's theory change (e.g., Marková & Čechová, 2016; Mosak & Maniacci, 1999; Nelson, 1981/1995; Oberst & Stewart, 2003; Shifron, Abramson, Joosten, Bettner, & Ferguson, 2018). None offers a statement from Adler himself on belonging as the fundamental motivator of humanity. When Ferguson does quote Adler, it is when he acknowledges that belonging is a basic human need (e.g., 2010, p. 1), not that Adler believed belonging was a prime motivator. When Ferguson raises the matter of belonging at the core of her own explanation of Adler's theory—she regularly cites herself rather than Adler (e.g., Ferguson, 2000, pp. 98, 200).
Griffith and Powers had already encountered and addressed such citation omission—what might be considered misattribution—in their IPR discussion. Heinz Ansbacher brought it to their attention in 1985 (Griffith, 1985). They reprinted his comments for the 1988 discussion (Griffith, 1988a):
I would like to take exception to the second paragraph of Rosemary M. Marquette's article. . . . She asserts that for Adler "the strongest motivating force for the human being is the desire to belong to the social world." If she has a reference to Adler for this statement, I would like to know it. Rudolf Dreikurs often wrote of "the need to belong" as the strongest motivating force and should be recognized as the author. (p. 3)
Ferguson's formulation of what she sees as Adler's shift from striving for superiority to striving for belonging is intriguing and perhaps useful in a certain conceptualization of the human person. Yet, such characteristics also apply to the formulation of other neo-Adlerian ideas (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956, p. 16): the works of Franz Alexander, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney (1950)—who originally proposed "belongingness" as a human motivator—and Harry Stack Sullivan. Their ideas and conceptualizations, however, do not substitute for the historical data related to Adler himself.
So, there you have the context of the difference between Adler and Dreikurs. We trust we've represented Ferguson accurately. That is certainly our intention. Our interest is not to illustrate right or wrong but to accurately portray the initial discussion of the difference. Next, we'll address in closer detail the denial of an Adler-Dreikurs difference.
The Denial of Difference
It is possible that we find ourselves in a quagmire in the effort to offer proof texts that verify Adler's consistent motivational position on striving from minus to plus. It will take a longer presentation than this to understand the motivation for Ferguson's choice of quotes and connections from Adler's writings in the 1930s, which she uses to retroactively support Dreikurs's contention of belonging as the prime motivator. If one were to be satisfied by the published historical record alone, Griffith and Powers's original effort would have settled the matter in 1988.
Instead of proof texts, we take a course that is similar to Adler's (1929/2005) stochastic guessing scheme, by which he conceptualized his clients' movement. We take guesses about the direction of a person's movement, but we surrender the veracity of the guess if future evidence refutes and does not support it. The initial guess is then abandoned or corrected to advance to a more plausible understanding.
In this case, Dreikurs's propositions (or guesses) about a change in Adler's theory are taken from Ferguson's writing, evidence is suggested that would support the conjecture and if this is not found, if support cannot be documented, the guess is determined to be nonsupported, refuted. By Adler's standard, such guesses should be corrected or abandoned.
Dreikursian Proposition 1
Ferguson (1989) proposed that "Adler developed his motivational theory through three identifiable phases" (p. 354). This statement could be supported and/or verified if Adler's biographers also noted that his motivational theory developed through such stages. In contrast, if there is no corroboration provided by Adler's biographers, the position is considerably weakened, if not refuted.
Dreikursian Proposition 2
Ferguson stated that the three stages of Adler's theoretical development were overlooked by others. Her implication is that the Ansbachers missed it and Dreikurs didn't. She explained her understanding this way: "Ansbacher never had, never shared the clinical experiences that my dad did, so he misunderstood much of Adler's emphasis" (Ferguson, 2016, p. 19). She seemed to imply that the Ansbachers were not clinically minded enough and that clinicians closer to Adler would be better able to discern Adler's stages and the supposed shift from striving to belonging.
Setting aside the nonclinical biographers, this proposition could be supported and/or verified, if a preponderance, or even a small number, of reliable clinicians who worked with Adler agreed overtly or tacitly with Dreikurs's three-phases proposition. If, however, a preponderance of clinicians who worked with Adler disagreed overtly or tacitly with Dreikurs on this point, this second proposition would be nonsupported and/or refuted and so would be in need of modification or abandonment.
Dreikursian Proposition 3
Setting aside the question of three phases, one can ask about the presumed emergence of belonging as the fundamental motivator—the crux of the difference between Adler and Dreikurs. Thus, Ferguson conjectures that, "according to Adler, the fundamental motivation of humans is to belong and to contribute to the community (Ferguson, 1995)" (Ferguson, 2000, p. 200). Ferguson uses Adler's growing understanding of Gemeinschaftsgefühl to affirm that he eventually saw this as a motivator. A particular challenge to support or refute this contention arises: There are no published statements by Adler to support that position. So, to sustain or verify a position that has no publication record, no published counterevidence can exist. If published statements contrary to Ferguson's position can be found, the contention that Adler changed his mind would be refuted. That is, published statements by Adler that indicate he maintained superiority striving as the primary human motivator—especially during the years conjectured as a third phase—would be the refutation and should lead to an abandonment or modification of Dreikurs's proposition.
The data that support refuting the propositions above is long and verifiable.
Regarding Proposition 1; or, Adler's Motivation Theory in Three Stages
Among Adler's biographers—academic, clinical, and otherwise (e.g., Bottome, 1957; Eife, 2018; Furtmüller, 1964; Hoffman, 1994; Orgler, 1963; Rattner, 1983; Sperber, 1974)—none identifies three phases in the development of his motivation theory.
Regarding Proposition 2; or, Ansbacher Misunderstood Because He Was Not a Clinician
The sequence of Adler's theory development presented by the Ansbachers (1956) has been corroborated by a number of clinicians past and present. For example, Gisela Eife, a contemporary Adlerian clinician and expositor, when asked about the development of Adler's motivation theory, responded this way: "As Adler wrote in 1926 and 1931, being human means to have inferiority feelings. That means Adler did not abandon his early understanding of inferiority feeling. In my understanding there are no stages" (Personal communication, September 18, 2016).
And within the works of the Classical Adlerian Translation Project we have access to the writings and professional opinions of several clinicians who worked intimately with Adler. The writings of Anthony Bruck, Alexander Müller, and Sophia deVries now join those of Kurt Adler, Sophie Lazarsfeld, Lydia Sicher, Erwin Wexberg, and Beran Wolfe, among others, who corroborate the Ansbachers' account of Adler's theory. Their writings and clinical presentations, which utilize Adler's understanding of motivation as striving from minus to plus, amount to endorsements of the Ansbachers' intellectual integrity.
Regarding Proposition 3; or, Adler Believed Belonging Was the Primary Motivator
The books by Adler that Griffith and Powers had examined were "laced with discussions of the striving for superiority, the striving from a minus to a plus, the striving to overcome feelings of inferiority, and similar phrases" (Griffith, 1988b, p. 3). That was accurate then and remains so today. Now, we also have corroboration from the 12 volumes that make up The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler (CCWAA).
Already in the first four volumes, two books, A Study of Organ Inferiority (Adler, 2002a) and The Neurotic Character (Adler, 2002b), and more than 40 published articles (Adler, 2003a, 2003b) lay the structure for Adler's theory of compensation, from which developed his formulation of striving. This is expressed in terms that are biological (e.g., organ inferiority) and gendered (e.g., masculine protest) but are not different theories; nor are they changed conceptualizations of what motivates people (as suggested by Oberst & Stewart, 2003, p. 21). They are clearer and clearer iterations of Adler's appreciation that psychological movement goes from felt minus to felt plus.
Volumes 4–11 are also laced with statements, articles, and full sections that illustrate the consistency of his position on striving and how he put it to use. Volume 4 contains Adler's 1918 article on Dostoyevsky, which signals the beginning of Adler's incorporation of Gemeinschaftsgefühl as the direction-giving aspect of the striving movement. This formulation, which pays respect to the biological striving and to the influence of social embeddedness, what Adler once called "a dual dynamic" (Eife, 2018), was part of Adler's theory from this point onward, right through to his last works, published and unpublished.
The last book in the CCWAA, Volume 12, is a formerly unpublished series of lectures titled The General System of Individual Psychology. The editor comments that in this undated material: "Adler's terminology and style suggest that the lectures were given later in his career, and represent a summary of his mature theory of the personality, as well as principles of prevention and treatment" (Stein, 2006, p. v). This volume is especially pertinent to the current topic since it was written within the years that are considered the third phase of Adler's developing motivation theory. It is replete with references to evolution (which Ferguson also emphasizes) and from its opening chapter ("Unique Goal of Overcoming") through to its last, only two references are made to belonging as a human need or characteristic.
The first mention is in a context where Adler references movement of the child and the importance of developing in the child an interest in contribution. His point is not that this is a natural phenomenon or a motivator for all humans; quite the opposite. It is the caregiver's responsibility to develop the child's natural striving in a useful, contributing direction (Adler, 2006, pp. 85–86). Adler mentions belonging a second time in reference to a pampered child he worked with, saying the child "belongs only to . . . mother or perhaps to similar pampering people" (p. 109).
Consider this in the face of the ten dozen references made to "striving" (e.g., "this striving power," "this striving force," "striving toward ideal form," "striving from minus to plus," "striving to overcome difficulties," "striving from below to above," "striving for equilibrium," "striving for an ideal completion"): with no mention of "striving to belong." Rather, Adler insists, "Our whole social life is based on this striving, this urge to move forward" (p. 17). And contrary to Ferguson's distinction between evolutionary thinking of species and individual, Adler maintained that the fictional final goal, seen from an evolutionary perspective, guarantees the survival benefit of a focused, efficient, unified striving:
This striving force, coming from the creative power of the personality . . . is expressed as movement. If this movement is put in the stream of evolution, striving toward a goal of completion, then I can understand why all the details in the mind or body of an individual connect to form a unit. (p. 16, §373)
Adler gaining conceptual clarity about the striving process in humans is a legitimate finding—one can understand the individual's end goal in different ways, as Adler did. Even if one were to think in terms of striving to belong, which Adler evidently did not, the emphasis would remain on striving, not on belonging. Why? Because striving is the neutral designation of movement, whereas belonging as the aim of striving can be done in numerous ways, positively or negatively.
As to belonging, it was Adler's genius to grasp that the modicum of Gemeinschaftsgefühl inherent in any movement is the determiner of the direction, which governs whether any movement is useful to the human community or not. He formulated this first in 1918 and maintained it through his last writings. This means that we, like all human beings, are part of the social world, whether we like it or not, simply by having been born into it. We automatically belong in the human community; there's nowhere else to be a human being except in the human community. To belong is not a goal, it is a given, and it is up to each of us to accept this reality and to manage its countless challenges. Adler taught that those with a high degree of community feeling will succeed, while those without an adequate degree of community feeling will fail the test of successful functioning throughout life.
Summarized in a sentence: It seems that outside of Dreikurs and his own students, no major expositor of Adler, none of his biographers, no other clinicians who worked with him, and none of Adler's own writings agrees with the Dreikurs–Ferguson proposal of Adler's motivational theory.
The Impact on Therapy
Now, in many ways, that would be the end of the current article, in that it would point to the need for a course correction and for a means of developing a scholarly consensus of Adlerian motivation. But the matter does not stop there. In fact, a discussion of theoretical differences would be misunderstood if it were not tied to other more important matters, such as the two men's therapeutic applications, the manner in which they trained their clinical students to engage in therapy, and even the relationship of their theoretical differences to their individual personalities.
These matters are being undertaken in other writings and can't be fully developed here. In the space left it seems important to advance two questions related to the theoretical differences addressed here as they have an impact on Adlerian therapy and therapists. The first is what seems to us to be Ferguson's diminishment of Adler's theory in favor of what she terms Dreikurs's advances; and the second is what might be a means of addressing the identity issues that such differences raise.
Diminishing Adler?
Back in 1988, and many times subsequently, Ferguson has insisted that "Adler was not always clear in his own writings" (Griffith, 1988c, p. 3). Among other comments about the Adler–Dreikurs relationship, in 2000 she asserted that Dreikurs's work was the "advancing of Adlerian theory" (Ferguson, 2000, p. 201).
Opinions, if well informed, are to be respected. Critique that is supported and well founded is necessary. And still, we do well to be aware of the impact of critical opinion, especially when it is not well informed or well founded. It seems to us that such statements as hers leave the unfortunate impression that those inquiring about Individual Psychology will find Adler's original writings either arcane, which requires someone to explain what Adler meant, or archaic, which requires someone to constantly update or advance the theory. We reject both implications.
With the completion of the CCWAA, much of which involves fresh and readable, if complex, translations we can promote direct access to Adler's works for the professionally interested. And why wouldn't we? Nothing can substitute for a deep reading of Adler's original thoughts. Deep reading exempts neither the newcomer nor the seasoned Adlerian from putting the effort into understanding his consistent and thoroughgoing system of psychotherapy. Let's not rob any inquirer from experiencing how "the personality of Adler comes to life again . . . behind the letters and the pages" of his original works (Furtmüller, 1964, p. 362).
As for advancing Adler's theory, we do not think it unkind, unprofessional, or disrespectful to question whether Dreikurs's formulas were advances of Adler's theory. When psychology students and psychologists are interested in learning about Adler, they ought to be able to access information that is accurate clinically and historically; information that explains what Adler said and did. If they are also interested in those who apply Adler's theory and clinical method, then the inquirer should also be able to access material that is forthright in sharing what is not Adler's but is that of his students. As we have seen in the main portion of this discussion, they are not the same.
Identity Issues?
Isn't it a reasonable solution to suggest that Adler's words and formulation be called Adlerian and Dreikurs's be called Dreikursian? We believe it would be very helpful if the material itself—that is, articles in the Journal of Individual Psychology—were more judiciously designated in this fashion. In the context of this article, history indicates Dreikurs himself would have supported such a distinction. Two anecdotes about how Dreikurs identified himself are worth sharing, both of which are offered by the second author:
I attended a program at the old Alfred Adler Institute with Bob [Powers], so this was in the early 1980s. I don't remember the overall topic or everyone who was presenting, but I remember clearly Bernie Shulman standing and reporting on an occasion when Dr. Dreikurs was on stage delivering a talk standing in front of a big blackboard. Shulman said Dr. D was standing on the left of the blackboard as he faced the audience, that he then turned, wrote the name adler on the left-hand side of the blackboard, strode across the stage to the right-hand side of the blackboard and wrote the name horney, that he then walked to the center of the blackboard and placed a strong mark right down the middle, turned and said, "Here's my position!", or some such declaration, perhaps "Here's where I stand!" (see Terner & Pew, 1978, p. 191)
Along with this story, the second author offers a more personal anecdote: "Bob Powers once spoke to Dreikurs about using the term 'Dreikursian' in reference to Dreikurs's numerous contributions to psychology. Bob told to me that Dreikurs was very pleased with the idea."
It seems quite legitimate that we do as Ansbacher suggested in 1985 (Griffith, 1985, 1988a): credit Dreikurs for his formulations, including the belonging position addressed here, along with Ferguson's theorizing and justifying that goes with it. The formulation that the "fundamental motivation of human beings is the need to belong (Ferguson, 1989)" (Ferguson, 2010, p. 1), is a Dreikursian formula, plain and simple. These are two men, in important ways theorizing differently. Who is to prevent it? If only they were accurately identified! Such attribution would be historically accurate and professionally helpful to those who prefer to explain Adlerian theory without Dreikursian advances. After all, it is what brought the scrutiny to this Adler–Dreikurs difference in the first place: "We do a disservice to those to whom we try to communicate the tenets of IP when we unthinkingly interchange the two or, worse yet, don't even [refer to] the striving for superiority" (Dubelle, as cited in Griffith, 1988a, p. 1).
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AUTHOR BIOS
Erik Mansager is codirector of Family Counselling Services in Geneva, Switzerland, and past president of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology. He is a Diplomate in Adlerian Psychology and a CADP training analyst, and is also certified in Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy (CADP).
Jane Griffith is professor emerita in psychology at Adler University, Chicago. She is a past president of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology and the coauthor with her late husband, Robert L. Powers, of four books, Understanding Lifestyle: The Psycho-Clarity Process, The Key to Psychotherapy: Understanding the Self-Created Individual, IPCW: The Individual Psychology Client Workbook, and The Lexicon of Adlerian Psychology: 106 Terms Associated with the Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. Together with Powers, she maintained a private practice in Chicago, founded Adlerian Psychology Associates, and conducted training seminars through the Americas Institute of Adlerian Studies.