To Ed

Your response to the "Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice" article was quite thorough. Therapists who are engaged in distance training with me are invited to send e-mail comments about the material they are reading and audio tapes they are listening to, but they rarely offer such a detailed "topic-by-topic" reaction.

I do not have the theological background to address your question about inferiority feelings and original sin. Superficially, my impression is that the inferiority feeling is a stimulation for growth, whereas original sin is a stimulation for guilt.

The images of smoke and fire, regarding symptoms and their cause, were stated by Antony Bruck, a master of Adlerian brief therapy, who was trained by Adler. I'm not sure if he originally used the terms or if he was reporting on Adler's comments, such as: "The task is not to fan away the smoke, but to extinguish the fire," and "What we must cure is not the symptom, but the individual who has it." We will be featuring Bruck's writings on our institute's home page in the near future.

The "missing experience" represents a real or imagined developmental deficit that seems to have hampered the individual's intellectual or emotional growth. It may have been the absence of acceptance, affection, or encouragement at a crucial period in the child's life. Earliest childhood recollections often offer clues to these "cracks in the foundation." We attempt to custom design a scenario, using guided imagery or role-playing, that restores this needed nourishment. If the client accepts and digests this "substitute" experience, psychological growth then moves quite rapidly. I have often conducted one-day, nine-hour marathon groups where individuals have "grown up" in an afternoon.

I sense that you might find a kindred spirit in the work of Alexander Mueller. Check our institute's home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hstein/ and follow the following links under the "Readings" section: Philosophical and Spiritual Implications of Adlerian Psychology, Fellow Man, and Mistaken Social & Psychological Developments of Our Times and Their Metaphysical Causes. You might then want to read Mueller's book You Shall be a Blessing: Main Traits of a Religious Humanism.

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