CLASSICAL ADLERIAN PSYCHOTHERAPY FORUM ARCHIVE
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Adlerian Ideas Disparaged
Craig Tucker · 08/03/01 at 12:52 ET
Due to a suggestion from Dr. Stein, I have been reading through the Samenow & Yochelson books on the criminal personality and am seeing several parallels to Adler's work. I am enjoying their work very much. They have stumbled on similar ideas to Adler but fail to acknowledge them. At one point they insist that Adler's concept of Striving for Power was incomplete and insufficient. In reality their understanding of Adler's concept of Striving for Superiority is less than rudimentary. I had not found anything in what they had said up to that point that seemed to deviate from what Adler had already suggested about power and compensation. This annoys me because I see it so often when authors dismiss Adler's work. The striving for superiority is often dismissed out of hand because this or that expert seems to assume that it has some limited application. Often it is only understood from the socially useless side and not the socially useful side. Or, authors fail to see it's application as a life force and as a drive to overcome and grow. If I was an author, I would feel foolish dismissing a theory unless I really understood it. And yet, several theorists that I respect have done so with Adler, this being one example. It is disappointing. Craig
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