A review by ayla_derammelaere
Mensenkennis: inleiding tot de karakterkunde by Alfred Adler

informative reflective fast-paced

3.0



Adler was a student of Freud but went his own way and created the 'individualpsychology'. He doesn't believe in personalitytraits that people are born with and doesn't believe there is hidden trauma that still has it's impact on how someone develops his/her life.

Adler says there are 2 big forces that form a person : the fact that people are social beings and that we live and function in a society + our drive to achieve power and be meaningful in life. Adler tells us that, from the moment that we interact with other people and the world, we create our own lifes-purpose and we develop our personalitytraits to combine the 2 forced to achieve our lifes-purpose.
To me, this sounds a lot like the 2 forces that Freud tells us have an impact on development : eros and thanatos or the power to create (love) and the power to destroy (dead).
Adler also tells us that the only way how we can work on personalitytraits that interfer with us being happy and accomplished, is to find why we used certain behaviour for the first time ever, link that to the behaviour that we still use and by understanding, behaviour can be changed. Again, this sounds a lot like 'trauma' in the subconscience that works through in day-to-day life as said by Freud, but I can be biased.

In the end of the book, Adler lets us know that families are not a good way to raise children and teach them to become healthy adults : parents often have their own problems, they are not psychologists so they don't know how to fix traits,.. teachers are also not ideal but better than parents since they have had schooling to deal with children and be more aware of what impact they have.. I found this last remarks really baffeling..

I was disappointed by the book : I was really excited in reading it and learning a new way of looking at things but that didn't happen : it feels like a lot of what he said was or a rip-off of Freuds theory or a summation of popular opinions or very shallow ideas that still need time to develop. I must say, this is the first time I ever read something by Adler so maybe he has developed his ideas and I just didn't read the newest book.