Alfred Adler - Individual psychology

Individual psychology

Where Freud believed that there were universal biological factors that there were universal factors that made people behave in certain ways, Alfred Adler believed that behaviors were based on the individual's experience and environmental and societal factors. Personality was determined by the confrontation of love-related vocational and societal forces.

Striving for success and superiority

Adler firmly believed that the driving force behind a person's actions were the desire for personal gain, which he called superiority, and the desire for community benefit, which he called success. Due to the fact that all people are born with small, delicate, and inferior bodies, we develop a sense of inferiority and attempt to overcome these feelings. People who strive for superiority have little concern for others and are only focused on personal benefit, and therefore psychologically unhealthy. People who strive for success do so for all of humanity without losing their identity, and are therefore psychologically healthy.

I. Inferiority complex: unconscious sense of inferiority, or feeling of lack of worth. The overcompensation of these feelings can lead to neurotic symptoms
II. Superiority complex: suppressing feelings that exist is an attempt to conquer an inferiority complex.

According to Adler, an individual's personality traits are derived from these external factors:

I. Compensation: When a person suffers from a disadvantage, they are made inferior to others and aim to put an end to those disadvantages. People who are able to do so become successful on an individual and social basis.
II. Resignation: This happens when people give in to their disadvantages  and settle with them. This occurs with the majority of people.
III. Overcompensation: This occurs when a person becomes infatuated with the notion of compensating for their weaknesses or disadvantages and they overindulge in the pursuit of striving for success. These people were neurotics.

Milgram's obedience study

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram is well-known for his famous, yet extremely controversial, experiment on obedience. Milgram was fascinated by the effect that authority had on obedience, and believed that people would nearly always obey orders out of desire to seem cooperative or out of fear. 

Milgram began his obedience experiment in 1961, shortly after trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman. Eichmans defense was that he was just following orders.

EXPERIMENT

Milgram conducted the experiment at Yale university, where he recruited 40 men through newspaper ads. The participants were informed that the study was focused on memory and learning. They were told that one person would take on the role teacher and the other would take on the role of student. In reality, all of the papers said "Teacher" on them. The only students were actors.

Milgram experiment setup

Each subject is paired with a student/learner (actors) and placed front of a "shock generator". The shock generator starts at 30 volts and goes all the way up to 450 volts. The switches are labeled with moderate, strong, danger and XXX. 
The subject is told he will teach word pairs to the student and if the student makes mistake, he/she should administer a shock. 

The word pairings begin and the student will eventually begin to make planned errors. At 75 volts the student will start to grunt. At 120 volts, complain about pain. At 150 volts the student will scream and wants to be released. At 300 volts, the student pounds on the walls and exclaims he can't stand the pain. After 330 volts, the student remains quiet. The experiment ends when the highest level of 450 volts is reached. 

During this if the subject/teacher questions the process, the experimenter will tell him things like "please continue", "It's absolutely essential that you continue", "the experiment requires that you continue", "you have no other choice, you must go on".

MILGRAM'S FINDINGS

Before the experiment Yale students were asked to predict how many people will obey and administer maximum of 450 volts. They estimated 3 out of 100 will do so (3%).

Surprisingly a whopping 65% administered shock levels of 450 volts. While people did show signs of internal struggle through groaning, nervous laughter, and trembling, most of them obeyed the experimenter's request to continue. Milgram even found that the subjects - in an effort to justify their behavior - devalued the student during the experiment saying the student was so dumb that he actually deserved the shock. 

Milgram was able to explain such high levels of  obedience in the following ways:
I. Compliance was increased because of the physical presence of an authority figure (the experimenter)
II. Many subjects believed the experiment was safe because it was a Yale experiment.
III. The selection process of who would be teacher and student seemed random.
IV. Assumption the experimenter was competent.
V. The subjects were told the shocks were painful but not dangerous.

CRITICISM

The experiment caused great stress to the subjects and the fact that they believed they were hurting a complete stranger could have traumatized them, so the Milgram experiment draw fierce criticism regarding its ethical procedure.

Lawrence Kohlberg: The Heinz Dilemma

STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Kohlberg's theory on the stages of moral development was a modification of the work performed by Jean Piaget. While Piaget described moral development as a two-stages process, Kohlberg identified 6 stages. Kohlberg proposed that moral development was a process that continued throughout a person's lifespan.

THE HEINZ DILEMMA

In the Heinz Dilemma, Kohlberg told children a story about a woman in Europe who is near death because she has a special type of cancer. The drug that might save her is a form a radium. The druggist charges 2000 dollars for the radium that cost him just 200 dollars. But the dying woman's husband only manages to get 1000 dollar, so he asks the druggist to sell it for 1000 dollars or let him pay the rest later on. The druggist refuses so the husband breaks into the store to steal the drug. After this story the children get presented with the question: "Should the husband have done that?"

The answer to the dilemmas were not as important, it's the reasoning behind the decision. The children's responses were classified into 3 levels and 6 stages. 

Level I: Preconventional morality

Stage 1. Obedience and punishment.
Children view rules as absolutes. Obeying the rules means avoiding punishment. 
Stage 2. Individuals and exchange
Children begin to take individual points of view into consideration and judge actions based on how the needs of the individual are served. 

Level II: Conventional morality

Stage 3: Interpersonal relationships
Children focus on living up to expectations set by society or the people close to them. 
Stage 4: Maintaining social order
At this stage, society as a whole is taken into consideration. This means focus on following the rules to maintain law and order - even in extreme situations - respecting authority and fulfilling a duty that one has agreed to do.

Level III: Postconventional morality

Stage 5: Social contract and individual rights
Understanding that people have different beliefs, opinion and values, and that in order to maintain society, rules of the law should be based on standards that are agreed upon.
Stage 6: Universal principles
Following internal principles of justice and ethics, even if this means going against what the rules and law state. 

CRITICISMS TO THE STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
It has been argued that Kohlberg's work reflected bias towards males: he claimed most men to be at a stage 4 and most women to be at stage 3. Also there is a notable difference between what a person says they ought to do and what they actually end up doing. Kohlberg also focused solely on justice but did not take into consideration things like compassion and caring. 

Anna Freud - Defense mechanisms

To understand Anna Freuds defense mechanisms we have to talk about Sigmund Freuds. According to Sigmund Freuds a reduction of tension is major drive for most people and that this tension was largely caused by anxiety. There are 3 types of anxiety:

1. Reality anxiety: the fear of real-world events occuring. For example a person is afraid of being bitten by a dog because they are near a ferocious dog. The easiest way to rude is to remove oneself from the situation.

2. Neurotic anxiety: the unconscious fear that we will be overpowered by and lose control of the urges of the id, and that this will lead to punishment.

3. Moral anxiety: the fear of our moral principles and values being violated, resulting in feelings of shame or guilt. This type of anxiety comes from the superego.

When anxiety occurs, Sigmund Freud claimed that defense mechanisms are used to cope with the anxiety amd shield the ego from reality, the id and the superego. This is when Anna Freud comes to play, she is responsible for identifying the specific defense mechanisms that the ego uses to reduce tension.

I. Denial: refusing to admit or recognize that something is occuring or has occured.

II. Displacement: taking one's feelings and frustration out on something or someone else that is less threatening

III. Intellectualization: thinking about something from a cold and objective perspective so you can avoid the emotional part.

IV. Regression: reverting back to childlike behavior. Anna Freud claimed that a person would act certain behaviors based on the stage of psychosexual development that they were fixtated on.

V. Repression: moving thoughts that make us uncomfortable into our subconscious

VI. Sublimation: converting unacceptable behaviors into a more acceptable form.