Quick Review: Understanding Human Nature by Alfred Adler

Adlerian psychology & Goals

In Understanding Human Nature Alfred Adler points our goals being the primary drivers of human behavior. Everyone has a goal from which most of our actions flows. This is what determines a persons psychic life according to legendary psychotherapist Alfred Adler. We can’t think, will, or dream without these activities being determined and directed towards an objective.

Actions reveal unconscious goals

We might be more or less conscious of what our objective is, but it’s more common that we actually don’t know what our goals is. Therefore it’s sometimes easier to figure out an individuals objective by looking at the results of her present actions.

Video Review of Understanding Human Nature by Alfred Adler

Video Review of Understanding Human Nature

Life Tasks

Healthy goals allow us to perform our Life Tasks of work, relationships, and community, but many individuals develop warped goals as they lack the courage or psychic development to carry them out. This often stems from a feeling of inferiority and results in one of them most popular tricks of the human soul:
Clinging to excuses and alibis for not doing what life demands of us.

Notes & Highlights

Adler was contemporary Freud and Jung, but is definitely lesser known then those those giants. Yet his style of psychology is far more practical than his peer’s.

The many possible interpretations of experience lend itself well to rationalization. We can bend almost any experience or event to fit our goals, turning it into reasons why we can’t fulfil the task of life; like tending to work, relationships and contribute to society.

Quote: “It’s well known that those who don’t trust themselves never trust others.”

⭐️ TAKEAWAYS:

If you want to understand what a person wants, the. observe what they do and where it takes them, rather than what they say.

⚖️ VERDICT:

I first heard Adler’s name in The Denial of Death; I got a taste of his ideas in The Courage to Be Disliked; and with this book I got a more in-depth look into his own writing. It started out slow, but it caught on, and a few chapters into it I didn’t want it to end. My favorite part of this book was chapters on common personality traits of people impoverished psychic development. Traits like vanity, envy, jealousy.

If you liked The Laws of Human Nature and want more—then this is it!

Have you every held on to beliefs and conditions that gave you an excuse to postpone important life tasks?!