Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian psychotherapy is both humanistic and goal oriented. It emphasizes the individual's strivings for success, connectedness with others, and contributions to society as being hallmarks of mental health. Birth order is considered important in understanding a person's current personality, yet the therapy is future-minded, rather than retrospective.

Hosted by Dr. Gary VandenBos, the session shows Dr. Jon Carlson working with a 35-year-old male teacher who is experiencing problems with perfectionism. The patient is the youngest of two sons and reports being very close to his parents. Using a positive and hopeful approach, Dr. Carlson demonstrates the four stages of Adlerian Therapy: creating a relationship, assessment, insight, and reorientation.

Bonus DVD features: In addition to the featured therapy session, a second session with a young woman working to eliminate her habit of putting others' needs before her own is included. This interview has a guest expert voice-over giving thoughts on the session as it progresses.

Adlerian therapy is a brief, psychoeducational approach that is both humanistic and goal oriented. It emphasizes the individual's strivings for success, connectedness with others, and contributions to society as being hallmarks of mental health. Birth order is considered important in understanding a person's current personality, yet the therapy is future-minded, rather than retrospective. This approach emphasizes understanding the unique lifestyle of each individual before working toward change.

Using this approach, the therapist strives to understand two important things in a client—ways of thinking and context. We all often have some form of faulty thinking—a pattern of cognition or assumptions that we learn early in life and that continues to influence what we do and feel in the present. In addition, context is important as well as cognition: culture and birth order strongly influence thoughts and behavior.

There are four stages or steps in this approach:

• Engagement: The therapist and client agree to collaborate on the problem at hand and create an alliance.
• Assessment: The therapist takes the client's history, including early recollections and birth order influences; more traditional assessment tools may also be used (e.g., Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory),
• Insight: The therapist helps the client see his or her situation or role differently.
• Reorientation: The therapist gives the client activities to do outside of therapy that will reinforce this insight or create further insight.

Adlerian therapy is integrative in that a therapist may call on any number of approaches within the general Adlerian approach—the goal is to be the best therapist that the client requires, something that may require adjusting the approach. Adlerian therapy has been empirically tested over the past 30 years, and it can work with any type of mental illness or disorder

Jon Carlson, PsyD, EdD, is distinguished professor in the Division of Psychology and Counseling at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois, and director of the Lake Geneva Wellness Clinic in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Dr. Carlson is diplomate in family psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has been named a Living Legend and received several professional development and social interest awards from the American Counseling Association. He has authored more than 35 books, including Adlerian Therapy (American Psychological Association, 2006) and has produced more than 200 training videos in psychotherapy and related areas. He serves as the founding editor of The Family Journal and past president of the International Association of Marriage and Family Counseling.

• Carlson, J., & Slavik, S. (1997) Techniques of Adlerian therapy. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
• Carlson, J., Watts, R., & Maniacci, M. (2005) Adlerian therapy: Theory and practice. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Dinkmeyer, D., & Sperry, L. (2000). Counseling and psychotherapy: An integrated individual psychology approach (3rd ed.). Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill.
• Sperry, L., & Carlson, J. (1996). Psychotherapy and psychopathology. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
• Watts, R. W., & Carlson, J. (1999). Counseling and psychotherapy. New York: Brunner-Routledge.

APA Videos

• Ethnocultural Psychotherapy
  Lilian Comas-Diaz
• Experiential Psychotherapy
  Alvin R. Mahrer
• Short-Term Dynamic Therapy
  Donald K. Friedheim

APA Books

• Enhanced Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Couples: A Contextual Approach
  Norman B. Epstein and Donald H. Baucom
• Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived
  Edited by Corey L. M. Keyes and Jonathan Haidt

• Adlerian Psychotherapy
  

  This book provides an introduction and overview to Alfred Adler's person-centered approach to psychotherapy.  In Adler's view, all behavior has social meaning, and the socio-cultural context of a person's life is a driving influence on their mental health and life experiences.