On the Promotion of Adlerian Knowledge

“To promote the knowledge, training, and teaching of Individual Psychology, defined as the psychological theory and practice originating with and so named by Alfred Adler”

Hello, NASAP Community!

I am both honored and excited to be beginning my role as NASAP President. I have much appreciated the support that I have had in our past president, Hallie Williams, and remain comforted to have him in this role to support and guide my stewardship in this role (thanks, Hallie!).

On purpose

As I look forward to the two years ahead of me, I find myself recurringly drawn to one simple concept:purpose. Purpose is important to Individual Psychology, and it thereby also has become of great importance to me, so much so that I have named my private practice after it: Psychological Purposes.

At the heart of the human experience, is that singular, evolving, at times hazy but always present question, “what is my purpose?"This question continues to draw out the trajectory of my own life movement; in whatever chances or opportunities I find myself pursuing. However, in the context of my presidency, the question shifts a bit from “what is my purpose?” to "what is our purpose?” For NASAP, there is actually a definitive answer to this. Our purpose is expressly identified in article II if our constitution. Section 1. of article II states “The purpose of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology (hereinafter referred to as NASAP or the Society) shall be,” and then it goes on two identify a total of eight distinct items, constituting our shared purpose.

Item 1

Beginning with this submission and throughout my future issues, I will be using my presidential posts in The Connection to outline what I see as the tasks at hand, in our realization of our purpose (more accurately, purposes), through the actualization of our eight respective aims.

I begin with the first item: to promote the knowledge, training, and teaching of Individual Psychology, defined as the psychological theory and practice originating with and so named by Alfred Adler.

A community of teaching, training, and knowledge

NASAP, undoubtedly, is a community of knowledge, training, and teaching. I can remember my first conference and walking away from it like I had my brain rebooted. In fact, I have continued to experience something like that at every conference I have attended ever since. This past year in Minneapolis was no exception. My annual dosing of concentrated Adlerian perspectives left me reeling and rejuvenated for another year. Better still, since I was fortunate to be able to bring friends and colleagues along with me this year, I was able to appreciate witnessing a similar impact that the conference had on each of them.

However, despite my strong appreciation for this annual pilgrimage, I have found myself vexed by an unsettling realization: There aren’t enough of us. Suffice it to say, NASAP remains the best kept secret in ever growing landscape of professional trainings.

However, keeping Adlerian concepts a secret is NOT what we have outlined in the second article of our constitution. It is our charge to promote knowledge, training, and teaching of Adlerian psychology. This means that we need to be able to share its growth outside of the closed circuit of our Adlerian community.

Training galore!

To be sure, it is not for the sake of Adler that we must be compelled to promote his legacy, but for the sake of the world in which we live and serve. As I sift through the growing stack of training offerings that get sent to my business office and home each year, I find myself taking careful note of the themes that organize what is being offered; evidence-based practices for specific conditions, considerations in serving specific types of clients or demographic groups facing certain types of hardships like war exposure or social exclusion, trauma-informed care, approaches catered to certain personality disorders, and interventions based on our emerging and ever growing understanding of the brain. Most of these offer clear and distinct values with irrefutable insights, and we are fortunate to live in a day and age where so much content is available to us.

 Yet, as we delve ever deeper into the treating of disordered personalities, brains, and specific demographic groups, it seems there are core components of the human experience we are missing. With all this information at our disposal, are we any more knowledgeable about ourselves or our relationship with others and the greater world, or how these very matters relate to the manifestation of suffering and “pathology” to begin with?

On knowledge

This begs the question, what is knowledge, and what is the purpose of pursuing it?

Once again, there is a tangible answer. In her classic essay, Education for Freedom, Lydia Sicher characterizes knowledge as atool. Knowledge is not so much a thing to be had, as it is a potency that can be enacted. According to Sicher, “the most worthwhile knowledge anyone could acquire would be to know that only in togetherness and interdependence can the individual accomplish...self-realization” (Sicher, 1954 in Davisdson [ed.], 1991). Perhaps this is what is missing now from so many popular professional trainings. Perhaps this is what is underlying the “rebooting” that I experience at our annual conference.

As the zeitgeist of teaching and training becomes increasingly technocratic, directed by specialized experts touting replicable interventions on subjects “in need,” the agency and humanity of those we serve get eclipsed in our “treatment” approaches. Even more concerningly, this trend may reflect an occlusion of a genuine knowledge of self as our professional trends in the end serve to alienate human awareness from human community and connection.

If this is the case, our charge to bring Adlerian perspectives into the world remains all the more important, and all the more daunting. How do we make Adlerian perspectives relevant during a time when we have parceled out “treatment” approaches from the broader contexts in which human experience is lived out and encapsulated? What strategies do we use to entice today's students and scholars to take a new look at this century-old approach? How do we proceed when professional guidelines around training require contributions from the past seven years? What do we do with the decades-long insight and knowledge they have established in Individual Psychology, if there are no new people to share it with?

Call to action

The fact that we remain unique and different from the broader trends does not need to make us seem irrelevant. Rather, because of our distinctiveness, we may now offer a desperately needed value and significance that the world is unknowingly starving for. But if we are going to make good on our constitutional priority to promote the knowledge, training, and teaching of Individual Psychology to current and future generations, we have work to do. We need to continue our efforts promoting Adlerian perspectives in the universities, professional schools and training institutions we are already affiliated with, as well as finding new ways into other existing institutions. We will need to develop training content and promote access to existing resources we have in ThinkIfic, Tap Talks and the Daily Adler (to name a few). We also need to promote and disseminate existing Adlerian texts, as well as continue writing new texts that will be relevant and appealing to new scholastic audiences.

Organizationally, we will need to be even more intentional and strategic in how we function, to make sure that in addition to maintaining our current NASAP membership, that we can support the regional initiatives that continue to take place in North Carolina, Idaho, Toronto, and other places, and to begin developing new opportunities to teach and train in new regions.

For sure, our existing sections and affiliates will need to play a role in this, and we as an organization need to promote and share the initiatives of professional clinicians and Family Education Sections (in particular) who are already offering recurring education and training experiences that we continue to offer over the year. But perhaps the most important work is still what remains to be decided.

Your part in this

If the promotion of Adlerian teaching and training interests you, there are important position vacancies on the Committee on Education and Professional Development. We could also use ongoing support on the Long-Range Planning Committee, as our priority for teaching and training really may best be considered as longer-range initiative. We are also interested in hearing from any members who are currently affiliated with a professional school, university, or training institution who would be interested in developing networking strategies and initiatives targeting students and future clinicians in ongoing training in Adlerian psychology. I would love to hear from anyone interested in helping NASAP develop training curriculum that would be appealing and relevant to new students, as this has become a particular focus of my tenure as president.

If this has stimulated any thoughts or ideas, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly at Rader.Benjamin@wspp.edu. The colony is always wiser than the individual bee. So, as I work to divine my own purpose as president relative to this first goal, I invite you all to align with me shared effort, imagining and then realizing together “what might be” as we act together in serving our calling as Adlerians.

Sincerely,

Ben Rader, Psy.D., President, North American Society of Adlerian Psychology