November 2021 Issue

What are essential oils and what do they have to do with Adlerian therapy?

Illustration © Callie Barker, 2021

Acting “As If” in Yoga Therapy

by Caroline Parry

Yoga therapy and the “acting as if” technique- bridging together western and eastern modalities to create optimal results in a therapeutic setting. 

As a certified yoga teacher, I’ve found that integrating yogic principles and postures into my therapy sessions yield fruitful outcomes. Our co-editor Caroline Faifman suggested I experiment with incorporating the “acting as if” technique into my yoga therapy sessions to connect the body and mind to a deeper degree. I explored this pairing of techniques in a session with a female in her early 20’s, whom I’ve been working with for the last year. This client has been struggling with bulimia and body dysmorphia, as well as depression and anxiety.

I began this session with the client in mountain pose, standing upright in the anatomical position: Feet firmly planted into the ground, hips square, palms anterior, shoulders back and down, chest and chin lifted.

I proposed to the client, “act as if you feel confident and comfortable in your body”. She immediately drew her shoulders back even more, lifted her chin a touch, and took a deep breath. I asked, “what would it feel like to walk in public feeling confident and comfortable in your body?” She took a moment to really reflect, and responded, “Free. Relaxing. Full of joy”. She walked across the room with her head held high. 

I then asked her to place one hand on her heart, and one hand to her belly: a mudra, or hand gesture often used in yoga to ground oneself when feeling anxious.  I guided her through a deep breath to re-connect, then asked her to place both hands on her belly. I asked her, “what physical sensations are you feeling right now?”. She replied after pausing to collect her thoughts, “I feel physical warmth in my chest, as well as emotional warmth”. I asked, “Could you tell me what it is like to feel and act as if you loved your stomach?”. Tears filled her eyes. She took her time, formulating a precise response. “My initial reaction is that I hate my stomach. I hate the way it looks, the way it feels. I hate that food goes here. But, if I were to act like I loved my stomach, I would feel carefree. I would eat foods without feeling guilty, I would savor and enjoy every bite and not think about the calorie intake.”

We went through a series of yoga postures, and weaved in deep breaths. In each posture, I asked her to act as if she was confident, proud, happy, healthy- all things she aspires to be. There was a profound shift in this session. Witnessing the cultivation of awareness was impactful. As the facilitator and observer, it was fascinating to see the mind-body connection with each posture along with the client’s reflections. According to my observations, these somatic techniques paired with the “acting as if” technique were very effective. It seemed that the client gained deeper insights and awareness that she has the capability to modify her perspectives. Although there were several times emotions were released, the client expressed feeling “lighter, relaxed, hopeful” after each sequence.  

At the end of the session, the client asked if we could continue this new blend of techniques in future sessions. She stated, “although some of the postures and questions were hard, I feel like I was really able to connect my thoughts and emotions to my physical state. I really like that.”

We are holistic beings, but often forget how the body, mind, and spirit are intrinsically connected. If we take a moment to check in with all three entities, we may gain more clarity and awareness. When we are able to make distinct connections between all three realms, we may uncover the true source of our thoughts and emotions. 

7 Review of Guiding Human Misfits

Review of Guiding Human Misfits

Alexandra Adler. (1938). Guiding Human Misfits: A Practical Application of Individual Psychology. New York: Macmillan.

Alexandra Adler needs no introduction to the readers of this newsletter. Perhaps her succinct treatise on Guiding Human Misfits does, as the title may put some readers off.

Guiding Human Misfits was first published in 1938 by Macmillan of New York, and was followed in 1939 by its publication in London by Faber and Faber. A second, revised edition appeared in 1948, published by The Philosophical Library in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK. Except for an addition of a chapter on “The so-called posttraumatic neuroses,” hardly any changes were made in the text of 1938.

Numerous reviews of the two editions of Guiding Human Misfits have appeared. Many dismissed the book with faint praise, such as “On the whole the book furnishes a pleasant and interesting hour of reading” (Anonymous, p. 112). Another states that “While the book does not add a great deal to our therapeutic concepts, it is well worth reading as a short and adequate presentation of individual psychology” (Lowrey, p. 446). A review in Mental Health says: “The book abounds in easy generalizations which do not escape notice, though they might not be expected in a book from such a source” (RT, p. 29). However, a review published in the first issue of Individual Psychology News is, as one might expect, both more favourable and more to the point of the book’s virtues:

Dr. Adler’s book is more than a scientific brief. Her warm interest in what people think, evident in her desire to answer questions raised by the layman, her tolerance of other methods of psychotherapy, her interestingly chosen and well-expressed illustrative material make of this book a pleasantly readable, if not a “popularly” read, book. (Bermond, p. 2)

This book has, to our minds, other virtues. First, it provides succinct and clear definitions of some difficult terms in Individual Psychology. For example, “We say that a person is suffering from an ‘inferiority complex’ when he [or she] reacts fatalistically to a crippling situation, real or fancied, without attempting to correct or improve it” (p. 3). The author distinguishes it clearly from situational feelings of inferiority. Equally clear are her definitions of three types of neurotic behaviour patterns.

Another virtue of this book is that throughout the text Adler emphasizes that the focus of Individual Psychology is, in fact, the uniqueness of each person. At the beginning, she states that “it is only when we are able to understand psychological manifestations in connection with a particular individual that these observations enrich our understanding of personality” (p. 1). The author endorses her father's individual approach and the necessity to study the circumstances and history of each person.This point of view pervades the book, particularly in her understanding of the purposes of neuroses. As she states, in many “neuroses the patient’s goal is not . . . evident and can be determined only by studying the personality as a unit. The summation of [the] . . . manifestations building up to this unity forms [the] ‘style of life’” (p. 6).

A third virtue of the book are the many case examples she offers, with commentary, just as her father did in The Case of Mrs. A. By the apt device of a running interpretation of a series of cases the author illustrates her method. One notices other virtues in passing: her discussion of sibling order and what it might mean to a child; her chapter on dreams and early recollections and how they can be used to clarify the style of life; and the final chapter on psychotherapy and its pitfalls.

However, in our view the outstanding virtue of the book is the author’s insistence that neurotic symptoms are not erratic or accidental. They are the result of intelligent choice: “The specific neurotic symptom will always be effective because it is the result of an intelligent choice on the part of the patient” (p. 16). In slightly greater detail, the author states:

The neurotic symptom always “hits the nail on the head” thus showing that it had been chosen with intelligence . . . to fulfill a purpose. The symptomatology of a neurosis is governed by the possibilities open to the patient. I have never seen an agoraphobic unless . . . one or more slaves [were] ready to accompany him [or her] when he [or she] had to cross a street. (p. 41)

Even in the case of shock, this applies. Adler finds no fundamental difference in the causation of post-traumatic neuroses and other types: all originate in an overwhelming situation from which the patient would like to escape.

We are interested to see that Adler’s ideas regarding neurotic symptoms, with their accompanying participants, closely follow a structural family therapy analysis of transactional patterns (Minuchin, 1974). Even in working with children and their families, the methods she recommends—establishing clear boundaries, emphasizing assets and de-emphasizing symptoms—follow systemic recommendations in treatment.

In conclusion, we gain the impression that Alexandra Adler was not a person to waste words. Although she does not present in Guiding Human Misfits a complete outline of Adlerian theory, or practice, she sketches an overall pattern of the work of Individual Psychology, particularly with children. Almost eighty-five years after its first publication, it is still well-worth review by practitioners, above all those who work with children.

References

Adler, A. (1938). Guiding Human Misfits: A Practical Application of Individual Psychology. New York: Macmillan.

Anonymous. (1939). [Review of Guiding Human Misfits]. Physical Therapy, 19(2), p. 112.

Bermond, J. R. (1940). [Review of: Alexandra Adler, Guiding Human Misfits; A Practical Application of Individual Psychology]. Individual Psychology News, 1(3), pp. 1-2. 

Lowrey, L. G. (1939). [Review of Guiding Human Misfits]. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 9(2), p. 446.

Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

RT. (1940). [Review of Guiding Human Misfits]. Mental Health, 1(1), p. 29.

Steve Slavik

#411 – 1044 Balmoral Road

Victoria, BC V8T 1A8

778-430-1353

stevenslavik@shaw.ca

Steve Slavik is a retired individual and marriage counsellor, presently devoting his time to reading, meditating, and repeating the sins of his past.

James Croake

437 5th Avenue South, 2B

Edmonds, Washington 98020

425-673-1105

jwcroake@gmail.com

James Croake is well-known as an Adlerian psychologist, author, and educator. He presently is semi-retired, seeing some couples, and living in Washington state.

November Artwork Spotlight: Emotion Wheel by Callie Barker

Adler in Depth and Breadth

by Erik Mansager

Adler and Siegel: Things persist for a purpose

I’ve drawn the title for this issue’s column from an earlier presentation (Connections, 2021) about similarities between Dan Siegel (Brain-iac) and Alfred Adler (Human-iac). 

Siegel’s summary presentations (Siegel, 2020) of Interpersonal Neurobiology acknowledges that neural-connections grow stronger once they happenstancially form in our prenatal and perinatal brains. Adler concurs that infants take information in as it presents itself to them – from within their bodies and from outside of them. They make sense of it only later when structures of the developing brain mature enough to evidence a developing mind. Infants start out only relatively open-to-experience (Siegel & Hartzell, 2014). Siegel emphasises that we can continue a certain openness to form new pathways all our life. But that flexibility is not automatic, nor accessible to all, at the personal-growth level. Why not?

As I noted in the March column, what I think is missing in Siegel is clarifying that “purpose” is wired right into our neural-connections, and openness is not the purpose of our movement, but rather the purpose of movement is to maintain our perception of the world as we discovered it as children so our tried-and-true responses fit.

Like drops of rain that are randomly distributed on a window and develop into little rivulets that serve to channel the rain to the bottom of the window – so are the random firings of our infant neurons. As more experience develops, certain neural connections serve to transmit not only information of perception (wetness, pitter-pattering, odor, etc.) but also of what the infant eventually thinks about the sensations registered by the firing neuron net. 

These perceptions are all implicitly registered in the infant brain with the help of the amygdala. This portion of the limbic system comes ready-to-fire at birth to help us be-wary when wariness is needed and thus to help our caregiver keep us alive, but the amygdala isn’t a reflective organ. Neither is the hippocampus for that matter.

The hippocampus needs another 18-24 months to mature  before it can take the data our amygdalae have been tracking  and “organizes” into remembering. As our amygdala itself stores more and more data, thought also begins to develop and at some point – usually within our third year, but who knows for sure when – the budding of mind occurs simultaneously.

About this enigmatic point in time Adler and Siegel concur. Herein the personality patterns begin to develop in terms of preferences of perception, states of mind, and the like. We develop the capacity to go beyond taking-in-and-organizing information. Soon enough our preferences act as filters and we take-in-and-exclude preferentially. Adler called it biased apperception (Adler, 1956); Siegel explains in some detail the workings of neural integration being fundamental to self-organization (Siegel, 2020).  This activity, by whatever name, is the basis for the earlier March comment, “When someone does something – or nothing – it’s not for no reason”(Mansager, 2021).

Adler drew his conclusions that the early biasing of our perception accounts for our intentions to behave in patterned ways: to accomplish some purpose. From my perspective, it is unfortunate that Siegel uses the word intentionality (and its derivatives intentional and intentions) ambiguously. He and Adler both use it to describe portions of the developing preferential mind, but Siegel also uses it in a more conventional way as a synonym for the word mindful, or even deliberate. Adler typically uses the word intention to mean the somewhat unaware psychological movement of striving toward one’s fictional goal, not “a goal” or “goals” but the fictional final goal.

And that is the difference and distinction between these two exquisitely thoughtful and mindful theorists/therapists. Adler put a name to the self-organizing tendency of the human person and rather precisely identified children’s third year as when they are capable of a conscious, felt-articulation (conviction?) of how the world works! And how they can operate in it, stimulated by their sense of littleness, to overcome any and all inferiority. Adler called this capacity at such a tender age, a “prototype” of the lifestyle (Adler, 1956). This seemed to mean it was definitely present yet still subject to refining – which could be activated in a socially interested direction or in a self-bounded direction. 

What can still be considered Adler’s most original (and still unique) contribution to our healing field is conceiving of human movement as teleologically casting their security-seeking goal before them, and following after it faithfully, if unconsciously. Where does this leave the Humaniac-Brainiac alliance? 

Siegel’s contribution conceptualizes therapy as the individual, in collaboration with the therapist, mindfully (he might add, “intentionally”) impacting one’s own neural-connectivity with the aim of that individual freely acting in life rather than rigidly reacting, and ultimately reasserting the interpersonal nature of the individual.

Adler’s contribution conceptualizes the therapeutic relationship as mutually exploring the client’s nearly-unconscious-yet-intentional movement (lifestyles), revealing thereby their individual hidden goal, exposing the goal as the unify-er of the reactive lifestyle and thus freeing them to revise their direction in life – ultimately toward joining and benefiting the larger community. 

References

(include APA 7 references here for Adler, Siegel, and The Connection)

Adler, A. (1956). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (H. L. & R. R. Ansbacher, Eds.). Harper & Row.

Mansager, E. (2021, October). Adler in Depth & Breadth: From Human-iac to Brain-iac. The Connection, NASAP's Newsletter.

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind. How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. The Guildford Press.

Siegel, D. J., & Hartzell, M. (2014). Parenting from the inside out. Tarcher/Putnam.

Adlerian Spotlight

Name: Jennifer Lee, M.A., RCC, CCC

Location: Vancouver, B.C.

Degrees, licenses & certifications: Registered Clinical Counsellor with the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC), Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC), Gottman Method Couples Therapy Level 1 and 2

Education: Masters in Counseling with a specialization in couples and family counseling from East Tennessee State University.

1. What do you do? Where do you work?

I work at a few different clinics as I like to have variety in my work. I work at a private addictions clinic named ALAViDA where the focus is medication-assisted treatment for alcohol addiction. I also work at the Adlerian Psychology Association of British Columbia (APABC). Here I provide low-cost counseling as I believe that counseling should be accessible and affordable to everyone. Lastly, I own a private practice that focuses on couples counseling. 

I practice out of Vancouver, BC. Since the pandemic started, I have been working virtually. I will continue to provide Telehealth through ALAViDA; however, I plan to return to seeing clients in-person beginning in January. 

2. What are your research and life task interests?

My research interests are focused on how culture impacts the dynamics of romantic relationships. As a bi-cultural individual, culture has played a big part in my life. Vancouver is a culturally diverse city, and I often see intercultural/bicultural couples in my private practice. I have been actively using the Lifestyle Assessment as a tool for couples to better understand the role of culture in relationship dynamics. My goal in the future is to provide studies and evidence based treatment around Adlerian theory, culture, and couples counseling. 

3. If you could be any animal/mineral/spirit/object, what would you be?

A penguin is my spirit animal! Emperor penguins are one of the most resilient creatures on Earth. They can survive some of the harshest winters and persevere through many potential challenges. If you’ve ever watched a penguin, they often fall down cliff sides or slip on ice, and they always get right back up and keep going. Penguins are a great example of strength.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” - Confucius 

4. Why did you join NASAP (and when), do you have any fond memories?

I joined NASAP in 2011. At that time, I was the office manager of the Adler Centre and I was our representative for the COR. I have a very special connection to NASAP, as it truly changed my life. At the 2012 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, during one of the breaks between sessions, James Bitter noticed I was sitting alone and walked over to introduce himself. At that time, I didn’t know anyone involved in the organization. During our chat, we were joined by Wes Wingett, and through conversation, I was encouraged to apply to East Tennessee State University (ETSU) where Dr. Bitter teaches to learn from him. I applied and got in, and Dr. Bitter was my mentor during my time at school and to this day. It was an experience that I am so thankful for, and it is due to NASAP that I could pursue a passionate career as an Adlerian therapist. 

5. What are your hopes for the future of NASAP?

NASAP is incredibly important to me as a community, and I hope  to see others have similar experiences where they can receive mentorship. I am hopeful that NASAP will have more diversity as we connect with newer members of all ages, races, and ethnicities. I also am looking forward to following the footsteps of James Bitter where I can one day become a mentor to a new member.

6. How have you participated in NASAP so far? 

So far, I have participated as a member of COR, attending conferences since 2011, and recently I have started presenting on topics of culture and addiction.