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Family and relationships

Alfred Adler

Whose task is this

Alfred Adler (1870–1937 · Austria) — Whose task is this.

Family and relationshipsThe industrial ageWhose task is this

What actually happened?

He is the best available evidence for his own theory. He had rickets and did not walk until he was four, nearly died of pneumonia at five, never reached five foot three, and grew up beside an older brother who was better at everything. On Freud's route that reads as a list of injuries. Adler's account runs the other way: those were the things that made him choose medicine and spend a career on how people get past their own limits. The term inferiority complex is his, and he meant something precise by it — not the feeling, which everyone has, but using the feeling as the reason not to act.

Whose task is this

One test only: follow the consequence and see who finally pays it. The child who does not study carries the grade. A colleague's mood is his to carry. What other people think of you is their task, and you have no vote in it.

Chasing homework until the house is at war means you have taken on his task. What is left to you is making the consequence clear and being available when he asks.

Not because, in order to

He translates because of my past, therefore now into in order to reach some end, therefore now. A man says he cannot socialise because of his childhood; Adler asks what not socialising spares him. The answer is usually being turned down — and a purpose can be swapped where a cause cannot.

I was too busy to write the proposal. Ask instead what not writing it spared you. Mostly it is being judged, which moves the block from your calendar to your fear.

Inferiority is fuel, not illness

Adler took striving to be ordinary and the feeling of inferiority to be universal. What separates people is the use: healthy striving pushes you to change your position, a complex argues that the position cannot be changed. Same feeling, one accelerator, one brake.

I did not train for this, if it sends you to fix the gap, is fuel. If it becomes the reason you never apply, it is the complex.

Worth grows out of contribution

His definition of mental health is not self-realisation but social interest — the felt sense that you are of use to somebody. So his direction of treatment often points outward: not liking yourself more, but finding one concrete thing that helps a particular person.

Affirmations repeated until they feel hollow do less than one small useful thing done for a named person. The second produces a sturdier sense of worth.

How do I use it today?

The next time a relationship is hurting, run the separation first: who finally pays for this? If it is not you, hand it back; if it is, someone else's opinion is not a reason. Then run the second question on yourself — what does staying exactly as I am spare me?

Deep read

Whose task is thisDraw the line where the bill landsWhoever finally pays for the outcome owns the taskNot because — in order toSwap the cause for the purposeHe is not stuck in the past. He is using it

Read alongside

Thomas GordonTwo ways of asking whose problem this is: Gordon's answer picks the method, Adler's decides whether it is yours to touch at all. EpictetusThe same cut two thousand years apart — what is up to me and what is not, against my task and your task. Brené BrownBoth are working on what other people think of me: Adler says it is their task and not yours, Brown says it is a mechanism that can be taken apart — one draws a boundary, the other dismantles a structure. Attachment TheoryTwo routes into the same trouble: Adler asks what you are using it for, attachment asks how the template got built. Murray BowenTwo knives for drawing a line: Adler asks whose task this is, Bowen asks whether their feeling has already got inside you.

Further

Attachment Theory Carl Rogers Viktor Frankl Epictetus Nonviolent Communication Brené Brown Kristin Neff Murray Bowen

Lines to keep

What other people think of you is their task, not yours.