Style of life

The term style of life (German: Lebensstil) was used by psychiatrist Alfred Adler as one of several constructs describing the dynamics of the personality.

Not to be confused with Lifestyle (sociology).

It reflects the individual's unique, unconscious, and repetitive way of responding to (or avoiding) the main tasks of living: friendship, love, and work. This style, rooted in a childhood prototype, remains consistent throughout life, unless it is changed through depth psychotherapy.[1]

The style of life is reflected in the unity of an individual's way of thinking, feeling, and acting. The life style was increasingly seen by Adler as a product of the individual's own creative power, as well as being rooted in early childhood situations.[2] Clues to the nature of the life style are provided by dreams, memories (real or constructed), and childhood/adolescent activities.[3]

Often bending an individual away from the needs of others or of common sense, in favor of a private logic,[4] movements are made to relieve inferiority feelings or to compensate for those feelings with an unconscious fictional final goal.[5]

At its broadest, the life style includes self-concept, the self-ideal (or ego ideal), an ethical stance and a view of the wider world.[6]

Classical Adlerian psychotherapy attempts to dissolve the archaic style of life and stimulate a more creative approach to living, using the standpoint of social usefulness as a benchmark for change.[7]

Types of style

Adler felt he could distinguish four primary types of style. Three of them he said to be "mistaken styles".

These include:

  1. the ruling type: aggressive, dominating people who don't have much social interest or cultural perception;
  2. the getting type: dependent people who take rather than give;
  3. the avoiding type: people who try to escape life's problems and take little part in socially constructive activity.
  4. the socially useful type: people with a great deal of social interest and activity.[8]

Religious interpretation

Adler used life style as a way of psychologising religion, seeing evil as a distortion in the style of life, driven by egocentrism, and grace as first the recognition of the faulty life style, and then its rectification by human help to rejoin the human community.[9]

Wider influence
  • Wilhelm Stekel discussed the 'Life goals' (Lebensziele) set in childhood, and neurosis as their product, in what Henri Ellenberger described as "Adler's ideas expressed almost in his own words".[10]
  • Strongly influenced by Adler was the idea of a life script in Transactional analysis.[11] Discussing the script as "an ongoing life plan formed in early childhood", Eric Berne wrote that "of all those who preceded transactional analysis, Alfred Adler comes the closest to talking as a script analyst. 'If I know the goal of a person I know in a general way what will happen...a long-prepared and long-meditated plan for which he alone is responsible'".[12]

See also

References
  1. Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature (1992 [1927]) p. 18
  2. Henri Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970) p. 623-7
  3. Ellenberger, p. 615
  4. H. H. Mosak/M. Maniacci, A Primer of Adlerian Psychology (1999) p. 48
  5. Adler, p. 69-70
  6. Mosak/Maniacci, p. 49
  7. Adler, p. 140-1
  8. Engler, Barbara. Personality Theories. 2006
  9. Ellenberger, p. 625
  10. Ellenberger, p. 598
  11. Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK (1969) p. 68
  12. Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) p. 32 and p. 58

Further reading
  • Shulman, Bernard H. & Mosak, Harold H. (1988). Manual for Life Style Assessment. Muncie, IN: Accelerated Development. ISBN 0-915202-72-7
  • Powers, Robert L. & Griffith, Jane (1987). Understanding Life-Style: The Psycho-Clarity Process. Chicago, IL: Americas Institute of Adlerian Studies. ISBN 0-918287-03-0
  • Eckstein, Daniel & Kern, Roy (2009). Psychological Fingerprints: Lifestyle Assessments and Interventions. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. ISBN 0-7575-6189-6
  • Bishop, Malachy L. & Rule, Warren L. (2005). Adlerian Lifestyle Counseling: Practice and Research. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-95216-6
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