Theories of Personality 9th Edition

84 Part II Psychodynamic Theories

Style of Life

Adler’s fifth tenet is: The self-consistent personality structure develops into a per-

son’s style of life.

Style of life is the term Adler used to refer to the flavor of a person’s life.

It includes a person’s goal, self-concept, feelings for others, and attitude toward the

world. It is the product of the interaction of heredity, environment, and a person’s

creative power. Adler (1956) used a musical analogy to elucidate style of life. The

separate notes of a composition are meaningless without the entire melody, but the

melody takes on added significance when we recognize the composer’s style or

unique manner of expression.

A person’s style of life is fairly well established by age 4 or 5. After that

time, all our actions revolve around our unified style of life. Although the final

goal is singular, style of life need not be narrow or rigid. Psychologically unhealthy

individuals often lead rather inflexible lives that are marked by an inability to

choose new ways of reacting to their environment. In contrast, psychologically

healthy people behave in diverse and flexible ways with styles of life that are

complex, enriched, and changing. Healthy people see many ways of striving for

success and continually seek to create new options for themselves. Even though

their final goal remains constant, the way in which they perceive it continually

changes. Thus, they can choose new options at any point in life.

People with a healthy, socially useful style of life express their social inter-

est through action. They actively struggle to solve what Adler regarded as the three

major problems of life—neighborly love, sexual love, and occupation—and they

do so through cooperation, personal courage, and a willingness to make a contribu-

tion to the welfare of another. Adler (1956) believed that people with a socially

Personal superiority

Personal gain

Exaggerated feelings

Success

Social interest

Normal feelings of incompletion

Feelings of inferiority

Physical deficiencies

Innate striving force

Final goal

dimly perceived

Final goal

clearly perceived

FIGURE 3.1 Two Basic Methods of Striving toward the Final Goal.