Eight Levels of Social Interest: Adult Development From an Adlerian Paradigm
✍ Scribed by Carl S. Hale
- Publisher
- American Counseling Association
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 716 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1524-6817
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In his u~ritings, Alped Adler (1964) alluded to 8 levels o f social interest. These 8 levels of evolution represent a bridge between ego pychologY and humanistic theories o f adult deselopment. Afier outlining these lesels o f social interest, the author concludes that psychotherapists need to address social interest in the therapeutic context. Alfred Adler's (1964) concept of social interest is the foundation on which a theory of selfhood and human development rests, and moves beyond the limitations of ego psychology, object relations, and psychodynamic theory. Gemeinschaj?sgefihl, or social interest, corresponds with the expanding concerns of the individual throughout the life cycle. This broadening relatedness to one's environment eventually encompasses one's family, community, nation, all of humanity, the earth, the cosmos, and God. Individual psychology may be viewed, in this context, as a way to expand the boundaries of individual selfhood to hasten identification with widening realms of authentic social reality. It is my view that Alfred Adler alluded to eight levels of social interest, which are outlined and discussed in this article. This article proposes levels of social interest that are defined as a predominant preoccupation of the individual in a specific breadth and range of social embeddedness, rather than discrete stages of development that involve additive and ordered progression. This theory, then, does not violate the Alderian concept of holism, which is believed by some Adlerians to be mutually exclusive with a developmental theory of human nature that is based on incremental stages. Nonetheless, the current theory is based on the assumption that not all social interest is qualitatively similar and that Carl S. Ha& is an associatcprojssor in dic Dcpartmcnt ofPycjiolOgy at Indiana Uniucrsiry andir ah0 in private practice. Corrcjponiicnce regarding this artich sjioula' k sent to Carl S. Hale, 705A Nnucastk Drive, Sclterrrsi&. I % ' 46375.