Adlerian’s school of psychology might forever change your view on trauma.
Suppose you were back in the same story where a dog bit you when you were little. Since then, you were traumatized. One day a dog jumped out of nowhere on the street and barked at you. A sense of fear crawled into you and you started to run. You recalled the traumatic memory, so you ran faster.
Cause and effect
Normally, people view this incident through the lens of cause and effect. So in terms of psychology, that means —
The trauma formed yesterday cause the fear and reaction of today.
This is easy to understand and closely resembles Freud’s school of psychology. But we don’t stop there.
Purpose and effect
Would you want your doctor to tell you the cold you caught was from the rain yesterday and not provide any help in resolving the illness? — The Courage to Be Disliked
If we look closer and consider another school of psychology, the Adelarian’s, we will find a hidden argument in the equation, the purpose. When a dog barked at you, all that you could think of is probably, “Get me the hell out of here”. To fulfill this purpose, you need to run fast and be 100% alert. That’s when your body utilizes fear as a tool, triggering an adrenaline rush to fuel your muscles and awareness in seconds. Then off you run.
The secret sauce of teleology
I noticed that the reasoning between Freud’s and Adler’s aren’t that different. There’s only one additional hypothesis that made Adler’s way that much ahead of its time—
We plan our future by imagining and picking the best path forward.
Don’t you agree?
In a scenario of being barked at by a dog, you think, “Because I have this trauma, a barking dog means a biting dog. I need to get out of here, that is the best way forward. Definitely not fighting it.” So, you feel afraid and start to run.
While you can certainly do that, other experiences and thoughts may pop up as well.
You can choose another narrative, “Well, other than the time I got bitten, I’ve been barked at so many times and they weren’t trying to bite me.” You started to wonder, “Perhaps now the best thing for me is to distinguish which dog bites and which doesn’t.” Now, you feel curious.
Now it’s your choice
Without a purpose in the middle, humans live like zombies and react to situations 100% based on what happened in the past. That is called etiology, and it is a very limited form of life in my opinion. However, if you choose to adopt Adlerian’s psychology for your own benefit, teleology is now your friend.
Break the cycle of cause-and-effect and define your purpose however you like it.
Incorporating ‘purpose’ in the equation of human functioning is a liberating perspective for me, and I hope it works for you, too.
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