I don't know when children lose confidence in themselves, are afraid to try new things, and are afraid to compete or compete with their peers. What should parents do to help children return to positivity and optimism, away from feelings of inferiority? Zhou Zhou said that the 26th issue of education, to share with you a book of the Austrian psychology master Alfred Adler's pinnacle book "Inferiority and Transcendence".
The right goal in life is to make the world a better place through one's own efforts; cooperation and dedication are essential elements to achieve this goal.
—Alfred Adler
Parents always want to give their children the best of everything and hope that they can be happy every day. However, parents often ignore their children's real mood swings in the process of blindly giving. Perhaps, they have already developed a sense of inferiority because of a small matter, such as a certain piece of clothing or toy forcibly purchased by parents, so that the child feels inferior to other children. But at this time, many parents are completely unaware, still intoxicated in their deep love for their children, and even think that their inferiority is unreasonable, leaving only a sentence "I am not blessed in the blessing.".
In fact, children's inferiority complex often has its roots traceable, and no one's inferiority complex comes out of thin air. This feeling of inferiority may be alleviated with age, but as everyone knows, the inferiority complex that has already penetrated into the bone marrow is likely to become a stumbling block on the road to children's growth, so that they cannot let go of their hands and feet and boldly do what they want to do, so that they are still afraid of their hands and feet after entering society.
Alfred Adler's psychological monograph What Life Could Mean to You is a book that helps us understand the root of inferiority, tells us the inevitability and possibility of transcending inferiority, and guides us to overcome inferiority.
In this book, the author treats psychology as a face, philosophy as a child, starting from the perspective of individual psychology, focusing on empirical cases, while clarifying the path of life and the meaning of life, telling us how people should understand professional problems, social problems and gender problems, so that we realize that all human behavior can be found in childhood, including the root of inferiority also lies in childhood experience. Therefore, if you want to transcend inferiority, you must solve the problem from the source.
01
Alfred Adler (1870–1937), an Austrian psychiatrist and founder of individual psychology, was a chair professor at Columbia University and a visiting professor of medical psychology at Long Island Medical College.
Columbia University ▲
Born in 1870 in a Jewish middle-class migu merchant house on the outskirts of Vienna, Adler was the second of six children, his father was from Berchenland, a very wealthy family, and his brother was also a typical model child.
However, Adler suffered from rickets from an early age, clumsy movements, and problems with the throat. When he was 3 years old, his younger brother, who slept next to him, died tragically. At the age of 5, Adler also suffered from pneumonia and almost lost his life. Coupled with the fact that he was hit by a car twice on the street in his childhood, Adler was terrified of death.
His experience as a child strengthened his determination to become a doctor. After graduating from high school, he successfully entered the University of Vienna, when he was 17 years old. Adler excelled in his studies, earning his MD at the age of 25, and of all the medical courses he was most interested in pathological anatomy, as well as social issues and changes that caught his attention.
For the 28-year-old Adler, who originally majored in ophthalmology, but eventually became a general practitioner, for whom the patient was not only a case, but also able to explore the whole situation of personality, psychology and body through the patient. His good diagnosis and extensive knowledge have won the trust and praise of patients. But he felt a strong sense of frustration when confronted with a diabetic who left him helpless, and with the encouragement of Croft Epbins, Adler began to shift from a general medical practice to neurology.
At the age of 32, Adler joined the Freud Group at the invitation of Freud and became one of the leaders of the group, where he worked for 9 years. Later, because Freud demanded that the members of the symposium must accept Freud's theory of sex unconditionally, Adler could not accept it and left the symposium to form the Free Psychoanalytic Research Society, which he called "individual psychology".
Later, after Freud, Adler became president of the Vienna Society for Psychological Analysis and editor of the Journal of Psychoanalysis, publishing his first psychological paper, The Doctor as an Educator, at the age of 34. At the age of 50, Adler traveled extensively, publishing a series of books and founding the International Journal of Individual Psychology at the age of 65. Eventually, when Adler was hired to lecture in Europe, he suffered a heart attack due to overwork and eventually died in Aberdeen, Scotland, at the age of 67.
Adler inherited Freud's ideas, which were very different in basic concepts, and on this basis he conducted in-depth research and made new achievements of his own. He explored the influence of childhood on the human spiritual world in a unique way, and centered on "inferiority" and "self-creation", and put forward a variety of psychological concepts such as creative self, life style, pursuit of superiority, inferiority and transcendence, compensation and social interest, and became the founder of the school of individual psychology.
Adler compiled and edited the results of his psychological research and published his first psychology book, Inferiority and Transcendence. The book was originally titled "What Life Could Mean to You", which originally meant "the meaning of life to you", but because the book explained in detail the role of "childhood inferiority" on human growth, it was translated into "Inferiority and Transcendence" that is more in line with the psychology of Chinese when it was introduced into China.
After that, he also published books such as Understanding Human Nature, Problem Children, Superiority and Social Interest, Adler's Individual Psychology, and The Science of Life, which comprehensively presented his research on psychology, and some of his ideas were still widely recognized, and his revision of Freud's pansexual view of psychoanalysis also opened up a new stage of psychoanalysis.
02
"Inferiority and Transcendence" is divided into twelve chapters, Adler from the meaning of life, explores the spirit and body, inferiority and superiority, early memory, dreams, family environment, school, adolescence, crime and crime prevention, occupation, individual and society, love and marriage and a series of issues closely related to the growth of children, and provides specific ways to solve the problem of inferiority, such as guiding children to face inferiority correctly, focusing on cultivating children's sense of cooperation and learning to establish equal relations with children.
When it is found that children have inferiority complex, the first thing parents should do is to guide their children to face inferiority correctly. Children's feelings of inferiority often stem from childhood experiences. This experience comes from family poverty, or from bullying by others, or from physical defects, and may also come from parental neglect.
Although our children have a relatively strong ability to perceive the world, they often lack the ability to interpret the world. Therefore, when they feel pain but are not correctly guided by their parents, but are rebuked by their parents, it is easy to take these pains as their own faults, and then internalize the pain into a missing part of their spiritual world, so that they begin to become inferior, and even hide their inferiority by showing a certain sense of superiority.
As Adler put it: "Behind all these domineering behaviors, we reckon he is trying to hide a sense of inferiority." It's like worrying that people who are too short will have to tiptoe to make them look taller. ”
However, as parents, we should understand that such a psychology is not conducive to the healthy development of children's physical and mental health. What we can do is to create a secure environment for children, and appropriately guide them to face their own shortcomings correctly and find their own foothold.
So, how to avoid children's inferiority complex? Adler believes that developing a sense of cooperation in children from an early age is an effective way. From the personality development of children in the early days, to the personal growth of adolescents, and even to the career choices of children as they grow up, the solution of almost all problems is inseparable from the cooperation between teams. A drop of water can only be placed in the sea and never dry up.
Let's try to think that if a person's reason and behavior are working in the direction of contributing to others, his life will naturally develop in the direction that best reflects the value of his life. Because children will constantly adjust their state in order to achieve this goal, so that their behavior is in line with their sense of mission, so as to achieve a win-win situation in cooperation.
Adler once said: "We live in connection with others, if we choose to be lonely, we are choosing death; the meaning of the individual has no value, the true meaning of life exists in the individual's interaction with others; we understand a person fundamentally depending on his ability to cooperate; cooperation is the only way to prevent the development of neurological diseases."
It is true that a flower is beautiful, but a flourishing splendid embroidery is even more brilliant. Adler's description in the book also gives parents and all educators a space for reflection, conveying the importance of cultivating children's sense of cooperation.
In addition, learning to establish an equal relationship with children can also effectively help children avoid inferiority complex.
The most harmonious relationship in a family is mutual respect. In today's family relationship, there are many parents who do not know how to respect their children's independent personality, but only regard their children as a continuation of their own lives. Especially in families with multiple children, there is even an unequal treatment of children.
This inequality between parents and children is also the cause of children's inferiority to a certain extent, because parents cut off their children's desire to express and talk, so it is easier to lead to children's confusion. And the unequal attitude towards children will also make children feel indignant. As Adler said, "It is impossible for man at this time to silently tolerate the taste of being relegated without resentment." ”
Therefore, both parents and educators should be like Adler said in the book, patiently answering the various questions raised by children, so that they feel cared for and loved.
In this way, children can cultivate an independent sense of thinking, let them learn to cooperate and dedicate, and learn to treat others in the way that our elders treat them; only when children feel the equal relationship with their parents more truly, they will have a strong interest in society and then discover the meaning of life.
03
After reading "Inferiority and Transcendence", you will find that the views of the whole book are condensed into four gripping words of "cooperation" and "equality". Through sophisticated and meticulous empirical case studies, Adler makes esoteric psychological theories easy to understand, so that we understand that the meaning of life lies in dedication, in obtaining satisfaction from solidarity and cooperation with others, and it is an effective way to overcome inferiority complex, learn to cooperate with others, and establish equal relationships.
The reason why "Inferiority and Transcendence" can be affirmed and praised by posterity is not only because Adler describes the impact of inferiority complex on personal behavior in an easy and relaxed tone, but also because this book provides all parents and educators with a way to help children overcome their inferiority complex and teach children to learn to cooperate with others in the pursuit of equality.
Golden sentence sharing
Once a person has established the goal of pursuing superiority, then his attitude towards life will not go wrong, and all actions are consistent with this goal.
Life means caring for others, meaning being part of the whole, and dedicating oneself to the well-being of humanity.
Once we discover and understand the meaning of a person's life, we have the key to unlocking his entire character.
When a person encounters a problem that he cannot adapt to or is unable to cope with, and is convinced that he cannot solve it, he will show an inferiority complex.
Any education that is not conducted in a friendly manner is wrong.
· A person is not determined by his environment, but by his interpretation of the environment.
If individuals do not cooperate with each other, do not care about others, and do not contribute to the whole, then their lives are bound to be deserted, and there will be no trace behind them.
Behind the superiority of ability, what we find is not the genetic factor of the supergroup, but the persistent interest and unremitting efforts.
• All acts in family life do not require the use of authority, and it would be unfortunate if one of its members was prominent or far more important than the others.
If you are interested in what is discussed in this issue, please leave a comment in the comments section below. I will send a new book "Different Growth" to 5 readers, which contains an introduction to the world's high-quality colleges and answers to questions related to international education, hoping to help everyone.