Central concept of adler

Central Concept: Feeling of Community

Adler based his psychology on the central concept of (in German) Gemeinschaftsgefühl. It is a difficult concept to translate adequately and has been translated by the phrases social interest, social feeling, community feeling, and social sense (Ansbacher and Ansbacher 1956, 134). Adler and many of his followers came to prefer the term feeling of community (Bruck 1978). It is a multi-level concept. Individuals may understand and put into practice some levels and neglect the development of others. If people have developed social interest at the affective level, they are likely to feel a deep belonging to the human race and, as a result, are able to empathize with their fellow humans. They can then feel very much at home on the earth -- accepting both the comforts as well as the discomforts of life. At the cognitive level, they can acknowledge the necessary interdependence with others, recognizing that the welfare of any one individual ultimately depends on the welfare of everyone. At the behavioral level, these thoughts and feelings can then be translated into actions aimed at self development as well as cooperative and helpful movements directed toward others. Thus, at its heart, the concept of feeling of community encompasses individuals' full development of their capacities, a process that is both personally fulfilling and results in people who have something worthwhile to contribute to one another. At the same time, the concept denotes a recognition and acceptance of the interconnectedness of all people.

These ideas of Adler's also speak to the current discussion of the relationship between self and society. Unlike others, he saw no fundamental conflict between self and society, individuality, and relatedness, self interest and social interest. These are false dichotomies. The development of self and connectedness are recursive processes that influence one another in positive ways. The greater one's personal development, the more able one can connect positively with others; the greater one's ability to connect with others, the more one is able to learn from them and develop oneself. This idea has been rediscovered by recent authors (Guisinger and Blatt 1994).