Becoming the Ideal Self in Adlerian Theory

Adlerian Theory

Major lifestyle components such as self-concept, self-ideal, environmental scan and well-built form a person’s unique and unified personality by informing the self and giving a person a sense of who he or she is and what he or she could be or has the potential to be. Life is as much about becoming as it is about being, and Adler understood that. As Lemberger-Truelove (2018) notes, it was Adler’s view that people sought to compensate for feelings of inferiority by striving to feel whole or even superior to others. Additionally, people look for empathy and sympathy among others and in social situations, including online social media spaces (Hammond, 2015).

Support groups offer a person a sense of having a supportive environment, which can enable to have a well-built sense of self (Hammond, 2015). The environmental scan is important to lifestyle because it shows whether one has this support system in place. Those who lack it tend to be lacking in feelings of self-worth and struggle with their inferiority issues throughout their life. Support is vital for a self-ideal. Without a self-ideal that is attainable, moreover, the self-image, which can be informed by the feelings of inferiority can be all that a person sees. Thus, having some kind of community in one’s environment is really a big deal for a person and should not be underemphasized. It is too often the case that people think they only need themselves to overcome their own inferiority issues, but as Lemberger-Truelove (2018) points out, support groups really help one have a sense of self-worth and wholeness, and to have alignment between the self-ideal and the self-image. Support groups and supportive environments are instrumental in the development of a person’s unique and unified personality because they bring together the self-image and the self-ideal in a way that the individual cannot do alone: the support group provides positive reinforcement, encouragement, and fosters a spirit of becoming in the sense that all things seem possible for the person—and this adds to the uniqueness of the individual as the personality develops.