Adlerian Therapy Applied to an Adolescent Case Study

An Adlerian approach to the case of B.A., a 14-year-old Guatemalan-American boy, should primarily focus on B.A.'s feelings of inferiority and his sense of community and social belonging. Adlerian therapy generally concentrates on these two areas, and it is worth examining each specifically as it applies to B.A.'s situation.

We can reasonably assume that B.A.'s feelings of inferiority are largely rooted in his family environment. Alfred Adler held that early childhood contains many clues for interpreting subsequent behavior. In Corey's words, the Adlerian view is that "at around 6 years of age our fictional vision of ourselves as perfect or complete begins to form into a life goal" (Corey 99). In B.A.'s case, he has had no physical contact with his mother since the age of five months — too young to have any memories at all, let alone positive ones. His mother was therefore experienced only as an absence, which may well have led B.A. to wonder why she had rejected him. This sense of rejection would likely have been present even at age 6, and it was certainly reinforced by B.A.'s subsequent attempts to communicate with her by letter without receiving any response.

The sense of inferiority would not solely be based on the mother-child relationship, however. B.A. describes an antipathetic relationship with his younger half-brother, though notably not with his younger half-sister. The reason he gives for disliking the half-brother — that the half-brother "misbehaves" — seems like an evasion on B.A.'s part, given that his own therapy was mandated because of his misbehavior. There appear to be deeper issues at work within the household.

Although we do not have a full account of whether the younger half-brother has a relationship with his own birth mother, we can still gain a sense of the probable dynamic. B.A. experiences outright rejection by his mother and also feels some degree of rejection by his father, who has had two other children — B.A.'s half-siblings — who likely represent competition for paternal attention within the home. The overall dynamic of B.A.'s immediate family life helps explain his basic motivation for the antisocial behavior at school: he expresses anger defensively, as if to signal to others not to confront him. This is a classic Adlerian dynamic in which feelings of inferiority shape the client's fundamental behavioral strategy. As Corey notes, "throughout the subjective interview, the Adlerian counselor is listening for clues to the purposive aspects of the client's coping and approaches to life" (Corey 109). In this case, B.A. appears to be compensating for inferiority and asserting social position through aggressive behavior and anger.