The following Classical Adlerian quotations are from the Adlerian Translation Project Archives at the Alfred Adler Institute of San Francisco (AAISF/ATP). Selected works of Alfred Adler, Kurt Adler, Lydia Sicher, Alexander Mueller, Sophia de Vries, Anthony Bruck, Erwin Wexberg, Alexander Neuer, Sophie Lazarsfeld, Ida Loewy, Ferdinand Birnbaum, and other Classical Adlerians have been collected, translated, edited, and converted into electronic text. All of this material is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the expressed consent of Dr. Stein at htstein@att.net.

Alfred Adler:

"The goal of a person's inner life thus becomes the conductor, the causa finalis, that pulls all emotions into the stream of psychological existence. This is the root of the unity of the personality, of individuality. Its strength, wherever it might have originated, becomes unique not because of how it was created, but where it is going, to where it is directed, its destination." (From a new translation of "Progress in Individual Psychology," by Dr. Alfred Adler, in Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie, Vol. II, No. 1, p.1-7, 1923, in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

"Therefore, the way in which the end goal, the finale, is examined becomes essential. Aside from the fact that we can never scrutinize a person other than as an integrated human being and, consequently, as a goal and methodically directed unity, his life and systematic movements require an integrated goal. Setting a goal forces the unity of the personality and its unique configuration, the style of life. The teleology of the person's inner life is established out of an inner necessity, but in its uniqueness is a creation of the individual." (From a new translation of a journal article, "Individual Psychology," in "Einführung in die Neuere Psychologie," 1926, in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

"What has made our task enormously easier is, first of all, that we count on the unity of the style of life; we do not make the mistake of believing that it is possible for contradicting psychological movements to exist within one individual." (From a new translation of a journal article, "Psychology and Medicine," 1928, in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

Kurt Adler:

"Adler, in line with his concept of the unity of the personality, said, 'We cannot oppose conscious to unconscious as if they were two antagonistic halves of an individual's existence. The conscious life will be unconscious as long as we fail to understand it; and as soon as we understand an unconscious tendency, it has already become conscious. Every conscious manifestation points also to one's unconscious idealized goal and desires. The postulated antithesis between conscious and unconscious impulses is one of means only, since both strive for the same idealized goal. And even the idealized goal, of which one is normally not entirely aware, may, in part, become conscious if it becomes necessary for self-aggrandizement, for instance, as we see in the psychoses. But as soon as a life-plan, a goal, becomes threatened by its becoming conscious, the individual manages easily to remain unconscious of it'." ( From "Socialist Influences on Adlerian Psychology," New York 19th International Congress of Individual Psychology Budapest, Hungary August 1 - 5,1993.)

Lydia Sicher:

"The human being is a unit, a whole, moving toward a goal. Everything a person does, every thought, action, and feeling goes in the same direction."

"The unity of body and soul manifests itself in the reciprocal influence of soma and psyche which gives rise to the conception of the individual as a distinctive unity. It is an individual's goal that gives direction to his activities; in part it is the mind that shapes the body."

"Only as we deal with a totality can we conclude from one single character trait within the psychic behavior, the same direction of the other emotional manifestations. If man were a conglomerate of jumbled drives without direction, then each character trait, each momentary attitude would resemble a flash-photo, corresponding to a single piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The remaining pieces would come from another toy box, from another picture puzzle."

"With the unity of the personality, we will see that the compensatory moves that a person makes will show in every single field of endeavor or every single field of human connectedness."

(From "The Collected Works of Lydia Sicher: An Adlerian Perspective," edited by Adele Davidson.)

Sophia de Vries:

"We find a unity as well as a common denominator when we examine a personality, and we always look for this common denominator in order to find out where a person makes a mistake, in all of his different functions. The mistake is the direction in which they are all going. There's where we have to help a person make a change, so that he does not repeatedly hit his head against a wall."

"I do not look at the structure of the personality as much as I look at the movements that this person makes in the different aspects of his life. In these relationships to work, friends, spouse, children, even animals, you find the unity of movements that reflect a common direction."

(From an edited transcription a discusion with Henry Stein on October 6, 1986, in Oakland, California, in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

Alexander Neuer:

"If there is any recognition of the soul, then it must be as a goal-directed unity, whose parts can only be understood if one has come to understand the whole."

"For example, if I observe a tree on the basis of this idea of a whole, then it will be a unit, but composed of several parts: the roots, the trunk, the boughs, the leaves – all these many multiplicities together compose the whole, the tree, the unit. And that is precisely what we are after, in the relations between these parts within a unit lies the goal. Whereas in the rest of nature any whole can be divided into its constituent parts, and all parts are equally valuable for the whole (for instance, a diamond can be cut into very small parts and the natural law that rules diamond will remain unchanged for the parts just as it will for the whole), one cannot get anywhere with this within living nature; for if the tree is cut up into its constituent parts, then the tree will be killed as well, it is no longer what it was, its unity has been terminated. We call such units in living nature ‘organisms’ and the parts we call ‘organs.’ The parts are the tools within the whole, they make sense only in the unity of the whole, every single organ performs its intended goal for its organism and this intentional functionality is not situated outside of nature but its value lies within it."

(From a translation of "A Series of Twelve Lectures," Vienna, held between 18 February and 2 March, 1936, in Vienna, in the AAISF/ATP Archives.)

Henry Stein:

"Understanding Adler's abstract construct of the unity of the personality is not difficult, but applying it to individual cases can be quite challenging. Usually, the unity is not obvious, but hidden in a unique form that can be unveiled with patient analysis, synthesis, empathy, and intuition. I can recall many years of case supervision with my mentor, Sophia de Vries, who masterfully penetrated the mystery of each unique case. It was a perpetually wondrous experience when the hidden core of a case became visible, and the unity of thinking, feeling, action, memory, emotion, and symptoms was illustrated again and again. Like an artist, she etched a coherent composition--each note fit the melody. Gradually the interplay of inferiority feeling, style of life, fictional final goal, private logic, scheme of apperception, childhood prototype, earliest memories, and dreams came together into an organic unity. The creative stimulation of this process never diminishes--each new case becomes an irresistible puzzle." (From an edited transcription of a tape recorded lecture given on 7-19-96, in San Francisco, in the AAISF/ATP Archives. Available in distance training course DT102A - "Case Analysis and Treatment Planning," at .)

Henry T. Stein, Ph.D., Director
Alfred Adler Institute of Northwestern Washington
2565 Mayflower Lane
Bellingham, WA 98226
Phone: (360) 647-5670
E-mail: HTStein@att.net
Web Site: http://www.Adlerian.us