Counselling and Creativity : An Approach to Individuation: What Life Should Mean to You

Monday, June 28, 2010

What Life Should Mean to You

Adler, A. 1933. What Life Should Mean To You. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd

Chapter XII

Love and Marriage

“Love with its fulfilment, marriage, is the most intimate devotion towards a partner of the other sex, expressed in physical attraction, in comradeship, and in the decision to have children. It can easily be shown that love and marriage are one side of cooperation – not cooperation for the welfare of two persons only, but cooperation also for the welfare of mankind”. ... Adler (1933), p.263 ... we are living in two sexes with the future of our race dependent on the relations of these two sexes ... There are other human beings who are not so much concerned with the welfare of mankind. Instead of taking as their underlying view of life “What can I contribute to my fellows?” “How can I fit in as part of the whole?”, they ask rather, “What is the use of life? What can I get out of it? What does it pay? Are other people considering me enough? Am I properly appreciated? If this attitude is behind an individual’s approach to life, he will try to solve the problem of love and marriage in the same way. He will ask always: “What can I get out of it?”.

...We could even say that for a full solution of this cooperation of two, each partner must be more interested in the other than in himself. This is the only basis on which love and marriage can be successful. ...If each partner is to be more interested in the other partner than in himself, there must be equality. ..Equality is only possible if both partners have this attitude. It should be the effort of each to ease and enrich the life of the other. In this way each is safe. Each feels that he is worthwhile: each feels that he is needed... that you cannot be replaced.

It is not possible for a partner in a cooperative task to accept a position of subservience. Two people cannot live together fruitfully if one wishes to rule and force the other to obey.” Adler (1933), Chapter XII.

It is a really solemn day today being the last day of University. However, this closure has opened many exciting doors and I am really looking forward to moving on as a Social Entrepreneur. I must say I did have the opportunity to read many insightful books over the course of the last 3 years to include Alfred Adler’s “What Life Should Mean to You”, edited by Alan Porter, 1933. It has taken me some time to complete reading this book amongst essay writing but in the last 10 days I returned to it to read the final chapter which I have had on hold for some time. I am wondering whether it has anything to do with what the final chapter is all about ‘Love and Marriage’?

Well I can let you know it was definitely a fascinating read, even though some might find it a bit dated about views on cooperation amongst the sexes. I would have loved to transcribe the whole chapter here but would recommend you finding it in a library and reading this chapter for yourself. I can only provide an extract as painful as it might be for some of us on the subject of Love and Marriage. I can confirm insightful learnings about devotion to a partner and vice versa.

This is one book I would like to add to my personal library to return to every now and then. There are plenty of insights on the behaviours of pampered or neglected individuals and ‘private’ agreement ideas about freedom within marriage that can get some into difficulties who may have an underlying reason to escape from responsibility.

I will end on Adler’s final words: "From all we have said we can draw a simple, obvious and helpful conclusion. Human beings are neither polygamous nor monogamous. The fact that we live on this plant, in association with human beings equal to ourselves, and divided into two sexes, and the fact that we must solve the three problems of life with our circumstances set us in a sufficient way, will help us to see that the fullest and highest development of the individual in love and marriage can best be secured by monogamy.”

Editor

According to Adler, “Individual Psychology has found no problems in life which cannot be grouped under these three main problems – occupational, social and sexual. It is in his response to these three problems that every individual human being unfailingly reveals his own deep sense of meaning of life”. Adler (1933), p.7.

However, in this modern world some may feel that they have found their own 'rigid' solution to these problems, even if it might get them into even more difficulties.

Adler, A. 1933. What Life Should Mean To You. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd

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Dear Readers,

You may be wondering when am I going to finish editing my book, I have been talking about. The thing is, it’s such a precious autobiography account of a story I want to share as interesting, educational and practical for lovers of poetry and psychology, it's been quite a special project of creating a kind of a fusion of the two disciplines in a creative way. I had parked the project temporarily to finish my Continuing Professional Development for 2010 and having achieved this, I will now resume my passion for writing. I hope now to be placing the manuscript safetly in the hands of someone who can tell me not just "it's a facinating read..." but will also direct me to a publisher, even though I have not ruled out self-publishing! I guess this takes us onto how my reading went on Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 1905? Fascinating to say the least and I dare say, postulations probably amounting to the impossible to those in the 18th Century who thought it preposterous that a child could ever have a sex life. It seems though,this was the very investigation that Freud started to uncover from both the light and dark side, which may have later influenced him to change some of his theories, maybe to avoid fierce debate and/or being unpopular, who really knows (Freud 1905). Nevertheless, his neurological and later psychotherapy approaches to discovery does seem to lend itself to a linear explanation to how innocent and precious child development is and how much it needs to be preserved for normal and social development. I guess when he talks of “repression”, that is, burying unwanted thoughts or feelings, he does have a point about humans doing this as a coping mechanism when confronted with unpleasant earlier memories.

Moving on to the next point, now will I get to read his full psychological works in 2011! That’s the challenge. However, I have set myself and even more challenging goal for 2011, that of reviewing at a more researched level, Carl G. Jung, probably Freud's earliest contemporary. I am excited already knowing that Carl saw the unconscious as a repository of unpleasantness too and also one for “positivity”. Maybe that’s how we know that all learnings are unconscious. Thank goodness we have the power to change or dispose of unpleasantness by responding differently to problems. A modern practical application, in this recession I would say, is it’s time to be resilient about our pasts and maintain this consistency for our futures, by empowering ourselves now to deal artfully with problems, because we know there will always be a new one, don’t we.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As you think about going into the New Year, you can let go of all the unpleasantness that you may be holding on to, because it’s not worth the energy is it. Yes, time is precious and so are you and you are so much more precious than problems aren’t you. So as you focus here on yourself and what you want to achieve in 2011, it feels good doesn’t it to know that you can fill your unconscious with “positivity”, good learnings, thoughts and feelings to take you through probably another tough year. And you will get through it won’t you, and you will remember that there will always be another problem that you can blow away. So now you will concentrate on becoming skillful, confident and ready to take the challenge to remain mentally strong for yourself and your loved ones for the next 365 days and beyond. Good. Now that you are ready, take a deep breath in and then out and and as you blow out, blow all those old problems out into the universe and enjoy your life. 123,WIDE AWAKE, WIDE AWAKE ... I do have a pet bird I need to chat to now, whilst all the fireworks are going off... (c) Jennifer Hooper 2010. 31.12.10 at midnight.

Counselling and Creativity : An Approach to Individuation

Monday, June 28, 2010

What Life Should Mean to You

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