The Psychology of Self-Esteem

“There is no value-judgment more important to man—no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation than the estimate he passes on himself.”
“Happiness or joy is the emotional state that proceeds  from the achievement of one’s values.  Suffering is the emotional state that proceeds  from a negation or destruction  of one’s values.”
“The collapse  of self-esteem is not reached  in a day, a week,  or a month:  it is the cumulative result  of a long succession  of defaults, evasions,  and irrationalities a long succession of failures to use one’s mind  properly.”

Nathaniel Branden

This book  popularized the concept  of self-esteem. Previously most psychologists  recognized  that  how we perceive ourselves is important, affecting our behavior  in areas such as work  and love, but few had looked  into exactly why. The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  attempts to get to the roots  of personal estimation—what increases it, and what  diminishes  it.
Nathaniel Branden  was a disciple and lover of Ayn Rand,  a famous Russian-American philosopher and author of the classic novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. As a result,  for a work  of psychology his book  is very philosophical, driven along by Rand’s notions  of supreme rationalism and individualism.
The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  takes as its premise that we are rational beings in full control  of our destiny. If we accept this truth  and take responsi- bility for it, we naturally see ourselves in a good light. If we fail to take responsibility for our life and actions,  that  estimation falls into danger.
Many  readers  find this book  tough  going, especially the first half, but it is one of the earliest classics of the popular psychology genre and still has the power  to change minds.

Conceptual beings
Branden  devotes many pages to highlighting  how humans  are different  to other  animals.  His chief point  is that  while other  animals  may have conscious- ness, or at least awareness, only humans  require  a conceptual  framework by which to view themselves. Other  animals  can perceive green-colored objects, but only we have the idea of “green.” Dogs can perceive individual  people, but only we have the concept  of “humankind.” Only humans  can ask questions about  the meaning  of life. There is nothing  automatic about  such conceptualiz- ing; thinking,  therefore, is for us an act of choice.
Branden  refutes the two schools of psychology that  were dominant at the time he was writing.  Freudian  psychoanalysis had humans  as an “instinct- manipulated puppet,” while behaviorism  saw us as a “stimulus–response machine.” Neither  took  account  of our powerful  conceptual mind that  gives
us self-awareness  and the ability to reason.  Branden  recalls Ayn Rand’s remark:  “The  function  of your stomach,  lungs or heart  is automatic; the function  of your mind is not.”  We have the power  to regulate  and shape our own consciousness  to achieve our goals.
We are created  to think,  and we must do so in order  to esteem ourselves highly. If we dim our awareness, or are passive or fearful, step by step we kill our greatest  gift. The result is that  we hate ourselves. To love ourselves, we must cherish our ability to think.

Emotions  and self-esteem
Have you ever been in a position  where you know  intellectually  you should  do something, but emotionally cannot  bring yourself to do it? Psychological maturity, according  to Branden,  is the ability to think  in terms of principles, not emotions.  Psychological  immaturity is being swamped  by the moment  and the emotion  so that we lose sight of the broader picture.  When we sacrifice thought and knowledge  to feelings that  cannot be justified rationally, Branden notes, the result is that  we subvert  our self-esteem.
Only if we have a rational approach to our emotions  can we be free of paralyzing  self-doubt, depression,  and fear. This does not mean becoming  a robot  or a cold person,  but simply having the awareness  that  emotions  must be contained within  a larger personal  life philosophy. Neurosis,  on the other hand,  occurs when we let our feelings dictate  our thoughts and actions.  It is impossible  to be both  happy  and irrational, Branden says; someone  in com- mand  of their life, if we look carefully, lives according  to reason.
We think  of happiness  as an emotion,  but it is one that  stems from values that  have been consciously chosen and developed—we  are happy  when we achieve or fulfill what  is most important to us. When we deny or erode those values, we suffer. Branden  remarks  that  anxiety  tends to happen  only “when  a person  has not done the thinking  about  an issue he should  have.”  By not thinking,  the person  has “thereby rendered  himself unfit for reality.”
Physical pain is a mechanism  designed for our bodily survival, but Branden suggests that  psychological  pain also serves a biological  purpose: When we feel anxiety,  guilt, or depression,  that  is telling us that  our conscious- ness is in an unhealthy state. To correct  it, we must reassert  ourselves as an individual  and assess our values, perhaps  forming new ones. In contrast, when we sacrifice reason  to our emotions,  we lose trust  in our own judgment.

Not sacrificial animals
People high in self-esteem are guided by objective facts. They have a good rela- tionship  with reality, and always seek to stay true to who they are.
Their opposite  is someone  whose life is not really their own, who lives to satisfy the expectations, conditions, and values of other  people; they want  to
be seen as “normal” at all costs, and feel terrible  if others  reject them. Branden calls such people “social  metaphysicians” because their philosophy of life revolves around others,  not themselves. Of course, this person  will label their style of life as “practicality,” as if self-sacrifice were quite rational. However, every step along this path  leads them away from what  is real and toward a loss of their true self.

Final comments
Branden  disabuses the reader  of the idea that  self-esteem is a “feel-good  phe- nomenon.” Rather,  it is a deep need that  cannot  be satisfied by shallow  means. It must come from within,  and like a muscle will get stronger  the more we develop it. The more decisions we make that  reflect our highest good, the better  we will naturally feel. The more “shoulds” (I should  do this, or do that, because…) we have in our life, the more justifications  we have to come up with. We become covered in a cloak of excuses, while inside our confidence slowly ebbs away.
If you are a very confident  person  and all is going well, The Psychology of Self-Esteem  may not mean much to you, but read it when faced with diffi- cult choices in your life and it may come alive. For a more practical  and less philosophical approach to self-esteem, you may prefer one of Branden’s subse- quent  books,  such as The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem  or The Art of Living Consciously.

Nathaniel Branden
The author  was born Nathan Blumenthal in Ontario, Canada in 1930.  He attended  the University  of California, Los Angeles, where he received a BA in psychology, and completed his psychology PhD at New  York  University.
Branden  first met Ayn  Rand  in 1950,  later becoming  leader of the “collective” or inner circle around  her, which  included  his wife Barbara Branden and Alan Greenspan,  later chairman  of the US Federal Reserve Board. In the late 1950s  Branden  established  the Nathaniel Branden  Institute to pro- mote  objectivism, and was considered  the movement’s second voice. Despite being more than 20 years her junior, Branden  had a lengthy  affair with  Rand, but only after they had gained the consent  of their spouses. The romantic  and professional  relationship  ended in 1968,  when  Rand  learnt of Branden’s affair with  the actress Patrecia Scott. His book  My Years with Ayn Rand  gives a good insight into the period, and although  he has since criticized the cult of personality  around  Rand,  her ideas continued to be reflected in his writing.
Branden  co-wrote  several books  with  Rand,  including  The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)  and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).  Other  titles include The Psychology of Romantic Love (1980),  Honoring the Self (1983), and Taking Responsibility (1996).
Based in Los Angeles, Branden  is a practicing psychotherapist and runs self-esteem  seminars.

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Lateral Thinking

“Lateral thinking  is like the reverse gear in a car. One  would  never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time.  On the other hand one needs  to have it and to know  how  to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”
“The purpose of thinking  is not to be right but to be effective.”

Edward  de Bono is inevitably  associated  with the word  “thinking,” and no one is better  known  for getting people to work  on the effectiveness of their thought patterns and ideas.
De Bono’s early books  were among  the first in the popular psychology field. The writing  style is not exactly bubbly,  but the quality  of the ideas made them bestsellers. De Bono coined the term “lateral thinking,” now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, in The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967),  but it is Lateral Thinking (subtitled  Creativity  Step by Step in the United States and A Textbook of Creativity  in Britain) that  is more widely read and still in print.

What is lateral  thinking?
When de Bono started  writing  in the 1960s  there were no practical,  standard- ized ways of achieving new insights. A few people were considered  “creative,” but the rest had to plod along within  established  mental  grooves. He promoted  the concept  of lateral  thinking  as the first “insight  tool”  that  anyone could use for problem  solving.
The lateral  thinking  concept  emerged from de Bono’s study of how the mind works.  He found  that  the brain  is not best understood as a computer; rather, it is “a special environment which allows information to organize  itself into patterns.” The mind continually looks for patterns, thinks  in terms of pat- terns, and is self-organizing, incorporating new information in terms of what  it already  knows. Given these facts, de Bono noticed  that  a new idea normally
has to do battle  with old ones to get itself established.  He looked  for ways in which new ideas could come into being via spontaneous insight rather  than conflict.
Lateral  thinking  is a process that  enables us to restructure our patterns, to open up our mind and avoid thinking  in clichéd, set ways. It is essentially cre- ativity, but without any mystique.  It is simply a way of dealing with informa- tion that  results in more creative outcomes.  What  is humor,  de Bono asks, but the sudden  restructuring of existing patterns? If we can introduce the unex- pected element, we need not be enslaved to these patterns.
Lateral  thinking  is contrasted with “vertical  thinking.” Our  culture  in general, but in particular our educational system, emphasizes the use of logic, by which one correct  statement proceeds  to the next one, and finally to the “right” solution.  This type of vertical thinking  is good most of the time, but when we have a particularly difficult situation it may not give us the leap forward we need—sometimes  we have to “think outside  the box.” Or as de Bono puts it, “Vertical  thinking  is used to dig the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking  is used to dig a hole in a different  place.”
Lateral  thinking  does not cancel out vertical thinking,  but is complemen- tary to it, to be used when we have exhausted the possibilities of normal thought patterns.

Techniques of creative  thinkers
It is not enough  to have some awareness  of lateral  thinking,  de Bono asserts, we have to practice  it. Most  of his book  consists of techniques  to try to get us into lateral  thinking  mode. They include:
❖  Generating alternatives—to have better  solutions  you must have more choices to begin with.
❖  Challenging  assumptions—though we need to assume many things to function normally,  never questioning our assumptions leaves us in thinking  ruts.
❖  Quotas—come up with a certain  predetermined number  of ideas on an issue. Often  it is the last or final idea that  is the most useful.
❖  Analogies—trying  to see how a situation is similar to an apparently different one is a time-tested  route  to better  thinking.
❖  Reversal thinking—reverse how you are seeing something, that  is, see its opposite, and you may be surprised  at the ideas it may liberate.
❖  Finding the dominant idea—not  an easy skill to master,  but extremely  valuable in seeing what  really matters  in a book,  presentation, conversation, and so on.
❖  Brainstorming—not lateral  thinking  itself, but provides a setting for that  kind of thinking  to emerge.
❖  Suspended  judgment—deciding to entertain an idea just long enough  to see if it might work,  even if it is not attractive on the surface.

One of de Bono’s key points  is that  lateral  thinkers  do not feel they have to be “right” all the time, only effective. They know  that  the need to be right pre- vents new ideas forming,  because it is quite possible to be wrong  at some stages in an idea cycle but still finish with great outcomes.  What  matters  most is generating  enough  ideas so that  some may be wrong,  but others  turn  out right.

The glorious  obvious
De Bono remarks, “It is characteristic of insight solutions  and new ideas that they should  be obvious  after they have been found.”
Brilliant yet obvious  ideas lie hidden  in our minds, just waiting  to be fished out. What  stops us from retrieving them is the clichéd way we think, always sticking to familiar labels, classifications,  and pigeonholes—what de Bono describes as the “arrogance of established  patterns.”
To get different  results, we need to put information together  differently. What  makes an idea original  is not necessarily the concept  itself, but the fact that  most other  people, thinking  along conventional lines, were not led to it themselves.
We have the cult of genius, glorifying famous  figures like Einstein, only because most people are not taught  to think  in better  ways. For those who practice  lateral  thinking  all the time, the flow of original  ideas never stops.

Final comments
Though  de Bono’s books  are the progenitors of many of the sensationally written  “mind  power” titles available  today, Lateral Thinking itself has a dry style. Unlike many of the seminar  gurus who followed  him, de Bono has degrees in psychology and medicine,  so there is more rigor in his approach.
If you have never got much out of de Bono before,  the chances are you are already  a lateral  thinker. But everyone can become a better  thinker, and his books  are a good place to begin.
People take jibes at de Bono’s invention  of words  like “po” to simplify his teachings,  but he has probably done more than  anyone  to get us thinking about  thinking  itself. This is an important mission, because among  the many things that  make the world  progress,  new and better  ideas are always at the heart  of them.

Edward de  Bono
Born in 1933  in Malta, the son of a professor of medicine  and a magazine journalist,  de Bono  was educated  at St. Edward’s  College and gained a medical degree at the Royal  University  of Malta at the age of 21. He won  a Rhodes Scholarship  to Christ Church,  Oxford, graduating  with  an MA  in psychology and physiology and a DPhil in medicine. He completed his doctorate  at Cambridge  and has had appointments at the universities  of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard.  He became a full-time  author  in 1976.
De Bono  has worked with  many  major corporations, government organizations, teachers, and schoolchildren, and is a well-known public speaker. He has written  over 60 books,  including  The Mechanism of Mind (1969),  Po: Beyond Yes and No (1973),  The Greatest  Thinkers  (1976),  Six Thinking  Hats  (1986),  I Am Right, You Are Wrong  (1990),  How  to Be More Interesting  (1997),  and How  to Have a Beautiful Mind  (2004).

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People Skills

“Although interpersonal  communication is humanity’s  greatest accomplish- ment,  the average person does not communicate well. Low-level  communica- tion leads to loneliness  and distance  from friends, lovers, spouses,  and children as well as ineffectiveness at work.”
“Communication skills, no matter how finely structured, cannot be a substitute for authenticity, caring, and understanding. But they can help us express these qualities
more effectively than many of us have been able to do in the past.”

Robert Bolton

ften the best books  are those that  authors needed to write for their own use. In the preface to People Skills: How  to Assert Yourself, Listen  to Others,  and Resolve  Conflicts would  never have got into the communications field were it not for the fact that  his own people skills were so bad.
The book  was written  over a six-year period  while he was running  a consulting  firm, and the material  was tested on thousands of people doing the company’s  communication skills workshops. Participants involved everyone from top executives to hospital  workers  to small business owners  to priests and nuns.
There are virtually  no jobs where communicating well does not make a big difference to our success. As many people have found,  particularly those in a more technical  field, the actual  “work” is only part  of the job; the rest is managing or dealing with people. Therefore,  if we can communicate well, this can account  for at least half our achievements.

Removing  the roadblocks
People yearn for a closer connection with one another, Bolton notes. They may be lonely not because they don’t have others  around them, but because they cannot  communicate well. Yet if we can put a man on the moon and cure viru- lent diseases, why aren’t we all great communicators? It is partly  because we learn a good deal of our communication skills from our family; chances are our parents  were not perfect communicators, and neither  were their parents.
Nearly  everyone wants  better  communication skills, yet often without knowing  it our communication is full of roadblocks that  prevent  real commu- nication  with others.  Two of the main ones are judging and sending solutions.
When talking  with someone,  it is difficult to listen to what  they are saying without putting  in our “two  bits’ worth.” This is the nicer side of judging. The other  is criticism and labeling. With people close to us we feel we should  be critical, otherwise  we don’t see how they will ever change. With others,  we feel the need to give them a label such as “intellectual,” “brat,” “jerk,” or “nag,” but by doing so we cease to see the person  before us, only a type. Our  “good advice”  is in fact rarely constructive, because it usually represents  an affront  to the other  person’s intelligence.
We may be so used to having roadblocks that  we wonder  what  will be left if we remove them from our style of conversation. What  remains  is the ability to understand and empathize  with other  people, and to make our con- cerns clearly known.

Listening skills
Are your conversations a competition in which “the  first person  to draw breath is declared  the listener”?  Not  many people are good listeners. Research has found  that  “75  percent  of oral communication is ignored,  misunderstood, or quickly forgotten.”
There is a huge difference between  merely hearing  and listening, Bolton notes. The word  “listening” is derived from two Anglo Saxon words,  hlystan (“hearing”) and hlosnian  (“waiting in suspense”).  The act of listening there- fore means more than  just something  physical, it is a psychological  engage- ment with another person.
Listening is not a single skill, but if genuinely practiced  involves a number of skill areas, which are described below.

Attending
The common  estimate  given in research  papers  is that  85 percent  of our com- munication is nonverbal. Therefore  attending skills, which are about  the extent to which we are “there” for someone  when they are speaking,  are vital to good communication. You are not looking  somewhere  else in the room,  but through your posture,  eye contact,  and movement  show the other  person  that they are your focus; you are “listening  with your body.”
Bolton describes when painter  Norman Rockwell was creating  a portrait of President  Eisenhower.  Even though  the President  was amid the worries  of office and about  to enter an election campaign,  for the hour  and a half he sat for Rockwell,  Eisenhower  gave the painter  his full attention. Think  of anyone you know  who is a great communicator and they will be the same: They fully attend  to you with their whole mind and body.

Following
Following  skills relate to how we follow up what  someone  says to us. Though commonly  we advise or reassure,  a better way is to provide  a “door opener” phrase.  This may involve:
❖  Noting  the other  person’s body language:  “Your  face is beaming  today.”
❖  Inviting the other  person  to speak: “Tell me more.” “Care  to talk about  this?” “What’s  on your mind?”
❖  Silence: giving the other  person  space to say something  if they want  to.
❖  Our  body language:  offering the message that  we are ready to listen.

Doing any of those things shows respect; the other  person  can talk or not talk as they wish. There is no pressure.  Bolton comments  that  a lot of people are initially uncomfortable with silence, but with a little practice  it is not hard  for us to extend  our comfort  zone.
In developing  our skill at following,  we become adept  at discovering exactly how the speaker  sees their situation, unlocking  or bringing  out what- ever is waiting  to be said. This is valuable  to both  parties.

Paraphrasing
Bolton defines paraphrasing as “a concise response to the speaker  which states the essence of the other’s content  in the listener’s own words.” For example, when someone  is telling us their problems,  we report  back to them in our own words,  and in one sentence, what  they are saying. This lets them know  we are really listening, and indicates  understanding and acceptance.  We may feel strange  doing this at first and think  the other  person  will wonder  what the hell we are doing, but in fact most of the time they will be glad that  their feelings are being recognized.

Reflective responses
This type of listening provides  a mirror  to the speaker  so that  the state or emotion  they are in is recognized.  Bolton gets us to picture  a young mother  on a morning  when everything  is going wrong.  The baby cries, the phone  rings, the toast  gets burnt. If her husband notices this and says something  like “God, can’t you learn to cook toast?” the woman’s  reaction  is likely to be explosive.
But picture  an alternative. The same events happen  and the husband says, “Honey, it’s a rough  morning  for you—first the baby, then the phone,  now the toast.” This is a reflective response,  acknowledging what  his wife is experienc- ing without any judgment  or criticism. Imagine how much better  she will feel!
Reflective responses work  because people don’t always wish to spell out what  they are really feeling. They beat around the bush. Only by being reflec- tive, not reactive, are we able to discern their real message. Psychologists  talk of the “presenting problem” and the “basic  problem.” What  presents is what  a person  says is the matter, and behind  it is the real problem.  This is why we have to listen for the feeling in a conversation. That  points  us in the right direc- tion, whereas  a common  mistake  is to try to make sense of the words  only.
People complain  that  reflective listening takes more time and effort. It does in the short  term, but it is likely to avoid major  troubles  that  blow up later on as the result of poor  communication.

Assertiveness skills
Bolton likes to think  of listening as the yin (the receiving aspect) of communi- cation,  while assertiveness  is the yang (the active aspect).
Because of the poor  communication skills most of us have been taught, when we want  something  we choose between  either nagging or aggression,  or we avoid the issue altogether. These responses stem from the basic “fight or flight” modes we operate  with as animals.  But as humans  we also have a third option:  verbal assertion. We can stand  our ground  yet not be aggressive. This is easily the most effective means of communication for most situations, yet most of us either forget assertion  or don’t know  how to use it.
The whole point  of assertion  statements is to produce  change without invading  the other  person’s space. There is no power  or coercion  involved, as the focus is on a result. We can remain  very angry, and the other  person knows it from what  we are saying, yet at the same time it allows us not to be hostile or aggressive. They are left to decide for themselves how to respond  to
the message, which allows them to retain  their dignity—while we have taken  a big step in getting what  we want.

Conflict prevention and control
What  we really want  in life is situations where everybody  wins. Bolton pre- sents the counterintuitive idea that  if we define a problem  in terms of solu- tions, one person  wins and the other  loses. To get win–win  outcomes,  we have to focus not on the solution  but on each party’s needs.
For instance,  he worked  with a group  of nuns who only had one car between  them. Several of them needed the car to make visits and go to meet- ings, so there were inevitable  clashes. When one person  had the car, the others lost out. But Bolton asked them what  each of them needed. The need they identified was transportation, and use of the group’s car was only one solution to that.  Seeing the situation in terms of needs meant  that  many other  possible solutions  appeared.
As the old saying goes, “A problem  well defined is a problem half solved.” Bolton provides  a step-by-step  process for identifying  needs, which then lead to a solution. Using this method surprisingly  elegant answers  can be found to questions we may have thought were intractable. But it first requires us to really listen to what other people require to make them happy.

Final comments
People Skills has been around for a quarter of a century  and still sells well. What  is the secret of its longevity? First, the book  rests on a strong  intellectual foundation, referencing  ideas from the likes of Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud, and Karen Horney.  Secondly, it sticks to the fundamentals, not trying to cover every aspect of interpersonal relations  but focusing on three vital, learnable skills: listening, asserting,  and resolving conflict. Although  the book  seems long and there is a fair amount of repetition, it contains  some highly useful tips and techniques  that  can be applied  immediately.
Nowhere does People Skills ask us to change our personality to become a warm  and fuzzy “people  person.” What  it does do is show us well-researched techniques  that  can make a dramatic difference to our effectiveness. We sud- denly understand what  people are really saying, and we begin to be able to communicate what  we truly want  in a direct fashion.
Conversely,  if we still have a tendency  to think  that  having good people skills means the ability to manipulate others  into doing or saying something that  suits us, not them, Bolton’s book  reminds us of the three pillars of respect that  really produce  good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive  love, and genuineness.

Robert Bolton
Bolton  is the head of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting  firm founded in 1972  that focuses on workplace communication and interpersonal  skills. He previously  created training programs for the New  York  State Department of Mental  Hygiene  and also founded a psychiatric  clinic.
His other book, written  with  his wife Dorothy Grover  Bolton,  is People Styles at Work:  Making  Bad Relationships Good  and Good Relationships Better (1996).

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Games People Play

“[The] marital game of ‘Lunch Bag.’ The husband,  who  can well afford to have lunch  at a good restaurant, nevertheless makes  himself a few sandwiches every morning,  which  he takes to the office in a paper bag. In this way he uses up crusts of bread, leftovers from dinner and paper bags his wife saves for him. This
gives him complete control over the family finances,  for what wife would  dare buy herself a mink stole in the face of such self-sacrifice?”

“Father comes  home  from work and finds fault with daughter, who  answers impudently, or daughter may make  the first move by being impudent, where- upon  father finds fault. Their voices  rise, and the clash becomes more acute… There are three possibilities: (a) father retires to his bedroom and slams the
door; (b) daughter retires to her bedroom and slams the door; (c) both retire to their respective  bedrooms and slam the doors. In any case, the end of a game
of ‘Uproar’ is marked  by a slamming  door.”

Eric Berne
In 1961,  psychiatrist Eric Berne published  a book  with a very boring  title, Transactional Analysis  in Psychotherapy. It became the foundation work  in its field, was much referenced,  and was a reasonable  seller.
Three years later he published  a sequel based on the same concepts  but with a more colloquial  feel. With its brilliant  title and witty, amusing  cate- gories of human  motivation, Games  People Play was bound  to attract more attention. Sales for the initial print  run of 3,000  copies were slow, but two years later, thanks  mostly to word  of mouth  and some modest  advertising,  the book  had sold 300,000 copies in hardback. It spent two years on the New York Times  bestseller list (unusual  for a nonfiction  work) and, creating  a template for future  writers  who suddenly  got wealthy  by writing  a pop psychology bestseller, the fiftysomething  Berne bought  a new house and a Maserati, and remarried.
Though  he did not realize it at the time, Games  People Play: The Psychology  of Human Relationships marked  the beginning of the popular psy- chology boom,  as distinct from mere self-help on the one hand and academic psychology on the other.  Mainstream psychologists  looked  down  on Berne’s book as shallow  and pandering to the public, but in fact the first 50 or 60 pages are written  in a rather  serious, scholarly  style. Only in the second part  does the tone lighten up, and this is the section most people bought  the book  for.
Today,  Games  People Play has sold over five million copies and the phrase  in its title has entered  the English idiom.

Strokes and transactions
Berne began by noting  research  that  infants,  if deprived  of physical handling, often fall into irreversible  mental  and physical decline. He pointed  to other studies suggesting that  sensory deprivation in adults  can lead to temporary psychosis. Adults need physical contact  as much as children, but it is not always available  so we compromise, instead  seeking symbolic emotional “strokes” from others.  A movie star, for instance,  may get his strokes  from hundreds of adoring  weekly fan letters, while a scientist may get hers from a single positive commendation from a leading figure in the field.
Berne defined the stroke  as the “fundamental unit of social action.” An exchange  of strokes  is a transaction, hence his creation  of the phrase  “transac- tional  analysis”  (TA) to describe the dynamics of social interaction.

Why we play games
Given the need to receive strokes,  Berne observed that  in biological  terms human beings consider  any social intercourse—even if negative—as  better  than none at all. This need for intimacy  is also why people engage in “games”— these become a substitute for genuine contact.
He defined a game as “an  ongoing  series of complementary ulterior  trans- actions  progressing  to a well-defined, predictable outcome.” We play a game
to satisfy some hidden  motivation, and it always involves a payoff.
Most  of the time people are not aware  they are playing games; it is just a normal  part  of social interaction. Games are a lot like playing poker,  when we hide our real motivations as part  of a strategy  to achieve the payoff—to  win money. In the work  environment the payoff may be getting the deal; people speak of being in the “real  estate game”  or the “insurance game”  or “playing the stock market,” an unconscious  recognition that  their work  involves a
series of maneuvers  to achieve a certain  gain. And in close relationships? The payoff usually involves some emotional satisfaction or increase in control.

The three  selves
Transactional analysis evolved out of Freudian  psychoanalysis, which Berne had studied  and practiced. He had once had an adult  male patient  who admit- ted that  he was really “a little boy in an adult’s clothing.” In subsequent ses- sions, Berne asked him whether  it was now the little boy talking  or the adult. From these and other  experiences,  Berne came to the view that  within  each person  are three selves or “ego states”  that  often contradict each other.  They are characterized by:
❖  the attitudes and thinking  of a parental figure (Parent);
❖  the adult-like  rationality, objectivity,  and acceptance  of the truth  (Adult);
❖  the stances and fixations  of a child (Child).

The three selves correspond loosely to Freud’s superego  (Parent),  ego (Adult), and id (Child).
In any given social interaction, Berne argued,  we exhibit  one of these basic Parent,  Adult, and Child states,  and can easily shift from one to the other. For instance,  we can take on the child’s creativity,  curiosity,  and charm, but also the child’s tantrums or intransigence. Within  each mode we can be productive  or unproductive.
In playing a game with someone  we take on an aspect of one of the three selves. Instead  of remaining  neutral, genuine, or intimate,  to get what  we want we may feel the need to act like a commanding parent, or a coquettish child,
or to take on the sage-like, rational aura  of an adult.

Let the games begin
The main part  of the book  is a thesaurus of the many games people play, such as the following.

“If it weren’t for you”
This is the most common  game played between  spouses, in which one partner complains  that  the other  is an obstacle  to doing what  they really want  in life.
Berne suggested that  most people unconsciously  choose spouses because they want certain  limits placed on them. He gave an example of a woman  who seemed desperate  to learn to dance. The problem  was that  her husband hated going out, so her social life was restricted.  She enrolled in dancing  classes, but found that  she was terribly afraid of dancing  in public and dropped out. Berne’s point was that  what we blame the other partner for is more often revealed as an issue within ourselves. Playing “If it weren’t for you” allows us to divest our- selves of responsibility for facing our fears or shortcomings.

“Why don’t you—yes, but”
This game begins when someone  states a problem  in their life, and another person  responds  by offering constructive  suggestions on how to solve it. The subject says “Yes, but…”  and proceeds  to find issue with the solutions.  In Adult mode we would  examine  and probably take on board  a solution,  but this is not the purpose  of the exchange.  It allows the subject to gain sympathy from others  in their inadequacy to meet the situation (Child mode). The prob- lem solvers, in turn,  get the opportunity to play wise Parent.

Wooden leg
Someone playing this game will have the defensive attitude of “What do you expect of a person  with a wooden  leg/bad childhood/neurosis/alcoholism?” Some feature  of themselves is used an excuse for lack of competence  or moti- vation,  so that  they do not have to take full responsibility for their life.

Berne’s other  games include:
❖  Life games—“Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch”; “See What  You Made
Me Do.”
❖  Marital games—“Frigid Woman”; “Look  How  Hard  I’ve Tried.”
❖  “Good” games—“Homely sage”; “They’ll be glad they knew me.”

Each game has a thesis—its basic premise and how that  is played out—and an antithesis—the way it reaches its conclusion,  with one of the players taking  an action  that  in their mind makes them the “winner.”
The games we play, Berne said, are like worn-out loops of tape we inherit from childhood and continue  to let roll. Though  limiting and destructive,  they are also a sort of comfort, absolving us of the need to confront unresolved psychological  issues. For some, playing games has become a basic part  of who they are. Many people feel the need to get into fights with those closest to them or intrigues  with their friends in order  to stay interested.  However,  Berne warned,  if we play too many “bad” games for too long, they become self- destructive.  The more games we play, the more we expect others  to play them too; a relentless game player can end up a psychotic who reads too much of their own motivations and biases into others’ behavior.

Final comments
Though  Games  People Play was reviled by many practicing  psychiatrists  as
too “pop” and inane, transactional analysis continues  to be influential  and has been added  to the armory  of many psychotherapists and counselors  who need to deal with difficult or evasive patients. It seemed like a ground-breaking
book  because it brought a psychologist’s  precision  to an area that  was nor- mally the preserve of novelists and playwrights. Indeed, American  novelist Kurt Vonnegut  wrote  a celebrated  review that  suggested its contents  could inspire creative writers  for years.
Be aware  that  Games  People Play is quite Freudian, with many of the games based on Freud’s ideas about inhibition, sexual tension,  and uncon- scious impulses. It is also clearly a relic of the 1960s  in its language and social attitudes.
Yet it can still be a mind-opening read, and is a classic for the simple insight that  people always have and probably always will play games. As Berne noted,  we teach our children  all the pastimes,  rituals,  and procedures they need to adapt  to our culture  and get by in life, and we spend a lot of time choosing their schools and activities, yet we don’t teach them about  games, an unfortu- nate but realistic feature  of the dynamics of every family and institution.
Games  People Play can seem to offer an unnecessarily  dark  view of human nature.  However,  this was not Berne’s intention. He remarked that  we can all leave game playing behind  if we know  there is an alternative. As a result of childhood experiences we leave behind  the natural confidence, spon- taneity,  and curiosity  we had as a child and instead  adopt  the Parent’s ideas of what  we can or cannot  do. Through greater  awareness  of the three selves, we can get back to a state of being more comfortable within  our own skin. No longer do we feel that  we need someone’s permission  to succeed, and we become unwilling to substitute games for real intimacy.

Eric Berne
Eric Bernstein grew up in Montreal,  Canada; his father was a doctor  and his mother  a writer. He graduated from  McGill  University  in 1935  with  a medical degree, and trained to be a psychoanalyst at Yale University.  He became a US citizen, worked at Mt Zion  Hospital  in New  York,  and in 1943 changed his name to Eric Berne.
During  the Second World  War Berne worked as a US army psychia- trist, and afterwards  resumed  his studies under Erik Erikson  (see p. 84) at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. Settling in California  in the late 1940s, he became disenchanted with  psychoanalysis, and his work  on ego states evolved  over the next  decade into transactional  analysis. He formed  the International Transactional  Analysis Association, and combined private prac- tice with  consulting  and hospital  posts.
Berne wrote  on a range of subjects. In addition  to his other bestseller, What  Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1975),  which  examined the idea of “life scripts,” he also published  the Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry  and Psychoanalysis  (1957),  Structure  and Dynamics  of Organizations and Groups (1963), Sex in Human Loving (1970), and, posthumously, Beyond Games and Scripts (1976).  See also the biography  by Elizabeth  Watkins Jorgensen, Eric Berne: Master  Gamesman (1984).
Berne admitted that he had a well-developed Child, once describing himself  as “a 56-year-old  teenager.” He was a keen poker  player, was married three times, and died in 1970.

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The Gift of Fear

“Like every creature, you can know  when  you are in the presence  of danger. You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you
of hazards and guide you through risky situations.”

“Though we want to believe  that violence is a matter of cause and effect, it is actually a process, a chain in which  the violent  outcome is only one link.”

“For men  like this, rejection  is a threat to the identity,  the persona, to the entire self, and in this sense their crimes could  be called murder  in defense  of
the self.”

Gavin de Becker
He had probably been watching  her for a while. We aren’t sure but what  we do know  is that  she was not his first victim.”  With this creepy line The Gift of Fear begins. The book  outlines  real-life stories of people who became victims, or almost  became victims, of vio- lence; in each case the person  either listened to their intuition and survived, or did not and paid the consequences.
We normally  think  of fear as something  bad, but de Becker tries to show how it is a gift that  may protect us from harm.  The Gift  of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from  Violence  is about  getting into other people’s minds so that  their actions  do not come as a terrible  surprise.  Though  this may be uncomfortable, particularly when it is the mind of a potential killer, it is better  to do this than  to find out the hard  way.
Before he was 13 Gavin de Becker had seen more violence within  his own home that  most adults  see in a lifetime. In order  to survive, he had to become good at predicting  what  would  happen  next in frightening situations, and he made it his life’s work  to formularize the violent mindset  so that  others  could also see the signs. De Becker became an expert  in assessing the risk of violence, charged  with protecting high-profile celebrity, government, and corporate clients, and also something  of a spokesperson on domestic  violence.
De Becker is not a psychologist,  but his book  gives more insights into the nature  of intuition, fear, and the violent mind than  you are ever likely to read in a straight  psychology text. As gripping  as a good crime novel, The Gift  of Fear may not just change your life—it could actually  save it.

Intuitive security
In the modern  world,  de Becker observes, we have forgotten to rely on our instincts  to look after ourselves. Most  of us leave the issue of violence up to the police and criminal  justice system, believing that they will protect  us, but often by the time we involve the authorities it is too late. Alternatively,  we believe that  better  technology  will protect  us from danger;  the more alarms and high fences we have, the safer we feel.
But there is a more reliable source of protection: our intuition or gut feel- ing. Usually we have all the information we need to warn  us of certain  people
or situations; like other  animals,  we have an in-built  warning  system for danger. Dogs’ intuition is much vaunted, but de Becker argues that  in fact human
beings have better intuition; the problem  is that  we are less prepared to trust  it.

De Becker describes female victims of attacks  who report:  “Even though  I knew what  was happening leading up to the event was not quite right, I did not extract myself from it.” Somehow,  the attacker who helped them with their bags or got into the lift with them was able to make these women  go along with what he wanted.  De Becker suggests that  there is a “universal code of violence”  that  most of us can automatically sense, yet modern  life often has the effect of deadening  our sensitivity. We either don’t see the signals at all or we won’t admit  them.
Paradoxically, de Becker proposes  that  “trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear.”  Real fear does not paralyze  you, it energizes you, enabling  you to do things you normally  could not. In the first case he discusses, a woman  had been trapped and raped  in her own apartment. When her attacker said he was going into the kitchen,  something  told her to follow him on tiptoe,  and when she did she saw him rifling through the drawers  looking for a large knife—to kill her. She made a break  for the front  door  and escaped. What  is fascinating  is her recollection  of not being afraid.  Real fear, because it involves our intuition, in fact is a positive feeling designed to save us.

A violent streak  in everyone
De Becker debunks  the idea that  there is a “criminal mind”  separating certain people from the rest of us. Most  of us would  say that  we can never kill another person,  but then you usually hear the caveat: “Unless I was having to protect  a loved one.”  We are all capable  of criminal  thoughts and even actions. Many murders  are described as “inhuman,” but surely, de Becker observes, they can’t be anything  but human.  If one person  is capable  of a par- ticular  act, under  certain  circumstances we may all be capable  of that act. In his work,  de Becker does not have the luxury  of making  distinctions like “human” and “monster.” Instead,  he looks for whether  a person  may have the intent  or ability to harm.  He concludes,  “the resource  of violence is in every- one; all that  changes is our view of the justification.”

A chain,  not an  isolated act
Why do people commit  violence? De Becker boils it down  to four elements:
❖  Justification—the person  makes a judgment  that  they have been intentionally wronged.
❖  Alternatives—violence seems like the only way forward to seek redress or justice.
❖  Consequences—they decide they can live with the probable outcome  of their violent act. For instance,  a stalker  may not mind going to jail as long he gets his victim.
❖  Ability—they  have confidence in their ability to use their body or bullets or a bomb  to achieve their ends.

De Becker’s team check through these “pre-incident indicators” when they have to predict  the likelihood  of violence from someone  threatening a client. If we pay attention, he says, violence never “comes  from nowhere.” It is actually not very common  for people to “snap” before they commit  murder.  Generally, de Becker remarks,  violence is as predictable “as water  coming to a boil.”
What  also helps in predicting  violence is to understand it as a process, “in which the violent outcome  is only one link.”  While the police are looking  for the motive, de Becker and his team are going deeper to find the history  of vio- lence or violent intent  that  usually precedes the act.
The Gift  of Fear includes a chapter  on spousal  violence, noting  that  most spousal  murder  does not happen  in the heat of the moment.  It is usually a pre- meditated decision, preceded  by the husband stalking his wife and sparked  by the wife’s rejection.  For such men, being rejected is too great a threat  to their sense of self and killing their partner seems the only way to restore  their iden- tity. De Becker reveals an alarming  fact: Three-quarters of spousal murders happen  after the woman  leaves the marriage.

Knowing how  to pick a psychopath
The features  of predatory criminals  usually include:
❖  recklessness and bravado;
❖  single-mindedness;
❖  not being shocked  at things that  would  appall  other  people;
❖  being weirdly calm in conflict;
❖  the need to be in control.

What  is the best predictor of violent criminality?  De Becker’s experience  is that a troubled or abusive childhood is an important factor.  In a study into serial killers, 100 percent  were found  to have suffered violence themselves, been humiliated, or simply neglected as children.  Robert  Bardo, who shot and killed actress Rebecca Shaeffer, was kept in his room  as a child and fed like the fam- ily pet. He never learnt  to be sociable. Such people form a warped  view of the world—at the public’s expense.
Yet violent people can be very good at hiding the signals that  they are psychopaths. They may studiously model normality so that  they can at first appear  to be “regular guys.” Warning  signals include:
❖  They’re too nice.
❖  They talk too much and give us unnecessary  details to distract  us.
❖  They approach us, never the other  way around.
❖  They typecast  us or mildly insult us, in order  to have us respond  and engage with them.
❖  They use the technique  of “forced  teaming,” using the word  “we”  to make
them and their victim seem like they are all in the same boat.
❖  They find a way to help us so we feel in their debt (called “loan  sharking”).
❖  They ignore or discount  our “no.” Never let someone  talk you out of a refusal, because then they know  they are in charge.

We don’t have to lead paranoid lives—most of the things we worry  about never happen—yet it is foolish to trust  our home or office security system or the police absolutely.  As it is people who harm,  de Becker notes, it is people we must understand.

Inside the mind  of the stalker
The Gift  of Fear is riveting when de Becker is discussing public figures who are his clients and stalkers’ attempts to get close to them. At any one time, a famous singer or actor  may have three or four people after them, sending mountains of letters or trying to get through security. Only a small number  of these stalkers actually  want  to kill their target  (the rest believe they are in
some kind of “relationship” with the star), but the common  factor  is a desper- ate hunger  for recognition.
All of us want  recognition, glory, significance to some extent,  and in killing someone  famous,  stalkers themselves become famous.  Mark  Chapman and John Hinckley  Jnr, for instance,  are names forever linked with their tar- gets, John Lennon  and Ronald  Reagan.  To such people assassination makes perfect sense; it is a shortcut to fame, and psychotic people do not really care whether  the attention they gain is positive or negative.
The image of a crazed person  going after a movie star or president  cap- tures the public imagination, but de Becker wonders  why are we so intrigued by celebrity stalkers,  but are blasé about  the fact that,  in the US alone, a woman  is killed by a husband or boyfriend  every two hours.  Incidentally,  he has little faith in restraining  orders,  which he says only intensify the situation. Violent people thrive on engagement, and if they are unbalanced anyway,  a restraining order  will not guarantee safety.

Final comments
The Gift  of Fear is a very American  book,  written  within  a cultural  context  of the rampant use of guns and a society that  puts less emphasis  than  others  on social cohesion.  If you live in an English village or a Japanese  city or even a quiet part  of the United States, the book  could seem a little paranoid. However, de Becker blames evening news reports  for making  his country  seem a lot more dangerous than  it actually  is, noting  that  we have a much higher likelihood  of dying from cancer or in a car accident  than  as a result of a vio- lent attack  by a stranger.
Since the attack  on New York’s World  Trade  Center  in 2001  we have become obsessed with the possibility  of random violence, but most attacks  and homicides still occur in the home, and knowing  the impending  signs of violence may save you from harm.  In terms of personal  safety, de Becker says that men and women  live in two different  worlds.  Oprah Winfrey told her television audience  that  The Gift  of Fear “should be read by every woman  in America.”
In writing  The Gift  of Fear, de Becker was influenced by three books  in particular: FBI behavioral scientist Robert  Ressler’s Whoever Fights Monsters; psychologist  John Monahan’s Predicting Violent  Behavior; and Robert  D. Hare’s Without Conscience,  which takes the reader  into the minds of psy- chopaths. There is now a large literature on the psychology of violence, but de Becker’s book  is still a great place to start.

Gavin  de  Becker
De Becker is considered  a pioneer in the field of threat assessment  and the pre- diction  and management of violence. His firm provides  consultation and protec- tion services to corporations, government agencies, and individuals.  He headed the team that provided  security for guests of President Reagan, and he has worked with  the US Department of State on official visits of foreign leaders. He also developed  the MOSAIC system  for dealing with  threats to US Supreme Court  judges, senators, and congressman.  De Becker has consulted  on many legal cases, including  the criminal and civil cases against O. J. Simpson.
He is a senior fellow  at the University  of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Affairs,  and has co-chaired the Domestic Violence Council Advisory Board.
Other  books  include Protecting  the Gift, on the safety of children, and
Fear Less: Real Truth  About  Risk, Safety and Security in a Time of Terrorism.

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Understanding Human Nature

“It is the feeling of inferiority, inadequacy and insecurity  that determines the goal of an individual’s  existence.”
“One motive  is common to all forms of vanity. The vain individual has created a goal that cannot  be attained in this life. He wants to be more important and successful  than anyone  else in the world, and this goal is the direct result of his
feeling of inadequacy.”
“ Every child is left to evaluate  his experiences for himself,  and to take care of his own personal development outside  the classroom. There is no tradition for the acquisition  of a true knowledge of the human  psyche.  The science  of human nature thus finds itself today in the position  that chemistry  occupied in the days of alchemy.”

Alfred Adler
In 1902  a group  of men, mostly doctors  and all Jewish, began meeting every Wednesday  in an apartment in Vienna. Sigmund Freud’s “Wednesday Society” would  eventually  become the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, and its first president  was Alfred Adler.
The second most important figure in the Viennese circle, and the founder of individual  psychology,  Adler never considered  himself a disciple of Freud. While Freud was an imposing,  patrician type who had come from a highly educated  background and lived in a fashionable district  of Vienna, Adler was the plain-looking son of a grain merchant who had grown  up on the city’s outskirts. While Freud was known  for his knowledge  of the classical world and his collection  of antiquities, Adler worked  hard  for better  working-class health  and education and for women’s rights.
The pair’s famous  split occurred  in 1911,  after Adler had become increas- ingly annoyed  with Freud’s belief that  all psychological  issues were generated by repressed  sexual feelings. A few years earlier Adler had published  a book, Study  of Organ  Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation, which argued  that people’s perceptions of their own body and its shortcomings were a major factor in shaping  their goals in life. Freud believed human  beings to be wholly driven by the stirrings  of the unconscious  mind, but Adler saw us as social beings who create a style of life in response  to the environment and to what
we feel we lack. Individuals  naturally strive for personal  power  and a sense of our own identity,  but if healthy  we also seek to adjust  to society and make a contribution to the greater  good.

Compensating for weakness
Like Freud, Adler believed that  the human  psyche is shaped  in early child- hood, and that  patterns of behavior  remain  remarkably constant into maturity. But while Freud focused on infantile  sexuality,  Adler was more interested  in how children  seek to increase their power  in the world.  Growing  into an envi- ronment in which everyone else seems bigger and more powerful, every child seeks to gain what  they need by the easiest route.
Adler is famous  for his idea of “birth order,” or where we come in a fam- ily. Youngest  children,  for instance,  because they are obviously  smaller and less powerful  than  everyone else, will often try to “outstrip every other  member  of the family and become its most capable  member.” A fork in the developmental path  leads a child either to imitate  adults  in order  to become more assertive and powerful themselves, or consciously to display weakness so as to get adult help and attention.
In short,  every child develops in ways that  best allow them to compensate for weakness;  “a thousand talents  and capabilities  arise from our feelings of inadequacy,” Adler noted.  A desire for recognition emerges at the same time as a sense of inferiority. A good upbringing should  be able to dissolve this sense
of inferiority, and as a result the child will not develop an unbalanced need to win at the expense of others. We might assume that  a certain  mental,  physical, or circumstantial handicap we had in childhood was a problem,  but what  is an asset and what  is a liability depends  on the context.  It is whether  we perceive a shortcoming to be such that  matters  most.
The psyche’s attempt to banish  a sense of inferiority  will often shape someone’s whole life; the person  will try to compensate for it in sometimes extreme  ways. Adler invented  a term for this, the famous  “inferiority com- plex.”  While a complex  may make someone  more timid or withdrawn, it could equally produce  the need to compensate for that  in overachievement. This is the “pathological power  drive,”  expressed  at the expense of other  peo-
ple and society generally. Adler identified Napoleon, a small man making  a big impact  on the world,  as a classic case of an inferiority  complex  in action.

How character is formed
Adler’s basic principle  was that  our psyche is not formed  out of hereditary factors  but social influences. “Character” is the unique  interplay  between  two opposing  forces: a need for power,  or personal aggrandizement; and a need for “social  feeling” and togetherness (in German,  Gemeinschaftsgefühl).
The forces are in opposition, and each of us is unique  because we all accept or reject the forces in different ways. For instance,  a striving for domi- nance would  normally  be limited by a recognition of community expectations and vanity or pride is kept in check; however,  when ambition or vanity takes over, a person’s psychological  growth  comes to an abrupt end. As Adler dra- matically  put it, “The  power-hungry individual  follows a path  to his own destruction.”
When the first force, social feeling and community expectation, is ignored or affronted, the person concerned will reveal certain  aggressive character traits: vanity, ambition, envy, jealousy, playing God, or greed; or nonaggressive traits:  withdrawal, anxiety,  timidity,  or absence of social graces. When any of these forces gains the upper  hand,  it is usually because of deep-seated  feelings of inadequacy. Yet the forces also create an intensity  or tension  that  can give tremendous energy. Such people live “in the expectation of great triumphs” to compensate for those feelings, but as a result of their inflated sense of self lose some sense of reality. Life becomes about  the mark  they will leave on the world and what  others  think  of them. Though in their mind they are some- thing of a heroic figure, others  can see that  their self-centeredness  actually restricts  their proper  enjoyment  of the possibilities of life. They forget that they are human  beings with ties to other  people.

Enemies  of society
Adler noted  that  vain or prideful  people usually try to keep their outlook hid- den, saying that  they are simply “ambitious,” or even more mildly “energetic.” They may camouflage their true feelings in ingenious ways: To show that  they are not vain, they may purposely  pay less attention to dress or be overly mod- est. But Adler’s piercing observation of the vain person  was that  everything  in life comes down  to one question:  “What do I get out of this?”
Adler wondered: Is great achievement  simply vanity put in the service of humankind? Surely self-aggrandizement is a necessary motivation in order  to want  to change the world,  to be seen in a good light? His answer  was that  it isn’t. Vanity plays little part  in real genius, and in fact only detracts  from the worth of any achievement.  Really great things that  serve humanity are not spurred  into existence by vanity, but by its opposite,  social feeling. We are all vain to some extent,  but healthy  people are able to leaven their vanity with contribution to others.
Vain people, by their nature, do not allow themselves to “give in” to soci- ety’s needs. In their focus on achieving a certain  standing,  position,  or object, they feel that  they can shirk the normal  obligations to the community or fam- ily that  others  take for granted.  As a result,  they usually become isolated  and have poor  relationships. So used to putting  themselves first, they are expert  at putting  the blame on others.
Communal life involves certain  laws and principles  that  an individual cannot  get around. Each of us needs the rest of the community in order  to survive both  mentally  and physically; as Darwin  noted,  weak animals never live alone. Adler contended that  “adaptation to the community is the most important psychological function” that  a person  will master.  People may out- wardly  achieve much, but in the absence of this vital adaptation they may feel like nothing  and be perceived as such by those close to them. Such people, Adler said, are in fact enemies of society.

Goal-striving  beings
A central  idea in Adlerian  psychology is that  individuals  are always striving toward a goal. Whereas  Freud saw us as driven by what  was in our past, Adler had a teleological view—that  we are driven by our goals, whether  they
are conscious  or not. The psyche is not static but must be galvanized behind  a purpose—whether selfish or communal—and continually moves toward fulfill- ment of that.  We live life by our “fictions” about  the sort of person  we are and the person  we are becoming.  By nature  these are not always factually  correct, but they enable us to live with energy, always moving toward something.
It is this very fact of goal directedness  that  makes the psyche almost  inde- structible  and so resistant  to change. Adler wrote:  “The  hardest  thing for human  beings to do is to know  themselves and to change themselves.” All the more reason,  perhaps,  for individual  desires to be balanced  by the greater collective intelligence of the community.

Final comments
In highlighting  the twin shaping  forces of personal  power  and social feeling, Adler’s intention was that  by understanding them we would  not be unknow- ingly shaped  by them. In the vignettes of actual  people presented  in his book we may see something  of ourselves: Perhaps  we have cocooned  ourselves in our family or community, forgetting  the career dreams  we once had; or maybe we see ourselves as a “king  of the world,” able to defy social convention at will. In both  cases, there is an imbalance  that  will lead to restriction of our possibilities.
Much  of Understanding Human Nature  reads more like philosophy than psychology,  overloaded with generalizations about  personal  character that  are anecdotal rather  than  empirical.  This absence of scientific support is one of the main criticisms of Adler’s work.  However,  notions  such as the inferiority com- plex have become a part  of everyday usage.
While both  Freud and Adler had strong  intellectual  agendas  to pursue, Adler had a more humble  aim, influenced by his socialist leanings: a practical understanding of how childhood shapes adult  life, which in turn might benefit society as a whole. Unlike the culturally  élitist Freud, Adler believed that  the work  of understanding human  nature  should  not be the preserve of psycholo- gists alone but a vital task for everyone,  given the bad consequences  of igno- rance. This approach to psychology was unusually democratic, and appropriately Understanding Human Nature  is based on a year’s worth  of lectures at the People’s Institute  of Vienna. It is a work  that  anyone  can read and understand.

Alfred Adler
Adler was born in Vienna  in 1879,  the second of seven children. After  a severe bout  of pneumonia at the age of 5 and the death of a younger brother,  he committed himself  to becoming  a doctor.
He studied  medicine  at the University  of Vienna  and qualified in 1895. In 1898  he wrote  a medical monograph on the health and working conditions experienced  by tailors, and the following year met Sigmund  Freud. Adler remained involved  with  the Vienna  Psychoanalytical Society until 1911,  but in
1912  broke  away with  eight others to form  the Society of Individual Psychology.  At this time he also published  his influential  The Neurotic Constitution. Adler’s career was put on hold during the First World War, when he worked in military  hospital  service, an experience  that confirmed  his anti- war stance.
After  the war, he opened  the first of 22 pioneering  clinics around
Vienna  for children’s mental  health. When  the authorities  closed the clinics in
1932  (because Adler was a Jew), he emigrated  to the United  States, taking  up a professorship  at the Long  Island College of Medicine.  He had been a visiting professor at Columbia University  since 1927, and his public lectures in Europe and the US had made him well known.
Adler died in 1937,  suddenly  of a heart attack.  He was in Aberdeen, Scotland, as part of a European lecture tour. He was survived  by his wife Raissa, whom he had married in 1897. They  had four children.
Other  books  include The Science of Living, The Practice and Theory of Individual  Psychology, and the popular  What  Life Could  Mean  to You.

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