Sunday, January 15, 2012

How did Alder, Ellis & Rogers each leave Freud’s Legacy?


            These three gentlemen all had worked under Freud at one point in time or another.  They all had been mentored in psychoanalysis as well.  Ellis left Psychoanalysis though since he did not like it anymore and left to create his own therapy method of irrational to rational studies.  Rogers and Adler both left so they could focus more on the kids of our future generations instead of focusing on older generations and fixing their problems.
            “Changes occur in the perception of self and in the perception of reality, changes occur in behavior.  In therapy, these perceptual changes are more often concerned with the self than with the external world.  Hence we find in therapy that as the perception of self alters, behavior alters.”  Carl Rogers’ quote explains pretty much everything he felt.  If it were not for perception we would not have a sense of self or a sense of behavior.  Behavior, with enough help from the external world, can be taught what is right or wrong based on life decisions and what we as an individual/self take from it.  Rogers was big on explaining that we as individuals take
            Albert Ellis was all for talking about irrationality and rationality.  He was basically explaining that we all have irrational thoughts and we need to do our best to work past the irrational thoughts so we can work through our problems rationally.  I absolutely love Ellis’ form of therapy. I agree with him that everyone is so concerned with their irrational thoughts that they have a hard time thinking rationally.  I have helped so many of my friends and family alike through their problems because they were so worked up about absolutely nothing, but unless you helped them see that they would only think that what they were worried about was the truth and only thing going on around them.  Calming them down is always my first step in helping work towards rationality; that is also my person step when I start thinking irrationally.
            Alfred Adler was basically talking about his Inferiority Complex and how we need to start working with the children in preventing and fixing their social mistakes while they are young instead of waiting for them to be adults.  Adler had a point in saying that we should fix this now and not later.  By the time we are adults we do not want to change or rather we feel that we have no reason to change since we have lived this particular way for the majority of our lives.  The mistakes that Adler is referring to are the social mistakes of our society.  We go around calling each other dumb or fat and so the children will grow up thinking that they are dumb or fat when in actuality they could be of extreme intelligence or of an appropriate weight.
            Why leave Freud’s Theories behind? These three gentlemen did just that because they believed that change was a good thing and that development was just as important while Freud thought we should just be open about everything and use the past to fix what was wrong in the here-and-now.  These three gentlemen seemed to just want to want to help our children develop more than to work on the older generations.  They believed that our children are our future, which they are right. 
            The fact that people takes Freud’s theories and cast them aside automatically without even considering them is just ridiculous.  The fact that these men worked with Freud, but in the end did not like his theories is understandable, but at the same time it makes you wonder what had turned them off from Freud’s theories all together?  At the same time, can one really not be influenced by someone they had received training from?  These three men had to be influenced by Freud in some way even if they claim to not follow his theories at all.

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