Alfred Adler's family constellation and fictional finalism: (This the third in a series of articles on Alfred Adler's "counseling theories").

Adler stressed that the order of birth was an important determiner of personality. In spite of their common heritage, siblings are usually very different from each other. It is not the child's position in the successive births that influences his character, but the situation into which he is born and the way in which he interprets it. For instance: if two children of a family are born much later than the earlier ones, the oldest of the two may develop like a first born and the younger one as a second child.

The first born child is given a great deal of attention until the second child is born and then the first is dethroned from his favored position. This dethroning experience may affect the child in a number of ways. It may cause him to protect himself against reversals, be conservative and insecure or it may cause him to develop a striving to protect others and be a helper. "If the parents have allowed the firstborn to feel sure of their affection, if he knows that his position is secure, and above all, if he is prepared for the arrival of the younger child and has been trained to cooperate in its care, the crisis will pass without ill effects."

The second child is in a different situation for he shares attention with another child and is therefore a little more likely to cooperate than the oldest child. He has a sibling that is older than he is and who is ahead of him so he strives to catch up. Adler used the Biblical account of Jacob and Esau as an example for the second child's striving to surpass the older sibling. The second child may continue his exaggerated struggle for equally with the older child or his ambitiousness may result in worthwhile achievement.

All other children may be dethroned but never the youngest who is always the baby of the family and often spoiled in the process. As he has no followers but many pacemakers, he may strive to overcome them all. Again Adler uses the Bible to illustrate his point as he refers to Joseph and David. He includes Joseph because he was 17-years-old when his younger brother, Benjamin, was born. Adler believed that the oldest child would most likely become a problem child and a neurotic maladjusted adult with the youngest following closely behind. The second child is by and large better adjusted than either his older or younger siblings.

The only child has problems of his own for the mother often pampers him. She is afraid of losing him, so spoils him as a results of her over protectiveness. As he has no siblings, his feelings of competition is often directed against his father or a girl against her mother. In later years when he is no longer the center of attention, he may have difficulties.

FICTIONAL FINALISM: Adler was influenced by the philosopher Hans Vaihinger whose book, The Psychology of the "As If" was published in 1911. In this book, Vaihinger proposed that people live by many fictional ideals that have no relations to reality. These are ideas that cannot be tested and confirmed. Some of these are "all men are created equal," "honesty is the best policy," and "the end justifies the means." The fictions may help people to deal more effectively with the reality or may hinder their efforts to accept reality. Adler took this idea and came to the conclusion that people are motivated more by their expectations of the future than they are by the past. If a person believes that there is heaven for those who are good and hell for those who are bed, it will probably affect how he lives. An ideal or absolute is a fiction.

Adler's Fictional Finalism is an interesting idea for the hypnotherapist. Fictional Finalism simply states that people act as much from the "as if" as from reality. One of my understandings of the subconscious mind is that whatever the subconscious mind accepts as true, it acts "as if" it is true whether it is or not. When one imagines tasting a lemon, his month waters and often he tastes the lemon "as if" there really was a lemon to lick.

Ansbacher states that there are five points to Adler's understanding of Fictional Finalism: (1) The fictional final goal became for Adler the principle for internal, subjective causation of psychological events, (2) The goal represented a creation of the individual and was largely subconscious, (3) It also became the principle of unity and self-consistency of the personality structure: from the point of the view of the subject, the fictional goal was taken (4) as the basis for orientation in the world and (5) as one aspect of compensation for felt inferiority.

Chaplain Paul G. Durbin, PhD is Past Pres. and Diplomat of IMDHA, retired Dir. Clinical Hypnotherapy MHSF / Methodist