Birth Order Effects

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Running Head: BIRTH ORDER Adler: Birth Order Effects Jane Doe Texas A&M University– Corpus Christi Abstract Beginning with Alfred Adler’s earliest works and continuing through to the present this paper examines the effects of birth order. Personality formation is based on psychological birth order as well as the family environment according to Adler. Personality becomes part of the individual’s life style and remains the same unless changed through therapy or some other event. Career choice is also related to birth order position. Birth Order Effects Alfred Adler’s theory of individual psychology focuses on the individual as an organized entity. Individual psychology theory has several major components. Each individual has a style of life or life style as it is now known. Adler characterized life style as the uniting of biology, psychology, drives, perceptions, memory and dreams (Ansbacher, 1969). Additionally each individual strives for a goal “which determines behavior and from that behavior the goal may be inferred” (Ansbacher, 1969, p. 249). Social interest is the innate aptitude in man to but must be nurtured. Adler calls this the “iron logic of communal life “(Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956 p. 128) and further more that the conditions of society must be reckoned with. Ansbacher goes on to say that life problems, occupational, social and sexual are all actually social and require a well developed social interest for their successful solution. Lastly those lacking in social interest are failures in life, neurotics, psychotics, criminals, addicts, suicides, and perverts. The concepts of Adlerian psychology enumerated by Robert Lundin in Alfred Adler’s Basic Concepts and Implications are feelings of inferiority, compensation, striving for superiority and self esteem, future goal orientation, style of life, unity of the personality,
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