[iroh2727]

Well, I don’t think this article did a good job of representing Adler’s real views. I’ve read a little bit of his work and he’s definitely a reasonable person who would agree that your trauma is real.

I think his perspective/emphasis just differs a bit from Freud for example. Like rather than saying this event caused my current state of mind (which is of course true from one perspective), he’d focus on the perspective that my mind reacted in this way for a particular purpose (e.g. to protect itself so that I can keep surviving/functioning in the future, even if it comes at a severe cost). That perspective is also true, just different.

I guess it’s important to have both—-empathy for your experience and the real trauma it caused (so that you still feel connected and supported by people) but also reflecting on what may be the purpose of some behaviors/mentalities that came out of the trauma, so that at least in the longer term they can be improved or substituted (e.g. if something exists for a purpose, we can’t just remove it because it’s “not normal”; we need to understand the root of it). All to keep moving forward to your best self. I mean, there’s no magic pill for trauma so every therapeutic approach is going to have limitations but it’s good to seek useful, self-empowering approaches which I think is what Adler was going for.

Just my interpretation. I’m not an Adler expert but I do like his work (as well as Freud’s).