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Women's roles evolving over time
What is the theoretical approach of adler and freud alike
Women's roles evolving over time
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Today, there are currently 23 women heading Fortune 500 companies, including General Motors, IBM, and Yahoo (Stybel, 2014). Women have generally made considerable progress in their social standing and the power they can wield in the public sphere in the past several decades, breaking through many of the obstacles that have previously subjected them to supporting and submissive roles to males. Could this phenomenon somehow be explained by some of the differing theories developed by Freud and Adler? For this paper, I would first provide a brief overview of both Freud’s and Adler’s theories, and then attempt to compare some of the theories introduced by Freud and Adler in relation to women in power.
Adler’s theories emphasized more on interpsychic relations while Freud focused on intrapsychic forces. To Adler, humans are essentially social beings with a need to interact with their environment and the people around them (Engler, 2009). He believed that human beings have an innate desire, a social interest, to adapt to the conditions of the external world and his principle of finalism thus suggests that individuals are oriented toward goals that guide their behavior. (Engler, 2009). Adler also theorized that humans must be understood as a holistic and integrated whole, unlike Freud, who took on a more reductionistic approach and believed that the individual was separated into parts (Engler, 2009).
One fundamental difference between Freud and Adler is that Adler viewed the striving for superiority as far more important than sexuality as a motivating force in action (Engler, 2009). For Adler, the main purpose of the psyche is to strive for superiority and to attain mastery in what one hopes to achieve (Engler, 2009). Each individual s...
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...udging philosophical assumptions – that a philosophy is useful if it “fosters productive living and enhances our lives” (Engler, 2009) -- perhaps what truly matters is simply the usefulness of these personality theories and that these theories attempt to make sense of the world in one way or another, regardless of their theoretical orientations, strengths and limitations.
Works Cited
Engler, B. (2009). Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud. Personality theories (9th ed., pp. 27-60).
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Engler, B. (2009). Interpsychic theories: Alfred Adler, Harry Stack Sullivan. Personality theories
(9th ed., pp. 27-60). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Stybel, L. (2014, January 18). Powerful Women Are Arriving. Psychology Today.
Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/platform- success/201401/powerful-women-are-arriving