Some basic assumptions about individual psychology or Adlerian psychology

Holism: Adlerians postulate that the person is an individual unit, that the person must be nderstood in his or her totality. The whole is different from the sum of its parts.

The next one is teology. In THE METAPHYSICS, Aristotle delineated four causes and believed that in order to understand the nature of something, we must know four things.

1) Material cause: what is it made of.
2) Efficient cause: how it came to be.
3) Formal cause: what shape or essence it is.
4) Final cause: for what sake or purpose it is.

Adlerian psychology or individual psychology focuses on the final cause of purpose and sake. Adler wrote, "the first thing we discover in the psychic trends is that the movements are directed towards a goal. This teology is striving for a goal. It is innate in the concept of adaptation. The next assumption is the creative self. Adlerians view people as actors and not merely reactors. When homeostatic in function, people interpret data and determine what adjustments needs to be made in order to maintain the status quo. When in feedforward, which is more proactive, basically they anticipate and modify the situation in order to produce the feedback that is already in line with the organism's requirements.

The next asumption is soft determinism, between nondeterminism and determinism. Soft determinsim basically states that there are influences and probable outcomes. There is the concept of freedom to choose and the freedom of choice. Free to choose implies limitations which freedom of choice doesn't. Free to choose implies that there is a set amount of choices that we can freely choose between. Freedom of choice implies that we can...