Individual PsychologyAlfred Adler postulates a single "drive" or motivating force behind all our behavior and experience. By the time his theory had gelled into its most mature form, he called that motivating force the striving for perfection. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, and is basically the same idea as Carl Rogers' idea of self-actualization. (2) Second in importance only to striving for perfection is the idea of social interest, i.e. caring for family, for community, for society, for humanity, even for all life. Adler felt that social interest was not simply inborn, nor just learned, but a combination of both: It is based on an innate disposition, but it has to be nurtured to survive. So here we are, all of us, "pulled" towards fulfillment, perfection, self-actualization. And yet some of us end up terribly unfulfilled, baldly imperfect, and far from self-actualized. And all because we lack social interest, or, to put it in the positive form,......
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