The philosophical question of life orientation in the context of individual psychology by Alfred Adler

Abstract

The question of life orientation, i.e. orientation towards creativity or destruction, life or death, has been considered in philosophy for a long time, but the social aspect of the issue has been developed relatively recently along with the development of psychology as a science, in particular, psychoanalysis and neo–Freudianism. This article is devoted to the study of the problem of life orientations on the example of Alfred Adler's individual psychology – a branch of deep psychology that has much in common with psychoanalytic knowledge, but differs in recognizing the holism of the human psyche. Qualitative analysis of primary empirical data, processing of secondary empirical data, analysis of the evolution of views on the chosen topic were used as research methods. This article examines and analyzes the basic concepts of individual psychology within the framework of the issue under study, as well as the assessment of the conceptual applicability of the theory of Alfred Adler to the actual existential problems of modern man. In the course of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that individual psychology, despite the historically mediated features of the proposed methods and theses, can and should be applied in the context of considering the ontological issue of life orientation, combines social and psychological-philosophical approaches, is consistent in theoretical and experimental terms, although it is almost not used in the framework of modern philosophical and psychological scientific knowledge.