đď¸ Book Notes: The Courage to be Disliked
It's the most powerful book I've ever read. The book provides a nice introduction to Adlerian psychology with a unique conversational format between the philosopher and youth, which grew on me. I had a lot of aha moments and will be picking this again soon.
Here are my notes from The Courage to be Disliked:
- None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and itâs impossible to share your world with anyone else.
- Everyone wishes they could change. I know I do, and Iâm sure anyone you might stop and ask on the street would agree. But why does everyone feel they want to change? Thereâs only one answer: because they cannot change. If it were easy for people to change, they wouldnât spend so much time wishing they could. No matter how much they wish it, people cannot change. And thatâs why there are always so many people getting taken in by new religions and dubious self-help seminars and any preaching on how everyone can change.
- If we focus only on past causes and try to explain things solely through cause and effect, we end up with âdeterminism.â Because what this says is that our present and our future have already been decided by past occurrences, and are unalterable.
- In Adlerian psychology, we do not think about past âcausesâ but rather about present âgoalsâ.
- Your friend had the goal of not going out beforehand, and heâs been manufacturing a state of anxiety and fear as a means to achieve that goal. In Adlerian psychology, this is called âteleologyâ.
- PHILOSOPHER: Suppose youâve got a cold with a high fever, and you go to see the doctor. Then, suppose the doctor says the reason for your sickness is that yesterday, when you went out, you werenât dressed properly, and thatâs why you caught a cold. Now, would you be satisfied with that?
YOUTH: Of course I wouldnât. It wouldnât matter to me what the reason wasâthe way I was dressed or because it was raining or whatever. Itâs the symptoms, the fact that Iâm suffering with a high fever now that would matter to me. If heâs a doctor, Iâd need him to treat me by prescribing medicine, giving shots, or taking whatever specialized measures are necessary.
PHILOSOPHER: Yet those who take an etiological stance, including most counselors and psychiatrists, would argue that what you were suffering from stemmed from such-and-such cause in the past, and would then end up just consoling you by saying, âSo you see, itâs not your fault.â The argument concerning so-called traumas is typical of etiology.
YOUTH: Wait a minute! Are you denying the existence of trauma altogether?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, I am. Adamantly. - In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly, the Freudian view of trauma is fascinating. Freudâs idea is that a personâs psychic wounds (traumas) cause his or her present unhappiness. When you treat a personâs life as a vast narrative, there is an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: âNo experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiencesâthe so-called traumaâbut instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.â Focus on the point Adler is making here when he refers to the self being determined not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them. He is not saying that the experience of a horrible calamity or abuse during childhood or other such incidents have no influence on forming a personality; their influences are strong. But the important thing is that nothing is actually determined by those influences. We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.
- Suppose there is someone whose parents had divorced in his past. Isnât this something objective, the same as the well water that is always sixty degrees? But then, does that divorce feel cold or does it feel warm? So this is a ânowâ thing, a subjective thing. Regardless of what may have happened in the past, it is the meaning that is attributed to it that determines the way someoneâs present will be.
- Why are you rushing for answers? You should arrive at answers on your own, not rely upon what you get from someone else. Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; theyâre of no value. Take Socrates, who left not one book actually written by himself. He spent his days having public debates with the citizens of Athens, especially the young, and it was his disciple, Plato, who put his philosophy into writing for future generations. Adler, too, showed little interest in literary activities, preferring to engage in personal dialogue at cafĂŠs in Vienna, and hold small discussion groups. He was definitely not an armchair intellectual.
- Without question, there is no shortage of behavior that is evil. But no one, not even the most hardened criminal, becomes involved in crime purely out of a desire to engage in evil acts. Every criminal has an internal justification for getting involved in crime. A dispute over money leads someone to engage in murder, for instance. To the perpetrator, it is something for which there is a justification and which can be restated as an accomplishment of âgood.â Of course, this is not good in a moral sense, but good in the sense of being âof benefit to oneself.â
- Although there are some small inconveniences and limitations, you probably think that the lifestyle you have now is the most practical one, and that itâs easier to leave things as they are. If you stay just like this, experience enables you to respond properly to events as they occur, while guessing the results of oneâs actions. You could say itâs like driving your old, familiar car. It might rattle a bit, but one can take that into account and maneuver easily. On the other hand, if one chooses a new lifestyle, no one can predict what might happen to the new self, or have any idea how to deal with events as they arise. It will be hard to see ahead to the future, and life will be filled with anxiety. A more painful and unhappy life might lie ahead. Simply put, people have various complaints about things, but itâs easier and more secure to be just the way one is.
- I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and thatâs why he canât complete work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No! Itâs actually that he wants to leave the possibility of âI can do it if I tryâ open, by not committing to anything. He doesnât want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesnât want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it. In another five or ten years, he will probably start using other excuses like âIâm not young anymoreâ or âIâve got a family to think about now.â
- Itâs basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too.
- Being alone isnât what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people.
- People enter this world as helpless beings. And people have the universal desire to escape from that helpless state. Adler called this the âpursuit of superiority.â
- Those who go so far as to boast about things out loud actually have no confidence in themselves. As Adler clearly indicates, âThe one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.â
- When we refer to the pursuit of superiority, thereâs a tendency to think of it as the desire to try to be superior to other people; to climb higher, even if it means kicking others downâyou know, the image of ascending a stairway and pushing people out of the way to get to the top. Adler does not uphold such attitudes, of course. Rather, heâs saying that on the same level playing field, there are people who are moving forward, and there are people who are moving forward behind them. Keep that image in mind. Though the distance covered and the speed of walking differ, everyone is walking equally in the same flat place. The pursuit of superiority is the mind-set of taking a single step forward on oneâs own feet, not the mind-set of competition of the sort that necessitates aiming to be greater than other people.
- This is what is so terrifying about competition. Even if youâre not a loser, even if youâre someone who keeps on winning, if you are someone who has placed himself in competition, you will never have a momentâs peace. You donât want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning if you donât want to be a loser. You canât trust other people. The reason so many people donât really feel happy while theyâre building up their success in the eyes of society is that they are living in competition. Because to them, the world is a perilous place that is overflowing with enemies.
- But do other people actually look at you so much? Are they really watching you around the clock and lying in wait for the perfect moment to attack? It seems rather unlikely. A young friend of mine, when he was a teenager, used to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror arranging his hair. And once, when he was doing that, his grandmother said, âYouâre the only one whoâs worried how you look.â He says that it got a bit easier for him to deal with life after that.
- If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the personâs hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another personâs words or behavior, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle.
- The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing all on its own.
- Itâs not that you mustnât get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempersâit is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like âI just snappedâ or, âHe flew into a rage.â We end up relying on anger to communicate.
- People are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them.
- If one takes appropriate action, one receives praise. If one takes inappropriate action, one receives punishment. Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I wonât take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, Iâll engage in inappropriate actions, too. You already have the goal of wanting to be praised when you start picking up litter. And if you arenât praised by anyone, youâll either be indignant or decide that youâll never do such a thing again. Clearly, thereâs something wrong with this situation.
- Studying is the childâs task. A parentâs handling of that by commanding the child to study is, in effect, an act of intruding on another personâs task. One is unlikely to avert a collision in this way. We need to think with the perspective of âWhose task is this?â and continually separate oneâs own tasks from other peopleâs tasks.
- In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other peopleâs tasks, or having oneâs own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change oneâs interpersonal relationships dramatically.
- There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made? When the child has made the choice of not studying, ultimately, the result of that decisionânot being able to keep up in class or to get into the preferred school, for instanceâdoes not have to be received by the parents. Clearly, it is the child who has to receive it. In other words, studying is the childâs task.
- When reading a book, if one brings oneâs face too close to it, one cannot see anything. In the same way, forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. When the distance gets too small and people become stuck together, it becomes impossible to even speak to each other. But the distance must not be too great, either. Parents who scold their children too much become mentally very distant. When this happens, the child can no longer even consult the parents, and the parents can no longer give the proper assistance. One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the personâs territory. It is important to maintain this kind of moderate distance.
- A stone is powerless. Once it has begun to roll downhill, it will continue to roll until released from the natural laws of gravity and inertia. But we are not stones. We are beings who are capable of resisting inclination. We can stop our tumbling selves and climb uphill. The desire for recognition is probably a natural desire. So are you going to keep rolling downhill in order to receive recognition from others? Are you going to wear yourself down like a rolling stone, until everything is smoothed away? When all that is left is a little round ball, would that be âthe real Iâ? It cannot be.
- Freedom is being disliked by other people.
Itâs that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles. - A community that you can break relations with by simply submitting a withdrawal notice is one that you can have only so much connection to, in any case. Once you know how big the world is, you will see that all the hardship you went through in school was a storm in a teacup. The moment you leave the teacup, that raging storm will be gone, and a gentle breeze will greet you in its place.
- In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being âthe passing of judgment by a person of ability on a person of no ability.â A mother praises her child who has helped her prepare dinner, saying, âYouâre such a good helper!â But when her husband does the same things, you can be sure she wonât be telling him, âYouâre such a good helper!â In other words, the mother who praises the child by saying things like âYouâre such a good helper!â or âGood job!â or âWell, arenât you something!â is unconsciously creating a hierarchical relationship and seeing the child as beneath her. The example of animal training that you just gave is also emblematic of the hierarchical relationshipâthe vertical relationshipâthat is behind the praising. When one person praises another, the goal is âto manipulate someone who has less ability than you.â It is not done out of gratitude or respect.
- It is when one is able to feel âI am beneficial to the communityâ that one can have a true sense of oneâs worth.
- Without judging whether or not other people did something, one rejoices in their being there, in their very existence, and one calls out to them with words of gratitude.
- It is even said that to truly understand Adlerian psychology and apply it to actually changing oneâs way of living, one needs âhalf the number of years one has lived.â In other words, if you were to start studying it at the age of forty, it would take another twenty years, until you turned sixty. If you were to start studying at the age of twenty, it would take ten years, until you turned thirty. You are still young. Starting at such an early stage in life means that you might be able to change more quickly. In the sense that you can change quickly, you are walking ahead of the adults of the world. To go about changing yourself and making a new world, in a way you are ahead of me, too. It is okay to lose your way or lose focus. Do not be dependent on vertical relationships or be afraid of being disliked, and just make your way forward freely. If all the adults could see that young people were walking ahead of them, I am sure the world would change dramatically.
- In the teachings of Judaism, one finds the following anecdote: âIf there are ten people, one will be someone who criticizes you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close friends with them. The remaining seven people will be neither of these types.â Now, do you focus on the one person who dislikes you? Do you pay more attention to the two who love you? Or would you focus on the crowd, the other seven? A person who is lacking in harmony of life will see only the one person he dislikes and will make a judgment of the world from that.
- Imagine that you are standing on a theater stage. If the house lights are on, youâll probably be able to see all the way to the back of the hall. But if youâre under a bright spotlight, you wonât be able to make out even the front row. Thatâs exactly how it is with our lives. Itâs because we cast a dim light on our entire lives that we are able to see the past and the future. Or at least we imagine we can. But if one is shining a bright spotlight on here and now, one cannot see the past or the future anymore.
- When one adopts the point of view of Freudian etiology, one sees life as a kind of great big story based on cause and effect. So then itâs all about where and when I was born, what my childhood was like, the school I attended and the company where I got a job. And that decides who I am now and who I will become. To be sure, likening oneâs life to a story is probably an entertaining job. The problem is, one can see the dimness that lies ahead at the end of the story. Moreover, one will try to lead a life that is in line with that story. And then one says, âMy life is such-and-such, so I have no choice but to live this way, and itâs not because of meâitâs my past, itâs the environment,â and so on. But bringing up the past here is nothing but a way out, a life-lie. However, life is a series of dots, a series of moments. If you can grasp that, you will not need a story any longer.
- No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of âI contribute to others,â you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Whether youâre disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free.
- You say you wish you had known this ten years ago. It is because Adlerâs thought resonates with you now that you are thinking this. No one knows how you would have felt about it ten years ago. This discussion was something that you needed to hear now.
If you liked the above content, I'd definitely recommend reading the whole book. đŻ
Until We Meet Again...
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