A Master’s Project Wittman...Alfred Adler and Martin Buber’s views of spirituality, psychotherapy, and community offer a therapist a deeper understanding of his or her immanent

Running head: TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE

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Alfred Adler and Martin Buber: Telling the Dancer from the Dance

A Master’s Project

Presented to

The Faculty of the Adler Graduate School

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In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of Master of Arts in

Adlerian Counseling and Psychotherapy

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By:

Ives K. Wittman

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Chair: Roger Ballou

Member: Herb Laube

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April 2016

TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE

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Abstract

This project argues for Alfred Adler’s study of the soul in the creative force, claiming of

inferiorities, unity and holism, and social interest as expressions of spirituality and a striving for

perfection in a similar fashion to Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy of dialogue and his

interpretations of Hasidism as a way to re-vision Judaism. Adler’s study of the soul and Buber’s

I-Thou philosophy create a spiritual subjectivity that grounds the therapeutic relationship

between therapist and client. This project demonstrates through a historical perspective of Adler

and Buber’s lives and a comparison of Individual Psychology to Buber’s Hasidism and the

I-Thou relationship how Adler’s psychology and Buber’s spirituality and his views of

psychotherapy utilize an intersubjective and spiritual space for shared movement and an innate

striving to overcome in the therapist and client relationship.


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Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4

The Argument ................................................................................................................................. 6

Part I: Background: Alfred Adler and Martin Buber ..................................................................... 8

Family Backgrounds and Early Childhood ................................................................................. 8

Religious and Spiritual Overview ............................................................................................. 11

Martin Buber’s Hasidism and Dialogical Spirituality .......................................................... 11

Alfred Adler, Jewish Roots, God, and Religion ................................................................... 14

Summary ................................................................................................................................... 17

Part 2: Individual Psychology, Buber’s Hasidism and Judaism .................................................. 17

Comparative Studies of Judaism and Individual Psychology ................................................... 18

Summary ............................................................................................................................... 23

Buber’s Early Hasidism as Jewish Spirituality ......................................................................... 24

Hasidism: Historical, spiritual, religious, and cultural landscape. ........................................ 24

An Adlerian response to Hasidism and Judaism................................................................... 25

Buber’s engagement with Judaism and Hasidism. ............................................................... 27

Buber’s reorientation of Hasidism and Judaism. .................................................................. 28

Buber’s Early Hasidism and Adler’s Individual Psychology - Primal and Subjective............. 30

Summary ................................................................................................................................... 32

Part 3: Therapeutic Implications: Buber’s I-Thou and Adlerian Therapy ................................... 33

Adlerian Community and Spirituality – Brief Literature Survey ............................................. 33

Adler and Buber Meeting Through Ferdinand Tonnies and Gemeinschaftsgefühl .................. 37

Adler and Buber Meeting Through Jääskeläinen (2000) .......................................................... 39

Adler’s Striving to Overcome and Creative Force and Spirituality .......................................... 41

Definitions of spirituality ...................................................................................................... 43

Buber’s I and Thou ................................................................................................................... 45

The Thou. .............................................................................................................................. 47

I-thou relationship and therapy. ............................................................................................ 48

Intersubjectivity, I-thou, and therapy. ................................................................................... 49

Adlerian Therapy Meets I-Thou Relationship .......................................................................... 50

Therapy in Meeting ................................................................................................................... 52

Forming the relationship. ...................................................................................................... 53

Assessment, analysis, and re-orientation. ............................................................................. 54

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 56

References ..................................................................................................................................... 59


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Introduction

In the dance of therapy, movement occurs when the therapist and client risk the

wholeness of their being in a relationship. A meeting of subjectivities and souls co-mingle in a

sanctuary for healing anxiety and neurosis. In the therapeutic moment, the spiritual work of

meeting convenes. Presence and connection engage the I-Thou relationship between therapist

and client. Genuine dialogue activates the creative force of therapist and client in a mutual

striving to overcome. Transcendence leads to alignment and engagement, the first step of the

four-step model of Adlerian therapy.

Alfred Adler and Martin Buber’s views of spirituality, psychotherapy, and community

offer a therapist a deeper understanding of his or her immanent resources in work with clients.

Through Adler’s Individual Psychology and his concept of the creative force and Buber’s

personal engagement of Judaism as he envisioned it through Hasidism and his I-Thou dialogical

philosophy of relationship, Adler and Buber offer a framework for spirituality, soul work, and

subjectivity in the in-between space of the therapeutic encounter. Through the creative force and

the I-Thou relationship, an intersubjective and interhuman striving to overcome provokes both

client and therapist towards mutual self-discovery and goal striving.

An overarching spiritual theme between Adler and Buber’s outlooks was their view of

the soul as intrinsic to the human spirit. Adler and Buber believed in the healing of the soul as a

priori to well-being and one’s striving in interpersonal and communal relationships (Buber,

1958/2006; Duba, 2012). Buber and Adler’s focus on the soul leaves them somewhat at odds

with a current institution charged with promoting the counseling profession. A current white

paper on the concept of spirituality posted by the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious

Values in Counseling (ASERVIC), a division of the American Counseling Association (n.d.),


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considers concepts of “meaning,” “innate,” “unique,” “creativity,” “transcendence,”

“connectedness,” “compassion,” “life force,” and “wholeness” (paras 3, 4, 5, & 6); however,

nowhere in the document does one find mention of the soul. The omission of the soul in an

institutional treatise on spirituality and psychology eerily recalls Adler’s criticisms of the

psychological institutions of his day. In a piece from 1935 entitled “The Structure of Neurosis,”

Adler stated, “The very word ‘psychology’ means science of the soul” (Duba, 2012, p. 218). He

rebuked the “schools” of psychology and their work as “mechanistic” (p. 218) excluding the soul

as part of the holistic nature of the human condition. Adler’s statement harkened back to Greek

roots of psychology with Aristotle’s work on the soul that eventually gave way to a mechanistic

view of psychology beginning with Renee Descartes (Vidal, 2011). The Enlightenment

reconfiguring of psychology led to the field’s focus away from the study of the soul to the study

of the mind. Buber and Adler’s shared views of the soul and relationship challenged the

institutions of their times.

Like Adler, Buber professed the unique soul of persons as central to healing and

wholeness. His re-visioning of Judaism with Hasidism and soul emphasis challenged the

institution of traditional, rabbinic Judaism. Buber espoused his soul views in his comments on

psychotherapy when he wrote, “The sicknesses of the soul are sicknesses of relationship. They

can only be treated completely if I translate the realm of the patient and add to it the world as

well” (Agassi, 1999, p. xi). The relationship between the client and therapist becomes the

immediate world of healing: a relationship embodied by spirituality and subjectivity. Friedman

(1960) argued that Buber’s ideas of dialogue stemmed from a person’s wholeness and “when the

soul achieves unification” (p. 95). This meant the “unity of all faculties within the personality

that constitutes wholeness of man, and it is this that Buber calls spirit” (p. 92). Furthermore,


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Friedman (1960) quoted Buber as saying “he who lives the life of dialogue knows a lived unity:

the unity of life” (p. 92) where living with presence and dialogue is a “being that is whole in

itself” (p. 94). Adler stressed the unity of personality informed by a creative force while Buber

professed unification of the soul within the I-Thou relationship of dialogue. In the therapist and

client encounter, telling the dancer from the dance becomes the spiritual dance of souls. Healing

towards wholeness becomes a transcendent experience for therapist and client.

The Argument

This project is a comparison of Buber and Adler that has yet to be fully explored in the

realm of spirituality. Jääskeläinen (2000) appeared to be the only peer-reviewed comparative

study of Buber and Adler. The author briefly described similarities between the work of the two

men that included Kantian epistemologies, pragmatism, I and Thou relations, social interest,

empathy and understanding, dialogue, meanings of life, and therapeutic implications. This

project continues to draw on Jääskeläinen’s (2000) as a signpost for the current investigations

into Adler and Buber.

This project begins by briefly exploring the crossing points in the backgrounds of Adler

and Buber as they informed their life work in psychotherapy and spirituality. One comes to

realize that although the men may have never met face to face, they were influenced by similar

geographic, spiritual-religious, and cultural spheres. Both Buber and Adler came from Austrian

backgrounds and spent portions of their childhood and adult lives in Vienna. Both men were

born into Jewish families with differing degrees of traditions and observance. Around 1910,

Buber’s re-visioning of Judaism through Hasidism pushed against traditional Jewish norms in

Western European Jewry. It was at this time, around 1911, that Adler broke from Freud and

developed Individual Psychology. Similar to Buber, Adler quickly found himself up against


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powerful institutions. In this case, rather than traditional Judaism and rabbinic traditions, Adler

challenged psychoanalysis, the dominant psychotherapy of the time, and the institutions that

were embracing it - academia and modern medicine.

The project also discusses connections between the I-Thou relationship, Individual

Psychology, Judaism, and Hasidism. It is readily acknowledged that Hasidism in part forms the

central tenets of Buber’s I-Thou relationship, and there have been several comparisons of Adler’s

Individual Psychology to Jewish religious traditions. It is the contention that Individual

Psychology concepts of unity and holism, social interest and community feeling (or in the native

German gemeinschaftsfgefühl), claiming of inferiorities, movement and striving for perfection,

and the creative force resemble aspects of Buber’s spirituality in Hasidic Jewish tradition.

Buber’s religious and spiritual view of Judaism through Hasidism matured into what Kramer

(2012) identified as “dialogical spirituality” (p. xx). Throughout this project, the writer draws on

Kramer (2012) to integrate a relevant, compassionate, and contemporary perspective on Buber’s

spirituality, Hasidism, and his I-Thou relation in psychotherapy.

This project concludes with the argument that Adler and Buber’s common belief in the

uniqueness and creativity of the person and his or her connection to a spiritual source comingle

in an intersubjective encounter between therapist and client. This encounter represents an I-Thou

and I-It relational event that engages the first stage of the four-stage model of Adlerian therapy –

establishing the therapeutic relationship (Carlson, Maniacci, & Watts, 2005; Oberst & Stewart,

2003; Watts, 2014).

The I-Thou and I-It dynamic can determine the foundation for the client’s healing and

activates mutual self-discovery between client and therapist for the remaining three stages of

Alderian therapy: assessment and analysis, interpretation and insight, and re-orientation. Each


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party uses his or her subjectivity towards an innate striving to overcome in the between space of

the Thou. Both the therapist and client act as channels for the creative force and life force in the

soul healing of the client.

Part I: Background: Alfred Adler and Martin Buber

Alfred Adler and Martin Buber spent portions of their childhood in Austria and inhabited

the intellectual milieu of Austria and Germany in the first third of the 1900s. Both men were

born into Jewish families and distanced themselves from their Jewish roots with Buber coming

back to Judaism through Hasidism and Adler going on to convert to Protestantism. Both men

also confronted traditional institutions of the Enlightenment. Jääskeläinen’s (2000) brief

comparative study of Buber and Adler argued that both men were seekers with philosophical and

conceptual similarities, yet Adler was much more “concrete” (p. 142) and “straightforward”

(p. 142) than Buber. Buber might be considered more complex and intricate with a transparency

difficult at times to pinpoint. One might also add that Adler’s presentations were deceptively

simple in contrast to Buber’s work, which could come across as dense yet opaque.

Family Backgrounds and Early Childhood

Alfred Adler’s grandparents were among the first wave of Jewish immigrants who moved

from Hungary to Vienna, Austria, around the 1850s and 1860s (Hoffman, 1994). Adler was born

in 1870 in Vienna, the second son of seven children. His older brother, with whom he did not

get along, was “bright” and “domineering” (p. 4) and received the lion’s share of attention from

his parents. Adler’s father and mother, Leopold and Pauline, did not provide an intellectual

family environment. His father, who ran a grain business with the help of Alfred’s mother, had

“minimal educational and intellectual drive” (Hoffman, 1994, p. 5); however, Alder’s father

wanted him to succeed academically. Their family valued the “pragmatic” (p. 10) aspects of


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education as did most of the Jewish community in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Leopold also

had a keen interest in music that became an integral part of the family environment, and the

young Adler took to it with vigor. Adler engaged in an active social life as a child with many

friends, and Hoffman (1994) indicated that Adler believed these early childhood encounters

strongly impacted his psychological approach, impressing upon him the significance of “feeling

of solidarity with others” and “understanding of the need for cooperation” (p. 5). Adler’s desire

for connection with others and his upbeat, outgoing personality continued to serve him

throughout his adult years (Deutsch, Manaster, Overholt, & Painter, 1977; Hoffman, 1994).

Adler’s prosocial tendencies in childhood and his vitality contrast several difficult

experiences he encountered as a 4 and 5-year-old. These included his bout with rickets, the loss

of his younger brother with whom he had great affection, and his brush with death due to

pneumonia. Adler’s encounter with pneumonia motivated him to become a doctor (Adler, n.d.)

and his other near death experiences may have inspired him with the grit and determination that

led to his striving to overcome.

Like Adler, Martin Buber was also born and raised in Vienna, Austria. Buber, who was

born in 1878 (8 years later than Alder), experienced his mother’s disappearance and was sent to

live with his paternal grandparents at the age of 3 (Friedman, 1983; Kramer 2003). While

coming to terms with his mother’s loss at 4 years old, Buber was told by a girl his same age that

she was never going to come back, and at that moment Friedman (1983) contended a

“mismeeting” (p. 5) as recalled by Buber became the hallmark moment for him for the rest of his

life. The gulf he felt between himself and his mother once he met with her briefly a few years

later set him on a path of seeking divine understanding and connection. He sought to reconcile

something he perceived as part of the human condition, this being a lack of mutual interaction


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between persons. Kramer (2003) contended the lack of mutual interaction belies “a sense of

insecurity [that] is often associated with meeting the Thou” (p. 46) coupled with a person’s

struggling with eternal loss.

Unlike Adler, Buber grew up the first 9 years of his life in relative isolation and

loneliness from peers. His grandparents raised him until he was 14 years old, and he did not

attend school until he was 10 years old. His grandparents arranged private tutors for their

grandson in lieu of a school-based education (Friedman, 1983). Both grandparents held

traditional Jewish beliefs about learning. Buber’s grandmother, Adele Buber, introduced him to

language and reading, and his grandfather, Solomon Buber, the “last great scholar of Haskalah or

the Jewish Enlightenment” (p. 11), introduced him to the virtues of scholarship. Solomon was a

high profile member of the Jewish community known across the region and revered by both

Hasidic and traditional Jewish rabbis and writers (Friedman, 1983). Buber’s grandmother was

highly educated, and her father was a disciple of a Hasidic Rabbi. She revered the spoken word.

This along with the bustling Jewish quarter where one regularly heard German, Polish, Yiddish,

and Hebrew, exposed Buber to the power of language and dialogue. His grandmother’s

reverence for the “integral unity of word and thought” (Friedman, 1983, p. 7) left an indelible

impression on the young Buber. In his isolation, he created dual language conversations and

quickly came to a revelation around the “essence of dialogical understanding not as precise

definition, technical communication, or subjective empathy, but as ‘inclusion’” (Friedman, 1983,

p. 7). Buber eventually learned to speak nine languages, among them German, Hebrew, Polish,

English, French, and Italian. He also and read Spanish, Latin, and Greek.

Comparing Buber and Adler’s early childhood, one recognizes the Jewish values of

community and education and how traumatic events in early childhood gave each the clarity and


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seeds of direction for their lives’ work. For Adler, life reflected a down-to-earth and socially

engaged experience, while for Buber, life moved him toward scholarly and religious endeavors.

For each man, a series of illnesses and death and near-death experiences early on informed

professional directions. For Adler, this included his conviction to become a physician and the

importance of social and relational connections as foundational constructs for social interest and

community feeling culminating in his later ideas of gemeinschaftsfgefühl. For Buber, the loss of

his mother and closeness to his grandmother brought about the power of language, unity of the

word, and initial dialogical encounters and relationship.

Religious and Spiritual Overview

Adler and Buber’s embrace of Jewish religious and spiritual traditions offer a differing

view. Jewish parents raised both men; however, while Adler eschewed his Jewish roots, Buber

grew more curious and gripped by them.

Martin Buber’s Hasidism and Dialogical Spirituality. Buber has been identified as a

religious existentialist and anthropological philosopher (Breslauer, 1996; Friedman, 1983;

Kramer, 2003). His philosophy of the life of dialogue out of which sprung the “I-Thou relation”

had its religious and spiritual roots in Hasidism (Breslauer, 1996; Friedman, 1983; Kramer,

2003; Kramer, 2012). A large part of Buber’s early engagement of Hasidism led him to focus on

the mystical elements of the movement. He eventually recognized these as another way to

remove one’s self from reality. Later, as he refined his understanding of Hasidism, Buber came

to a deeper understanding of Hasidism and incorporated that understanding in his formulation of


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his I-Thou relational philosophy.1 Kramer (2012) has labeled Buber’s spiritual approach as

dialogical spirituality.

According to Kramer (2012), what makes Buber’s contemporary spiritual perspectives so

unique is the centrality of “‘genuine dialogue’ – direct, honest, open, spontaneous, mutual

communication – at the center of the soul’s search for God” (p. xxvii). Genuine dialogue has its

roots in Buber’s Hasidism that was not about ritualistic, institutional, or intellectual striving but a

unique relational engagement with the world, with his or her fellow human beings, and God.

This was tied intrinsically to the “hallowing” of everyday life (Kramer, 2012, p. xx). For Buber,

every moment of life and interaction between persons and between God is sacred, and Jewish

renewal begins with the individual embedded in Hasidic community.

Buber’s religious and spiritual pedigrees began in the first 14 years of his life with his

grandfather, Solomon Buber. As noted earlier, his grandfather introduced him to the merits of

scholarship. More importantly, his grandfather gave him early exposure to traditional, rabbinic

Judaism (Friedman, 1983) as well as encounters with the Hasidic community. Because Buber’s

father was well-known and respected by traditional rabbinic and Hasidic communities, the young

Buber saw a legalistic, rabbinic, and academic Judaism formalized through intense study and

interpretation of historical and biblical texts as well as the Hasidic community’s fervent

engagement with life and community. These somewhat contradictory embraces of Jewish

religious tradition left Buber vexed and in disconnection over how to reconcile the two forms of

Judaism (Friedman, 1983; Kramer, 2012).

1 This project continues to draw on the evolution of Buber’s interpretations and presentations of

Judaism and Hasidism as they relate to Individual Psychology, Dialogical Spirituality, and the

I-Thou relational encounter in therapy.


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In his 20th year, Buber’s disconnection spurred him to voraciously study Hebrew texts

for several years. During this period, he discovered a collection of sayings from the founder of

the Hasidic movement, Israel Ben Eliezer (1700-1760). Buber was enthralled by his discovery

of this collection of sayings and legacy of oral stories passed down by Hasidism. Their focus on

the hallowing of every moment and every human encounter brought him to the realization of

“the primal human reality” of “the idea of the perfected person” (Kramer, 2012,

p. xxxiv). The perfected person came to mean how one sought unification with a spiritual force

that permeates all life rather than a force allocated to specific spheres of life such as religion or

bestowed in certain individuals. Everyone experiences the transcendent. Everyone can

experience transcendence to more fully participate in his or her life through his or her own

unique way in an ongoing becoming of his or her perfection in alignment with God.

After this revelation, Buber in his early 20s withdrew for several years from public life to

immerse himself in the Hasidic culture. He reappeared to produce and publish Hasidic stories

with the collective wisdom of Hasidism as Buber came to envisioned it (Kramer, 2012). Central

to the Hasidic dialogical and spiritual encounter as Buber experienced it was the teacher-student

relationship between the Hasid and the leader of each Hasidic community, zaddik, sometimes

referred to as a helper and spiritual guide (Breslauer, 1996). Unlike the traditional Judaic

practices of pouring over religious texts as a primary way to achieve the divine connection, the

zaddik guided, channeled, and cultivated within his students spiritual teachings and connection

with God through personalized lived experiences. Through stories and relational dialogue,

zaddiks passed down Hasidic lore, traditions, and ways of unification with God (Breslauer,

1996). By his mid to late 20s, Buber’s spiritual understanding of Judaism had transformed into

the realization that the life of the Hasid (one who practices Hasidism) was directed towards


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living spiritual values in relation to the world that was “more desirable than any intellectual

achievement” (Kramer, 2012, p. xxxv). In dialogue with others in presentness and inclusion of

the Other, one brought himself or herself into “authentic (I-Thou) dialogue” (Kramer, 2012, p.

xxxv) with God. Through its practice of dialogue in community and God, Hasidism provided the

platform for Buber’s dialogical spirituality that helped him initially recast and rejuvenate

Judaism and eventually mature towards his I-Thou relational philosophy.

Kramer (2012) went on to point out two other significant aspects of Buber’s dialogical

spirituality. First, the fullness of one’s life and being are found in genuine dialogue with another

and with God. This dialogue occurs in the

insecure narrow ridge between the scared and everyday (p. xxxiv) . . . between absolute

truths, between dualisms of life and death, good and bad and God and the world (p.

xxxviii) . . . a space in which there is no certainty of expressible knowledge and where

the dialogical meeting between God and human beings occurs. (Kramer, 2012, p. xxxvi)

Buber’s spirituality seen in this vein remains dynamic and ever changing. Connection

remains tenuous, abiding, and eternal. Relationships become another expression of a divine

space that invigorates Buber’s Hasidic philosophy of “renewal and self-transformation”

(Breslauer, 1996, p. 67). Relational transcendence offers an interhuman experience of soul

connection through a wholeness of mind-body-spirit (Kramer, 2012). From an Adlerian

perspective, Buber’s narrow ridge reflects the place where striving to overcome, in this case, the

uncertainty of what one meets in another person in relationship, and what one meets in one’s self

in that encounter, engages movement from a felt minus to a perceived plus and willingness to

trust in one’s primal urges to adapt and develop within the relationship.

Alfred Adler, Jewish Roots, God, and Religion. Sources offer contradictory views on

the Jewish tradition of Adler’s immediate family. Rietveld (2004) described Adler’s parents as

“faithful, pious, but not strictly Orthodox” (p. 209). According to Rietveld, Adler disengaged


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from this Jewish tradition, and at the age of 34, became a member of the Evangelic (Lutheran)

denomination and had his children baptized. In contrast, Hoffman (1994) stated that Adler’s

family had “minimal Jewish observance” and considered “Judaism irrelevant to their lives”

(p. 8). Adler’s father was “generous” and “elegant” but not a religious man (Hoffman, 1994,

p. 5). Adler had few memories of his Jewish upbringing, and those he remembered were mostly

unimpressionable. The Adler family lived four of Adler’s boyhood years in a Jewish designated

ghetto in Leopoldstadt, Vienna. Interestingly, autobiographical references by Adler never

mention this (Hoffman, 1994, p. 10). This view dovetails with Hoffman’s (1994) assertion that

Vienna’s Jewish population and their practice in Jewish tradition was waning. Most Jews saw

Judaism as a relic of the past.

In the mid-1890s, as Vienna’s Jewish community moved towards secularism and anti-

Semitism escalated, socialism began to attract many Jews who were intellectually curious about

Marx and Engels. Adler joined his fellow Jews in this movement, and Hoffman (1994) noted

that Adler at 20, the same age Buber was embarking on a quest to delve deeper into the meaning

of his Jewish heritage, was moving in the opposite direction by disconnecting from Judaism.

Hoffman (1994) intimated that Adler, like his fellow socialist contemporaries, may have

distained and rejected his Jewish roots. In contrast to Buber, where Judaism was central to all

facets of family life, Adler’s communal and familial environments deemed Judaism unnecessary

and irrelevant. Buber’s upbringing may have insulated him from the harsh effects of Jewish

assimilationist movements and anti-Semitism, while Adler’s left him directly exposed and

accelerated his break with Judaism by economic and social necessity. Buber also embraced

socialism early in life but he did so with a religious tradition steeped in Judaism. In 1904, Adler

was baptized as a Protestant, a religious conversion common for many Jews in Vienna at the


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time (Hoffman, 1994). Engagement with the wider Western culture in Vienna was much more

appealing than holding onto an inconsequential and debilitative Judaism increasingly under anti-

Semitic attack. Symbolic remnants of Adler’s Jewish heritage continued in his marriage to

Raissa and his ongoing connections with socialists.

If one looks outside of Adler’s Jewish experience, a brief commentary on his views of

organized religion, God, and spirituality suggests a spectrum from skepticism to psychological

necessity. Ansbacher and Ansbacher (1956) contended that Adler viewed God as more an “idea”

as opposed to a “reality” (p. 460). Others argue that Adler’s idea of God and even spirituality is

in part a psychological construct that could be viewed as a fiction used by an individual in his or

her striving for perfection from a felt-minus to a perceived-plus originating from a feeling of

inferiority (Ansbacher, 1978; Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956; Mansager, 2000; Peluso, 2012;

Watts, 2012). For many, God offers a representation of “ultimate values” in living towards self-

development and the common good in community (Mansager, 2000, p. 383; Watts, 2012). In the

process of striving for perfection in the image of God, one does so in wholeness, unity, and self-

transcendence. Later in this project, these ideas are further explored in the relationship between

one’s development of social interest and community feeling to one’s spirituality.

In Ansbacher and Ansbacher (1979), Adler prefaced his comments on religion by stating

the “human soul, as part of the movement of life” (p. 276) has the capacity towards perfection

and completion. He went on to commend characteristics of religious striving that included

“sanctification of human relations,” “unification with God – a goal setting God . . . and the goal

of redemption from all evil” (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1979, p. 278-279). He also attributed

God “as a gift of faith” (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956, p. 277) and identified the unique ways

each person perceives their understanding of God as a reflection of their striving to develop


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(Ansbacher, 1978; Mansager, 2000; Peluso, 2012; Watts, 2012). While Adler acknowledged the

value of religious striving, he also held religion’s institutional structures with suspicion due to

their power, dogmas, and purposes.

Summary

As one ponders the Jewish upbringings of Adler and Buber, one has to marvel at the

divergent paths each man took towards his spiritual and religious traditions. Buber was steeped

in a family tradition of rabbinic Judaism with frequent exposure to vibrant Hasidic communities.

Buber went on to live a life driven by divine seeking and connection. For Adler, his family’s

distant and uninspired secular Judaism never held his attention and he eventually renounced his

Jewish tradition; however, it was his childhood hardships that formed ambitions towards the

medical profession and eventually psychology and foreshadowed his development of social

interest and community feeling. For Buber, the loss of his mother brought revelatory insight and

intensified his quest for deeper understanding of the connections between time, space, and

eternity that he eventually worked out in his I-Thou relational and dialogical philosophies. This

project continues to build on the intersections and connections between Buber and Adler. The

next section and thereafter offers a deeper unfolding and understanding of Hasidism, Judaism,

Buber’s dialogical spirituality and I-Thou relational philosophy, and Adler’s Individual

Psychology.

Part 2: Individual Psychology, Buber’s Hasidism and Judaism

Despite Adler’s formal break with Judaism, many of the core tenets of Individual

Psychology can be seen in Jewish philosophy as well as applied to the spiritual and philosophical

foundations of Buber’s Judaism as envisioned by Buber through his discovery of Hasidism. This

section of the project includes a brief survey of articles from the Adlerian community on the


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similarities between Judaism and Individual Psychology. The writer provides a more in depth

investigation of Buber’s Hasidism by integrating his early encounters with Hasidism as well as

his more mature understanding of Hasidic philosophy. It includes an analysis, from an

Individual Psychology point of view, of Buber’s re-visioned Judaism from his Hasidic

perspective in a series of speeches given between 1909 and 1918 and his other writings. Buber’s

speeches revolutionized Judaism at the time, setting a new direction for the Jewish Renaissance.

The Jewish Renaissance started at the turn of the twentieth century. It marked the beginning of

the end of the Jewish Enlightenment when institutionalized Judaism had dominated the religious

landscape. Buber’s challenge to Jewish traditionalism offered a generation of disillusioned Jews

a new way to embrace their religion with spiritually, renewed meaning, and vigor.

Buber’s language is remarkably similar to that of Individual Psychology. The dates of

Buber’s early addresses also coincided with Adler’s split from Freud in 1911. Buber, in his

discussion of Judaism, used verbatim terminology articulated by Adler in the principles and

concepts of Individual Psychology. Buber challenged the Jewish people, who at the time were

disillusioned and spiritually empty. His perspective offers a way to see how the anxiety and

neurosis of the Jewish spirit stemmed from its disconnection from the primal and ancestral roots

of Judaism.

Comparative Studies of Judaism and Individual Psychology

There are several works that compare Judaism and Jewish philosophy and Adler’s

theories of Individual Psychology. They include a spectrum from messianic Judaism to more

traditional and rabbinic Judaism. In most cases, the authors highlighted the more moral, cultural,

religious, and pragmatic constructs of Judaism and how it reflects tenets of Adlerian theory

through the tension between moral obligation of the individual and socially useful engagement in


19

community; the individual’s right, free will, and responsibility towards moral and religious

development; and in one’s striving for perfection in right living through the God ideal where one

is part and parcel of God in unity and holism.

Kaplan and Schoeneberg (1987) investigated rabbinic tradition of Judaism from the

second to sixth centuries and personality theory in the Adlerian paradigm. Both rabbinic

tradition and Adlerian theory uphold “moral responsibility and free-will” (p. 316). In both

rabbinic tradition and Alderian theory, individuals make decisions and strive for goals in

behaviors that either enhance or diminish social interest and self-esteem. For Adler, one’s

behaviors are caused by a “mysterious creative power of life” (p. 316). Historical rabbinic

tradition asserted opposing God-like energies that harmoniously work together to pull one

towards “positive inclination . . . yetzer tov” and “negative inclination . . . yetzer rah” (p. 316).

These concepts go beyond their literal meaning. Like social interest, Jewish tradition holds each

person responsible for balancing yetzer tov and yetzer yah towards moral, religious, and

personality development toward socially useful engagement. When one fails to do this, feelings

of inferiority and misguided fictions decrease the likelihood of one choosing “socially useful

behaviors” (Kaplan & Schoeneberg, 1987, p. 317). Kaplan and Schoeneberg (1987) offered a

powerful argument that social interest and inferiority feelings and fictions find their roots in

Jewish traditions more than 1500 years old.

Weiss-Rosmarin (1990) presented a comparative study of Judaism and Individual

Psychology to facilitate cooperation between psychoanalysis and religion to meet the need for

“a psychology with a soul” (p. 117). Weiss-Rosmarin (1990) identified Jewish messianism as a

branch of Judaism that upholds movement from the “minus position of imperfection to the plus

position of perfection” (p. 114). Striving for perfection, holism, and unity can be seen in Jewish


20

messianism. This views self-transcendence without directly referring to God as the source of

transcendence but rather highlighting the upward movement of the individual. Striving for

perfection and self-transcendence were core concepts for Adler and his Individual Psychology.

For Messianism, the striving for perfection was also a striving to be “whole” (holism; p. 115).

Weiss-Rosmarin (1990) also argued that more traditional Judaism set forth the striving

for perfection with a conception of God similar to what Adler professed for Individual

Psychology. Like Adler’s own opinion, Judaism offers God with no “unilateral definition”

(p. 113). Each Jew brings his or her own unique understanding to God. For Adler, “Each person

imagines his God differently” (Watts, 2012, p. 50). In addition to individual conceptions of God,

and God as the goal of perfection, Jewish tradition similar to Individual Psychology believes

each person is a blank slate. For Individual Psychology, this appears as the creative power of the

individual’s movement and personality formation. This creative power manifested in Judaism

means “freedom of will and action as unlimited” (Weiss-Rosmarin, 1990, p. 114).

Weiss-Rosmarin (1990) defined inferiority feeling through Adler’s understanding of it as

the “axis of the soul-life” (p. 109). All people strive to overcome their felt inferiorities. Jewish

scriptures regularly set forth examples of biblical figures struggling with inferiorities from which

“strength springs from weakness” (p. 109). For Jews, feelings of inferiority have special

significance given they “have survived two millennia of dispersion and persecution” (p. 110).

For Jews, suffering had become a “badge of distinction” (p. 110) from which “blessings”

(p. 110) flow. Jewish community reflects social interest as the focal point of all Jewish life and

most human endeavors (Weiss-Rosmarin, 1990). Through its rituals and practice, Jews flourish

in community. Even in Rabbinic study, the biblical study practice occurs in community. While

Judaism upholds community, it also values balance between the community and individual. In


21

the same way, social feeling is a marker of wellness. It, too, is active engagement in the Jewish

community and considered the mark of Jewish vibrancy and healthy “self-interest” (Weiss-

Rosmarin, 1990, p. 112).

Shulman (2003) explored the sociopolitical implications of the Ten Commandments from

a societal and psychotherapeutic group approach. The article never references Adler or

individual psychology; however, its publication in the Journal of Individual Psychology

intimates the connections between Judaism, Individual Psychology, and the social and relational

imperative of the human condition. Shulman (2003) identified five factors significant to the

functioning of a group: a code of conduct, mutual respect, limits on competition, a feeling of

belonging, and rituals. Shulman (2003) saw the Ten Commandments as a way for the Jewish

people to prioritize these factors towards social functioning and community.

Shulman (2003) also mentioned Martin Buber and his view that the Ten Commandments

established guidelines to initially “preserve the people” and community through “common

regulation” rather than enforcing “rules of behavior” or “articles of faith” (p. 168-9). Shulman

(2003) called attention to the three Judaic principles of cooperation, democratic tradition, and the

central theme and unifying principle of God: “Humans will always construct a reference point

outside of themselves” (p. 172). Shulman (2003), through the analysis of an ancient Judaic text,

alluded to commonalities between Jewish religion tradition and Individual Psychology. More

specifically, these are humanism principles, unity, social interest, feelings of inferiority, and

striving for perfection in the ideal of God. The inclusion of Buber’s remarks on the Ten

Commandments as they relate to communal striving suggests further evidence of alignment

between Buber’s philosophies and Adler’s psychology.


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Rietveld (2004) stressed the humanitarian aspects of Judaism and Individual Psychology.

Jewish striving for perfection is seen as a striving for the ultimate “elevation of humanity” that

occurs through one’s view of God. This includes shared principles of equality and communal

life. This striving also reflects the Jewish ethical concern for the well-being of the entire world

and one’s community as a “whole” (p. 215).

Reitveld (2004) also argued that some have viewed Adler and his psychology with a

prophetic almost religious hue. The philosophical underpinnings of social interest and striving

for perfection can be considered in an ethical, religious, and psychological context. Rietveld

(2004) asserted that gemeinschafsgefühl reflects Adler’s “optimistic portrayal of humanity”

(p. 211) and takes into account the goal of perfection towards the messianic vision of an ideal

community that “endures” (p. 212). Drawing on biblical references of “peace” and “justice,”

Rietveld (2004) argued Adler’s idea of a future community may have built into it an “expectation

of salvation” (p. 212). From here, Rietveld (2004) contended that, with his concept of

gemeinschafsgefühl, Adler exchanged Individual Psychology as a “descriptive science for a

normative science . . . in which ethical principles became of preeminent importance” (p. 212).

Adler’s ideal community and communal life can be seen as a “prophetic concept” (p. 213) and,

to many, Adler appeared a prophet. From this philosophical perspective, Individual Psychology

reflects Jewish ethical and moral codes of service towards God, thus blurring the lines between

religion and psychology.

Manaster (2004) investigated the cultural, moral, and spiritual values of Judaism and

Individual Psychology. Unlike most other psychological theories that claim to be “value-

neutral” and inculcated with “modern individualism” (p. 420), Individual Psychology offers a

moral, spiritual, and ethical context for wellness through social interaction, transcendence, and


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community. In Judasim’s monotheism and Individual Psychology’s embrace of holism, each

person remains unique yet connected to the whole of humanity and-or God. In addition,

Manaster (2004) cited the importance of dialogue and analysis in both Individual Psychology

and Judaism (p. 421). What one concludes is not as important as engaging in the dialogue.

Manaster (2004) also took on the dispute of whether or not social interest or feelings of

inferiority were the most important ideas of Individual Psychology. Like Judaism, Individual

Psychology with its emphasis on individual rights and responsibility to pursue goals of right

living, social interest, and feelings of inferiority are not more or less important because they

work off and with each other. Anxiety increases with deeper feelings of inferiority. This

triggers striving for oneself or self-interest rather than striving for community and perfection and

for “humankind” (p. 424). Furthermore, when one is connected to his or her community with

meaning and belonging, the more one is less likely to act out of feelings of inferiority and

neurosis. With social interest, Individual Psychology aligns with many of the other “great

religious traditions” (p. 424) including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, and Taoism.

Summary. In summary, most if not all treatments of Judaism do so from either a

religious, moral, or ethical perspective rather than a spiritual or mystical one. From these

studies, the connections between Individual Psychology and Judaism run deep from ancient

rabbinic and messianic traditions to more modern day Jewish cultural, ethical, and moral

traditions. Building on this foundation of scholarship, this project adds Hasidism as another way

to view the Jewish relationship to Individual Psychology.


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Buber’s Early Hasidism as Jewish Spirituality

Buber’s re-visioning of Hasidism to European Jewry in a series of speeches given

between 1909 and 1918 provided a starting point for extending the connections between Buber’s

Hasidism and Judaism, and Individual Psychology in a spiritual context.

Hasidism: Historical, spiritual, religious, and cultural landscape. When Buber

introduced Hasidism to the Jewish mainstream in 1909, it was a marginalized movement held in

contempt by the dominant Jewish culture of Western Europe. Despite this resistance, Buber’s

revolutionary speeches on Judaism and Hasidism between 1909 and 1918 ignited the Jewish

Renaissance, especially in young Jews who had become disenchanted and disillusioned with

traditional Judaism (Buber, 1995; Friedman, 1983; Ratsabi, 2002). According to Buber (1995),

traditional Judaism focused too much on religious law and study of Torah and had removed the

true essence of Judaism. The “creative” element had been replaced by rigidity.

Buber’s Hasidic view of closeness with God through individual experience and

commitment to Torah study through daily lived experiences pitted him against the “educated

European” who saw Hasidism as “religious superstition and backwardness” (Friedman, 1983;

Mendes-Flohr, 1999, p. ix). Hasidism was founded in the late 18th century in rural parts of

Poland and Ukraine in reaction to the intellectualization and dominance of the “law” in European

Judaism. This went back a thousand years to the Jewish Diaspora (Breslauer, 1996). Buber

sought to revitalize a Jewish community bereft of its intrinsic spiritual experiences from ancient

Judaism (Breslauer, 1996). Kamenetz (1995) pointed out how Hasidism was perceived by many

intellectual and enlightened Jews as an affront to the more rational aspects of the at-the-time

Jewish religion because of its embrace of “magic, amulets, exorcisms, and demons and dybbuks,

and other lore of Jewish folklore” (p. vii). These Jewish intellectuals, secularized and


25

assimilated, looked down on the Hasidic Jews as village peasants, even as many of them pined

for a more authentic encounter with their faith.

In his speeches and writings, Buber nimbly integrated the ancient Judaic elements of the

prophetic, mythic, and mystic with the ritualistic and legalistic framework of staid Judaism of the

time to capture the attention of the entire Jewish community, one that had become disaffected

and unmoored from its soul. Buber in his early lectures called on the spirituality of Judaism.

Buber’s task of re-introducing ancient traditions and tenets of Judaism to contemporary

audiences required the documentation of Jewish myth, folklore, and oral history in ways that

appealed to the entire Jewish collective. Buber’s appeal for a spiritual Judaism integrated an

ancient vision with a mainstream culture that was initially resistant to change. Eventually,

widespread acceptance of Buber and his understanding of Judaism at the turn of the twentieth

century exemplified a lived–experience of Adlerian social interest and community feeling.

An Adlerian response to Hasidism and Judaism. Buber, in his early speeches on

Judaism, encouraged a personal relationship with God as an integral part of the universal human

community and soul. Many of Buber’s ideas of Judaism and Hasidism mirrored Adler’s ideas of

holism, unity, psychic life, and movement. With a slightly differentiated terminology, context,

and application, Buber offered Jews a three-fold mandate of striving for unity, a commitment to

action and deeds, and development of future communities built on love, mutual understanding,

and mutual help (Buber, 1995).

Central to Buber’s mandate was the goal of unification of the soul, a never-ending

endeavor of one soul connecting with all souls to unite with God from within. This unification

brought about renewal and redemption for the Jew. For Adler, unified striving in the psychic life

also moved the individual towards a goal: “The result is that the aspiration toward this goal is


26

immanent in every part of the psychic movement; therefore the goal becomes a part of the unity”

(Duba, 2012, p. 219). Adler’s psychology incorporates the soul life as necessary to bringing the

individual into purer forms of development, adaptation, and well-being. For both Adler and

Buber, finding God is the exercise of unity.

In the striving for unification with God, Buber also argued that the Jews’ historical

struggle was unifying his or her primal duality (Buber, 1995). Binaries of good and evil, one

God and many Gods, God above and God below, and prophetic experience and priestly authority

reflected the split nature not only of the Jewish primal experience of duality, but the primal

duality of humankind (Buber, 1995). In his lecture entitled, Judaism and Mankind (1911), Buber

offered a holistic, spiritual, and communal solution to Jewish primal dualism:

Striving to evolve unity out of division of I, he conceived the idea of the unitary God.

Striving to evolve unity out of the division of the human community, he conceived the

idea of universal justice. . . . The Jew’s creative forces are set aflame by his striving for

unity. . . . The creative Jews are the conquerors of duality, its positive overcoming.

(Buber, 1995, p. 28-29)

Here, one notices a striking similarity to Adler’s language in form and content.

Individual Psychology attributes an individual’s striving to overcome to the creative power of the

child. For Adler:

There is a creative force at hand in the psychic life which is identical to the life force

itself. . . The goal of a creative force must be formed from the stress of the overcoming of

social difficulties that place themselves in opposition to movement. (Peluso, 2012, p. 62)

Adler, like Buber, mentions not only striving to overcome as a goal, but also a striving

propelled by a creative force. Adler emphasized the creative power of the child as well as human

creativity (Moore, 2012). This paralleled Buber’s focus on the creativity of the Jews. In

addition to a creative force and creativity, Adler shared Buber’s belief in an individual

experience of God and spirituality, especially in his ideas of striving for perfection. In his 1933


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lecture, On the Origin of the Striving for Superiority and of Social Interest, Adler asserted “each

person imagines his God differently” and goes on to speak of the “psychic life” as a window into

the divine (Watts, p. 50, 2012). For Buber, in his early interpretations of Hasidic Judaism, he

described how each “man finds God on all ways and all ways are full of unification” (p. 19). It

was this type of spiritual and soul-calling Buber adroitly imbued in his Jewish counterparts to

inspire cooperation and harmony within the whole of Jewish community.

Buber’s engagement with Judaism and Hasidism. In an inadvertent nod to Adlerian

psychotherapy, Kamenetz (1995) described how at the time of Buber’s early speeches, he

“captured in his [Hasidic] stories the anxious social and psychological state” of his audience

(p. viii). Many were stricken with an inner tension from the conflict between what the Western

European Jew desired from within, a more authentic connection to the Jewish spirit, and what he

or she felt was expected of him or her from without, a more ritualistic yet empty experience.

This circumstance reflected a vertical striving of superiority that required the “educated” Jews to

maintain a one-up one-down relationship between their contemporary, superficial view of

Judaism and what Buber was advocating, a more substantive spiritual return in Hasidism.

As Buber continued to argue for a more authentic Judaism, he expounded on the ways the

Jews had protected or removed themselves from this authenticity in remarkable Adlerian

terminology of safeguards and fictions. According to Buber (1995), the Jewish experience had

become “merely ritual,” “intellectual,” and “noncommittal,” and this disconnection was for all

intents and purposes an “evasion” that the people kept as a “carefully guarded fiction” (p. 194).

In the “Holy Way,” one of Buber’s early speeches from 1918, Buber described the phenomena

where political and business agendas infected Judaism and Hasidim as “a repellent example of

safeguarding by adaptation” (Buber, 1923/1995, p. 132). For the Jews, a history of exile and


28

Diaspora and what might be labeled early recollections of long-term persecution created

collective shocks. In response to these shocks, the Jewish people became distrustful of and even

rejected God’s benevolence and questioned God’s presence.

The German Jews, who eventually came under Buber’s spell, shared cultural, social, and

political ideas as well as views of traditional Judaism. Driven by anxiety and neurosis, Jews

invented mistaken convictions of their unworthiness and lowliness protected by fallacious

safeguards and insincere strivings. Buber demanded of the Jews what Adlerians might demand

of their clients – the claiming and owning of their inferiorities in order to claim mental health

and authentic living.

In their striving for security, significance, and belonging, Jews became preoccupied with

a striving for intellectuality, material acquisition, and assimilation. Their vacant practice of

Judaism had become a safeguarding mechanism to avoid disclosure, exposure, persecution,

prejudice, and racism. They established within themselves the superiority of their views and

ideas: “It is the nature of faith to strive above reality and shape it according to a system of values

anchored to a structure of ideas that deviates from reality and rises above it” (Ritsabi, 2003).

Adler (2011) termed pathological striving for superiority as a complex when the striving is used

to escape the difficulties in life in response to feelings of inferiority that have made the

individual “depressed and incapable of development” (p. 97). In one’s striving for superiority

one gains a “false success” (p. 97). Movement occurs on a vertical axis of self-interest rather

than social interest. Over time, this happened to the Jews and as a consequence had pushed true

community to the background.

Buber’s reorientation of Hasidism and Judaism. Buber created life-affirming

convictions for the Jewish people. Rather than disparaging exile and dispersion, Buber reframed


29

them as pathways to unity, redemption, and renewal by a God who never abandons despite

feelings of shame and degradation (Buber, 1995). The history of Jewish exile and wandering

served as a metaphor for the growth of the Jewish people and the individual. Exile from one’s

self expanded and returned them to self-acceptance and an authentic Jewish identity, purpose,

and meaning – a Jewish healing through transcendence. Buber’s claiming of this Jewish legacy

and feelings of inferiority became a part of communal transcendence and a useful striving for

superiority.

Buber’s efforts not only redefined the story of the Jewish people and instilled new hope

for Jews; he charged them with three courses of action: striving for unity of the Jewish soul not

only in the individual but also in the universal community of humankind; action in the form of

deeds and doing; and the building of a future community with guiding principles of universal

justice, diversity, and humanity. Buber saw the creativity of Jewish people and the everyday

lived individual experience of God as anchors for change. Channeling the creative power of the

Jews in acknowledgement of and towards unity, deed doing, and the well-being of future

generations are congruent with Individual Psychology’s holism, movement, social interest, and

the creative power of the child.

Adler also took the psychic life a step further by including humankind. Adler discussed

civilization’s eternal movement to adapt and develop in the world (Watts, 2012). This Jewish

messianic message appears in the writing of Adler in his discussion about striving for superiority

and social interest: “the striving for perfection must contain the goal of an ideal community”

(Watts, 2012, p. 5). Societies striving for superiority and community have been an ongoing

enterprise since the beginning of time. For Adler, religion and conceptions of a Creator offered

one way for humans to strive towards betterment and harmony (Moore, 2012). Adler’s


30

psychology has been likened to Confucianism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Judaism

and Native American spiritual and religious traditions (Mansager, 2000). In the striving for

truth, justice and being, Buber (1995) mentioned the Chinese principle of tao, the Indo-Aryan

rita, Iranian urta, Israel’s zedek, and the Greek dike (p. 192). In line with other religious

traditions, Adler and Buber conceived universal humanity as an ideal community yet to be

realized, but one that required individual responsibility in actions of communal and relational

cooperation.

Thus, a striving for unification of the soul became an overriding imperative for the Jew,

but it also became a striving for the soul of all people. More importantly, Buber (1995)

confirmed one of the deepest conflicts facing the Jew and each human being – the balance

“between the objectives of society and the task of releasing his or her own potential” (p. 19).

Humanity is best expressed and recognized when in direct relationship with another human

being. Spirituality becomes a path to social bonding.

Buber’s Early Hasidism and Adler’s Individual Psychology - Primal and Subjective

In addition to the philosophical and pragmatic similarities, Buber’s take on Judaism

through Hasidism and Adler’s Individual Psychology embraced the subjective and primal. When

Buber went public in 1909 and put forth his vision of Judaism as he perceived it through

Hasidism: “He read Hasidism with unabashed subjectivity, for his goal was not scholarship but

inspiration. He understood that interpretation, not translation was required” (Kamanetz, 1995).

Through his speeches, Buber’s interpretations singlehandedly rejuvenated Judaism at the turn of

the twentieth century.

In the words of Buber, in Hasidism “the primally Jewish opened to me” (Friedman, 1983,

p. 35). Buber, through his subjectivity, encountered the transcendent. The perfected Jew’s


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striving for unification of one’s soul and all souls towards God also entailed a striving for unity

from a primal dualism within. This revelation reconfigured Buber’s perspective and changed

forever his spiritual, personal, and professional striving. Buber’s primal connections transpired

in dialogue with Hasidic stories and Hasidic spirituality. These connections eventually matured

into his I-Thou philosophy and dialogical spirituality where “real awakening takes place not as a

result of reading scripture or taking up a solitary practice, but in a living response to being

challenged at the core of one’s being” (Kramer, 2012, p. xxxv). To be challenged at the core of

one’s being is the essence of transcendence. Buber and Adler also saw this as the primal struggle

of the human condition. The primal subjectivity of Buber’s Hasidism aligns with Adler’s

philosophy of Individual Psychology that establishes another spiritual conduit between the two.

Individual Psychology is a subjective psychology of which perception remains a key

ingredient (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956; Moore, 2012). Ansbacher and Ansbacher (1956)

took this a step further by stating the “Objective corresponds to the psyche as seen from without,

by the observer, and subjective corresponds to the psyche seen from within, by the subject

himself” (p. 5). Not only does Adler’s psychology and Buber’s Hasidism draw on the soul, but

also on the individual’s power of meaning making. Alder individuals through their subjective

capacity to perceive, interpret, and make meaning. Adler declared that “the mark of all true

‘meanings of life’ is that they are common meanings” (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956, p. 253).

Buber’s early meanings of Hasidism gave renewed meaning to a generation of Jews who had

been disconnected from meaning in their practice of traditional Judaism. Buber’s transcendence

and primal Hasidic exhortations call into discussion Adler’s primal and evolutionary references

to the human condition through Individual Psychology.


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Adler’s focus on the primal and primordial takes on greater urgency in later translations

of his later lectures and writings. In these translations, a shift occurs from “creative endeavors,”

“creative power,” and the “creative self “to “psychic life,” “God,” “creative force,” and “life

force.” These translations identify the “primordial” or “primal” for Adler (Watts, 2012, p. 50).

Adler added to this the transcendent and discussions of evolutionary principles and human

striving. He stressed human goals of self-preservation, procreation, mastering, or becoming

“victorious” over the environment and “ever better adaptation” so one may not “perish” (Bitter,

2012, p. 49; Eckstein, 2012; Rasmussen & Dover 2006; Watts, 2012). Adler’s primal goals

deepened the meaning of his psychology – one of raw power and energy in keeping with Adler’s

personality and his approach to work and social relations. His primal goals resonate with a

psychology of the soul in contrast to more popularized Adlerian goals of security, belonging, and

significance. In an ironic twist, the contrasting essence between the primal Adler and the

popularized Adler suggests Individual Psychology’s primal dualism and struggle for unification

of its own soul. For Buber and Adler, the primal and subjective cut to the core of one’s spiritual

essence, being, and healing.

Summary

Comparisons of Judaism and Individual Psychology offer a view of the remarkable

similarities in philosophical, ethical, and practical approaches of the Jewish religion and Adler’s

psychology. An analysis of Buber’s interpretations of Judaism through Hasidism viewed

through an Adlerian lens further elucidates Individual Psychology’s kinship to the Jewish spirit

and provides a lived experience, on the macro-level, of Adlerian theory in the Jewish spirit

world. In the end, this investigation furthers the argument that Adler’s psychology and Buber’s


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Hasidism intersected at the soul. This offers a spiritual essence from which to draw in the

therapeutic setting.

Part 3: Therapeutic Implications: Buber’s I-Thou and Adlerian Therapy

As time went on, Buber’s early Hasidism evolved into a more mature Hasidism beyond

mystical interpretations. Along the way, Buber developed his I-Thou relations that became the

basis for his philosophy of dialogue to create what Kramer (2012) identified as dialogical

spirituality.

The final section of this project moves the discussion to a brief literature survey of

spirituality in the Adlerian community, an entry point of connection between Adler and Buber.

This is constructed through the ideas of gemeinschaftsfgefühl by German sociologist, Fernand

Tonnies. From there, the project tackles striving to overcome, creative force, and baseline

definitions of spirituality from the writer’s perspective; Buber’s dialogical spirituality as

informed by I and Thou; I and Thou and its therapeutic applications; and intersubjectivity. The

section concludes by synthesizing the four-stage process of Adlerian therapy with Buber’s I-thou

relational philosophy and dialogue and the spiritual space created for client therapist self-

discovery, healing, and change.

Adlerian Community and Spirituality – Brief Literature Survey

This survey of Adlerian literature around spirituality does not claim to be an all-

encompassing review. It moves the project’s conversation beyond Adler’s Individual

Psychology and Buber’s Hasidism and Judaism to conversations around spirituality within the

Adlerian community and, eventually, to Buber’s I-Thou relationship and philosophy of dialogue.

Mansager (2000) examined Adlerian theory as a way to understand religion and

spirituality from four perspectives: striving, integration, self-transcendence, and ultimate value.


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Mansager (2000) argued that Individual Psychology considers “striving to be the essence of life”

where “movement constitutes life” (p. 380). This movement consists of striving to “belong” and

striving for “perfection.” (p. 381). With regard to integration, Adlerians embrace the philosophy

of holism originally developed by Jan C. Smuts. This consists of an “understanding the

complexity of life without reducing it to opposites” (Mansager, 2000, p. 381) and considers

human beings already a unity as whole beings. Mansager (2000) compared the developing child

who uses “dualistic” (p. 382) constructs to move through life as opposed to the well-adjusted

adult who finds integrative constructs to move through life. Individual Psychology’s take on

holism is reflected in its both-and rather than either-or mode. Adlerians believe dualistic

thinking leads to lower well-being. It goes so far as to suggest this mode of thinking results in

prejudice, racism, sexism, and bigotry. For Mansager (2000), spirituality encompasses “social

embeddedness” (p. 383) as a way to derive meaning. Contributing to the community in useful

ways brings about transcendence in the individual with movement towards gemeinschaftsfgefühl.

Gold and Mansager (2000a) argued against Dreikurs and Mosak’s conception of

spirituality as a fifth task. They concluded that, despite Adler’s “deep appreciation for human

transcendence and the mystery of life” (p. 275), his psychology did not intend to view living in

terms of religious and spiritual striving per se but rather in terms of “social feeling” and terms of

better “adaption to life” (p. 275). In this way, Gold and Mansager (2000a) drew a distinct line

between Individual Psychology and spirituality.

Cheston (2000) viewed encouragement as another way to view spirituality from the

Adlerian point of view. Encouragement, of primary importance in Adlerian psychology, must be

engaged by and with others. In this way, Cheston (2000) stressed relationship as a key

ingredient to encouragement and not only a temporary but an enduring relationship: “The idea


35

that spirituality is a relationship is a model of Adler’s premise that humans are naturally social

beings who need to be understood within that context” (p. 301). Cheston (2000) refocused ideas

of social interest, community feeling, and meaning from the social to the interpersonal.

Powers (2003), in his brief comments on religion and spirituality, suggested Individual

Psychology viewed one’s subjectivity through creativity where fictions provide the impetus for

perception and understanding. Using this construct, Powers (2003) named the two Adlerian

primary feelings embodied in social embeddedness to be “inferiority feeling” and “community

feelings” (p. 84). Rather than viewing these feelings as part of the human “subjective,” they are

basic features of the “primal” human condition and its movement (p. 84), weaving a “double

helix . . . of all religious feeling” (p. 85). Powers’s (2003) remarks invoked the primal Adler as

an integral component of spirituality.

In an effort to rekindle Adler’s psychology of the soul, O’Connell (1997) argued for an

Adlerian inspired psychospirituality that juxtapositioned “self-esteem and social interest” with

“spirit and soul” (p. 39). O’Connell (1997) challenged modern healthcare institutions as part and

parcel of an ego driven society, its preoccupation with competition, and its dualisms. Individual

Psychology, with its integrity of soul and spirit, offers a way to promote personal innate

worthiness and love through “compassion” and “wisdom” (p. 37). O’Connell (1997) extoled the

virtues of Adlerian psychology and its humanitarian stance as holistic, whole, and holy.

Adlerians can provide a counterforce to the institutionalization of contemporary living that

wishes to divide and conquer the human soul.

Polanski (2002) acknowledged growing interest in the links between spirituality and

counseling and psychotherapy. Spirituality is “subjective,” “personal,” and “transcendental” and

the institution of religion is a religious expression of spirituality (p. 127). Polanski (2002)


36

discussed the movement of an individual from compensatory behaviors and overcoming of organ

inferiorities to striving for superiority and the “desire to belong” through social interest to a

desire for meaning in which, “Feelings of inferiority become the impetus for developmental

movement or the origin of all striving” (p. 131). The individual strives in a unified fashion

through “thinking, feeling, willing, and acting” (p. 46). One of the more noteworthy points

Polanski (2002) made was “the propensity of the individual from the first moments of life to

establish contact with another individual” (p. 133). From this point of view, all human life from

its inception seeks relationship in a striving to overcome feelings of inferiority.

And finally, Leak (2006) offered an empirical study on the connections between social

interest and spirituality. Topics included self-transcendence; the relationship between personal,

religious, and psychological lives; and the expression of community feeling. Leak (2006)

confirmed spirituality as broad and open in contrast to religion’s rigid and narrow ideological

confines. Spirituality rather than religion encouraged increased community feeling and social

interest. These in turn established greater life meaning and increased “subject well-being”

(p. 63).

Within the modern day Adlerian community, Individual Psychology and its applications

for spirituality in therapy confirm the relevancy of Adler’s psychology. Furthermore, many of

the concepts and ideas around spirituality will be seen in Buber’s I-Thou Philosophy. These

include striving, movement, subjectivity, meaning, innate social embeddedness, desire for

relational connection, wholeness, creativity, community and transcendence; however, there still

needs be an entry point at which Adler’s psychology of the soul and striving to overcome meets

Buber’s I-Thou philosophy.


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Adler and Buber Meeting Through Ferdinand Tonnies and Gemeinschaftsgefühl

This project chooses as the entry point to pull together striving to overcome and the

I-Thou relationship in the work of Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist from the late 1880s.

Tonnies’s work with gemeinschaftsgefühl influenced Adler’s conception of community feeling

and social interest and Buber’s vision of Jewish community and I-Thou philosophy.

Buber came under the sway of Tonnies’s ideas in 1909, a few years earlier than Adler.

Tonnies became popular among young Jews before and after World War I in their attempts to

rebuild community (Zank & Braiterman, 2014). He focused on the changing social landscapes

of Germany in the late 1800s from agrarian communities to complex modern industrial states and

wanted to know how to preserve community feeling in the face of modernity. Buber reworked

Tonnies’s ideas into his political, psychological, and social philosophies. To many, Tonnies’s

ideas not only addressed community and the impersonal, but also spoke of Geselleschaft and

Gmeinschaft as respectfully “the substitution of institutional ties for organic ties” (Meyer, 2001,

p. 259). Buber reinterpreted Gemeinschaft’s community feeling as a religious quality. In 1919,

he wrote, “A great yearning for Gemenschaft courses through souls of soulful people at this

life-moment in Western culture” (Meyer, 2001, p. 259). Tonnies’s influence on Buber found its

way into the I-Thou philosophy of dialogue (Silberstein, 1990) as well as his ideas of community

feeling and wholeness for the Jewish community.

Like Buber, Tonnies’s ideas are reflected in Adler’s concept of gemeinschaftsfgefühl.

Angioli and Kruger (2015) described how Tonnies published his first book in the late 1880s

titled Gemeinshaft und Gesellschaft, translated as Community and Civil Society. In his book,

Tonnies analyzed Gemeinschaft, “community feeling,” and its opposite, Gesellschaft,

“impersonal, transactional relationships” (p. 244). Tonnies’s early works failed to gain notoriety


38

until 1912, the same year Adler came to gemeinschaftsfgefühl. It is unclear if Adler had read

Tonnies, for no mention is made of him.

For several years, Adler worked with the concept gemeinschaftsgefühl until he introduced

it as the primary measurement of well-being for his Individual Psychology. According to

Angioli and Kruger (2015), after World War I, Adler, captivated by the “critical healing force”

(p. 244) of community then recognized social interest as an eternal “striving for a community”

(p. 245).

The synthetic outcome that envisages a kind of coexistence of gemeinschaft and

gesellshaft in the modern industrial state is perhaps the most important implication for

understanding the context and climate of Adler’s development . . . Adler had viewed

social feeling as a kind of limiting force that restricted or counterbalanced the more

primal Will to Power – the force that lay behind the phenomenology of growth, striving,

and purpose. (Angioli & Kruger, 2015, pp. 243-244)

With Adler’s elevation of gemeinschaftsfgefühl after World War I, he confirmed his conviction

that psychology was in fact the study of the soul in community feeling. Adler further refined the

relationship between striving and community feeling.

Community feeling as a counterweight to Adler’s primal striving intersects with Buber’s

primal I-It and the divine I-Thou relationship. More importantly, Angioli and Kruger (2015)

indicated that Adler, in speeches from 1913, stated “unequivocally the socially embedded nature

of upward striving and subordination of that striving to the feeling of community” (p. 248). With

this statement, Adler implicitly lays out a construct similar to Buber’s I-Thou. Striving to

overcome may be viewed in Adlerian terms as the primal force behind the I-It relationship.

Community feeling then becomes the creative force behind the I-Thou relationship. Striving to

overcome can be viewed as an I-It construct that may also include the I-Thou since striving to

overcome in socially useful ways does not always engage the I-Thou relationship.


39

Tonnies provided a bridge connecting Adler and Buber through gemeinschaftsfgefühl.

With Tonnies, Adler and Buber met philosophically on common ground in their quest to

understand social relations. Whereas Adler applied Tonnies to a soul-centered psychology of

striving to overcome and gemeinschaftsfgefühl in the social realm, Buber applied Tonnies’s ideas

of community to the personal realm of religion and spirituality in the I-Thou relationship.

Taking this connection between the two men to the next level, this project proposes the only

extensive Adlerian analysis of Adler and Buber.

Adler and Buber Meeting Through Jääskeläinen (2000)

At this point, it is important to acknowledge Jääskeläinen (2000), the only extensive

scholarly comparison of Adler and Buber and the inclusion of two noteworthy and rare instances

of Adler (1930) and Ansbacher (1978) mentioning the I-It and I-Thou relationship in Individual

Psychology. The mention of I-Thou by Adler (1970) was an inadvertent nod to a spiritual

element implicit in Individual Psychology. Jääskeläinen (2000) compared Individual

Psychology to Buberian philosophy, a large part of which covers Buber’s concept of I-Thou.

Jääskeläinen (2000) considered Adler’s gemeinschaftsfgefühl and Buber’s I-Thou as

companionable ideas for explaining human relations. For Jääskeläinen (2000), the I-Thou

relationship entailed the I-It and I-Thou of which the I-It is “detachment,” “objectivity,” and

“observation” (p. 144) and love serves as the “primal paradigm” for the I-Thou. Adler viewed

love from a different perspective, but his understanding was for all intents and purposes similar

to Buber’s. Social interest intersects with the I-Thou since both concepts prioritize human

relationships (Jääskeläinen, 2000). Jääskeläinen (2000) also reviewed Adler and Buber’s

connection to Tonnies as a way to illustrate the alignment between social interest and I-Thou,


40

and then followed with a brief discussion of the intersubjective nature of the I-thou, tying it to

Adlerian notions of empathy and understanding.

From here, Jääskeläinen (2000), discussed Buber’s dialogue in a similar vein to Adler’s

ideas of cooperation, taking into account that Individual Psychology is “a psychology based on

values” (p. 149) that must include an I-It relationship and I-thou dialogue. Jääskeläinen (2000)

identified the similarity between Buber’s I-Thou and Adler’s community feeling through

meaning and transcendence and the metaphor of “feeling at home,” such that social interest goes

beyond “individuality. . . to a feeling with the whole” (Jääskeläinen, 2000, p. 150). For Buber,

this also included an “inborn drive for social contact” (p. 145) and relationship.

At this point, Jääskeläinen (2000) mentioned a paper published in 1930 in which Adler,

in a rare instance, mentioned the I-Thou relationship in his discussion of the fundamentals of

Individual Psychology: “the I-Thou relationship, the productivity for the community and the

relationship of the sexes are never private matters but problems of the community” (p. 37).

Jääskeläinen, (2000) contended that Buber would have taken issue with Adler’s assertion of the

I-Thou not being a private matter but one solely of community. In addition to citing Adler

(1930), Jääskeläinen, (2000) included a reference by Ansbacher (1978) that suggested Buber’s

I-Thou relationship rather than the I-It relation fits into the category of social interest.

In analyzing the therapeutic implications, Jääskeläinen, (2000) asserted that Adler and

Buber concurred on the “primordial importance” (p. 150) of relationship and social connection;

therefore, therapeutic techniques turn out to be secondary to the therapist and client relationship.

For Buber, the I-Thou was an unworkable paradigm in therapy because the relationship is not

mutual. For Adlerians, Jääskeläinen (2000) contended the client-therapist relationship can

realize an I-Thou relationship through “cooperation” and “collaboration” (p. 151).


41

In conclusion, Jääskeläinen (2000) saw Adler and Buber emphasizing relationship over

technique and I-Thou as social interest and the differences between the men in I-Thou vs the

human community, social interest vs. personal existence, and social and cosmic life vs individual

and God.

As a point of clarity, Jääskeläinen (2000) focused on a broad range of topics, which this

project also considers tangentially. This project now turns its attention to the creative force,

striving to overcome, the I-Thou relationship, and the spiritual space created between the

therapist and client to facilitate the client healing in the four stages of Adlerian therapy.

Adler’s Striving to Overcome and Creative Force and Spirituality

As this project progresses, Adler’s striving to overcome in upward striving for

superiority, completion, and-or perfection towards community feeling will be seen in alignment

with Buber’s I and Thou philosophy of human movement towards “expansion” and “connexion”

in his I-It and I-Thou paradigms for relations (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 110). This project also

recognizes the innateness of striving to overcome as a goal in accordance with Adler’s beliefs

(Duba, 2012). For Adler, overcoming covered a broad spectrum of strivings towards a goal that

encourages positive actions and behaviors as well as those “to overcome imperfections and

achieve completion [and] the urge toward perfection” (Duba, 2012, p. 220; McBrien, 2012).

Striving to overcome is considered in the I-It relation in part because overcoming may not occur

in socially useful ways that encompass the I-Thou relationship. One instance may be a neurotic

pattern of striving that results in a superiority complex.

Initially, Adler mentioned upward striving in the context of power. In his 1932 lecture

“Personality as a Self-Consistent Unity,” Adler contended that overcoming had been

misunderstood with striving for power, the latter a more “concrete formulation,” while the


42

former is a “madness” (p. 63) in individuals, not in Individual Psychology. In this regard,

community feeling acts as a bulwark against striving to overcome as a striving for power gone

awry in the neurotic and-or psychotic. In this phenomenon, the therapist must identify the

movement and direction of the individual in concert with his or her goal as useful or useless,

normal or neurotic, and self-interested or socially interested. For Buber’s I-Thou relationship,

movement and direction also become important landmarks for interhuman, human, and divine

connection.

In addition to movement and direction, it is essential to understand the primal importance

of striving to overcome. Adler infused Individual Psychology with consequence and immediacy

and called upon the perilous and precious nature of human life. He regarded evolutionary goals

of self-preservation and life development as primary to the human condition in a continuous

striving to overcome in which “there hangs also the threat of damage, of listlessness – of death”

(Peluso, 2012, p. 63; Watts, 2012). With Adler’s social Darwinism in mind, one can extend

these goals to continuous active adaptation, procreation, and victorious contact with the external

world (Watts, 2012). These goals reflected the temperament of Adler’s psychological approach

informed by Adler’s childhood struggles, vigor and resilience, and pragmatic outlook. Like

Adler, Buber’s personal and professional struggles and strivings led him to savor the primal in

life. He fearlessly searched for the consequences of human social and spiritual interactions that

challenged and elevated the core of one’s being.

Striving to overcome is a response to an inferiority feeling and overcoming social

difficulties in movement from a felt-minus to a felt-plus (Duba, 2012). According to Adler, this

minus-plus movement occurs “simultaneously” in goal directed behavior at the behest of the

individual’s creative force: “the creative force at hand in the psychic life which is identical to


43

the life force . . . arranges: it has the ability to look ahead and see what it must do” (Peluso, 2012,

p. 63). Not only does the psychic life include the creative force of the life force, it also includes

the ego, thoughts, feelings, and actions that originate from “psychic impulses” (p. 62). The

coupling of striving to overcome with a creative force and its ability to discern or intuit a future

path bespeak of spiritual and transcendent qualities. By lumping together the creative force, life

force, and ego under the umbrella of the psychic life that Adler considered “the whole of the

individual,” (p. 227) Adler remained unclear if he was building towards a matrix for not only a

psychological and social force, but of a spiritual force as well (Duba, 2012; Peluso, 2012). In

addition, Adler’s reference to the wholeness of the individual is a critical concept in Buber’s

I-Thou relationship where the I-Thou as opposed to the I-It relationship occurs with persons who

bring the wholeness of their being into dialogue.

Although the conversation about whether or not Adler considered spirituality a life task

or imbued his psychology with spiritual elements has been debated vigorously in the Adlerian

community, it remains an issue not resolved (Gold & Mansager, 2000a; Mansager & Gold,

2000b, Mansager et al., 2000; Reardon, 2014). For the purposes of this project, the tripartite

concepts of creative force, life force, and striving to overcome will be considered spiritual

corollaries to be drawn upon by clients and Alderian therapists in the healing encounter of the

I-Thou relationship.

Definitions of spirituality. In light of Adler’s life force and creative force as spiritual

corollaries, the writer builds on these concepts and sets forth definitions of spirituality. Going

forward, this is inclusive of but not limited to something ineffable that encompasses a personal

connection to a universal source, creator, or spirit through which one recognizes his or her innate

self-worth and a sense of grounding, beliefs, values, meaning, purpose, and connection to the


44

world and his or her immediate community. Religion offers a dogma and structure through

which one practices spirituality. Spiritual practices cultivate within a person an internal and

external transcendence to a force or persona or power beyond his or herself. Faith in a power

greater than one’s self provides direction and grace. Spirituality and faith may show up in

sudden and unannounced intuitive thoughts, urges, hunches, revelations, or shifts of perspective.

This definition also draws on Kramer (2012) and his definition of Buber’s Hasidic

spirituality, one that encompasses Buber’s dialogical spirituality and I-Thou philosophy: “the

profound reciprocity between the human spirit and the divine spirit. Spirituality involves an

ongoing partnership with the invisible, unprovable, insubstantial yet creatively revealing and

redeeming spirit who penetrates into our lives” (p. xix). For Buber, God always enters and

continuously shapes interhuman relationships.

In terms of Individual Psychology, Mansager (2000) offered a definition of healthy

spirituality:

Spirituality is the individual’s conscious movement from a felt-minus to that of a

fictional-plus, holistically experienced as a unifying factor not rooted in self-boundedness

but in community feeling aimed at full participation in an apperceived perfect

community. (p. 385)

This definition of Adlerian spirituality prioritizes movement, unity, community, and striving as

central features of spirituality. Individual Psychology empowers clients to become active agents

in their own lives in concert with a personal understanding of a spiritual presence.

With an introduction to the creative force, life force, and striving to overcome and a

context for a personal, dialogical, and Adlerian notion of spirituality, this project moves on to the

I-Thou relationship and its implications for the four stages of Adlerian therapy.


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Buber’s I and Thou2

Buber’s most influential work of I and Thou (1937/1958)3 laid out a construct for

dialogue and relationship between three entities: I, the Other, and the Eternal Thou. Friedman

(1960), Friedman (1983), Kramer (2003), Kramer (2012), Potok (1991), Scott (n.d.), and Zank

and Braiterman (2014) offered insights to the following summary of Buber I and Thou. Buber

saw his work as a primal imperative of human relationship and being. Buber’s early translations

of the legendary leader of the Hasidic movement, the Bal Shem Tov, provided the “seeds”

(p.112) of the dialogue between the “I” and “the eternal Thou”: “The legend is the myth of I and

Thou, of the caller and the called, the finite which enters into the infinite and the infinite which

has need of the finite” (Friedman, 1983, p. 112). God needs humans as much as humans need

God remains a foundational tenet of Judaism (Friedman, 1983). For Buber, finite humans need

infinite God in a movement from primal dualism to unified whole being and connection with

Him. Buber also asserted “the free will of the whole man in dialogue and the arbitrariness of the

man who does not stand in living mutuality” (Friedman, 1983, p. 114). Here Buber drew a

contrast between those who brought to the dialogue their whole being as opposed to those who

brought only the intellect.

The I-It and the I-Thou reduced existence to three relational domains: persons, nature,

(i.e., trees, animals), and the divine. In the I-Thou domain, the relationship between persons,

2 From this point forward, this project italicizes the words It and Thou when mentioned apart

from the two words I-It and I-Thou to preserve the artistic and spiritual integrity of Buber’s

original printing and recognition of the word as the divine, higher power, God, creator, etc. 3 Buber originally published I and Thou in German in 1923. Ronald Gregory Smith first

translated Buber’s work into English in 1937. Buber published a second edition in 1958 with a

series of translation corrections and a postscript. Walter Kaufman also completed a translation

of I and Thou into English in 1970. This project draws on the 1958 edition of I and Thou as

translated by Ronald Gregory Smith.


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between person and animate object, or between person and God encounters “one whole unique

entity with another . . . such that it is known without being subsumed by another” (Scott, n. d.,

para. 22). The I-Thou centers on presence and confirmation of each participant by the other in

dialogue and meets in unity, wholeness, and mutuality. The I-It uses, categorizes, classifies,

experiences, observes, manipulates, institutionalizes, and objectifies the other in the dialogue. In

I-It, the person not only turns away from the other, he or she turns away from his or herself.

Humans move between the two positions of I-It and I-Thou. Buber stated that everyone must

encounter the I-It and I-Thou. One cannot live in I-It or I-Thou exclusively nor would it be

desirable. One must complete life tasks that in many cases require engagement with people,

nature, and things in I-It relations.

In the I-Thou relationship, Buber identified relationship between persons and between

“an ‘I’ engaging a ‘Thou’ – [as] a unity achieved though the meeting of man and God in

relation . . . man in full relation to another” where each gives to the essential being of the other

with “compassion,” “trust,” “respect,” and “love” (Potok, 1991, p. xii). In I-It relations, the

encounter occurred between individuals. Person, to Buber, connoted the divine and human

uniqueness and wholeness of a person whose uniqueness and wholeness is only realized in the

mutual meeting of another’s uniqueness and wholeness in true dialogue. The Thou (aka God) is

realized in the between space of the meeting between two persons in their wholeness and

uniqueness. The I-Thou also requires a mutual concern for the other. For Buber, the teacher-

student relationship could not engage in true I-Thou relationship. The student would have to be

equally invested or concerned about the teacher in a mutual way that the teacher holds concern

and investment in the student. In this example, the student-teacher relationship extends into the


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I-It relational construct where one is using or experiencing the other rather than being in

presence of the other.

In later essays, Buber expanded his I-Thou dialogical relationships to encompass

movement and direction. Two persons bring their wholeness into the I-Thou relationship and,

through distance and movement, maintain their individuated presence while at the same time

developing a fuller wholeness in contact with the other. One is only truly whole in the presence

of another. One becomes more of his or herself in dialogue with the uniqueness and wholeness

of the other. The dynamic is mutual and reciprocal.

The Thou. The I-Thou resides in dialogue between person and person, and person and

spirit, and extends to animals and artistic endeavors whenever the dialogue encompasses the

mutuality and inclusion of the uniqueness and wholeness of the other. Under this umbrella,

Buber included areas of study and investigation, when mutual dialogue occurs with a living text

such as scripture.

In dialogue with spirit, Buber offered a number ways for the Thou to appear in what he

termed the “primal phenomenon” (Scott, n. d., p. 104). In connection with the Thou “every

ought vanishes in unconditioned being. . . Duty and obligation are rendered only to the stranger;

we are drawn to and full of love for the intimate person” (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 103). At this

point, such things as judgment, laws, rules, and dictates no longer hold sway over the person, but

the person resides in pure being. At times, in the moment of the Thou, humans take in the Thou

as a “breath” as in a “wrestling bout” in which “it happens” (p. 104). On the other side of the

happening, the man or woman has grown beyond his or her previous self; he or she “no longer

questions the meaning of life” nor does it require an uncovering of the meaning and he or she

becomes a more realized being (Buber, 1937/1958).


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I-thou relationship and therapy. Nanda (2006) contended that therapy in the I-Thou

relationship engages the therapist in presence and in the confirmation and inclusion of the

uniqueness and wholeness of the client. At the same time, the I-Thou requires an element of

mutuality and reciprocity. Under these conditions, the client’s “self emerges in ‘dialogue’ with

the other where the focus is not on technique [or the ends] . . . but, rather what takes place

between the therapist and the client” (p. 345). In the process, the client not only changes, but so

does the therapist. The authentic I-Thou encounter realizes “fluidity” (p. 349) in the exchange

between therapist and client and the unlimited possibilities for the becoming of more whole for

both.

As noted by Nanda (2006), Buber challenged the claim that an authentic I-Thou

relationship can occur in therapy. Nanda (2006), drawing from others in the psychotherapy field,

asserted that therapist self-disclosure done with attention to the client’s needs and preferences,

stage of therapy, and status of the client-therapist relationship offered a way to move towards the

mutuality and reciprocity of the I-Thou relationship.

If therapy does not extend beyond an exploration of the social self of the client to the

uniqueness of the client, the therapy may remain in the I-It relation never engaging the I-Thou

dynamic of “direct, mutual, present, and open” dialogue (Nanda, 2006, p. 345). Furthermore, in

therapy, the therapist need not lose his or her sense of self and separateness in the I-Thou

relationship as long as the distance between the therapist and client is still “maintained” (p. 345).

In mutual relation, attunement ensues allowing the client to more easily respond to the other with

an unfolding of his or her true self. This type of therapist-client interaction runs counter to the

medical model of psychiatric-patient relationship.


49

Therapist training, technical skill, knowledge, experience and observation, and analytical

and assessment abilities remain integral to achieve client goals; however, these are the I-It of the

therapy encounter. When the therapist responds to the client with preconceived categories,

groupings, classes, types, and classifications, again he or she has accessed the I-It of therapy

(Mutter & Neves, 2010). As Buber indicated, one cannot inhabit only I-Thou or I-It relations.

We move between and unify the two into our being through the Thou; however, it is the I-Thou

relationship that establishes the grounds of trust and safety between client and therapist that in

turn open the way for I-It interventions.

Intersubjectivity, I-thou, and therapy. The I and Thou engages the interhuman

encounter of intersubjectivity and mutuality in the two word pairs I-It and I-Thou. I-Thou

relations are dialogical and I-It relations are monological. According to Mutter and Neves

(2010), intersubjectivity occurs when client and therapist call on their subjectivities in an

interplay that becomes another resource for therapy. The I-Thou and I-It relationship subsumes

one’s subject and subjectivity and becomes another way to develop dialogue of mutuality and

reciprocity between the therapist and client.

Unlike other traditional therapy modes, intersubjectivity does not discount the therapist’s

subjectivity nor discourages its use. It aligns with Buber’s differentiation of I-It and I-Thou

relations towards genuine meeting. In I-Thou relationship, meeting between persons transcends

subject-subject relations: "In subjectivity the spiritual substance of the person matures . . . in

solidarity of connexion and of separation . . . the fuller its sharing the more real it becomes"

(Buber, 1937/1958, p. 67-68). With subjectivity, a therapist distinguishes where he or she begins

and ends in kind with the client. Keeping this in mind allows a therapist with continuous self-

awareness and ongoing work on himself or herself to happen upon subjectivity combined with


50

his or her professional and personal experience during moments of therapy. Mutter and Neves

(2010) and Reardon (n.d.) argued that the subjectivities of therapist and client interact with each

other making it impossible to engage in objective forms of therapy; however, Buber might

contend an I-It relationship does exactly this; however, acknowledging that the therapist and

client enter into dialogue with separate subjectivities permits subject-subject relations to surface.

This taps into Buber’s I-Thou (Mutter & Neves, 2010).

Reardon (n.d.) asserted subjectivity consists of a therapist’s claiming and understanding

his or her feelings of inferiority as a way to a fuller understanding and acceptance of self. The

ability to more fully tap into who one is as a person allows a therapist to be more fully real with

clients. Subjectivity and feelings of inferiority include, but are not limited to, one’s mistaken

convictions, biases, judgments, private logic, assumptions, feelings, meaning, thoughts, values,

beliefs, etc. (Reardon, n.d.). Attention to one’s subjectivity as it unfolds in therapy allows the

therapist to draw on the raw material of his or her human wholeness as part of the I-Thou I-It

towards client healing and realization via the between space of genuine Thou dialogue.

Adlerian Therapy Meets I-Thou Relationship

“God dwells wherever man lets him in” (Buber, 1947/2006, p. 38).

The therapist who encounters the I-Thou and creative force, in the overcoming of the

client’s anxiety and neurosis, engages in continuous inviting and letting in of the Thou. One is

called to a continuous surrendering of the therapist self to the between space of the Thou as it

shows up in therapy. It requires a turning towards the client and the Thou that situates itself

“over against” 4 one’s self. At times, this occurs in the depths of one’s being in the unknown,

4 Buber used the word pair “over against” throughout I and Thou. It appeared in his descriptions

of the newborn child reaching out for relation – a necessary movement to “develop out of the

primal world” (Buber, 1958/2006, p. 38-39). The writer contends that this word pair defined by


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insecure, eternal, and transcendent space of being. This “being” in mutual dialogue is with

another: the client.

In the “inborn Thou” of the child, relation precedes perception where relation is “mould

for the soul . . . and development of the soul . . . is inextricably bound up with that of longing for

the Thou” (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 39). In the mature Thou, I-It relations evolve into I-Thou

relationships. In Individual Psychology and Adlerian therapy, perception and inferiority feelings

precede community feeling. In therapy, the client and therapist enter into the primal struggle of

overcoming what is over against them in perception. The goal of true relationship of I-Thou sets

the direction and movement of the client and therapist. A striving to overcome brings about

movement from the I-It relations of self-interest to the I-Thou relationship of social interest.

Finite self-striving of I-It bounded by and against others yields to infinite self-striving of I-Thou

unbounded for and with others.

In the Thou, the creative momentum of the life force fashions the pattern of striving to

overcome in the service of the goal. In community, the client and therapist realize movement

from object-object and object-subject of I-It relations to subject-subject, intersubjectivity, and

interhuman of I-Thou relationship. The unified striving of two souls meets with all souls. In the

between space of the Thou, client and therapist’s mutual striving for community feeling confirms

the risk that each takes in that “the primary word [Thou] can only be spoken with the whole

being. “He who gives himself to it may withhold nothing of himself” (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 25).

Genuine dialogue confirms the mutual exploration of a shared safe place in the unfolding of

intimacy, well-being, and undeveloped potential.

Merriam-Webster (n. d.) “as opposed to,” and “in contrast to” offers a practical understanding of

what Buber considered the spiritual forces a person confronts that fosters movement and growth

in the person and his or her striving to overcome towards I-Thou relationships.


52

In the midst of the Thou, “how can we know the dancer from the dance?”5 Buber’s spirit

finds Adler’s soul. Buber’s I and Thou meets Adler’s psychology of the soul.

Therapy in Meeting

For the purposes of this project, the four stage process for Adlerian therapy include

forming the relationship,

assessment-insight,

interpretation-analysis-intuition, and

re-orientation (Watts, 2014).

When used as a process for interventions and techniques, the Adlerian stages reside in the

I-It relational realm. With Adler’s ideas of the individual as both artist and picture, an I-Thou

relationship becomes a creative meeting between therapist and the four stages of Adlerian

therapy. Lyon (1971) argued that, for Buber, moving towards “being” as person is an “artistic”

striving with another through the “act of speech” (p. 110). In dialogue with the four stages, a

therapist finds him or herself inspired and directed in the presence of the Thou and creative force.

The spirit and soul of the therapist reside in the Thou and creative force in a striving to overcome

what sets itself over against the other.

In the Adlerian four stage process of therapy, the mark of well-being is two-fold: a) the

client’s claiming of his or her inferiorities, and; b) cultivation of community feeling and social

interest. For Adlerians, the client’s healthy development strives for a goal of community feeling

and social interest in socially useful behavior in adapting to his or her external world and life

5 From Butler, W. B. (1996). Among school children. In R. J. Finneran (Ed.) The collected

poems of W.B. Yeats (p. 215). New York: Simon & Schuster.


53

tasks. Buber’s I-Thou relationship clarifies the goal of overcoming for the therapist in this

endeavor:

True community does not arise through peoples having feelings for one another (though

indeed not without it), but through, first, their taking a stand in living mutual relation with

a living Centre, and second, their being in living mutual relation with one another.

(Buber, 1937/1958, pp. 53-54)

In contrast to Adler, Buber asserted a spiritual living center in community through a

personal connection with that center. For Adler, striving to overcome culminated in community

feeling and may or may not include the idea of a God. Adler stressed the social, cosmic, and

transcendental aspects of striving to overcome. This can also occur through a fictional goal of

God.

Despite this distinction, Adler’s community feeling and striving still echoes Buber’s

Hasidic infused I-Thou precept: “no soul has as its object its own salvation” (Kramer, 2012,

p. 84). In I-It relation, the individual sees himself as the “starting point” (Buber, 1937/1958,

p. 58). In the therapy encounter, Adler’s striving to overcome in community concurs at its

primal base Buber’s primal seeking of relationship.

Forming the relationship. In the first stage of therapy, the therapist establishes the

relationship with the client. For Adlerians, Carlson, Watts, and Maniacci (2005) set forth

characteristics necessary for the therapeutic relationship by calling on conditions one finds in

social interest and include, but are not limited to, collaboration, empathy, cooperation,

understanding, appreciation, tolerance, egalitarianism, equality, congruence, caring, compassion,

honesty, humility, benevolence, and altruism. Kramer (2012) stated qualities necessary for

genuine dialogue as directness, honesty, openness, spontaneity, mutuality, presence,

confirmation, affirmation. yielding, timeless, betweenness, happening, addressing, turning, and


54

responding. These two sets of conditions highlight the social and ethical context of Adlerian

social interest and striving as juxta positioned to the Buber’s more personal and spiritual I-Thou.

In I and Thou, Buber presents a three-fold matrix for language and relations in the I-Thou

between humans and nature, between human and human, and between humans and “spiritual

beings” (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 98). The first relation verges on speech. The second takes on the

shape of speech. The third moves beyond speech. In each “sphere” (p. 98), the ever present

“eternal” (p. 98) Thou breathes life.6

In therapy, the therapist and client encounter all three relations. Buber’s relationship and

“becoming” (Buber, 1937/1958, p. 98) occurs through language and dialogue, as it is in therapy.

In the initial forming of the client-therapist relationship through the ensuing three stages, the

Adlerian therapist moves fluidly between the three spheres, conscious of the presence that is

verily spoken, directly spoken, and not spoken, all in the I and Thou the language of “give-and-

talk” (p. 99). Mutual trust and safety and meeting of subject-subject and subjectivities realizes

an interhuman meeting that unifies I-It and I-Thou relations. Therapist and client encounter

initial overcoming in the presence of the Thou and creative force. A striving to overcome from

inferiority feelings of vulnerability and disclosure, to the intimate meeting of community and

relationship, establish the conditions of going forward for both therapist and client.

Assessment, analysis, and re-orientation. The conditions set forth in the first stage of

Adlerian therapy establishes the apriori of the I-Thou relationship with the creative force.

Connection and movement occurs in the presence of the Thou. The spirit meets soul. In

assessment, analysis, and re-orientation, these phases occupy the I-It relations of using and

6 The Latin origin of "spirit" is spiritus, of breath and wind (Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.).


55

experiencing the unity of the client to determine his or her movement towards his or her fictive

goals. In the fluid movement between I-It relations and the I-Thou relationship, client and

therapist movement dwells between dialogue and use. The between space of the Thou and the

directives of the creative force are continually called upon in surrender. In wholeness and

uniqueness, the therapist and client wrestle in the depths of wholeness and uniqueness in mutual

dialogue, confirmation, and address. A primal struggle to unbound oneself from the anxiety and

neurosis that threatens to tyrannize therapy appears in an I-It complex.

The client’s fictive goals, mistaken beliefs, private logic, and patterns of striving to

overcome occur in the socially useful striving on the horizontal plane or in socially useless

striving on the vertical plane of social intersect. These are assessed with Adlerian tools of life

style assessment, early recollections, and family constellation. Analysis, interpretation, and re-

orientation call on techniques and interventions. These activities occur in the secure, safe, finite,

and comfortable confounds of the I-It against the insecure, infinite, and unknownness of the

I-Thou relationship.

In these stages, therapist and client engage in the I-It moments of analysis, self-

awareness, self-insight, and confrontation. A vortex of feelings of inferiority and striving for

community feeling intensifies the struggle to overcome. At times, suddenly encouraged, the

striving to overcome in the engagement of subjectivities, flashes of I-Thou present in instances

and happenings for therapist and client of unexplainable insight, intuition, knowing, and being.

The language of nature, human, and the spirit unspoken, directly spoken, and grasping for

spoken languish and vibrate between. Adler and Buber unified with all souls.

Then, something sparks and settles. A soul moment of mutuality brings about an

authentic turning away from self and turning towards others. The work of looking inward now


56

moves outward. Client and therapist sense the way. A new resolve follows. The psychic life of

mutuality yields a turning away from self and turning towards others. One stands where one is,

in more full uniqueness and wholeness. A striving to overcome in client and therapist is realized

in a common striving for community in the therapy realm. An all-inclusive world reigns anew in

the therapeutic dialogue of the betweenness in the I-Thou relationship. The creative force moves

on. For the client and therapist, in the encounter with the other, they find renewed meaning and

realization of their wholeness and uniqueness, as separate yet one.

And the overcoming begins again.

Conclusion

This project is an homage to Alfred Adler and Martin Buber. There is no record of Buber

and Adler meeting. Friedman (1960) in his biography of Buber devoted an entire chapter to how

Buber’s view of Hasidism and his I-Thou relationship incorporated elements of psychoanalysis

and engaged in discourse in the work of Erich Fromm, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud,

and several other European psychologists of the time. As one reads this list, it is interesting to

note the absence of Alfred Adler; however, Buber inadvertently distinguished Adler in his

landmark essay “Healing Through Meeting” written in 1951, as a tribute to his mentor and

German psychoanalystic therapist Hans Trüb. This essay refined his I and Thou philosophy and

philosophy of dialogue. In the essay, Buber told a story to highlight the everyday psychoanalyst

who is called by economic and professional necessity to address a situation with no access to his

extensive training, skill, experience, and objectivity and superiority. The moment is fraught with

terror,

but is graced with the humble power of wrestling and overcoming, and is thus ready to

wrest and overcome ever anew. . . will return from the crisis to his habitual method, but

as a changed person in a changed situation. He returns to it as one to whom the necessity


57

of genuine personal meetings in the abyss of human existence between the one in need of

help and the helper is revealed. (Buber, 1951/1999, p. 19)

In this passage, Buber channeled Alfred Adler. The men shared embodied spiritedness,

grit, passion, and forcefulness while being known for their gentleness, kindness, and generosity.

Adler honored the human struggle to adapt and overcome the “abyss” of inferiority feelings. Out

of this came gemeinschaftsfgefühl. Buber’s found realization in Hasidism out of which came

I and Thou and philosophy of dialogue.

This project investigated Adler’s soul in search of Buber’s spirit. It argued for the

intersection of spirituality and subjectivity and a striving to overcome in tandem with the I-Thou

relationship as significant ingredients in the therapeutic healing process of a client whose

neurosis and anxiety have impaired social development and relational capacities. It was posited

that mutual self-discovery of the therapist and client in dialogue and movement in a mutual

striving to overcome resulted in a more expansive uniqueness and wholeness of personality and

humanity towards the goal of well-being and community.

Adler and Buber grew up in differing Jewish milieus. Buber came from a religious

background, was disillusioned early on, and chose a path of Jewish spiritual seeking in Hasidism.

Adler came from an assimilationist and secular upbringing that was disconnected from his

Jewish roots and sought a path of social and soul striving. Childhood traumas shaped their

characters and professional strivings and each man became a pioneer and a leader in his fields of

psychology, religion, theology, and philosophy. Their subjective and humanitarian

psychological approaches challenged the Enlightenment institutions of their time in academia,

traditional religion, and medicine. They became both ostracized and popularized. In the process,

they founded vibrant and organic movements that celebrated the human spirit in healing and

redemption.


58

Buber’s concepts and ideas of Hasidism reflected the concepts and ideas of Adler’s

Individual Psychology. Their approaches agreed on the individual as unique and whole and

personally connected to a creative force in a striving for ideal communities of cooperation,

redemption, and service. For Buber, overcoming was a struggle of the spiritual with the primal

Thou. For Adler, overcoming was the struggle of the social in the primal soul for survival. In

religion, Adler saw an idea. In spirituality, Buber saw true reality. Each man identified well-

being as a transcendent connection to personal meaning in useful action towards social and

interpersonal relations and community.


59

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A Master’s Project Wittman...Alfred Adler and Martin Buber’s views of spirituality, psychotherapy, and community offer a therapist a deeper understanding of his or her immanent

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