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Alfred Adler's Influence in the United States and Great Britain Jon Sperry and Len Sperry In April 1935 the first issue of the International Journal of Individual Psychology (IJIP) appeared, with Alfred Adler as its editor in chief. There were other psychology journals at the time, but most of them focused on experimental psychology topics. IJIP was one of the few clinically oriented ones. The journal, directed at psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists in the United States and Great Britain, and published in English, offered mental health professionals in those countries opportunities to learn the theory and practice of Individual Psychology. In many respects, it was the start of Adler's significant influence and contribution to the fields of psychology, education, parent education, and psychotherapy in both the United States and England. Amid the then domination of psychoanalysis, Adler perceived the need to "introduce" Individual Psychology to readers who knew little about its distinctive structure and foundations. The short, four-page summary, titled "Introduction: The Fundamental Views of Individual Psychology," was the lead article for Adler's new journal. It is presumably his shortest publication, and certainly a remarkable summary of the fundamental tenets of Individual Psychology. Because very few readers of the Journal of Individual Psychology will have had the opportunity to read this article by Adler, we, as editors, wanted to reprint it and make it the centerpiece of this special issue, which consists of the "Introduction" followed by four commentaries. We invited a broad cross section of prominent Adlerians to respond to the article. They include university professors, administrators, private practitioners, and presidents of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology. They were tasked with reflecting on the state of mental health practice at the time this article appeared some 80 years ago in either or both of the United States and England, compared to what it is now. We encouraged them to comment on [End Page 183] the specific statements that most impressed them. Finally, we asked them to reflect on what they considered the value of this short piece for psychology and psychotherapy today. We are excited to reprint Adler's "Introduction" as the first article in this special issue. Three exceptional articles follow Adler's article and commentaries on it. Mansager and Griffith revisit an ongoing discussion on whether Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs agreed on the primary motivation of human beings in their article "Respecting Differences: Theoretical Variance Between Adler and Dreikurs." The authors articulate that Adler did not identify belonging as the primary motivator of human behavior, but rather it is striving from a felt minus to a felt plus. The need to consider Dreikursian formulations as different from Adlerian formulations is also discussed. Parker and Crunk examine the test–retest reliability of the Adlerian Personality Priority Assessment (APPA) in their article "Exploring the Test–Retest Reliability of the Adlerian Personality Priority Assessment." The APPA is used to assess individuals' personality priorities and help mental health practitioners conceptualize their clients' style of life. The study was implemented with 120 graduate and undergraduate university students, and the authors find that the APPA demonstrated good temporal reliability as well as initial evidence of convergent validity. The final article in this issue, by Alizadeh, Elmpak, Little, and Choobdary, examines social interest among 60 children from a public school in Iran in "Social Interest in Children With and Without Oppositional Defiant Disorder." They utilized the Social Interest Scale for Iranian Children (SISIC) to find that children diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder had lower levels of social interest than their peers who were not diagnosed with ODD. The authors also provide clinical implications for practitioners working with this population. Reference Adler, A. (1935). Introduction: The fundamental views of Individual Psychology. International Journal of Individual Psychology, 1(1), 5–8. Google Scholar Copyright © 2019 University of Texas Press
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