The Adlerian Life Style for Couples

I’ve been using the Life Style Assessment technique (originated by Alfred Adler, and developed further by Bernard Shulman and Harold Mosak) for many years, as a way to help clients understand their basic life convictions and help in setting goals and direction in psychotherapy. This technique can also be of great value for couples.

The Life Style (or Lifestyle) Assessment (or Analysis) is a process in which a trained clinician interviews an individual about the influences that they recall from their childhood. The two main components are the Family Constellation and a series of Early Recollections.

In the Family Constellation, the initial questions center on the sibling constellation, creating a set of thumbnail sketches of each sibling’s personality and character traits. This can include step-siblings and other children with whom the individual grew up. The idea behind this process reflects Alfred Adler’s understanding that a family is an ecological system, in which each child learns to find a place by “specializing” in one or more areas of significance. Birth order is often strong influence on these choices, and books have been written about using birth order to explain personality. However, Adlerians understand that what matters is not the actual chronological order, but the individual’s perception of what it means to occupy that position in this particular family. Siblings are rated on a series of characteristics, such as having a lot of friends, being mischievous, and being responsible, as a way to clarify these personality sketches and the chosen role that the individual created.

Next, the individual’s role models are described in detail. Parents, grandparents, and others who served as influences (either positive or negative) are described in detail. In couples work, the nature of the relationships between these adults takes on great significance: how they showed affection, solved disagreements, and divided responsibilities in the family.

Additionally, the child’s social relationships, physical development, school life, and family values emerge from a series of questions woven through the interview. Gender guiding lines, cultural and religious influences, attitudes about leadership, and a sense of self-image are among the characteristics that emerge from these descriptions.

The Early Recollections are a series of six to ten vignettes recalled from as early in life as possible. The individual is asked to describe who was present, what happened, the most vivid moment of the incident, and how he or she felt about it.

From this rich set of information, the clinician draws a series of impressions about the individual’s basic approach to life, convictions about the self, other people, the world, and how to act in order to “find a place” in life. These convictions are always unique to the individual, but often have common characteristics shared by many people.

The final step in the Life Style process involves the therapist going over the hypotheses made on the basis of the interview, and asking the client to comment or clarify any of the statements. The client is the expert, and the therapist will incorporate the client’s interpretation into the summary. This is an empowering part of the process, and helps the client to gain self-understanding in a deep way.

I’ve used this technique for more than twenty years, and it’s often very useful for individual clients who are interested in discovering their mistaken or self-defeating beliefs. But the technique can be especially useful in working with couples. I always interview each partner while the other listens, and we go over the interpretations together. Hearing the family influences that contributed to a partner’s personality development often leads to a greater appreciation of the basis for the couple’s recurring issues and conflicts.

After going through this process, one couple I worked with commented that they wished they had been able to do it before they were married. It’s a good idea. Although the Life Style is intended as a tool for psychotherapy, it can also be a tool for self- (and partner) understanding.

Many churches ask couples to get pre-marital counseling as a way to gain this very type of understanding, and to prepare themselves to respectfully deal with the inevitable differences between their emotional and relational “road maps.” The Life Style assessment can serve as a good tool for this.

The Adlerian Life Style for Couples by Fitzgerald Counseling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.