5 – Centrality of community; “The Iron Law of Communal Life”; Social Embeddedness; Family creates human being

While psychology in its infancy at the turn of the century focused on the inner world of the person, and stressed the influence of past causes, environment, and heredity...Dr.Alfred Adler saw that the individual is set within the larger society of relationships, family, culture, and other people.

So Adler brought the view that, from birth onward, a person is part of a social setting whose influences and responsibilities cannot be avoided. Society, experienced first as the family, insists on certain beliefs, actions, attitudes, etc. A person is as much a creation of social setting as of personal choice or genetic design. Adler said this influence is so strong and basic that he called it “The Iron Law of Communal Life.” Society’s demands are transmitted through games, friendship groups, fairy tales, rules, customs, folk sayings, religion, school, and more.

The community is key in shaping the individual; this is central to Individual Psychology. It became so much a part of the basic thinking that it quickly came to be assumed by others. Indeed, so-called “neo-Freudians,” by taking up Adler’s stress on social influences, are better seen as “neo-Adlerians.” They include Erickson, Sullivan, Horney, Perls, Berne, and many others. Of course Adler's view is universally accepted today.

The child’s first experience with the human community is the family, which provides several important influences on the developing person and personality:

Sibling position (numerical and psycho-social) is influenced by birth-order, comparisons with siblings, the child’s sex, and other factors.

Hundreds of studies on sibling position support Adler’s reasoning on the shaping influence of birth order. Adlerians stress the psycho-social position of the child over mere numerical placement: innate intelligence, whether a child is wanted, spoiled, abused or neglected, etc., the influence of the sex of each sibling (including traditional parental preferences), which parent the child most or least favors or resembles, behaviors and attitudes of the siblings among each other,
parental comparisons between children, a child’s special gifts or talents, special problems such as handicaps or retardation, and more.

Parental examples are important as the young child seeks to understand what it means to be “a grown-up.” So the child pays attention to parental models of adult roles: male and female, mother & father, husband & wife, etc. Imitation of these
and other roles in play and imagination becomes the foundation for later adult self-definitions and relationships.

Meadian role theorists as well as researchers in marriage and family have confirmed Adler’s assertions that how a child perceives parental behavior is a major influence on how the eventual adult will adopt, adapt, accept, or reject those same roles for the self.

Family atmosphere includes family social status, self-views, emotional climate, life in the home, correct behavior, etc. What is learned in the family is central to later self-image, relationships, work, marital choices, parenting, moral behavior, and how one pursues one’s goals. In terms of marriage, the family atmospheres of each partner can be as important a factor as culture, language, religion, or personal goals in predicting marital happiness or success.

Thus the family is the first community we encounter at birth. From it we learn about relationships, responsibility, duty, loyalty, cooperation, belonging, and all the rest that creates us as human beings.