Top Quotes: “The Courage to be Disliked” — Ichiro Kishimi

Introduction

“In Adlerian psych, trauma is definitively denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly, the Freudian view of trauma is fascinating. Freud’s idea is that a person’s psychic wounds (traumas) cause their present unhappiness. When you treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there’s an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: ‘No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We don’t suffer from the shock of our experiences — the so-called trauma — but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We aren’t determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.

He isn’t saying that the experience of a horrible calamity or abuse during childhood or other such incidents have no influence on forming a personality; their influences are strong. But the important thing is that nothing is actually determined by those influences. We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life isn’t something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you’re the one who decides how you live.”

Anger

“Anger is an instantaneous emotion. One day, a mother and daughter were quarreling loudly. Then, suddenly, the phone rang. ‘Hello?’ the mother picked up the receiver hurriedly, her voice still thick with anger. The caller was her daughter’s homeroom teacher. As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and she became very polite. Then, for the next 5 minutes or so, she carried on a conversation in her best phone voice. Once she hung up, in a moment, her expression changed again and she continued yelling at her daughter.

Don’t you see? In a word, anger is a tool that can be taken out as needed. It can be put away the moment the phone rings, and pulled out again after one hangs up. The mom isn’t yelling in anger because she cannot control. She’s simply using the anger to overpower her daughter with a loud voice and thereby assert her opinions. Anger is a means to achieve a goal.”

Superiority Complexes

“Those who go as far as to boast about things out loud actually have no confidence in themselves. If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one ‘the way I am.’ This is a full-blown superiority complex.

Though one would think from the sound of the words that inferiority complex and superiority complex were polar opposites, in actuality they border on each other.

There’s one last example I’d like to give, a pattern leading to a particular feeling of superiority that manifests due to the feeling of inferiority itself becoming intensified. It’s bragging about one’s own misfortune.

The person who assumes a boasting manner when talking about his upbringing and the like, the various misfortunes that have rained down upon him. If someone should try to comfort this person, or suggest some change be made, he’ll refuse the helping hand by saying, ‘You don’t understand how I feel.’

Such people try to make themselves ‘special’ by way of their experience of their misfortune, and with the single fact of their misfortune try to place themselves above others. Take the fact that I’m short, for instance. Let’s say that kind-hearted people come up to me and say, ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ or ‘Such things have nothing to do with human values.’ Now, if I were to reject them and say, ‘You think you know what short people go through, huh?’ no one would say a thing to me anymore. I’m sure that everyone around me would start treating me just as if I were a boil about to burst and would handle me very carefully, circumspectly.

By doing that, my position becomes superior to other people’s, and I can become special. Quite a few people try to be ‘special’ by adopting this kind of attitude when they’re sick or injured, or suffering the mental anguish of heartbreak.

They use their misfortune to their advantage and try to control the other party with it. By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they’ve suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them (their family and friends, for example), and to restrict their speech and behavior and control them. The people I was talking about at the very beginning, who shut themselves up in their rooms, frequently indulge in feelings of superiority and use misfortune to their advantage. So much that Adler himself pointed out, ‘In our culture weakness can be quite strong and powerful.’

Adler says, ‘In fact, if we were to ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be, the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.’ The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And it’s because of this weakness that no one can control him.”

Competition

“When one is conscious of competition and victory and defeat, it’s inevitable that feelings of inferiority will arise. Because one is constantly comparing oneself to others and thinking, I beat that person or I lost to that person. The inferiority complex and the superiority complex are extensions of that.

Before you know it, you start to see each and every person, everyone in the whole world, as your enemy.”

“This is what is so terrifying about competition. Even if you’re not a loser, even if you’re someone who keeps on winning, if you’re someone who has placed himself in competition, you’ll never have a moment’s peace. You don’t want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning if you don’t want to be a loser. You can’t trust other people. The reason so many people don’t really feel happy while they’re building up their success in the eyes of society is that they’re living in competition. Because to them, the world is a perilous place that is overflowing with enemies.

But do other people actually look at you so much? Are they really watching you around the clock and lying in wait for the perfect moment to attack? It seems rather unlikely.”

“The child oppressed by his parents will turn to delinquency. He’ll stop going to school. He’ll cut his wrists or engage in other acts of self-harm. In Freudian etiology, this is regarded as simple cause and effect: The parents raised the child in this way, and that’s why the child grew up to be like this. It’s just like pointing out that a plant wasn’t watered, so it withered. It’s an interpretation that’s certainly easy to understand. But Adlerian teleology doesn’t turn a blind eye to the goal that the child is hiding. That is to say, the goal of revenge on the parents. If he becomes a delinquent, stops going to school, cuts his wrists, or things like that, the parents will be upset. They’ll panic and worry themselves sick over him. It’s in the knowledge that this will happen that the child engages in problem behavior. So that the current goal (revenge on the parents) can be realized, not because he’s motivated by past causes (home environment).

Try to think how the people around the child — the parents, for instance, will feel as a result of the behavior of wrist cutting. If you do, the goal behind the behavior should come into view of its own accord.

And once the interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it’s almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in.”

“What should you do when you’re subjected to personal attacks right to your face? Do you just grin and bear it?

No, the idea that you’re ‘bearing it’ is proof that you’re still stuck in the power struggle. When you’re challenged to a fight, and you sense that it’s a power struggle, step down from the conflict asap. Don’t answer his action with a reaction. That’s the only thing we can do.

When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it.’ Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal.

One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you’re right, try not to criticize the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into.

The moment one is convinced that ‘I’m right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.

I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship. ‘ In other words, the conviction that ‘I’m right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’ and finally it becomes a context and you’re thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through.

In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you’re right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle and try to make others submit to them. And that’s why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat.’

Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles — none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority isn’t something that’s carried out through competition with other people.

When you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices. It clouds your judgment, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.”

Relationships

“Adler doesn’t accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.

The kind of relationship that feels somehow oppressive and strained when the 2 people are together cannot be called love, even if there’s passion. When one can think, Whenever I’m with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love. One can be in a calm and quite neutral state, without having feelings of inferiority or being beset with the need to flaunt one’s superiority. That’s what real love is like. Restriction, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the mindset of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust. Being in the same space with someone who distrusts you isn’t a natural situation that one can put up with, is it? As Adler says, ‘If 2 people want to live together on good terms, they must treat each other as equal personalities.’”

“It isn’t that you dislike Mr. A because you can’t forgive his flaws. You had the goal of taking a dislike to Mr. A beforehand and then started looking for the flaws to satisfy that goal. So that you could avoid an interpersonal relationship with Mr. A.

It’s easy to see if you think back on the example of separating from a person whom one has been in a love relationship with. In relationships between lovers or married couples, there are times when, after a certain point, one becomes exasperated with everything one’s partner says or does. For instance, she doesn’t care for the way he eats; his slovenly appearance at home fills her with revulsion, and even his snoring sets her off. Even though until a few months ago, none of it had ever bothered her before.

The person feels this way because at some stage she has resolved to herself, I want to end this relationship, and she has been looking around for the material with which to end it. The other person hasn’t changed at all. It’s her own goal that has changed. Look, people are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them. A man of perfect character could come along, and one would have no difficulty in digging up some reason to dislike him. That’s exactly why the world can become a perilous place at any time, and it’s always possible to see everyone as one’s enemies.”

Tasks

“Studying is the child’s task. A parent’s handling of that by commanding the child to study is, in effect, an act of intruding on another person’s task. One is unlikely to avert a collision in this way. We need to think with the perspective of ‘Whose task is this?’ and continually separate one’s own tasks from other people’s tasks.”

“There’s a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that’s made? When the child has made the choice of not studying, ultimately, the result of that decision — not being able to keep up in class or to get into the preferred school, for instance — doesn’t have to be received by the parents. Clearly, it’s the child who has to receive it. In other words, studying is the child’s task.”

“So even if the child hasn’t been studying at all, you’re saying that, since it’s his task, I should just let him be?

One has to pay attention. Adlerian psych doesn’t recommend the noninterference approach. Noninterference is the attitude of not knowing, and not even being interested in knowing what the child is doing. Instead, it’s by knowing what the child is doing that one protects him. If it’s studying that’s the issue, one tells the child that that’s his task, and one lets him know that one is ready to assist him whenever he has the urge to study. But one must not intrude on the child’s task. When no requests are being made, it doesn’t do to meddle in things.”

“What another person thinks of you — if they like you or dislike you — that’s that person’s task, not mine?

That’s what separating is. You’re worried about other people looking at you. You’re worried about being judged by other people. That’s why you’re constantly craving recognition from others. Now, why are you worried about other people looking at you, anyway? Adlerian psych has an easy answer: You haven’t done the separation of tasks yet.”

“What should one do to not be disliked by anyone? There’s only one answer. It’s to constantly gauge other people’s feelings while swearing loyalty to all of them. If there’s 10 people, one must swear loyalty to all 10. When one does that, for the time being one will have succeeded in not being disliked by anyone. But at this point, there is a great contradiction looming. One swears loyalty to all 10 people out of the single-minded desire to not be disliked. This is like a politician who’s fallen into populism and begun to make impossible promises and accept responsibilities that are beyond him. Naturally, his lies will come to light before long. He will lose people’s trust and turn his own life into one of greater suffering. And, of course, the stress of continual lying has all kinds of consequences. If one is living in such a way as to satisfy other people’s expectations, and one is entrusting one’s own life to others, that’s a way of living in which one is lying to oneself and continuing that lying to include the people around me.”

“Regardless of our efforts, there are people who dislike me and people who dislike you. This, too, is a fact.”

“‘Freedom is being disliked by other people.’ It’s that if you are disliked by someone. It’s proof that you’re exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you’re living in accordance with your own principles.

It’s certainly distressful to be disliked. If possible, one would like to live without being disliked by anyone. One wants to satisfy one’s desire for recognition. But conducting oneself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and it’s also impossible. There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.

You’ve probably been thinking of freedom as ‘release from organizations.’ That breaking away from your home or school, your company or nation is freedom. However, if you were to break away from your org, for instance, you wouldn’t be able to gain real freedom. Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgments, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognized, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living. One will not be able to be free.”

“I’m not telling you to go so far as to live in such a way that you’ll be disliked, and I’m not saying engage in wrongdoing.

Can people actually endure the weight of freedom? Are people that strong? To not care even if one is disliked by one’s own parents — can one become so self-righteously defiant?

One neither prepares to be self-righteous nor becomes defiant. One just separates tasks. There may be a person who doesn’t think well of you, but that’s not your task. And again, thinking things like He should like me or I’ve done all this, so it’s strange that he doesn’t like me, is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person’s tasks. One moves forward without fearing the possibility of being disliked.”

“You don’t want to be disliked, but you don’t mind if you are?

Yes, that’s right. Not wanting to be disliked is probably my task, but whether or not so-and-so dislikes me is the other person’s task. Even if there’s a person who doesn’t think well of me, I cannot intervene in that.”

Vertical & Horizontal Relationships

“One must not praise, and one must not rebuke.

Consider the reality of the act of praise. For example, suppose I praised a statement you made by saying, ‘Good job!’ Wouldn’t hearing those words seem strange somehow?

What’s unpleasant is the feeling that from the words ‘Good job!’ one is being talked down to.

Exactly. In the act of praise, there’s the aspect of it being ‘the passing of judgment by a person of ability on a person of no ability.’ A mom praises her child who has helped her prepare dinner, saying, ‘You’re such a good helper!’ But when her husband does the same things, you can be sure she won’t be telling him that.

In other words, the mother who praises the child by saying things like ‘You’re a good helper!’ or ‘Good job!’ or ‘Well, aren’t you something!’ is unconsciously creating a hierarchical relationship and seeing the child as beneath her. When one person praises another, the goal is ‘to manipulate someone who has less ability than you.’ It isn’t done out of gratitude or respect.

Whether we praise or rebuke others, the background goal is manipulation. The reason Adlerian psych is highly critical of reward-and-punishment education is that its intention is to manipulate children.”

“The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability.

Even if you do derive joy from being praised, it’s the same as being dependent on vertical relationships and acknowledging that you have no ability. Because giving praise is a judgment that’s passed by a person of ability onto a person without ability.”

“How does one go about this? One cannot praise, and one cannot rebuke. What other words and choices are there?

Think about a time when you’ve had help in your work — from a partner who’s your equal — and you will probably see the answer right away. When a friend helps you clean your home, what do you say to him?

Thank you.

Right. You convey words of gratitude. You might express straightforward delight: ‘I’m glad.’ Or you could convey your thanks by saying, ‘That was a big help.’ This is an approach to encouragement that’s based on horizontal relationships.”

“Being praised essentially means that one is receiving judgment from another person as ‘good.’ And the measure of what’s good or bad about the act is that person’s yardstick. If receiving praise is what one is after, one will have no choice but to adapt to that person’s yardstick and put the brakes on one’s own freedom. ‘Thank you,’ on the other hand, rather than being judgment, is a clear expression of gratitude. When you hear words of gratitude, one knows that one has made a contribution to another person.”

“If you are building even 1 vertical relationship with someone, before you even notice what is happening, you’ll be treating all your interpersonal relations as vertical.

Even if you aren’t treating them in a boss-or-subordinate kind of way, it’s as if you’re saying, ‘A is above me, and B is below me,’ for example, or ‘I’ll follow A’s advice but ignore what B says,’ or ‘I don’t mind breaking my promise to C.’”

“Confidence…is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others. Even if one doesn’t have sufficient objective grounds for trusting someone, one believes. One believes unconditionally without concerning oneself with such things as security. That’s confidence.

If one believes in others without setting any conditions whatsoever, there will be times when one gets taken advantage of. Just like the guarantor of a debt, there are times when one may suffer damages. The attitude of continuing to believe in someone even in such instances is what we call confidence.

There are times when someone deceives you, and you get used. But look at it from the standpoint of someone who’s been taken advantage of. There are people who will continue to believe in you unconditionally even if you’re the one who has taken advantage of them. People who will have confidence if you no matter how they’re treated. Would you be able to betray such a person again and again? I’m sure it would be quite difficult for you to do such a thing.”

“Suppose you’ve placed ‘doubt’ at the foundation of your interpersonal relations. That you live your life doubting other people — doubting your friends and even your family and those you love. What sort of relationship could possibly arise from that? The other person will detect the doubt in your eyes in an instant. They will have an instinctive understanding that ‘this person doesn’t have confidence in me.’ Do you think one would be able to build some kind of positive relationship from that point? It’s precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it’s possible for us to build a deep relationship.”

“Adlerian psych isn’t saying ‘having confidence in others unconditionally’ on the basis of a moralistic system of values. Unconditional confidence is a means for making your interpersonal relationship with a person better and for building a horizontal relationship. If you don’t have the desire to make your relationship with that person better, then go ahead and sever it. Because carrying out the severing is your task.”

“In Adlerian psych, we think of this as a way of living that’s lacking in ‘harmony of life.’ It’s a way of living in which one sees only a part of things but judges the whole.

In the teachings of Judaism, one finds the following anecdote: ‘If there are 10 people, one will be someone who criticizes you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you’ll not learn to like him either. Then, there will be 2 others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you’ll become close friends with them. The remaining 7 people will be neither of these types.’ Now, do you focus on the 1 person who dislikes you? Do you pay more attention to the 2 who love you? Or would you focus on the crowd, the other 7? A person who’s lacking in harmony of life will see only the 1 person he dislikes and will make a judgment of the world from that.”

“Why is stammering so hard to deal with? The view in Adlerian psych is that people who suffer from stammering are concerned only about their only way of speaking, and they have feelings of inferiority and see their lives as unbearably hard. And they become too self-conscious as a result and start tripping over their words more and more.

There are not many people who will laugh at or make fun of someone when he trips over his words now and then. To use the example I just mentioned, it would probably be no more than 1 person in 10, at most. In any case, with the sort of foolish person who would take such an attitude, it’s best to simply sever the relationship. But if one is lacking in harmony of life, one will focus only on that person and end up thinking, Everyone is laughing at me.”

“For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself. The feeling of ‘I am beneficial to the community’ or ‘I’m of us to someone’ is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.”

“If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that ‘I’m of use to someone,’ without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others. In other words, a person who’s obsessed with the desire for recognition doesn’t have any community feeling yet, and hasn’t managed to engage in self-acceptance, confidence in others, or contribution to others.

Why is it necessary to be special? Probably because one cannot accept one’s normal self. And it’s precisely for this reason that when being especially good becomes a lost cause, one makes the huge leap to being especially bad — the opposite extreme. But is being normal, being ordinary, really such a bad thing? Is it something inferior? Or, in truth, isn’t everybody normal?”

“Let’s dance in earnest the moments of the here and now, and live in earnest. Don’t look at the past, and don’t look at the future. One lives each complete moment like a dance. There’s no need to compete with anyone, and one has no use for destinations. As long as you’re dancing, you’ll get somewhere.”