The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: A NEW APPROACH IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY AND AN ADLERIAN INTERPRETATION OF SELECTED WORKS BY THEODOR STORM A Thesis in German by Birger Sachau © 2004 Birger Sachau Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2004 The thesis of Birger Sachau was reviewed and approved* by the following: Daniel L. Purdy Associate Professor of German Head of Graduate Studies in German Thesis Adviser Chair of Committee Sandra S. Savignon Professor of Applied Linguistics Michael Hager Professor of German Barton W. Browning Associate Professor of German * Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ABSTRACT Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology constitutes an ideal tool to understand and to reinstate the balance between matters of the individual and matters of the community within the framework of critical democracy. The education of a responsible and truly democratic citizen starts in the family and especially in school. The present dissertation will show the necessity of Adlerian psychology in the field of teaching foreign/second language and literature at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I want to prove that with the implementation of Adler’s IP at US-American colleges we can change our students into well-rounded, socially encouraged, critical, and curious learners and fellow human beings. Furthermore, IP constitutes a critical tool for the depth-psychological interpretation of selected works by the North-German poet and novelist Theodor Storm and their didactic application to the foreign/second language classroom situation. In both parts, the equilibrium between individuality and community will be analyzed and put to the test. Thereby, the unnecessary and unfortunate gap between linguistic and language aspects on the one hand and literary criticism on the other will be significantly narrowed by my approach. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures vii Prologue viii Acknowledgements xi Epigraph xiii CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM – THE DIALECTICAL TENSION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY 1 1. Introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO: THE INITIAL POSITION – A CRITICAL ANALYSIS 27 2. Literature Review 27 2.1 Alfred Adler 27 2.1.1 Adler and Erziehung 37 2.1.2 Adler’s Position in Literary Theory 41 2.1.3 Reasons for the Rejection of IP in Literary Theory 43 2.1.4 Justification and Value of Adlerian Interpretations of Literature 47 2.1.5 Individual Psychological Interpretations 51 2.1.6 Can we talk an Individual Psychological Literary Theory? 56 2.2 Theodor Storm 57 2.3 Language Pedagogy 64 CHAPTER THREE: ALFRED ADLER – THE CO-OPERATION OF INDEPENDENT HUMAN BEINGS 70 3. Adler’s Individual Psychology – An Overview 70 3.1 Key Aspects of Adler’s Individual Psychology 70 3.1.1 Inferiorities, Inferiority Feelings, and Inferiority Complex 70 3.1.2 Geltungsstreben 72 3.1.3 Gemeinschaftsgefühl 74 3.1.4 Phenomenology, Biased Apperception, and Private Logic 76 3.1.5 Birth Order and Early Recollections 77 3.1.6 Guiding Fiction and Finalism 79 3.1.7 Style of Life 80 3.1.8 The Tasks of Life 82 3.1.9 Neurosis 84 3.2 Adler versus Freud 86 3.3 Summary 96 iv CHAPTER FOUR: THEODOR STORM – LONELINESS AND THE LONGING FOR COMPANIONSHIP 98 4. Adler and Theodor Storm 98 4.1 Theodor Storm’s Understanding of Democracy 100 4.2 Storm, the Writer of Poetic Realism 112 4.3 Storm’s Understanding of Loneliness, Individualism, and Community 116 4.4 Individual Psychological Analysis of the Author 124 4.4.1 Storm’s Childhood 125 4.4.2 Storm’s Aktionskreis, Circle of Social Interaction 134 4.4.3 Storm’s Novellas as Mirrors of his Psyche 136 4.5 Selected Novellas by Theodor Storm and Their Interpretation 149 4.5.1 Carsten Curator (1877/78) 150 4.5.2 Die Söhne des Senators (1880) 183 4.5.3 Im Nachbarhause links (1875) 193 4.5.4 Ein Doppelgänger (1886) 205 4.5.5 Der Schimmelreiter (1888) 219 4.6 Summary 251 CHAPTER FIVE: FOREIGN/SECOND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY – THE STRIVE FOR SELF-INVOLVEMENT AND GROUP COMMITMENT 255 5. Adler in Foreign/Second Language Pedagogy 255 5.1 Overview and Brief Adumbration of HLP 257 5.2 The Role of the Teacher 262 5.3 The Aspect of ‘Social Interest’ and Community in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) in General and in Holistic Language Pedagogy (HLP) In Particular 273 5.4 Self-Knowledge and Self-Acceptance 283 5.5 Dreams and Early Recollections 288 5.6 Individual Psychology’s Maxim of Encouragement and Motivation 291 5.7 Democracy 294 5.8 Comparison of HLP with Other Humanistic FLT Approaches 304 5.8.1 Total Physical Response 304 5.8.2 Suggestopedia and ACT 307 5.8.3 The Silent Way 311 5.8.4 The Confluent Approach 313 5.8.5 Conclusion 315 5.9 Practical Implementation of HLP 315 5.9.1 Group Work 315 5.9.2 The Project Method – possunt quia posse videntur 318 5.9.3 Interactive Writing Assignments and Clusters 328 5.9.4 Games 331 5.9.5 “Warming-ups” and Ermutigungsrunden 335 5.9.6 Role Plays 336 5.9.7 Meditations, Fantasy Trips, and Symbols 342 v 5.9.8 Short Stories and Novellas 345 5.9.9 Essays and Interpretations 347 5.10 Possible Topics in the Holistic Language Class 349 5.11 Summary 353 CHAPTER SIX: THE CLASS – THE UTILIZATION OF THE GROUP TO FURTHER INDIVIDUAL LEARNING AND ENCOURAGEMENT 355 6. Theodor Storm’s Literature in the Holistic Language Pedagogy Class 355 CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SOLUTION – THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SELF-ACCEPTANCE AND SOCIAL INTEREST 364 7. Conclusion 364 Epilogue 369 References 371 Appendix 400 Figure 1: Storm’s Novellas 401 Figure 2: Work Sheet: Tree Image 402 Figure 3: Work Sheet: Problem Solving Strategies 403 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft 12 Figure 2: IP Interpretations of Literary Works 54f. Figure 3: IP Interpretations of Authors 55 Figure 4: Films and TV Productions Based on Storm’s Novellas 62f. Figure 5: Striving 73 Figure 6: The Three Tasks of Life 84 Figure 7: Loneliness and Individualism in Selected Novellas by Theodor Storm with a Brief Adlerian Interpretation 119ff. Figure 8: Strategies of a Child to Overcome the Felt Inferiority and Discouragement in the Case of Lacking Social Interest 169 Figure 9: The Main Differences between the Traditional and the Adlerian Interpretations 252f. Figure 10: The Core Elements of HLP 261 Figure 11: The Four Life Philosophies 287 Figure 12: The Didactic Triangle 317 Figure 13: The Basic Scheme of the Project Method 321 Figure 14: Character Typology 352 Figure 15: Appropriateness of Storm’s Novellas for the Different Language Levels 359 Figure 16: Life-style Elements 361 vii PROLOGUE Humans are social beings. This statement is not at all controversial, but how human beings have organized their social lives in the past and present is. If we take a look at the different societies that have existed over the course of history we find a multitude of different ways in which people have organized their social lives and their communities. At first glance we ‘see’ tribes, clans, feudal states, empires and kingdoms, monarchies, presidential republics, and parliamentary states. We ‘see’ centralized societies, federations, unions, and commonwealths. We ‘see’ democracies, plutocracies, aristocracies, autocracies, tyrannies (in Greek: tyranis), dictatorships, and theocratic republics. However, if we take a much closer look and analyze all of these societies on the basis of their social values we find that there are, in fact, just two basic forms of human coexistence. The first form is the vertical model, the second one the horizontal. All societies and communities in the world can be differentiated in this manner. It is fallacious to think that only dictatorships or the feudal societies of the European Middle Ages or the Middle East were structured the vertical way. Even our modern Western society, especially the society in the United States of America is in fact a picture-perfect representative of the vertical model. Howard F. Stein (1998) compares the structure of the American society with a pyramid. Even though it is possible to leave the level (or “class” if you will) into which one is born and to move up – after all America is proud of its “upward mobility” – there is an underlying sense of class-awareness. Even the term “upward mobility” itself shows us the direction of this society as well as the fundamentals of the American understanding of a good and just society. It is – after all – necessary to strive for an always better, i.e. higher, position in that society, no matter where you find yourself in the pyramid-shaped hierarchy. The famous saying of “bigger, better, faster, higher, and wider” symbolizes America’s recipe of economic, military, political, and cultural success. The striving for perfection, however, is nothing unusual and not unique to America. However, a more of money and power is not the same as a more of understanding and community. Constructive criticism of the present society – viii one goal of this dissertation – should also include and clearly present a valid and valuable alternative. In my case it is the horizontal model of human coexistence and interpersonal action. Stein describes in his article “Freedom and Interdependence: American Culture and the Adlerian Ideal” (1998) America’s society as a pyramid, a vertical form of community. The alternative that he presents, however, as the horizontal model is the bridge. With the help of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology (IP), I want to explain what human coexistence could look like if we align our lives, especially here in the U.S.