The in Flue Nc E of Adler on Rotter ' S Social Learning

In ]950 John Dollard and Neal Miller (4) published a book on Personality and Psychotherapy which was heavily influenced by Freud's psychoanal ytic theory. Freudian concepts such as conflict, repression, transference, and the pleasure principle were related to con cepts and experimental pa radigms which had been developed by learning theorists who had followed the path blazed by Pavlov, T horn dike, and Hull. From this syn thesis emerged a theoretical schema which ha s had considerable impact on Am erican psychology. But it seems that although D ollard and M iller had made psychoanalytic t heory more palatable to m ay psychologists, psychoanalysts responded that the new bland recipe wa s so drastically altered that it had omitted the essential ingredients of psychoanalytic theory (8) . In 1954 Julian B . Ro t ter 's book , Social L earning and Clinical Psy chology, was published. In it R ot ter presented " a social learning theory of personality" (9, p. 84), personality assessment, per sonality research, and psychotherapy. " It is a social learning theory because it stress es the fact that the major or basic modes of behaving are learned in social situations and ar e inextricably fused with needs requiring for their sat isfac tion the mediation of other person s" (9, p. 84)' It was influenced by Adler 's Individual Psychology . W hile many people seem to be aware of Freud 's influence on Dollard and Miller, fewer are aware of Adler 's influence on Rotter. Rotter did not offer his work as an effort to recast Adlerian conceptions into the language of learning t heory. While the influence of Adler was heuristi cally powerful and pervasive, R otter 's theoretical efforts went beyond the tra nsla tion of Adlerian ideas into a lan guage which might be more acceptabl e to academically inclined psychologists . To depreciate social learning theory as wa tered-down Individual Psych ology or to depreciate Individual Psychology as fatty waste in comparison to the lean, red meat of social learning theory would