Analysis of a Personality with Mental Issues Using Jung's and Adler's Theories

Mental illness is among one of the highest growing psychological disorders worldwide these days. People can be diagnosed with a mental illness due to many different conditions which may include social, cultural and environmental situations. Today my personality essay assignment is about my brother who passed away several years ago due to mental health-related issues. Thus, I will try to analyze his life situation with some of the personality theories of Adler and Jung and the treatment that could help him out if practiced. To begin with, to have a clear idea and understanding of my topic I will write a summary of my brother’s life starting from his childhood. I grew up in a big family of ten back home in Eritrea. My oldest brother Efrem was sent to a Catholic school to study when he was five years of age.

The place where he went to study was outside the city where my parents used to live. So, there were no chances for him to come and spend some time with my families whenever he wanted as a child. Thus, he had to wait until the college closes for summer break which was twice a year. Later when he was around 15, he came back home to live with my parents as he could not resist all the life he had with those people in the college. Based on Adler's theory, my brother Efrem was having inferiority complex during his childhood, which means he had developed a sense of inferiority that is wholly or partly unconscious according to the article (Inferiority complex, 2018, para. 1). Thus, the fact that he is the oldest brother and being separated from our family and his youngest siblings staying with the parents made him think unloved or nobody's favourite. And he was always in competition with his youngest siblings and feels as if his other youngest siblings were treated more fairly than him in the family. Thus he was not satisfied with how he was handled in every aspect of life that involved family situation.

According to Adler a childs personality can be impacts based on the birth order of the family, thus the oldest one is prone to perfectionism and need for affirmation and tends to become intellectual, conscientious and dominant in a social setting (Reyes-Baybay, 2018). He also attributes that a child is losing parents' attention and is trying to compensate throughout life by working to get it back and Efrem was trying to win my family's heart and to be responsible for his siblings as expected and fix what happened in his childhood. As per Jung' s theory, the persona, or the image himself represents to the world, from his shadow, which was comprised of hidden anxieties and repressed thoughts. So the relationship between his individual or personal unconscious was filled with his own memories and ideas which was killing him inside. My brother Efrem was experiencing the feeling of inferiority as a result of disobeying my father for coming back home from the college. As a result, he started to stress out easily and became ultra sensitive and shy therefore he did not had that much social interaction with other people, and he used to spend his time alone by himself and never made any friends throughout his life. Each person develops his lifestyle based on the factors that affected him during his childhood period. Thus, later in life people tend to express the feeling and actions that had developed during their childhood.

As a result, those people with an inferiority complex feel the constant need to prove themselves better than others to boost their self-esteem. Efrem used to criticize how hard life was for him when he was in the Catholic school as a child and was saying he would have enjoyed his childhood more and would have been a different person if he was raised with his siblings and family. As a result, Efrem was trying so hard to determine that he is capable of doing things and was trying to involve into many voluntary clubs and Soon later he was able to join university but was suffering from mental illness when he was in his second year of studying archeology. My family did not have a good knowledge of the psychological problem, so it took them so long to figure out that my brother was suffering. My family thought that related mental health issue is a curse but not a disease, so they preferred not to speak about it to anyone and tried to keep him in the house without having any medical treatments. My brother’s conditions became worse and worse every single day, and that’s when they were forced to take him to the hospital. My brother Efrem was admitted to hospital for treatments, and he had to drop his studies. After staying some time in the hospital for treatment, he came back home and was able to finish his studies. Soon after his discharge from the hospital, my family failed to give him that much attention and support when he came back home in comparing during those times while he was in the hospital. So, he ends up committing suicide which put the whole family in grief. And that’s when they realize that they did not do things that they were supposed to do even though he tried a lot to come out being educated while mentally disabled.

Thus, based on Adler’s and Jung’s theory my brother could have been benefited from a therapy which could have been saved his life. This therapy could have been a trained psychotherapist who could have been helped him to overcome the feeling of loneliness and isolation that he had with the people around him and to reinforce him to develop a sense of self-esteem, positive thinking and also social interaction with the people around him. Besides this kind of real close family experience helped me to realize how important it is to have good communication, knowledge of the illness and care towards someone, who needs support. “To some, communication is the interchange of information between two or more people; in other words, it is the exchange of ideas and thoughts, a transmission of feelings, or more personal and social interactions between two or more people” (Kozier et al. ,2017, p. 385-386). Having said that, family or someone who is closely related to the person who is in need of help plays a vital role in helping the patient with mental health related issues to overcome the problems they have within their life. This kind of important role of the family involves verbal communications along with positive body movement which will help the patient to feel cared for and loved. Finally, in addition to my personal experience, Adler's and Jung's theory gave me deep understanding on my brother's situation, how the persona and all archetypes by Jung were related and how birth order has a significant influence on one’s personality traits.