Who is adler

Born on February 12th, Russell Adler enlisted in the U. Army in and qualified for U. Army Special Forces in He was recruited into Central Intelligence Agency in After Vietnam, Adler disappeared from and only sporadically appears in the CIA's records but continued to be affiliated with a number of clandestine operations. His deep knowledge of covert tactics, fluency in Russian and German, and mastery of espionage make him one of the few key operatives that the CIA can consistently rely upon.

Despite his interrogations, Adler was unable to force Kuzmin to disclose any critical information; in retaliation for what Lev Kravchenko did to fellow CIA operative Grigori Weaver back at the Baikonur Cosmodrome , Adler stabbed Kuzmin's left eye with a knife.

On January 13, , during a mission with Frank Woods and Alex Mason in Turkey, Adler discovered that the Soviet agent Perseus became active and four days later Jason Hudson tasked Adler to build a team to track down and eliminate Perseus.

During his mission, he came across an injured operative of Perseus , who he subsequently captured and brainwashed into falsely believing they were a CIA agent who served with Adler in Vietnam, alongside nicknaming the operative "Bell". Despite breaking through the conditioning, Bell still managed to assist Adler and his allies in stopping Perseus' plot to detonate nukes across Europe. Adler would take Bell to a cliffside, telling them they were a hero for making sacrifices to stop Perseus.

Adler would then tell Bell that he had to make one last sacrifice, and that it wasn't personal before both of them drew their pistols on each other. Adler would soon find himself confronting Kuzmin again, where would be baited by the Perseus operative into coming to the Mall at the Pines after a raid on a CIA base in West Berlin. Alongside a strike team, Adler arrives at the mall, only to be ambushed by Kuzmin and his soldiers and found Nova 6 barrels. A firefight ensued, which ended with Adler being captured by Stitch and transported onto a helicopter.

Weeks later, Hudson contacts Wolf for a sit-rep and news on Adler. The team eventually got "skunked" hard but were able to get through heavy firefights in the camps. They eventually found a safehouse where Nova 6 barrels were being stored but upon finding them they were empty and were used to draw in Adler and the Team.

They interrogate the remaining bad guys in the safe house and search for intel which all pointed to Verdansk. Hudson orders the team to head to Verdansk and "bring our boy home". In the process, the duo destroyed the site so that the Soviets could blame the United States for the incident.

With the data secure, Stitch intends to brainwash Adler and "entire nations" with the same method used by Dragovich and Steiner on Alex Mason. On June 26th, two satellites collectively known as the "Jumpseat Constellation" are crashed by Perseus operative Owethu "Jackal" Mabuza.

One lands in Verdansk, while the other lands in Algeria. Adler rushes into the firefight, acting of his own accord by stealing the data recorder and lying that it must have burnt up on re-entry. After his outing in Algeria, Adler began working off the grid on an unknown project in Verdansk. During a private meeting between Woods and Hudson, the two came to the conclusion that Adler had been compromised.

With this in mind, Hudson ordered Woods to have Mason bring Adler in. On August 2nd, , Mason managed to capture Adler and bring him to the same interrogation room That Hudson and Grigori Weaver put Mason in after killing Fredrich Steiner 16 years prior. They, along with Woods and Hudson, then travel to Verdansk to investigate a series of explosions in Verdansk. Adler, now free of his brainwashing, confronted Stitch at gunpoint with a Stitch attempted to activate Adler's conditioning, but it failed as Adler told his nemesis that he was fixed.

Stitch was unfazed, stating it was "worth a shot" anyway. Adler then demanded Stitch tell him the whereabouts of Perseus, where Stitch revealed to him that there never was any single Perseus, and that the man he had been searching for all this time had died years prior in due to cancer. Adler told Stitch that there was blood on his hands, but Stitch mocked his hypocrisy, calling him the "Scourge of Verdansk".

Tired of Stitch's words, Alder resolved to killing Stitch, though the Soviet solemnly told Adler that his life no longer mattered, telling him to finish what he started on Rebirth Island before adding that he already changed the world in ways he could not imagine.

With that, Adler executed Stitch with a shot to the back of the head. Five days later on August 24th, Adler and his team visited an abandoned Nazi bunker in Verdansk, where they encountered a strange, old man with his back turned to them.

They demanded the man identify himself, pointing their guns at him. The man told them to relax, and that they were on the same side. Adler motioned for the rest of his team to lower their weapons, knowing they were in the company of an ally. Moving things from the past into the future has some dramatic effects.

Since the future is not here yet, a teleological approach to motivation takes the necessity out of things. In a traditional mechanistic approach, cause leads to effect: If a, b, and c happen, then x, y, and z must, of necessity, happen. But you don't have to reach your goals or meet your ideals, and they can change along the way.

Teleology acknowledges that life is hard and uncertain, but it always has room for change! His main interest was science, so he gave as examples such partial truths as protons and electrons, waves of light, gravity as distortion of space, and so on. Contrary to what many of us non-scientists tend to assume, these are not things that anyone has seen or proven to exist: They are useful constructs.

They work for the moment, let us do science, and hopefully will lead to better, more useful constructs. We use them "as if" they were true. He called these partial truths fictions. Vaihinger, and Adler, pointed out that we use these fictions in day to day living as well.

We behave as if we knew the world would be here tomorrow, as if we were sure what good and bad are all about, as if everything we see is as we see it, and so on. Adler called this fictional finalism. You can understand the phrase most easily if you think about an example: Many people behave as if there were a heaven or a hell in their personal future.

Of course, there may be a heaven or a hell, but most of us don't think of this as a proven fact. That makes it a "fiction" in Vaihinger's and Adler's sense of the word. And finalism refers to the teleology of it: The fiction lies in the future, and yet influences our behavior today. Adler added that, at the center of each of our lifestyles, there sits one of these fictions, an important one about who we are and where we are going.

Second in importance only to striving for perfection is the idea of social interest or social feeling originally called Gemeinschaftsgefuhl or "community feeling". In keeping with his holism, it is easy to see that anyone "striving for perfection" can hardly do so without considering his or her social environment. As social animals, we simply don't exist, much less thrive, without others, and even the most resolute people-hater forms that hatred in a social context!

Adler felt that social concern was not simply inborn, nor just learned, but a combination of both: It is based on an innate disposition, but it has to be nurtured to survive. That it is to some extent innate is shown by the way babies and small children often show sympathy for others without having been taught to do so. Notice how, when one baby in a nursery begins to cry, they all begin to cry.

Or how, when we walk into a room where people are laughing, we ourselves begin to smile. And yet, right along with the examples of how generous little children can be to others, we have examples of how selfish and cruel they can be. Although we instinctively seem to know that what hurts him can hurt me, and vice versa, we also instinctively seem to know that, if we have to choose between it hurting him and it hurting me, we'll take "hurting him" every time!

So the tendency to empathize must be supported by parents and the culture at large. Even if we disregard the possibilities of conflict between my needs and yours, empathy involves feeling the pain of others, and in a hard world, that can quickly become overwhelming.

Much easier to just "toughen up" and ignore that unpleasant empathy -- unless society steps in on empathy's behalf! One misunderstanding Adler wanted to avoid was the idea that social interest was somehow another version of extraversion. Americans in particular tend to see social concern as a matter of being open and friendly and slapping people on the back and calling them by their first names. Some people may indeed express their social concern this way; But other people just use that kind of behavior to further their own ends.

Adler meant social concern or feeling not in terms of particular social behaviors, but in the much broader sense of caring for family, for community, for society, for humanity, even for life. Social concern is a matter of being useful to others. On the other hand, a lack of social concern is, for Adler, the very definition of mental ill-health: All failures -- neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes -- are failures because they are lacking in social interest Their goal of success is a goal of personal superiority, and their triumphs have meaning only to themselves.

Here we are, all of us, "pulled" towards fulfillment, perfection, self-actualization. And yet some of us -- the failures -- end up terribly unfulfilled, baldly imperfect, and far from self-actualized. And all because we lack social interest, or, to put it in the positive form, because we are too self-interested. So what makes so many of us self-interested? Adler says it's a matter of being overwhelmed by our inferiority.

If you are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, you can afford to think of others. If you are not, if life is getting the best of you, then your attentions become increasingly focussed on yourself.

Obviously, everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another. For example, Adler began his theoretical work considering organ inferiority , that is, the fact that each of us has weaker, as well as stronger, parts of our anatomy or physiology.

Some of us are born with heart murmurs, or develop heart problems early in life; Some have weak lungs, or kidneys, or early liver problems; Some of us stutter or lisp; Some have diabetes, or asthma, or polio; Some have weak eyes, or poor hearing, or a poor musculature; Some of us have innate tendencies to being heavy, others to being skinny; Some of us are retarded, some of us are deformed; Some of us are terribly tall or terribly short; And so on and so on.

Adler noted that many people respond to these organic inferiorities with compensation. They make up for their deficiencies in some way: The inferior organ can be strengthened and even become stronger than it is in others; Or other organs can be overdeveloped to take up the slack; Or the person can psychologically compensate for the organic problem by developing certain skills or even certain personality styles.

There are, as you well know, many examples of people who overcame great physical odds to become what those who are better endowed physically wouldn't even dream of! Sadly, there are also many people who cannot handle their difficulties, and live lives of quiet despair. I would guess that our optimistic, up-beat society seriously underestimates their numbers.

But Adler soon saw that this is only part of the picture. Even more people have psychological inferiorities. Some of us are told that we are dumb, or ugly, or weak. Some of us come to believe that we are just plain no good. In school, we are tested over and over, and given grades that tell us we aren't as good as the next person.

Or we are demeaned for our pimples or our bad posture and find ourselves without friends or dates. Or we are forced into basketball games, where we wait to see which team will be stuck with us.

In these examples, it's not a matter of true organic inferiority -- we are not really retarded or deformed or weak -- but we learn to believe that we are. Again, some compensate by becoming good at what we feel inferior about. More compensate by becoming good at something else, but otherwise retaining our sense of inferiority. And some just never develop any self esteem at all. If the preceding hasn't hit you personally yet, Adler also noted an even more general form of inferiority: The natural inferiority of children.

Adler suggested that, if we look at children's games, toys, and fantasies, they tend to have one thing in common: The desire to grow up, to be big, to be an adult. This kind of compensation is really identical with striving for perfection! Many children, however, are left with the feeling that other people will always be better than they are. If you are overwhelmed by the forces of inferiority -- whether it is your body hurting, the people around you holding you in contempt, or just the general difficulties of growing up -- you develop an inferiority complex.

Looking back on my own childhood, I can see several sources for later inferiority complexes: Physically, I've tended to be heavy, with some real "fat boy" stages along the way; Also, because I was born in Holland, I didn't grow up with the skills of baseball, football, and basketball in my genes; Finally, my artistically talented parents often left me -- unintentionally -- with the feeling that I'd never be as good as they were.

So, as I grew up, I became shy and withdrawn, and concentrated on the only thing I was good at, school. It took a long time for me to realize my self-worth. If you weren't "super-nerd," you may have had one of the most common inferiority complexes I've come across: "Math phobia!

Every year, there was some topic you never quite got the hang of. Every year, you fell a little further behind. And then you hit the crisis point: Algebra. How could you be expected to know what "x" is when you still didn't know what seven times eight was?

Many, many people truly believe that they are not meant to do math, that they are missing that piece of their brains or something. I'd like to tell you here and now that anyone can do math, if they are taught properly and when they are really ready.

That aside, you've got to wonder how many people have given up being scientists, teachers, business people, or even going to college, because of this inferiority complex. But the inferiority complex is not just a little problem, it's a neurosis , meaning it's a life-size problem.

You become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on. Nobody can take all that self-centered whining for long! There is another way in which people respond to inferiority besides compensation and the inferiority complex: You can also develop a superiority complex.

The superiority complex involves covering up your inferiority by pretending to be superior. If you feel small, one way to feel big is to make everyone else feel even smaller! Bullies, braggarts, and petty dictators everywhere are the prime example. More subtle examples are the people who are given to attention-getting dramatics, the ones who feel powerful when they commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc.

Even more subtle still are the people who hide their feelings of worthlessness in the delusions of power afforded by alcohol and drugs. Although all neurosis is, for Adler, a matter of insufficient social interest, he did note that three types could be distinguished based on the different levels of energy they involved:. The first is the ruling type. They are, from childhood on, characterized by a tendency to be rather aggressive and dominant over others. Their energy -- the strength of their striving after personal power -- is so great that they tend to push over anything or anybody who gets in their way.

The most energetic of them are bullies and sadists; somewhat less energetic ones hurt others by hurting themselves, and include alcoholics, drug addicts, and suicides. The second is the leaning type. They are sensitive people who have developed a shell around themselves which protects them, but they must rely on others to carry them through life's difficulties. They have low energy levels and so become dependent. When overwhelmed, they develop what we typically think of as neurotic symptoms: phobias, obsessions and compulsions, general anxiety, hysteria, amnesias, and so on, depending on individual details of their lifestyle.

The third type is the avoiding type. These have the lowest levels of energy and only survive by essentially avoiding life -- especially other people. When pushed to the limits, they tend to become psychotic, retreating finally into their own personal worlds. There is a fourth type as well: the socially useful type.

This is the healthy person, one who has both social interest and energy. Note that without energy, you can't really have social interest, since you wouldn't be able to actually do anything for anyone! Adler noted that his four types looked very much like the four types proposed by the ancient Greeks. They, too, noticed that some people are always sad, others always angry, and so on. But they attributed these temperaments from the same root as temperature to the relative presence of four bodily fluids called humors.

If you had too much yellow bile, you would be choleric hot and dry and angry all the time. The choleric is, roughly, the ruling type. When these qualities are underdeveloped, feelings of inferiority may haunt an individual, or an attitude of superiority may antagonize others.

Consequently, the unconscious fictional goal will be self-centered and emotionally or materially exploitive of other people. When the feeling of connectedness and the willingness to contribute are stronger, a feeling of equality emerges, and the individual's goal will be self-transcending and beneficial to others. Adlerian individual psychotherapy, brief therapy, couple therapy, and family therapy follow parallel paths. Clients are encouraged to overcome their feelings of insecurity, develop deeper feelings of connectedness, and to redirect their striving for significance into more socially beneficial directions.

Through a respectful Socratic dialogue, they are challenged to correct mistaken assumptions, attitudes, behaviors, and feelings about themselves and the world. Constant encouragement stimulates clients to attempt what was believed impossible. The growth of confidence, pride, and gratification leads to a greater desire and ability to cooperate. The objective of therapy is to replace exaggerated self-protection, self-enhancement, and self-indulgence with courageous social contribution.

As articulated by noted Adlerian psychotherapist Henry Stein, the theory and application of Adlerian Psychology have as their lynchpins seven critical ideas: Unity of the Individual Thinking, feeling, emotion, and behavior can only be understood as subordinated to the individual's style of life, or consistent pattern of dealing with life. Goal Orientation There is one central personality dynamic derived from the growth and forward movement of life itself. Self-Determination and Uniqueness A person's fictional goal may be influenced by hereditary and cultural factors, but it ultimately springs from the creative power of the individual, and is consequently unique.

Social Context As an indivisible whole, a system, the human being is also a part of larger wholes or systems -- the family, the community, all of humanity, our planet, and the cosmos. The Feeling of Community Each human being has the capacity for learning to live in harmony with society. Mental Health A feeling of human connectedness and a willingness to develop oneself fully and contribute to the welfare of others are the main criteria of mental health.

Treatment Adlerian individual psychotherapy, brief therapy, couple therapy, and family therapy follow parallel paths. Interested in Learning More? Connect with Us Sign up to the newsletter. Designed by August Ash.