To Preserve and Promote. Appreciating the Creative Life of Henry Stein

His arranging for professional translation and management of editing The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler (CCWAA) was the most prominent contribution he offered to the field of psychology and his greatest gift to the English-speaking Adlerian community (Stein, 2002-2006, Mansager, 2015). He published twenty-eight books and authored five. The fifth book, Volume V in the Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy (CADP) series titled Couple Therapy: Dissolving Interlocking Life Styles & Counter-Fictions will soon be published posthumously.

Our hope is that Henry’s memory will bring a sense of appreciation to those who remember him, as he surely rests in peace after many valuable contributions. We will share a bit of his personal life but mainly focus on his Adlerian involvement and influences. These include his field research into Adler’s original therapeutic style, his unique contributions to the corpus of Adlerian therapy, as well his devotion to technological advances that enhanced the reach and scope of Adlerian theory.

Where to begin sharing on such a full life?! Let’s start at the beginning.

Pre-professional Life

Born on July 12, 1932, Henry was the older of two boys. His father died when he was seven and his brother four. Henry once reflected that this experience likely left him longing to fill the missing parental relationship, and he assumed that his love of philosophy and his life-long appreciation for Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture (Wolf, 2014, pp. 282-287) were a response to the gap left by his father’s passing. Later, the loving men he encountered in his psychotherapy training contributed to healing this missing experience. This included Anthony Bruck, Alexander Müller, and especially his marathon group mentor, Joe Potts (Wolf, 2014). Henry remembered that the financial burden of his father’s passing was considerable. He believed the weight that fell to his mother shifted responsibility for managing home life to him and his brother. He grew up quickly and was a “latchkey kid” before the term was popular. Henry learned early the importance of social equality within the traditions of his Jewish upbringing. There were intellectuals he respected, but it also included an overbearing uncle, who brought out “a strong democratic impulse” in young Henry. That is, he decided at a young age to have nothing to do with the uncle’s autocratic ways and spoke out to him when he felt it appropriate (p. 282).

Henry’s love of philosophy opened the door to psychology. Before that, however, his appreciation for Wright’s unity of design found him enrolled at Cooper’s Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Rochester, New York. His goal was to become an architect. However, he found it extremely difficult to draw in three dimensions. He believed there was a powerful connection between Adler and Wright. They shared the core concept of unity. For Wright it was the unity of design. Every detail, no matter how small, contributed to the coherence of the whole. This concept is similar to Adler’s theory of the uniqueness and unity of the personality. Henry's devotion to Wright and Adler stems from the same source: Henry's core belief in unity and coherence. The house he and his wife Laurie designed and built was the physical embodiment of those principles.

For several years he took night courses prior to joining the Army. Upon enlistment, his former studies in architecture put him in good stead for engineering-related positions in the service—especially cartography. Just prior to discharge, he was introduced to theatre by auditioning for a musical called At War with the Army. He found himself infatuated with technical stage productions and the psychology of acting. He went to study at San Francisco State University where he finished his bachelor studies and a master’s degree in theatre.

His studies included a deep dive into the development of personality in acting. This led him to an initial acquaintance with the writings of Freud, then Jung, and finally Adler. Henry was delighted when he learned about Adler’s concept of the fictional final goal. It seemed to him that this was akin to what he’d learned in his theatre studies after reading the works of Constantine Stanislavski. The celebrated director and theoretician taught that a character’s “super-objective” was the organizing principle, the prime mover, of the character being enacted. Henry said when he grasped that Stanislavski’s super-objective was tantamount to Adler’s fictional final goal, it felt as if he’d been struck by “a thunderbolt” (Wolf, 2014, p. 285). He immediately arranged to meet any Adlerian he could find in the Bay area. This was the occasion of a life-re-directing encounter with Sophia de Vries. The two developed a profoundly productive professional relationship which gave rise to the codifying of Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy.

Henry had three heroes in Sherlock Holmes, Albert Einstein, and Alfred Adler. Although Holmes is a fictional character, he is a creative genius driven to penetrate a mystery. Einstein and Adler were creative geniuses in reality. Einstein pondering the mystery of the universe; Adler the mystery of human behavior. Henry saw discovering the life style as solving a mystery. He loved mysteries and difficult cases. The more challenging the case, the more alive he became. His eyes would light up and he would begin guessing both what was missing and the mistaken direction the client had taken. His humor, tact, and gentleness in using Socratic questioning to discover mistakes was masterful. He, as Sophia before him, made it look deceptively easy.

Henry and Laurie, a high school literature teacher in the Bay area, were married in 1972. From that point forward, Laurie joined Henry in all his Adlerian endeavors, acting as co-editor of the CCWAA and other projects. Her mastery of Adler’s writings and theory earned her co-authorship of A Clinician’s Guide to the CCWAA—which features in-depth abstracts of each article and chapter within the collection (Stein & Stein, 2012). She collaborated, influenced, and supported Henry in his research, writing and motivation to explain and train psychotherapists in Adler’s original style.

Adler’s Original Theory and Therapy

Henry’s encounter with Sophia deVries was a life-changing experience (Stein, 2020). He was invited to study with her by means of completing an Adlerian training analysis. Sophia had described such analysis as standard training for her and her European Adlerian colleagues. Fortunately for his life’s work, Henry had the impulse to record each of his consultations with her over more than 20 years. He described his method of documentation as an interactive process in which he transcribed the encounters, analysed them for thematic development, and repeatedly checked with Sophia for accuracy and import of his notes. Such was his struggle to pinpoint the methodology of a classical Adlerian approach to therapy. He ultimately received her approbation upon producing a 12-stage therapeutic process (Stein, 1988). In his own words his work was …

… a combination of learning from Sophia, being in practice, having to be at the front lines every day, working with difficult clients and then teaching it; these were, I guess you could say, all cross-referenced with each other [and] was a great learning-teaching combination. (Wolf 2015, p. 172)

Henry was told repeatedly by Sophia and Kurt Adler to “go back to Adler’s work, to re-translate it because it was not well done, and it needs to be studied in depth” (Wolf, 2015, p. 176). Thanks to the CCWAA, the CADP process and its numerous psychological constructs, are well-documented. Adler regularly incorporated the constructs in describing the psychological movement of a client’s life style from unhealthy to healthy. Several of these (e.g., style of life, feeling of inferiority, superiority striving, community feeling) are commonly applied among most Adlerians. Still, the practice of a number of others (e.g., fictional final goal, counter fiction, activity level and radius of movement) are used mostly in the CADP application of Individual Psychology.

Sophia emphasized to Henry that Adler’s impact on Abram Maslow transformed the ultimate aim of Adlerian depth psychotherapy into a possible route to self-actualization –should clients wish to pursue such a goal. The formalization of this expanded therapy process and outcome resulted in the CADP certification program. In its current format this is a 4-year/30+ course of study. It is overviewed in the 5-volume set of CADP manuals (see Stein, 2013-2024). Certification is being carried out on each side of the Atlantic via the present authors – Dyanne at the Classical Adlerian Depth Psychology Institute (http://adlerian.us) and Erik at the Alfred Adler Institute in Suisse Romande (https://institute.adler).

Stein’s Contributions to Adlerian Therapy

In his 2007 Ansbacher Lecture (Stein, 2008), Henry shared some of what he considered his own contributions to Adlerian therapy. It is not his written descriptions in published articles that he considered his primary contributions—although beyond the five CADP manuals just mentioned, he edited just as many volumes of his discussions with Sophia that he hoped to complete at 20 volumes. Rather, it was the working out of an interactive method such as a course within the CADP training sequence that Henry understood as his living contribution. This included reemphasizing the Socratic method as integral to Adler’s theory and practice (see Stein, 1991, 2013b, deVries & Stein, 2014), demystifying the creative power so that his students could grasp “the dynamics of thinking and feeling that yield artistically unique, therapeutic insights and strategies” (Stein, 2008, p.14). In particular, Henry studied the importance of stimulating creativity in children for the benefit of their self-education (Stein, 2018).

Henry often searched for ways to visually represent Adler’s concepts. He had learned from Anthony Bruck the utility of mind-mapping. Along with his Army cartography skills, this assisted him in designing dozens of mind-maps, available on the CADPI website, in the effort of making Adler’s practices more accessible. Making Adler’s theory and therapy appealing, understandable, and relevant led Henry beyond artistic cognitive approaches and into further study of emotions and their impact. Training himself in the eidetic imagery techniques of Akhter Ahsen (1977) led to the subsequent development of techniques to supply emotionally missing developmental experiences (Stein, 2013a). By remembering and directing as many senses as possible in precise detail, the depth Adlerian therapist evokes cognitive, emotional, and behavioural activity that moves toward deep and lasting personality change—what Henry termed, dissolving the life style.

Finally, it is important to put perspective to what Henry was contributing over the last years of his life. Ten years ago, he was known worldwide because he had the most visited Adlerian website. His site was receiving millions of hits each year from students and scholars because of the vast holdings of his one-time award-winning Classical Adlerian website (see Wolf, 2014, pp. 305-307). He included training material, popular takes on Adler, a rogues gallery of Adlerian photographs. He also added availability to e-version of Adlerian books whose copyrights had expired. In addition, Henry ran discussion forums which came to serve as the home of his distance training certification in CADP (see Mansager, 2014). Tragically, a 2014 algorithm revision within the old CompuServe company lead to months long problems of keeping the site secured and available.

Conclusion

Henry never tired of exploring the possibility of human potential which Maslow did so much to develop. His CADP training manuals each address some aspect of the potential of fully-human personality expression. Henry’s own conceptualization of such movement followed Adler’s constructs closely. By means of depth therapy, both the feeling of inferiority and the fictional final goal become more flexible and no longer despotic in the individual’s life. Rather than the competitive self-striving that our life styles aim for, flexibility is managed by the growth in social interest that provides direction toward and on behalf of others (see Mansager & Bluvshtein, 2017).

All his life, Henry was devoted to the democratic cause, writing two thorough going, still to be published manuscripts. The first focused on “a psychology for democracy” and another broached the challenges of “social inclusion” as the potential of democratic character style. He understood such inclusion as implicit in social life as was the development of social interest. So, his legacy is a rich one and promises to continue unfolding as we explore the many projects he left behind.

Henry had a wonderfully full life! Had he had the choice, he would certainly have continued until he’d finished all the projects Sophia’s insights had stimulated in him. Henry's entire life was characterized by movement—physical, mental, emotional, and professional. He went from being a fatherless child exploring the streets of New York to a youth gradually moving from a would-be architect to theater director and finally growing into a psychotherapist and man of character. He was a husband, father, teacher, mentor, friend, therapist, flawed individual who embraced his humanity. Most of all he was a fellow human being. We are humbled and grateful for the generous contribution of his 91 years.

References

Ahsen, A. (1977). Psycheye: Self-analytic Consciousness. A Basic Introduction to the Natural Self-analytic Images of Consciousness: Eidetics. Brandon House.

deVries, S. J. & Stein, H. T. (2014). Examples and explanations of the Socratic method in CADP. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 70, 390-404.

Mansager, E. (2015). Book Review –The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler. 12 vols., edited by Henry T. Stein, 2002-2006; Cees Koen & Gerald Liebenau (Trans.). Bellingham, WA: Classical Adlerian Translation Project. Published in The Journal of Individual Psychology, 71, 337-358.

Mansager, E. & Bluvshtein, M. (2017). Adler and Maslow in collaboration: Applied therapeutic creativity. Journal of Humanistic Psychology: DOI: 10.1177/0022167817745643 journals.sagepub.com/home/jhp.

Stein, H. T. (1988). Twelve stages of creative Adlerian psychotherapy. Individual Psychology: The Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice, 44, 241-246.

Stein, H. T. (1991). Adler and Socrates: Similarities and differences. Individual Psychology: The Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice, 47, 242-246.

Stein, H. T. (2008). Adler’s legacy: Past, present, and future. Journal of Individual Psychology, 64, 4-20.

Stein, H. T. (2013a). Providing the missing experience. In H. T. Stein’s Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy, Volume I. Theory & Practice: A Socratic Approach to Democratic Living, pp. 260-276.

Stein, H. T. (2013b). Socratic questioning in Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy. In H. T. Stein’s Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy, Volume I. Theory & Practice: A Socratic Approach to Democratic Living, pp. 195-259.

Stein, H. T. (2018). Contributions to theory and practice by the author. In H. T. Stein’s Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy, Volume IV. Child & Family Therapy, pp. 91-149.

Stein, H. T. (2020). An inspiring legacy: Sophia J. deVries. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 76, 43-35.

Stein, H. T. (Ed.) (2002-2006). The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler in 12 volumes. Cees Koen and Gerald Liebenau (Trans.). Classical Adlerian Translation Project.

Stein, H. T. (Ed.) (2013-2024). Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy in 5 volumes. Alfred Adler Institute of Northwestern Washington.

Stein, H. T. & Stein, L. J. (Eds.) (2012). A clinician’s guide to the collected clinical works of Alfred Adler. A unified system of depth psychotherapy, philosophy, & pedagogy. The Classical Adlerian Translation Project.

Wolf, J. J. (2014). Conversations with Henry Stein. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 70, 280-322.

Wolf, J. J. (2015). Historical note: Henry T. Stein’s development of Classical Adlerian Depth Psychotherapy training and The Collected Clinical Works of Alfred Adler. Adlerian Year Book, 2015. P. Prina, C. Shelley, K. John & A. Millar (Eds.), pp. 167-194. UK Adlerian Society and Institute for Individual Psychology.