Horizontal Relationships
Why do some relationships work better? This is something I often find myself reflecting upon. I recently read the book ‘The Courage to be Disliked’ by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi, which is primarily based on Adlerian psychology. Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist who lived during the early 20th century.
Adler studied in individual psychology and one of the bigger topics he examined is the effects of an inferiority complex, which speaks of the problems of self-esteem and its effects on mental health. He emphasized the importance of equality in developing relationships — also as a mean of preventing various forms of psychopathology.
This equality in relationships got me curious.
The presence of equality in one’s relations is called horizontal relations. And vertical relations are the ones that lack equality.
Vertical relationships are characterized by a hierarchal relation to one another as between a boss and an employee or a child and a parent, where the superior intervenes with the inferior.
It’s easy to see how an intervention such as a rebuke done by the superior can lead to a vertical relationship, but how can praise do so as well?
To explain this the authors asks the question, how does it make us feel when someone says “good job” to us. We often feel patronised or we view the person giving such praise as an authority figure. This results in the relationship becoming a vertical one.
This argues that we should restrain from both rebukes and praises. This can at first feel very counter-intuitive, but will help form a horizontal relation.
But how does one develop a more horizontal relationship?
The horizontal relationships are built on a basis of equality, encouragement and assistance. A relationship that helps one perform tasks through encouragement.
With all this in mind, I have come to view this as a key element in developing sustainable and meaningful relationships.
