life style

This term in Adler's Individual Psychology is congruent with but must be contrasted to the terms personality and ego in other psychological systems.  Adler first used the too easily reified and misunderstood term life plan but abandoned it in favor of life-style in order to convey a sense of the creative, artistic side of the development of the unique individual.  The style of living refers to (1) the person's characteristic way of operating in the social field, and (2) the basic convictions concerning self, others, and the world which form the person's schema of biased apperception.