Alfred Adler, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The style of life is the whole person — not a trait, not a habit, not a reaction, but the single unifying pattern by which a human being moves through the world toward his goal.1 Think of the pine tree. Growing in the valley it takes one shape; on the mountain top, another. Both are pine trees, yet each has developed its own form in answer to the conditions it faced.
We recognize the style precisely when the environment changes, because then we see that the tree is not merely a mechanical product of its surroundings — it has a life pattern of its own.1 A human being is the same. In favorable circumstances the style of life lies quiet, almost invisible. Put a person in difficulty, in a new and demanding situation, and the pattern declares itself plainly — to the trained eye and eventually to everyone.2
How does this pattern come to be? The inferiority feeling, which no child escapes, sets off a movement; that movement orients itself toward a goal — security, significance, a place among others where the felt smallness is overcome. What I long called the plan of life I now prefer to call the style of life, because the older name suggested something too deliberate, too consciously schemed.3
The style is more organic than that: it is fixed, in its essential lines, by the time a child is five or six years old, crystallized out of the specific inferiority situation each child faces and the compensatory goal it generates.4 From that point forward, the great majority of people do not learn from their experiences so much as they make their experiences fit the pattern already laid down — unconsciously arranging their lives so that the familiar situations keep recurring.5
This is why the style of life allows prediction. Knowing the pattern, knowing the goal it serves, I can look at a person as one looks at the fifth act of a drama, where all the mysteries are resolved.6 The child who always holds back from others, who seeks support rather than cooperation, who hesitates before every new demand — we know where that movement leads, because we have seen it a thousand times.6
The person whose goal is to be carried by others will stop, hesitate, and escape rather than meet the questions of life; he will occupy himself with useless things rather than struggle with the useful ones, and the lack of social interest will show itself sooner or later in failure — in neurosis, in problem conduct, in isolation.6 But the style of life is not fate, not in the sense of a sealed verdict.
Every act a child performs expresses the whole of his personality, and it is precisely because the unity is visible — because the whole scroll must be unrolled to understand a single event — that the fault of construction, once discovered, opens the possibility of reconstruction.7 Individual Psychology exists for exactly this: to help a person understand his own goal, see the pattern he has been living, and, at least to the degree that lesser errors can be substituted for major neurotic mistakes, become something more nearly the master of his own life.5
Its style on top of the mountain is different from its style when growing in the valley. The style of life of a tree is the individuality of a tree expressing itself and moulding itself in an environment. We recognize a style when we see it against a background of an environment different from what we expect, for then we realize that every tree has a life pattern and is not merely a mechanical reaction to the environment.The Science of Living
As long as a person is in a favorable situation we cannot see his style of life clearly. In new situations, however, where he is confronted with difficulties, the style of life appears clearly and distinctly.The Science of Living
Individual Psychology has long called the consistent movement toward this goal a plan of life. But because this name has sometimes led to mistakes among students, it is now called a style of life.The Science of Living
Patterns of life are usually fixed by the time a child is five or six years old. That is to say, a definite set of situations, giving a specific and characteristically individual tinge to the inferiority situation of each child, expresses itself in a characteristic goal in life, which is often crystallized in a phrase-formula.The Pattern of Life
It is only rarely that an individual learns from his experiences. The great majority of human beings make their experiences fit into their patterns. Unconsciously they so live that the appropriate experiences occur.The Pattern of Life
It is like looking at the fifth act of a drama, where all the mysteries are solved. We can make predictions in this way because we know the phases, the difficulties and the questions of life. Thus from experience and knowledge of a few facts we can tell what will happen to children who always separate themselves from others, who are looking for support, who are pampered and who hesitate in approaching situations.The Science of Living
Every act seems to express the whole of a child's life and personality, and is thus unintelligible without a knowledge of this invisible background. To this phenomenon we give the name unity of personality... a unity that is unbreakable until the fault of construction is discovered and a reconstruction is accomplished.The Education of Children