Structural Limits of Teleology in Adlerian Psychology: An Interoceptive Predictive Processing and Embodied Simulation Perspective on Empathy and Behavioral Adaptation

Adlerian psychology places purposive, goal-directed interpretation at the center of its account of human behavior. In many contemporary Adlerian applications, this orientation is also used to criticize reward-and-punishment education as a form of hierarchical control. Developments in affective neuroscience, embodied cognition, and predictive processing, however, suggest that empathy and emotional resonance also involve rapid, partly involuntary bodily and interoceptive processes. This conceptual paper re-examines strong versions of Adlerian teleology through the lens of these developments. It argues that, especially for individuals who are highly sensitive to social and affective cues, exposure to an authority figure's anger or disappointment may elicit automatic autonomic arousal and vicarious distress. Behavioral change in such contexts therefore need not be explained solely as a reflective calculation aimed at avoiding punishment; it may also function as a pre-reflective attempt to reduce bodily distress and restore regulatory balance. To avoid replacing one reductionism with another, the paper proposes a two-tier model that integrates bottom-up interoceptive dynamics with top-down purposive agency. The model is offered as a theoretical framework for future empirical testing and as a caution against overly voluntaristic interpretations in clinical and educational practice.