Henry, thanks for your response. Adlerian technique certainly sounds friendly and supportive from your description. (I could not, however, access the "http" address you placed in your response. Is the address correct?)
From your response, I still could not determine what affects the Adlerian system considers important. Nor could I determine the origin of those affects and how you recognize them. In affect theory, each affect is known to have a characteristic facial expression. Knowledge of this expression permits the therapist to see immediately if the client has an affective response to something the therapist or client says and know what that affect is. We consider this knowledge critical for the establishment of an empathic connection with the client. We believe that significant therapeutic errors occur if the therapist misidentifies the affect of the client. This is one origin of our disagreement with blank screen therapies, especially those where the therapist does not observe the face of the person in therapy. Such therapists can be severely limited and even wrong in their affective attunement to their clients.
From your description of Adler, I assume that he, and you, face the client during sessions. You correctly point to the potential shame that can be induced in people if Socratic method is used as it is in law school or courtrooms (and I must confess that I have also seen it used in medical schools in ways that shame the students). What I am curious about concerning your statement that you "have never seen [your] approach provoke 'shame' in a client" is how you identify shame.
For instance, in your discussion area of the BOL forum, you mention the use of Socratic method with a client who often ran red traffic signals. You posed the question to him "what if everyone ran red lights?" All of us have heard that question or its equivant used by teachers or parents of adolescents who are purposely trying to induce shame in the adolescent for engaging in a dangerous behavior. (In such a case the shame may well be appropriate in order to teach the child behavior that is not dangerous for the society at large.) Is it not possible that a client could react to such a question with shame not matter how carefully it has been posed? It seems probable to me that you have encountered a person, even one you knew well, who had a sensitive spot somewhere that you unwittingly hit upon with what you believed to be an innocent question, and that that person reacted with shame. How does the Adlerian recognize the shame and what happens next?