Scripts People Live

by Claude Steiner

  1 Structural and Transactional Analysis

  The building blocks of the theory of transactional analysis (TA) are three observable forms of ego function: the Parent, the Adult, and the Child. They may seem to resemble three basic psychoanalytic concepts—the superego, the ego, and the id—but they are, in fact, quite different.

  The Parent, Adult, and Child differ from the superego, ego, and id in that they are all manifestations of the ego. Thus, they represent visible behavior rather than hypothetical constructs. When a person is in one of the three ego states, for instance the Child, the observer is able to see and hear the Child sing, skip, and laugh. TA therapists focus on the ego and consciousness because they have found these concepts explain and predict social behavior better than other concepts.

  Structural Analysis,

  A person operates in one of three distinct ego states at any one time. Diagnosis of ego states is made by observing the visible and audible characteristics of a person’s appearance or ego. The ego states are distinguishable on the basis of skeletal-muscular variables and by the content of verbal utterances (words and sounds). Certain gestures, postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and intonations, as well as certain words, are typically associated with each one of the three ego states. In addition to what she sees in the person being observed, the observer can use her own emotional reactions and thoughts as information in the diagnosis; a parental reaction in the observer may indicate that a Child ego state is being observed, while feelings of inferiority or rebelliousness may mean that the ego state being watched is Parent, and so on.

  The most complete diagnosis of an ego state includes three sources of information: 1) The behavior of the person being observed; 2) the emotional reaction of the observer; and 3) the opinion of the person being observed. When diagnosing an ego state a transactional analyst doesn’t say, “That’s your Child!” but, “You act and sound as if you were in your Child ego state, and it feels like it is your Child because it brings out nurturing feelings in me. What do you think?” Naturally, if there are other observers their opinions must be taken into account as well. (See Chapter 6 for a further discussion of transactional analysis diagnosis.)

  THE CHILD

  The Child ego state is essentially preserved in its entirety from childhood. When a man is functioning in this ego mode, he behaves as he did when he was a little boy. It appears that the Child is never more than about seven years old and may be as young as one week or one day. When a person is in the Child state, she sits, stands, walks, and speaks as she did when she was, say, three years old. This childlike behavior is accompanied by the corresponding perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a three-year-old.

  The Child ego state tends to be fleeting in grownups because of a general societal injunction against “childish behavior.” However, Child ego states can be observed in situations which are structured to permit childlike behavior, such as sports events, parties, and revivals. A good place to view the Child ego state in grownups is at a football game. Here, childlike expressions of joy, anger, rage, and delight can be observed, and it is easy to see how, aside from bone size and secondary sexual characteristics, a man jumping for joy when his team scores is indistinguishable from a five-year-old boy. The similarity goes further than the observable behavior since the man is not only acting as a boy, but feeling, seeing, and thinking as a boy does.

  In the Child ego state, a person tends to use short words and expletives like “golly,” “wow,” “gee,” and “nice,” delivered in a high-pitched voice. He adopts stances characteristic of children: a downward tilt of the head, upturned eyes, feet apart or pigeon-toed. When sitting, the person may balance on the edge of the chair, fidgeting, rocking, or slouching. Jumping, clapping, laughing expansively, or crying are all part of the repertoire of the Child ego state.

  Aside from situations which permit childlike behavior, the Child can be observed in a fixated form in so-called “schizophrenics” and in such persons as comedians, actors, and actresses whose profession requires them to appear habitually in a Child ego state. Of course, the Child ego state is readily observable in children.

  A Child ego state much younger than a year is rarely observed, since persons who habitually express this ego state are usually severely disturbed. However, this type of a very young Child appears in “normal” persons under circumstances of severe stress, or when great pain or joy is felt.

  The value of the Child should not be underestimated. It is said to be the best part of a person and the only part that can really enjoy itself. It is the source of spontaneity, sexuality, creative change, and is the mainspring of joy.

  THE ADULT

  The Adult ego state is essentially a computer, an impassionate organ of the personality, which gathers and processes data and makes predictions. The Adult gathers data about the world through the senses, processes them according to a logical program, and makes predictions when necessary. Its perception is diagrammatic. While the Child perceives in color, in space, and from one point of view at a time, the Adult may perceive in black and white, often in two dimensions, and from several points of view at the same time. In the Adult ego state, a person is temporarily detached from her own affective and other internal processess, a condition indispensable for the proper observation and prediction of external reality. Thus, in the Adult ego state the person “has no feelings,” even though she may be able to appraise her Child or Parent feelings. Often the Parent ego state is confused with the Adult ego state especially when it is calm and appears to be acting rationally. However, the Adult is not only rational but it is also without emotion.

  According to Piaget’s detailed discussion of “formal operations,”1 it appears that the Adult grows gradually during childhood as a consequence of the interaction between the person and the external world.

  THE PARENT

  The Parent is essentially made up of behavior copied from parents or authority figures. It is taken whole, without modification. A person in the Parent ego state is a play-back of a video tape recording of his parent or whoever was or is in place of his parents.

  Thus, the Parent ego state is essentially nonperceptive and noncognitive. It is simply a constant and sometimes arbitrary basis for decisions, the repository of traditions and values, and as such it is important to the survival of children and civilizations. It operates validly when adequate information for an Adult decision is not available; but, in certain people, it operates in spite of adequate Adult information.

  The Parent, while taken whole from others, is not a completely fixated ego state since it can change over time. Thus, a person’s experiences can add to or subtract from his Parent’s repertoire of behavior. For instance, rearing of a first-born child will greatly increase the range of Parent responses of a person. The Parent ego state changes throughout life, from adolescence to old age, as the person encounters new situations that demand parental behavior, and as the person finds authority figures or admired persons from whom examples for such behavior are adopted.

  For instance, it is possible for people to learn nurturing Parent behavior and discard the oppressive aspects of the Parent. Some Parent behavior is genetically built into people, such as the tendency to nurse and defend one’s young, but most human Parent behavior is learned, built as it were, on those two innate tendencies: nurture and protection.

  VOICES IN THE HEAD

  Structural analysis is organized around the fundamental concepts of these ego states. Some further concepts in structural analysis will be advanced.

  Ego states operate one at a time; that is, a person is always in one and only one of the three ego states. This ego state is called the executive, or is said to have executive power. While one ego state has the executive power, the person may be aware of literally standing beside himself, observing his own behavior. The feeling that the “self is not the ego state in the executive usually occurs when the Child or Parent has executive power, while the “real self,” perhaps the Adult, observes with
out being able to behave. Thus, while only one ego state is cathected —that is, imbued with the energy necessary to activate muscular complexes involved in behavior—it is possible for another ego state to become conscious to the person, even though it is unable to activate the musculature.

  Since a person can be acting in one ego state while another state observes, internal dialogues between these ego states become possible. For example, after a few drinks at a party, a man may be swept by the music into an expansive, childlike dance. His Child is now in the executive while the Parent observes his gyrations and mutters something like, “You’re making a fool of yourself, Charlie,” or “This is all very well, but what about your slipped disk?” Often this comment by the nonexecutive ego state decathects the Child and transfers the executive to the Parent, in which case Charlie will stop dancing, perhaps blush, and retire to his seat where the situation will be reversed and Charlie, now in the Parent ego state, will look disapprovingly at other dancers. Becoming aware of the conversations that occur between the executive and the observing state is a very important step in therapy.

  These internal dialogues can happen between any two ego states. One specific dialogue, between the Critical Parent and the Natural Child (see p. 44), is most relevant to psychotherapy.

  Some people find that they are constantly plagued by statements which they perceive as voices in their heads. These statements sometimes are even audible and felt to come from outside the person, but they are more commonly understood to come from within one’s own head. They are usually put-down statements like, “You’re bad, stupid, ugly, crazy, and sick,” in short, “You’re not O.K.,” or statements predicting failure, or preventing action, such as, “You can’t do it,” or, “That is a stupid idea, don’t try it.”

  These internal messages have been observed by other theorists such as Ellis1 and Freud.2 Ellis speaks of “catastrophic expectations” and Freud speaks of the “primitive, harsh superego.” Wyckoff has named this Parent ego state which is the enemy of the natural Child, the Pig Parent.3

  EXCLUSIONS AND CONTAMINATIONS

  At times it is difficult to diagnose ego states because people tend to masquerade their Child and Parent as Adult ego states. Opinionated and judgmental attitudes are often couched in rational language. The Parent, with a straight face pretending to be Adult, may express very logical points of view. From his Adult ego state, a husband might ask his wife, “Why isn’t dinner ready?” From his Parent masquerading as an Adult, he may ask the identical question. The difference, however, is that in the former case the husband is simply asking a question, while in the latter he is attempting to pressure and blame his wife for being lazy and disorganized.1

  Sometimes two sets of muscles may seem to be powered by two separate ego states at the same time. For instance, a lecturer’s voice and facial muscles may indicate an Adult ego state, while an impatient toss of the hand reveals a Parent ego state. In such cases, it is likely that the behavior is Parent in Adult disguise and therefore Parent, or that Parent and Adult are alternating rapidly.

  Alternation between ego states depends on the permeability of the ego state boundaries. Permeability is an important variable in psychotherapy. Low permeability leads to exclusion of appropriate ego states. Exclusions of the Parent, Adult, and Child ego states are all problematic since they preclude the use of ego states that, in a given situation, may be more useful and advantageous than the excluding ego state.

  For example, at a party the excluding Adult is less useful than the Child. The purpose of the party is to have fun, which the Child can do, but the Adult, analyzing and computing data dispassionately, would deter the party’s purpose. A father with an excluding Adult prevents the more useful Parent from properly raising his children. For example, when Johnny asks his father, “Daddy, why do I have to go to bed?” the Adult response would be a lecture about the physiology, psychology, and sociology of sleep. A more useful response might come from the Parent who might simply say, “Because you’re tired, and if you don’t you’ll be cranky tomorrow,” an answer much more appropriate to the situation.

  On the other hand, extreme permeability causes another kind of problem; most often, a person’s inability to remain in the Adult ego state for a sufficient period of time.

  Every ego state, being a substructure of the ego, is, in its own way, an adaptive “organ” having as its function adaptation to the demands of reality. How the ego as a whole functions adaptively has been elucidated by Hartmann;2 all three ego states share in this function, each one specially suited for specific situations. It might be said that the Parent is ideally suited where control is necessary—control of children, of unknown situations, of fears, of unwanted behavior, and of the Child. The Adult is suited to situations in which accurate prediction is necessary. The Child is ideally suited where creation is desired—creation of new ideas, procreation, creation of new experiences, recreation, and so on.

  Adaptiveness here refers to the valuable function of being responsive to reality. Adaptation to the demands of oppressive persons is a special form of response which is, in most cases, except when one is under their total physical control, unhealthy and unnecessary. Thus, adaptation is generally a function which works to the person’s advantage except when it occurs in response to others who may not have the person’s welfare in mind. The Child ego state in an unhappy person is often completely adapted to the Pig Parent. This is the result of oppressive child-rearing situations in which parents coerce their children into submission, giving them no choices of their own.

  One more concept of great importance is contamination. This phenomenon is characterized by an Adult ego state holding as fact certain ideas stemming from the Parent or the Child. For instance, a Parental idea such as “masturbation leads to insanity” or “women are passive creatures” could be part of a person’s Adult ego state. Or, the Adult might be contaminated by an idea such as “grownups can’t be trusted.” Decontamination of the Adult is an early therapeutic requirement in treatment and can be accomplished through an accurately timed confrontation by the therapist’s Adult with the inaccuracy of the ideas which are causing the contamination.

  A very successful technique to decontaminate ego states is having the person alternately speak first for one, then another, of his ego states. This technique, originated in psychodrama and later adapted by Gestalt therapy, is a very convincing demonstration of the reality of ego states. A person who feels guilty because of masturbation could be asked to speak from his Parent about the evils of masturbation, from his Child about the guilt and fears of insanity due to his masturbation, and from his Adult about the well-known fact that masturbation is harmless and normal. Verbalizing these different points of view tends to separate the two ego states, a process which facilitates decontamination of the Adult.

  Transactional Analysis

  Just as the ego state is the unit of structural analysis, so the transaction is the unit of transactional analysis. The theory holds that a person’s behavior is best understood if examined in terms of ego states, and that the behavior between two or more persons is best understood if examined in terms of transactions. A transaction consists of a stimulus and a response between two specific ego states. In a simple transaction only two ego states operate. One example is a transaction between two Adult ego states: “How much is five times seven?” “Thirty-five.” All other combinations of ego states may occur in a transaction. However, of the nine possible combinations, four are most common and the others are seldom observed. The four common transactions are between P and C, between P and P, between A and A, and between C and C.

  Transactions follow one another smoothly as long as the stimulus and response are parallel or complementary (Figure 1A).

  In any series of transactions, communication proceeds if the response to a previous stimulus is addressed to the ego state that was the source of the stimulus and is emitted from the ego state to which that source addressed itself. Any other response creates a cros
sed transaction and interrupts communication. In Figure 1, transaction A is complementary and will lead to further communication, while transaction B is crossed and will break off communication. Crossed transactions not only account for the interruption of communication but also are an essential part of games. Discounts (see Chapter 9) are one very important kind of crossed transaction.

  In addition to simple and crossed transactions, another very important form is the duplex or ulterior transaction. It operates on two levels: social and psychological. In Figure 1, the stimulus of transaction C is between A and A: “Let’s work late on these accounts, Miss Smith, we’ll catch dinner on the way to the office”; and between C and C: “Let’s have dinner and drinks together, Sally, and maybe we’ll get some work done later.” In an ulterior transaction, the social level usually covers up the real (psychological) meaning of the transaction; thus interpersonal behavior is not understandable until the ulterior level and ego states involved are understood. Anyone operating on the basis of the overt communication between Sally and her co-worker would expect them to get a lot of work done that evening. A more sophisticated observer would know that another outcome is much more likely.

  Games and Payoffs

  A game is a behavioral sequence which 1) is an orderly series of transactions with a beginning and an end; 2) contains an ulterior motive, that is, a psychological level different from the social level; and 3) results in a payoff for both players.

  Figure 1

  The motivation for playing games comes from their payoff. To use an analogy, structural analysis describes the relevant parts of the personality, just as a parts list describes the parts of an engine. Transactional analysis describes the way in which the parts interact, just as a cutaway engine shows how the engine parts relate to each other. But to understand why people transact with each other at all, some driving force (like gasoline) has to be postulated; and this explanation is found in the motivational concepts of stimulus hunger, structure hunger, and position hunger. Games provide satisfaction for all three of these hungers and this satisfaction is referred to as the advantage, or payoff, of the game.