Injunctions and Attributions
The main injunctions and attributions tend to come from one of the parents, and the parent of the opposite sex is often the source. The parent of the same sex then teaches the youngster how to comply with these injunctions and attributions. Thus, if mother dislikes assertive behavior in men and boys and enjoys sensitivity and warmth, she will enjoin her sons not to be assertive, will attribute warmth and sensitivity to them, and, having married a non-assertive, sensitive man, will provide her sons with a father who gives them the proper example.
Injunction and attributions in child-rearing aren’t the only parental influences upon the offspring. Parents, even before therapists, can give their children Permissions. Permissions, however, are not restricting but liberating.
Let me illustrate the above with an example of how a young girl might become a beautiful woman (Figure 6). Mr. America likes beautiful women, that is to say, his Child likes beautiful little girls. He marries a beautiful woman, Ms. America, and they have a daughter. The little Miss America’s Child is told by her father’s Child to be a beautiful little girl and is taught by mother’s Adult how to do it. Ms. America knows how to use make-up, how to dress, how to stand, how to talk, since she is herself a beautiful woman, and transmits this knowledge to her daughter. This genesis of beauty, it will be noted, is basically independent of physical attributes. It explains why some women with all the physical attributes of beauty are not beautiful, and vice versa. It should also be noted that many physical attributes such as weight, posture, skin texture, facial characteristics, etc., are affected by parental injunctions such as “enjoy (food but not sex),” “don’t outdo me,” “don’t be happy,” “don’t be strong,” and attributions such as “you are skinny,” “you are too tall,” or “you are clumsy.”
Miss America’s example illustrates how people marry each other to form what can be described as a child-rearing team. In the same manner as was illustrated above, a woman who has a phobia of assertive behavior will marry an unassertive male and they as a team will produce unassertive male offspring (see pages 59 and 70).
Thus, when attempting to diagnose someone’s injunctions and attributions, it might be helpful to remember that the working hypothesis for a man is “mother tells you what to do and father shows you how”; and for a woman, “father tells you what to do and mother shows you how.” The manner in which the parent of the same sex demonstrates how attributions and injunctions can be followed is called the program.
Figure 6
The rule is a “working hypothesis,” that is to say, the most likely to be correct given no prior knowledge about the case. Exceptions have been found, and it should only be used carefully.
When correct it is, I am sure, because of the strict sex role programming that most North Americans are subjected to. In a culture where “men are men” and “women are women” there are deeply rooted prohibitions against a great deal of attraction between, say, father and son, or for the setting of examples for boys by their mothers. As the sexual barriers between same sexed people decrease and as stereotyped “male” and “female” behavior becomes less rigidly prescribed for children this rule of thumb will lose its usefulness in the diagnosing of injunctions and attributions.
The next task is to determine area, range, and intensity of injunctions. In this realm it is helpful to know about children, childhood development, and child-rearing practices. The therapist’s task is to imagine himself an invisible observer in the home situation of the person. Keeping in mind that the injunctions are often not spoken but implied, hinted at, or thrown out as jokes or when the parents are angry, it becomes possible to reconstruct the specific Child ego state enjoining the person. I am able to conjure up a vivid image of the home scene as viewed through the eyes of the person’s parent and to intuit the injunction. These mental images are educated guesses and have to be checked out against the person’s recollections, as the person is always the final judge of the validity of a diagnosis. The same process can be used to determine the content of attributions.
The Counterscript
So far the discussion has focused on the influence of the parental Child ego state on the offspring. However, another very important influence comes from the Nurturing Parent of father and mother.
In script formation, the offspring is not only given injunctions and attributions by the P1 in C of father and mother but also a contradictory message from the Nurturing Parent (P2).
Thus, while one young man’s bad witch mother enjoined him not to cry or have any feelings, the Parent ego state of both parents (P2) encouraged him to be a loving man (Figure 7A); while an alcoholic’s father demands of her that she drink and she not think, the Parent ego states of both parents expect her to be an abstainer (Figure 7B). When these two demands are made of a young person, he will basically follow the injunctions of the bad witch, but the life course usually involves an alternation between compliance to the witch’s injunction incorporated in the script, and compliance to the parental Parents or counterscript.
Figure 7
The counterscript is an acquiescence to the cultural and social demands that are transmitted through the Parent. In the alcoholic, the counterscript reoccurs in the periods of sobriety between binges. If one looks back on the case history of an advanced alcoholic, one always finds periods during which it seemed that the script’s tragic ending would be avoided. The alcoholic, as well as the people around him, seemed to believe that the tragic outcome that everyone feared had indeed been avoided. This situation, in which the hero of the tragedy seems for a time to escape his tragic end, is an essential requirement of a good tragic script, both in real life and on the stage. Anyone who has seen an ancient Greek tragedy or any modern version of a tragic play knows that regardless of previous knowledge about the outcome, the audience truly hopes and seems to believe that the known, inevitable ending will be dramatically averted. That is, people are always wishing and willing to believe that things will turn out O.K. The counterscript is an expression of this tendency, which is in turn an expression of the Nurturing Parent.
In contrasting the two sets of instructions given by parents to their offspring, one representing the script and the other representing the counterscript, it should be noted again that the injunction from the bad witch is in almost every case nonverbal, not transmitted in explicit words. Because of this, most people have difficulty agreeing with the notion that they were given such injunctions until it is made clear to them that they were often given implicitly by approval or disapproval of certain forms of behavior, through insinuation or jest in a “witchy” manner. Thus, an injunction such as “don’t be assertive,” while perhaps never uttered verbally, is made by the consistent reinforcement of passive behavior and negative reinforcement of assertive behavior. On the other hand, the counterscript instructions coming from the parent’s Parent ego state are usually given verbally and are not always associated with reinforcements designed to produce acquiescence. The saying “Do as I say, not as I do” characterizes the situation in which the Nurturing Parent ego state makes a verbal demand of an offspring which is contradicted by the action emanating from the parent’s Child ego state.
Because the witch’s injunction is far more potent and meaningful than the counterscript, the counterscript is short-lived. It is characteristic of counterscript behavior that it is highly unstable and brittle, for the reason that it runs counter to the much more powerful tendency represented by the script. When in the counterscript phase, the person feels a deep, primitive, visceral discomfort (accompanied by a superficial and unstable sense of well-being) which alcoholics often place in the pit of their stomachs; the discomfort is related to the fact that counterscript behavior goes against the wishes of the bad witch and is frightening. Consistent with this, there is an equally visceral comfort associated with the script behavior. For example, one alcoholic reported that at the worst point of an alcoholic binge, when he was so sick he could no longer keep anyt
hing in his stomach, he heard his mother’s voice saying, “Isn’t this fun, Jerry?”
As suggested in this example, an alcoholic who behaves as the script demands carries out those tendencies in his personality which acquiesce to parental wishes and are therefore associated with the well-being and comfort of parental protection. This is one reason the hangover is seen as the payoff for the alcoholic: even though in pain, the individual with the hangover is receiving approval for acquiescing to the parental Child’s injunction. During this period the alcoholic feels temporary respite from the demands of the bad witch. Although the patient’s Parent ego state may be actively castigating him for his drunkenness during the hangover, at the same time father’s or mother’s Child is saying, in effect, “That’s my boy!”
One aspect of counterscripts which distinguishes them from a genuine departure from the script is their “unreal” quality. For example, it is common to find among black delinquent youths that their script alternates between aggressive delinquent behavior (enjoined by the bad witch) and wholly unrealistic attempts to “make it” in the entertainment or sports world which represents the culturally accepted alternative for “good Negroes” (enjoined by the Parent ego states around them). Succeeding in these endeavors is statistically unlikely, and they almost always represent a counterscript. A true departure from the script, or a new life course, cannot constitute being a “good Negro,” but usually necessitates well-coordinated, often strongly self-assertive and angry, but realistic approaches to the realities of racism. Such an approach in the black community is the youth groups like the Black Panthers. These movements are of great value in that they clearly offer an alternative to the usual self-defeating scripts which are so commonly seen among black people.1 The basic message given a black youth by such a movement is “You’re O.K., not in spite of being black, but because of it. You are a prince and you deserve princely treatment. Black is beautiful. Your hair is beautiful, you are beautiful. You can have anything you want. You are a prince, you are O.K.” This statement offered at the time of decision is a powerful antithesis against the adoption of a self-destructive script such as heroin addiction or alcoholism, and is likely to tip the balance for many black adolescents, by giving them permission to be O.K. and offering them a realistic path to autonomy. A similar approach has been followed by women, homosexuals, fat people,2 and other minorities oppressed by banal scripting.
From the diagnostic point of view during therapy, the principal significance of the counterscript is that the behavior of a person still following his script but in a counterscript phase may be indistinguishable from another person who has in fact given up his script. For instance, a woman with a Loveless script might meet a man and get married and appear to have changed her script. But she may not have; she may still be living by her father’s injunction not to ask for strokes she wants and not to accept them when they are given so that after a short period of counterscript well-being she will once again find herself loveless.
A therapist who mistakes counterscript for a script change is making an important error. On the other hand, a therapist who is unwilling to recognize a script change and insists that it is only temporary is in danger of making an equally important error in the other direction.
Thus, the proper diagnosis is essential here. Diagnosis should be based on behavior changes. For instance, for an alcoholic a protracted period of moderate social drinking is the most convincing evidence for a script change. However, since many cured alcoholics lose interest in alcohol, this criterion is not always available. In general, the loss of preoccupation with alcohol—either the alcoholic pastimes, or the game in any of its roles—is a good criterion. A radical change in time structuring and the development of avenues of enjoyment without alcohol are crude indicators of a script change. In addition, an often subtle change in the physical appearance of the cured alcoholic is a reliable index, though difficult to assess. The joyless person in a counterscript is tense, anxious, “uptight,” even when smiling and enjoying himself, as if constantly on the brink of relaxing and letting go, which he feels he can’t do for fear that his “Not O.K.” Child will take over. The completely recovered alcoholic lacks this “on the brink” quality and therefore looks and “feels” quite different from the alcoholic in a counterscript. The tension of the counterscript is a part of the somatic component, which I will elaborate upon later in this chapter.
The Decision
The decision has a number of components: the existential position or racket that is embraced at the time of decision; the sweatshirt; the mythical hero chosen to live out this position; the somatic component which bodily reflects the decision; and the actual time of the decision.
Knowing the exact date of the decision when possible is useful because it pinpoints the child’s age and gives an estimate of the Professor’s level of development and understanding at the time the decision was made.
The existential position adopted at the time of the decision represents a shift away from the original basic trust position “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” In addition, it is based on some elaboration of either “I’m not O.K.” or “You’re not O.K.,” or a combination of both. This elaboration is called the racket because the person will exploit every situation to justify whatever position he chooses. For instance, a woman with an “I’m not O.K.” position elaborated it into a “Nothing I do ever works” racket and would use any situation to feel badly. Whenever she went to a meeting she played her racket as follows: If she got there early, she felt badly because she could have used the time to do an additional wash at home; if she arrived late, she would feel badly because everybody noticed her with disapproval; and if she came on time, she felt badly because no one noticed her. Thus, no matter what the situation, she used it to promote her racket.
The sweatshirt is intimately related to his decision. The sweatshirt is a metaphoric reference to the fact that most persons with scripts can be visualized as wearing sweatshirts over or under their clothes, on which is written a short, two- or three-word description characterizing their existential positions. In addition, just as games contain a sudden switch or reversal, so sweatshirts often have a front and back. For instance, Miss Felix’s sweatshirt prominently read “Looking for a man” in front. On the inside of the back, to be read as it was taken off, was written “But not you.” Captain Marvel’s sweatshirt said “Captain Marvel” on the front and “Unless I’m sober” on the back; another man, a “born loser,” had “You can’t win them all” in front, and “I can’t win any” on the back. The sweatshirt is another way of saying that people have their scripts written all over them and is actually a part of the somatic component.
The mythical hero has been amply described earlier. The diagnosis of the mythical hero, when there is one, is aided by such questions as “What is your favorite fairy tale?” “Who is your favorite person?” “Are you imitating someone’s way of life?” and so on. If a certain personality emerges as significant to the person, she should be asked to describe it fully since it is the person’s view of the mythical hero, and not the popular one, that is relevant. If the description fits—and when it does it often does uncannily—then it can be safely assumed that the mythical hero has been identified. From then on, therapy can be simplified by using the mythical hero’s name to refer to script behavior. For instance, every time a person whose mythical hero was Little Orphan Annie obligingly accepted the “hard knocks of life,” a pattern which was part of her script, some group member would call it to her attention by saying something like “That’s the way Orphan Annie would take it, but what are you going to do?” Or if a man whose mythical hero was Superman muscled his way into a conversation, he could quickly be made aware of his behavior by simply saying “There goes Superman again.”
Not everybody with a script has a clearly defined mythical hero. Some persons see themselves as nondescript losers, “Mr. Nobody” or “Nowhere man,” and in these cases it is not possible to identify a mythical hero. Gene
rally it helps when a person has identified with a clear-cut mythical hero because his script behavior will be much more apparent to the therapist, the group members, and himself.
The Somatic Component
Another important element in the diagnosis of scripts is the somatic component. The somatic component refers to the fact that a person who has made a decision invariably brings certain aspects of her anatomy into play, especially the musculature. Negative injunctions, which cause inhibitions in behavior, become visible in a person’s body in the form of muscular contractions. For example, attributions which cause people to engage or activate certain types of behavior can be seen in the form of overused or overdeveloped muscles. Eric Berne has pointed out the relevance of sphincters, but any muscle, set of muscles, or organ can be involved. These physical changes find expression in certain postures (chest out, stomach in, tight anal sphincter, shoulders up, tight lips, crossed legs) which are effective in obeying parental injunctions and which may have some physical similarity with the fantasied appearance of the mythical hero when there is one. Organs, such as tear glands in the case of Little Orphan Annie who could not produce tears even when crying, or the heart in the case of Mr. Bruto, can also be part of somatic component.
Scripts People Live Page 11