Scripts People Live

by Claude Steiner

  Tough Lady

  Life Course: She’s taught by her parents to be a loner and not to trust or count on others, because they as a family unit are in a pitched battle for survival (“us against the world”). She is given a lot of male programming to compete and be successful.

  She is concerned with her own survival so she takes care of herself on a subsistence level but ignores herself as far as frills and nurturing go. She takes care of business for herself in a “masculine,” tough, feelingless manner.

  She often likes competitive sports; she may even be a female “jock.” She spends much time being angry at men who one-up her (they can always run faster and farther) and at other women who get privileges that she doesn’t because they have “sold out” in sexist submission. Her friends, when she has them, tend to be men.

  She fights back at people who put her down for her spunk and independence by Pigging them (saying they’re not O.K.) and mocking them. She is most familiar with the role of Persecutor, since it provides her with a sense of power—particularly over people who are afraid of her toughness.

  She keeps proving she can’t trust people because they let her down one time after another; a situation she colludes with because she is not very clear about what she wants except in “taking care of business” in survival terms and because she continually sends out messages about not needing anybody.

  Men see her as a “castrating bitch” and avoid her and women dislike her because she comes on one-up and condescending, so she ends up bitter and alone.

  Counterscript: It appears that she has broken through the barrier against intimacy in her script when she falls in love with a man she admires. But as time goes by she comes to be unable to tolerate being dependent on him. She also decides it’s too much trouble to keep asking him for things in their relationship.

  Injunctions and Attributions:

  Don’t trust

  Fight back

  Take care of yourself first

  Decision: Early in life she feels that it’s better and safer not to need much from others, so she decides she can pretty much go it alone.

  Mythical Heroine: She admires women like Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and Amelia Earhart.

  Somatic Component: She has a hard tough body, strongly armored, that cuts off her feelings. When she has trouble with her body, she tends to have G.I. problems (gastro-intestinal), like colitis.

  Games:

  Now I’ve Got You—You SOB

  Uproar

  Courtroom

  Therapist’s Role in the Script: He tries to push her into adapting to the standard sex role stereotype and she laughs at him and walks out.

  Antithesis: A first step in getting out of this script is for her to decide that she wants to build intimate relationships with others even though it scares her, and to decide that other people are O.K. and trustworthy and it’s O.K. to take chances with people.

  She must also want to give up her one-up position and be an equal with people and learn to ask them for what she wants without feeling it puts her one-down. She can come to see what’s in it for her to cooperate rather than compete, and to begin to nurture herself as warmly and richly as she can so that she feels safe enough to take risks with others.

  Queen Bee

  In an article called “The Queen Bee Syndrome,” Staines et al.1 define the Queen Bee as a successful woman, usually a lawyer, doctor, or business woman, who by working hard and being highly competitive has made it in the “man’s world.” She has had a tough time getting there on her own and thinks women’s liberationists are lazy complainers. She is an underground anti-feminist, though she says she is a liberated woman in favor of women’s liberation. Her personal success in the system makes her feel invested in maintaining her unique position and it is not in her interest for other women to “get off easy” by avoiding the tough time she had or, worse yet, for her to have to contend with other women coming in as competitors. As the authors of this article point out, she endorses the Horatio Alger philosophy of individual striving and cannot resonate to the collective social action trend in women’s liberation. She believes that she has made it on her own sweat and if other women are willing to pay the price, they can make it, too.

  She often receives much support from male chauvinist men who realize that she is instrumental in keeping other women in their place, in exchange for their support and admiration. In a Psychology Today questionnaire1 they tended to agree with the statements “women have only themselves to blame for not doing better in life” and “women can best overcome discrimination by working individually to prove their abilities.”

  15

  Banal Scripts of Men

  Men, just like women, have certain stereotyped scripts which they choose to live by.

  These narrow life styles are often matched to a corresponding life style in a woman. “Big Daddy” and “Poor Little Me” meet at a party and may “fall in love” at first sight because so much of their scripting is complimentary and fits together. Indeed, “they were made for each other” in that factory of banal life styles, the nuclear family. “Creeping Beauty’s” parents, the Smiths, knew just what she should be like so she would fit right in with the Jones’s “Playboy.” When they meet and fall in love they don’t really know each other, they are simply very well matched; designed, as it were, on the basis of national standards for men and women which causes an instant interchangeable fit. Having been thus patterned after other people’s plans, autonomy is lost and intimacy, awareness, and spontaneity are grossly interfered with.

  Brian Allen1 describes some of the basic injunctions and attributions of men. Generally, men are told “Don’t loose control,” “Never be satisfied,” “Don’t ask for help,” “Dominate women.” Some of the scripts described below were first suggested by Allen early in the investigation of banal scripts (“Big Daddy” and Jock”).2

  Big Daddy

  Life Course: Big Daddy is the exaggerated version of the responsible father and husband. He may be married to Mother Hubbard or to Poor Little Me. In any case, his life is immersed in responsibilities. Not only does he have to bring in a large amount of money to support all of the members of his household, but he also has to worry about their well-being, make plans for their future, prevent them from getting into trouble, and so on. Because he has so much responsibility in the household, he is also its absolute ruler. He knows everything best and admits of no arguments on that score. If he allows them to use their own judgment it is only because he is giving them an opportunity to learn by their own mistakes rather than because he feels that they can in fact do things well without his help. Because he is so burdened with responsibility he loses his ability to enjoy himself and his only remaining pleasure is the deference given him by the one-down members of his family. He works hard, competes hard, and has some limited success in his business or professional career. If he has any thought of not taking care of others, severe guilt immediately prevents him from acting on the thought. In most cases, as he approaches retirement, he becomes more rather than less of a tyrant, demanding more deference and one-down strokes from people because of his growing sense that his life is going to waste. He endures, hangs on, sticks to, and perpetuates the Rescue triangle as long as people will play. His dying day is usually soon after retirement when all of his work power is taken away from him, his children have left him and turned against him, while his wife, who is not racked and broken by responsibility, begins to gain power, persecutes him for Rescuing her, and eventually survives him to enjoy the fruits of their labor. A special case of Big Daddy is Dr. Rescue, a professional healer who is overburdened with patients in addition to his home responsibilities.

  Counterscript: He decides to “take it easy,” go on vacation, hire a secretary, get rid of a portion of his work with the purpose of equalizing responsibilities in his life. He may even get a divorce and try to start a new family or become a bachelor to avoid responsibilities. But he is a Rescuer at heart an
d eventually is swamped anew.

  Injunctions and Attributions:

  You’re always right

  Take care of everyone

  Don’t admit weakness

  Mythical Hero: Daddy Warbucks, “Life with Father,” Dr. Marcus Welby.

  Somatic Component: He is energetic, his shoulders are hunched, and his chest inflated. He is generally uptight and stiff.

  Games:

  Rescue

  Courtroom

  If It Weren’t For You (Them)

  Therapist’s Role in the Script: The therapist commiserates with him, gives him tranquilizers so he’ll relax, and pills so he’ll sleep. He is sympathetic to his situation, which is the therapist’s own, and encourages him to “keep trying.”

  Antithesis: He realizes that he is Rescuing everybody and that his rewards for this are Persecution. He decides guilt is a racket and begins to demand equal responsibility in every situation in which he relates to people. He disconnects himself from every Rescue and puts his life ahead of others’. He decides that it is O.K. to be wrong sometimes, since he is not responsible for every aspect of every decision.

  Man in Front of the Woman

  Life Course: The Man in Front of the Woman is, as Wyckoff (Chapter 14) points out, actually less competent than the Woman Behind the Man. He knows that his success would not be possible without his wife’s, or some other woman’s, hard work. However, he needs to pretend that he is, in fact, the commanding genius of the partnership. Even though he knows that in many respects she is more competent, well-organized, and even perhaps more intelligent, he promotes the sham of her secondary nature. He gives lip service to her competence but always makes clear that he is in command. On stationery they may list both their names separately, but his name comes first. If they publish a book together she may actually be included in the credits on the cover, but his credits will come first. Somehow, in a mysterious way, it is assumed that he provides the élan, the spirit, the driving force for their success, while she provides merely the hard work which is of secondary importance since any intelligent woman could replace her. He feels considerable guilt about his usurpation of his wife’s power and is not really able to enjoy his success because he always knows that it isn’t his as he pretends. Nevertheless, he is required by the sexist standards of society to continue the sham even though he himself might much prefer to abandon it and become an equal partner with his wife.

  Antithesis: He realizes that his partner’s power would be much better expressed to both their advantages if she were allowed to be an equal. He could then relax and stop feeling guilty about the unfairness of the situation. He can be himself instead of the “The King Has No Clothes.”

  Playboy

  Life Course: He spends his life chasing after the “perfect” woman who doesn’t exist. A Playboy is a man who has become the Victim of the media’s portrayal of the ideal woman. Advertising media use the female body to sell consumer items, and he buys it. He comes to believe in the reality of women he sees in magazines and he values them over and above the women he meets in his everyday life. His perception of people becomes as two-dimensional as the printed sheet or the silver screen, and as a consequence his response to women is totally superficial, based only on their surface appearance. He is never satisfied with his mate because he plays “Blemish.” She does not represent the media image and therefore he goes from one woman to another, never finding what he’s looking for and never seeing what the women that he meets have to offer, because it does not appear in the copy of advertising ads. When he connects with a woman who fits his fantasy ideal, he puts her next to him in his Cadillac or Corvette and shows her off to his Playboy and Playgirl friends. He is ashamed of being seen with “ugly” women and will never go out in public with them, though he may like them and spend time with them on the sly.

  His partners are either Plastic Women, or Creeping Beauties. With Plastic Women he has brief affairs which end with him leaving them when he finds that they are “phony.” With Creeping Beauties he has abortive relationships which end with him being rebuffed. Occasionally he meets a Guerrilla Witch who does him a great deal of damage (perhaps she puts a curse on him, rendering him “impotent”). Because the advertising media carefully avoid portraying angry, demanding women, he is puzzled and hurt by her anger and attacks. He spends a tremendous amount of his energy in the procurement of strokes from the women he is attracted to. He works strictly for the purpose of making enough money to be able to afford the Plastic Women and Creeping Beauties with whom he spends the rest of his waking hours. In the end he gets nothing for his labors except a great deal of secondhand merchandise and a large number of guilt feelings, plus a list (long or short) of women with whom he has had relationships.

  Counterscript: Occasionally he finds a woman who is “perfect” for him. Unfortunately the relationship does not last, usually because his understanding of love and relationships is the shallow media-promoted boy-meets-girl script which never ends as it is supposed to—living happily ever after.

  Injunctions and Attributions:

  Don’t settle for second best

  Don’t give yourself away

  Mythical Hero: Hugh Hefner, Joe Namath, Porfirio Rubirosa, Don Juan.

  Games:

  Rapo

  Blemish

  Why Don’t You—Yes, But

  Therapist’s Role in the Script: The therapist gets vicarious enjoyment from his sexual exploits and envies him his “success” with women. He agrees that women are difficult to understand and winks at his failures with them.

  Antithesis: He realizes that he is chasing an impossible dream. At first he has much trouble seeing beauty in the women he meets, but he stops playing “Blemish” and begins to appreciate their real qualities. In time he becomes aware of a large gamut of human attributes and he realizes that most of the women he knows are beautiful. He enters into a long-range committed relationship with a woman who appreciates his sexy fun-loving Child and lets him be friendly and loving with others.

  Jock

  Life Course: This man decides in his adolescence (with the help of Charles Atlas) that the highest achievement of manhood is to be found in the sports world. He pursues a sport and usually becomes fairly adept in it. His body becomes all muscle. He is detached from his feelings, and ironically, even though he is a body worshipper, he is cut off from the majority of it. His sexual energy is completely transformed into physical activity. He finds, after he enters young adulthood, that he has been sold a bill of goods, that his athletic physique is actually not attractive to women, and that it stands in the way of his enjoyment of sex and of the kinds of things that women really appreciate in men.

  He lets go of his physical pursuits and goes from being muscle-bound to being overweight. Because of the tremendous emphasis he has put on the development of his body, he is underdeveloped in his rational, intuitive, and spontaneous faculties. He is generally considered a dummy by his competitive fellow men and by the women he meets. He is good-natured and naive and always surprised when he finds, repeatedly, that good guys finish last. He spends a lot of time at spectator sports events and thinking back about the “good old days” when he had a strong and athletic body.

  Injunctions and Attributions:

  Don’t think

  Be competitive

  Somatic Component: He is muscle-bound and his body is unevenly developed, depending on the sport he chooses. Later in life he becomes overweight.

  Games: Stupid

  Busman’s Holiday

  Let’s Pull a Fast One on Joey (in the Victim role)

  Therapist’s Role in the Script: The therapist believes that he is actually stupid and discounts him. He ignores him and condescends to him in group and is relieved when he quits therapy. Secretly he feels one-up to him and doesn’t think he can be helped.

  Antithesis: He realizes that he is expected not to be smart and that he colludes with this expectation. He decides to use his Adult and stop playing “Stupi
d.” He realizes that competitive sports are unhealthy for him and reacquaints himself with his body in a whole new way. His good nature and belief in fair play serve him well when he moderates them with a reasonable amount of intuition and rationality.

  Intellectual

  Life Course: This man decides in adolescence that the highest achievement accomplishable is the development of the intellect. He rejects all physical pursuits in favor of “learning.” He reads, studies, talks, and head-trips around the clock and begins to feel that his body and his emotions are encumbrances in these intellectual pursuits. He becomes a fixated Adult with an irresistible tendency to want to convert every activity into some form of “rationality.” Because rationality is highly prized in this society, his script pays off in terms of “success” and he becomes convinced of the validity of his life style. Unfortunately, he is unable to experience emotions, especially love, and he feels empty. His life feels stale, incomplete.

  His relationships are planned and regulated with his Adult but don’t seem to work out. The women he relates to complain that he does not love them (though he believes he does) and that he discounts them (which he can’t understand).

  Counterscript: He falls in love, experiences a gamut of emotions, lets out his Child and Parent. Or he goes on a vacation and lets go. But the Adult doesn’t stay on the back burner for long; in time, “reason prevails” and he falls back into his rational rut and everything becomes, once again, black and white, straight-lined, and boring.

  Injunctions and Attributions:

  Don’t feel

  You are smart

  Use your head

  Mythical Hero: Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

  Somatic Component: His head is prominent in his body. It is so heavy that his shoulders are round with its weight. His chest is caved in and he breathes shallowly to avoid arousing any emotions in his gut. He thinks of his body as an instrument of his mind which is the Center of his being.