Scripts People Live

by Claude Steiner

  2. We put in more than 50% of the effort in helping another person.

  Arriving at contracts with every group member is an important step in setting up a Rescue-free group.

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  Contracts

  Drawing up a contract is the indispensable first step of transactional script analysis. Transactional analysis is a contractual form of group therapy which needs to be distinguished from any number of activities which may be undertaken in groups and which may be of therapeutic value. When practiced in a group, observing a boxing match or football game, finger painting, dancing, screaming or “expressing feeling,” can be therapeutic, but they can also be harmful. A basic difference between transactional analysis groups and other group activities is the existence of a contract. This section defines the therapeutic contract and presents a practical approach to obtaining one.

  Therapeutic contracts should be regarded with as much respect as are legal contracts in courts of law, and the legal aspects of contracts are fully applicable to therapeutic contracts.1 Legal contracts must contain four basic requirements to be legally valid. Inasmuch as these requirements have been historically evolved from innumerable litigations over hundreds of years, they may be accepted not only as legally necessary but also otherwise desirable when establishing a therapeutic contract.

  Mutual Consent

  Mutual consent implies an offer by the therapist followed by the client’s acceptance. The offer must be explicitly communicated and certain in its terms. The offer made by the therapist is an attempt to remedy a certain unhappy state of affairs or disturbance. In order to make an intelligent offer, the therapist should know the nature of the problem and it is his duty to elicit this information during the beginning stages of therapy. Thus, the person seeking help should state what he wants in specific, observable, behavioral terms. For instance, in the case of the alcoholic or other drug abuser this involves gaining control over drinking or drug use, and this specific, observable change is a good basis for a therapeutic contract. Other contracts can be experiencing pleasure and getting rid of headaches and other chronic pains and tensions without drugs. Enjoying strokes, the outdoors, learning to laugh, dance and cry. Having good sex, stopping eating or spending too much as a means to experience pleasure are all good contracts.

  In the case of a depressed person, being happy most of the time, establishing good, enduring, cooperative friendships and love relationships, learning how to get strokes, being able to go to sleep or wake up, eat or not eat, as desired, and abandoning thoughts of suicide are all good contracts.

  For people with madness scripts, being able to think, to figure out problems, to stop attacks of madness, feeling in control most of the time, learning accounting, asking for what one wants, or not being scared most of the time are good contracts.

  On the other hand, the attainment of happiness (rather than being happy most of the time), better relationships (rather than good relationships), emotional maturity, responsibility, self-understanding, and other vague achievements, sometimes expressed as the desired effect, cannot be used in a therapeutic contract because these terms are unclear and non-specific. It is not possible to enter into a therapeutic contract on the basis of such desired but vague goals and, generally speaking, words of more than two syllables are largely unusable in contracts because of their vagueness. In order for a contract to satisfy the requirement of mutual consent, it is necessary that both parties be able to specify what they are consenting to. Since a person often has little knowledge of what the therapist’s offer is, he may grasp at any offer no matter how unclear. The therapeutic offer should contain a clear description of proposed services, and the conditions which will be considered to constitute the fulfillment of the contract.

  When the person has no clear understanding of the offer, it may be advisable to arrange a short-term contract of some four to six weeks’ duration during which the therapist can explore the person’s situation, and the person can acquaint himself with the therapist and her methods. After the short-term contract elapses, the final offer and acceptance, which implies mutual consent, can be attempted again.

  This issue of mutual consent is very important. Many people come into therapy due to pressures applied by family or through the courts, and a therapist may make the mistaken assumption that there is mutual consent in the ensuing relationship. The basic transactions of mutual consent are 1) request for therapy; 2) offer of therapy; and 3) acceptance of therapy. It is not unusual for a therapeutic relationship to develop which is lacking in one or more of these transactions. Consider, for instance, the following conversation taking place in the first interview with an alcoholic patient:

  THERAPIST: What brings you here, Mr. Jones?

  MR. JONES: I’m here to get treatment for my alcoholism.

  THERAPIST: Fine. I will be able to see you weekly on Monday at 10:00 A.M.

  MR. JONES: O.K. I’ll see you next Monday.

  This conversation may seem a satisfactory achievement of mutual consent. If examined closely, however, it may turn out that the patient’s “request” was as follows (if one reads between the lines):

  THERAPIST: What brings you here, Mr. Jones?

  MR. JONES: [My wife is threatening to leave me and I have a drunk-driving charge against me, and my wife and my mother and the judge say I need treatment, so] I am here to get treatment for my alcoholism.

  This is not a request for therapy, and it probably constitutes a beginning move in a game of Rescue. There is only one response the therapist can make which would not further the game, and that is to make explicit the fact that the person is not really requesting therapy. On the other hand, consider the following conversation:

  THERAPIST: What brings you here, Mr. Jones?

  MR. JONES: I’m drinking too much, I have made myself physically sick, I’m losing my wife, and I am in trouble with the law. I want to stop drinking so I am here for treatment.

  THERAPIST: Fine, I will be able to see you weekly on Monday at 10:00 A.M.

  MR. JONES: O.K., I’ll see you next Monday.

  This constitutes a request for therapy but not an offer, in that the therapist has in no way stated what he intends to do or what he hopes to accomplish. Therefore Mr. Jones is free to assume whatever he pleases about what the therapist’s role will be, and he will probably assume that it will be one of the roles of the Alcoholic game.1

  This could also easily be the first move in a Rescue game in which the therapist will eventually wind up as a Rescuer. Any further interaction between the person and the therapist without clarification of the contract would further the game.

  The therapeutic offer by the therapist implies that he is willing to work on the problem and that he feels that he is competent to do so with success. Occasionally a person will request therapy for a condition which the therapist is not competent to work with, at which time it is the therapist’s duty to decline making a therapeutic offer. People on occasion apply for therapy of a minor problem but do not want a major problem such as drug addiction or alcoholism to be included in the contract. Making an offer to work on a relatively minor disturbance such as marital disharmony without dealing with the much larger problem of addiction can be compared with doing plastic surgery on a terminal patient and should be declined on the grounds that addiction is such a destructive form of behavior that it will disrupt and defeat any efforts to deal with minor disturbances.

  The above view should not be confused with the view held by some therapists, i.e., that it is improper to make an offer to treat a symptom such as drinking, sexual impotence or frigidity, or a phobia, because these disturbances are caused by “deep” dynamic disturbances—and treating the symptom will not only be of no value to the person but, in some mysterious way, may be harmful instead. The argument may run approximately as follows: “This young lady requests treatment to overcome her sexual frigidity. But her incapacity to enjoy sex is related to a deeply buried hostility against men which will overwhelm her if she in fac
t enjoyed sex, causing her to become psychotic. Therefore we cannot offer to treat her frigidity but must treat her hostility instead.” This strange but not unusual thinking process is not communicated to the person and has a certain similarity to the situation in which a person goes to a store to buy a whiskbroom and emerges with a five-year contract for home maintenance, a vacuum cleaner, and a one-year supply of soap.

  If the woman in question asks for therapy with the aim of learning to fully enjoy sex, then the therapist must pursue that goal or refuse to do therapy. He doesn’t have the option to secretly work on his own aims no matter how convinced he is of the validity of his theory.

  Finally, returning to Mr. Jones, consider the following conversation:

  THERAPIST: What brings you here, Mr. Jones?

  MR. JONES: I’m drinking too much, I have made myself physically sick, I am losing my wife, and I am in trouble with the law. I want to stop drinking so I am here for treatment. (Request)

  THERAPIST: O.K., Mr. Jones, I think we can work together on your problem. While you are in therapy you’ll attend group therapy once a week, and perhaps an occasional individual session. I’ll expect you to stop drinking entirely as soon as possible and to continue to abstain for at least one year, since it is my experience that individuals who do not abstain for at least a year tend not to recover from alcoholism. If you remain abstinent for a year while in therapy, you will probably gain control over your drinking to the point that drinking will no longer be of concern to you. This contract implies that you will be actively pursuing not only sobriety but any number of other things which might be helpful to you. I, as the therapist, will be guiding and working with you as long as you want to work on your problem. I will be able to see you on Monday at 10:00 A.M. (Offer)

  MR. JONES: O.K., I’ll see you next Monday. (Acceptance)

  This highly condensed example contains a request for therapy, an offer, and an acceptance, and satisfies the requirements of mutual consent in a therapeutic contract.

  Mutual Consent Implies Mutual Effort: In every situation in which one person helps another and therefore one person is for that moment one-up to the other, it is also true that the person who is one-down or being helped has a certain amount of power available to him. In order for the situation to be effective, the power that is available to the person being helped has to be used in its entirety. That is to say, the person being helped has to contribute to the situation everything that he has to contribute. Mr. Jones, above, should be expected to come to meetings on time, be involved, do homework (see p. 236), and in general put out a visible effort toward the fulfillment of his contract. If he ceases to do so, the effort is no longer mutual and the situation becomes a Rescue. This is true of any situation in which a person is being helped, even those in which it seems that the person being helped is totally without power. Take, for instance, a person who has been run over by a car and badly hurt. As long as she is unconscious, she has no power to contribute to the process of help delivered by ambulance drivers, doctors, nurses, etc. But as soon as she regains consciousness she is able to apply her energy, her power toward the healing process, and if she doesn’t, whoever is helping her is engaging in a unilateral effort which is a Rescue.

  Consideration

  A helper is giving of herself. To avoid a Rescue the person helped needs to give something in return. This is called in legal parlance the consideration.

  Every contract must be based upon a valid consideration. Valid consideration refers to benefits conferred by the therapist and the person being helped, which may be bargained for and eventually agreed upon. The benefit conferred by the therapist should always be a competent attempt to remedy the disturbance. Given that a person and a therapist specify an undesirable state of affairs in observable, behavioral terms, when the person, the therapist, and the majority of the members in the group agree that the problem as described is no longer present, the therapist has delivered her consideration in the contract. Clearly, it is impossible to state that a person was helped unless the condition from which she was to be helped was precisely described at the beginning of therapy. The consideration delivered by the client can vary. Take as an example the following teaching (rather than therapy) contract:

  Mr. Smith is an accomplished pianist. Charlie comes to Mr. Smith asking to be taught how to play the piano. Mr. Smith may decide to teach Charlie to play the piano for a $3.00-an-hour fee, or he may teach Charlie the piano in exchange for Charlie’s taking care of his garden. Mr. Smith was taught to play the piano by someone who detected that he was very talented and who taught him for free, making it clear to him that she expected her teachings to be passed on to other talented people. Therefore, Mr. Smith might teach Charlie, whom he sees as a very talented young man, in repayment for the teaching he received from his own teacher. Or, Mr. Smith may teach Charlie for free in exchange for the benefits that he receives from the community in which he and Charlie live. Finally, it is possible that Mr. Smith would have such pleasure in teaching Charlie, either because Charlie is very talented or because of some other personal quality of Charlie’s, that Mr. Smith is willing to invest the effort to teach Charlie in exchange for being in Charlie’s company. Charlie may also be able to teach Mr. Smith something.

  All of these alternatives are valid arrangements for consideration as long as they are understood and agreed upon by both parties. When consideration does not exist or ceases to exist, then the situation becomes a Rescue.

  In therapy the benefit or consideration conferred by the client is usually money. But any of the above described kinds of consideration are possible (though not often plausible) in therapeutic contracts.

  Competency

  Contractual ability is limited in certain cases:

  1) Minors. Legally, minors cannot enter into a valid contract. The likelihood of establishing a contract with such a person is very slim, unless the parents enter into the contract as well. This necessity arises with minors as it often occurs that the legal guardians will, for one reason or another, decide to discontinue his therapy—particularly if the child begins to exhibit some changes after a period of therapy. Frequently, this decision is based on their notion that their child is getting worse, instead of better. This phenomenon is easily understandable in terms of the script, since it is assumed that children who need therapy are performing according to the wishes of their parents. When they cease to behave according to parental injunctions the parents will interpret this change as a negative effect of the therapy.

  Thus, with minors, it is important that at the beginning of therapy a contract be made not only with the minor but with her parents as well. In practice I have found that this difficulty is adequately dealt with by an agreement with the parents that the child will not discontinue treatment unless both the guardians and she consent to it.

  2) Incompetence. Those whose mental faculties are so impaired that they are incapable of understanding the consequence of their agreement cannot enter into a contract and are therefore not appropriate for contractual therapy. Persons who cannot cathect an Adult ego state, such as acutely (temporarily) psychotic individuals or profoundly retarded individuals, are included in this group.

  3) Intoxicated persons. Intoxicated persons are a sub-group of incompetents and represent persons under the influence of mind-altering drugs to the extent that Adult ego functioning is impaired so as to prevent mutual consent. Contracts entered into while a person is intoxicated are invalid; and therefore people who are heavily dosed on any drug, be it alcohol, tranquilizers, or stimulants, cannot make a contract until they “sober up.” It should be pointed out here that persons who are excluded from entering into a valid contract for reasons of competency are not necessarily unable to profit from other therapeutic measures available to helpers. The above statements apply only to contractual treatment, which is only one of the avenues available to people who want to alleviate their condition.

  Lawful Object

  The contract must not be in v
iolation of the law or against public policy or morals, nor should the consideration be of such nature. This stipulation seldom applies but must be considered with care in the treatment of users of illegal drugs or persons with criminal involvement.

  Transactional analysis of scripts cannot be effectively-pursued without a contract because unilateral therapy is intrinsically contradictory to the principles of transactional analysis outlined in the Introduction to this book. The absence or presence of a contract most clearly distinguishes transactional analysis from other forms of therapy, especially psychoanalysis where contracts are referred to but in a completely different manner than outlined above;1 one which binds the client but not the analyst.

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  Strategies of

  Script Analysis

  Any experienced therapist probably has an intuitive grasp of the need to avoid the Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim roles in therapy, though he may not know how these roles interrelate. Avoidance of these roles is the reason why many therapists hide behind a mask of noncommittal passivity in their work.

  Unfortunately, by retaining a strictly noncommittal Adult-to-Adult relationship, psychotherapists have rejected the kind of behavior which is essential to effective therapy, especially therapy of scripts. Games and scripts are played from the Parent or Child ego state and their therapy requires what may be called “tissue” or “gut” responses from the therapist. By rejecting all tissue responses and using only their heads, their Adult, therapists have thrown out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, since without tissue responses, that is, transactions from the Parent and Child, effective script analysis is not possible.

  By making it possible to dissect and evaluate the possible transactions in therapy, transactional analysis makes available to the therapist a number of strategies in addition to Adult-to-Adult Work which are needed to help people with scripts. These therapeutic strategies (namely, Antithesis, Fun, Permission, and Protection, outlined in the following discussion) involve the therapist’s Parent and Child ego states. They will be distinguished from harmful tissue responses which they resemble but which are roles in the Rescue Triangle.