|
The continuing response to our
article twenty-five years ago has been
gratifying. The idea of a hierarchy of permissions has proven to be fruitful in
a variety of cultures and in the hands of a number of therapists. While there
have been no hard research studies in this area, as far as we know, the concept
of permissions is highly compatible with a large body of recent research - or
at least a large body of research can be conceptualized within this frame of
reference. Today, however, we would like to draw attention to eight areas which
have been greatly expanded since the publication of the original paper.
First, we have extended our original list of permissions.
While many other therapists now use their own versions, our personal list is as
follows:
Permission
- To be, to exist, and to occupy space
- To live with zest
- To experience one's own experiences
- To be appropriately close, to trust and to feel secure
- To influence one's environment (to be important)
- To experience one's own feelings across a wide range of
emotions
- To be one's self (of appropriate age, personality and
sex)
- To feel that one belongs (family, friends, community and
culture)
- To feel OK about one's self, others and the world
- To allow oneself to be soothed and nurtured and to soothe
and take care of one's self
- To experiment, and to change (and also to fail safely and
use that failure productively)
- To think clearly and to solve problems across a wide
variety of domains (be sane)
- To be empathetically responsive to others
- To "make it" in love and work
- To make/find meaning
Second, while these permissions do form a kind of hierarchy,
it is more useful to think of them as forming a matrix. All are important
throughout the life cycle, but each becomes more important at certain times.
They also need to be given differently at different ages and their presence or
absence manifests itself differently during different life periods. The infant
who is learning to make interesting spectacles last, for example, and the
adolescent who is comparing religious or philosophical systems can both be
conceptualized as manifesting permission to make/find meaning, but at very
different levels of development (3).
Third, although many therapists have conceptualized
permissions as the antidote to injunctions, there is a difference between an
injunction such as "Don't Be" and the lack of permission to be. As a
consequence, it seems, some suicidal patients respond better to "You don't have
to kill yourself. Don't!" and some to "Live!".
Fourth, some injunctions have a proviso attached. This is
most common with the injunctions "Don't be" and "Don't be sane". For example,
some people have permission to be, PROVIDED they are not close. To reduce the
power of the "Don't be close" prior to dealing with the "Don't be" can be
dangerous. There are usually reasons, given the world as they understood it at
the time, that patients made the life decisions they did. Their subsequent
hesitancy to change can be conceptualized as the Child's fear of
abandonment (death), or that someone else (mother) or the world itself (family)
will be destroyed, if they behave differently. The patient needs protection by
the therapist from all these fears and dangers.
Fifth, twenty five years ago, most of us conceptualized
permission as coming from one person, usually the parent who was most important
for nurturing. This fit with the script matrix diagram (5),
and it is still a useful concept for therapy. However, it is not entirely
accurate. Permissions and injunctions can also come from family systems and
from the culture. Nevertheless, therapists can deal with them therapeutically,
perhaps by analogy or metaphor, by working as if they come from a single
person.
Sixth, current research has documented that, on a genetic
basis, certain people are especially vulnerable or especially resilient to
particular environmental factors, (1), (3).
Many of these environmental factors can be conceptualized in terms of
permissions or injunctions. Here is one of the most promising areas for the
integration of modern biology and especially molecular genetics (6) into transactional analysis theory and practice.
Seventh, over the years, there has been a growing awareness
that people ultimately need to give themselves the permissions they need. The
therapist "stacks the cards", as it were, but it is the patients who give
themselves the permissions they need. It is now evident that this can be done
quietly by manipulating context and environment as well as by more obvious
therapeutic work, a phenomenon which is especially true for work with young
children. One of the authors (JRA), for example, directs inpatient and
residential treatment units for children and adolescents using this principle -
and rarely mentions the word permission, other than to teach trainees. This
line of thinking forms a bridge to current research in the area of
psychological resilience (7). Much of this large body of
research can be conceptualized in terms of permission and protection
(1).
Thanks to the Oklahoma Arts Institute, the authors are
currently analyzing a study of an elite group of over 300 gifted and talented
young people. One of our goals is to examine the differences - outside basic
talent - within and between various subgroups; for example, between poets and
sculptors, ballet dancers and actors. This includes an examination of
permission and protection. Follow-up studies are planned to examine the
differences between those who continue and even become successful in their art
form and those who "burn out".
Eighth, in recent years, we have gradually become more aware
of the implications of the permission to make/find meaning. This permission
applies not only to a child's decisions about who he is, what others are like,
and what happens to people like him in the world (his script), but also to the
various scenarios we construct to understand ourselves and the world.
Unfortunately, these scenarios also limit what questions we can ask, what we
can perceive and what solutions we can elaborate. In the last three years, we
have had a unique opportunity to follow this process in detail as we have
observed the political, economic and therapeutic consequences of the scenarios
elaborated around the Oklahoma City bombing. This line of inquiry leads to
postmodernism, constructivism, social constructionism, and narrative therapy
(2).
In summary, during the last 25 years, there has been a
gradual flowering of the understanding of permission, an understanding which
brings transactional analysis into contact with a number of other contemporary
lines of thought and research. We are indeed grateful to those pioneers who
preceded us - Berne, Gouldings, Kupfer, Steiner, Crossman, among others - and
to contemporaries who have also worked in this area (4), but
we expect to be equally grateful to those who succeed us and further develop
these ideas, including perhaps some of you now reading this brief summary from
1998.
References
1. Allen, J.R., Pfefferbaum, B. (1998). Of
resilience, vulnerability --and a woman who never lived. Child-Adolescent
Psychiatric Clinics of North America. 7(1): 53-57
2. Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A. (1998)
Redecision therapy: Through a narrative lens. In Hoyt, M. (Ed.). The handbook
of constructive therapies. San Francisco: Josey Bass, 31-46.
3. Allen, J.R., Heston, J., Durbin, C.,
Pruitt, D. (1998). Stressors and development: A reciprocal relationship.
Child-Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders of North America. 7(1), 1-17
4. Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A., Barnes, G.,
Hibner, B., Krauss, R., Moiso, C., Welch, S. (1996). The role of permission:
Two decades later. Transactional Analysis Journal 26 (3): 196-205.
5. Steiner, C. (1966). Script and
counterscript. Transactional Analysis bulletin 5 (18) 133-135.
6. See
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/publicat/primer/intro.html for primer on molecular
genetics: Human Genome Project Information.
7. see ED386327 Aug
95 Fostering Resilience in Children. ERIC Digest. Author: Benard, Bonnie,
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed386327.html
Copyright © James R.
Allen & Barbara A. Allen, all rights reserved.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Definitions From:
(EB) Berne, E. (1964). Games people play: The psychology
of human relationships. New York: Grove Press.
(A&A) Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A. (1978). Guide to
Psychiatry. Garden City, NY: Medical Examination Publishing Co. Inc.
(TT) Tilney, T. (1998). Dictionary of transactional
analysis terms. London: Whurr Publishers.
Child, (TT) The Child ego-state which holds the
thinking feeling and behavior of childhood. p. 14
Ego State, (EB) ... phenomenologically as a
coherent system of feelings, and operationally as a set of coherent behavior
patterns. In more practical terms, it is a system of feelings, accompanied by a
related set of behavior patterns. p. 23
Injunction, (TT): ...part of the script apparatus and
can be conceived as a negative message from [parent to child]. p. 59
Permission, (A&A): One of the clinicians major
therapeutic tasks is setting the stage for the patient to give himself the
permissions he needs to experience something new, to decide to do something
new, and to practice it successfully. p. 336
Protection, (TT): therapeutic procedures to protect
the client from the adverse effects of negative script elements during therapy.
Therapy involve dismantling the defensive structure that underlies the script.
This may leave the client vulnerable to injunctions or other toxic... material.
An important aspect of protection is the closure of ESCAPE HATCHES.... p.
95
Script, (TT): We decide our life-plan, or
"script" as it is called in Transactional analysis, in childhood, pp.
109-110.
TAJnet reprint of the 1972 article Scripts - the Role of
Permission, by James and Barbara Allen...
About the
Authors
James R.Allen, M.D. is a
professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Professor of Child-Adolescent
Psychiatry and Program Director of the Child-Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship
at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, and a
teaching and supervising member of the International Transactional Analysis
Association. .
Barbara A. Allen, Ph.D. is a
psychotherapist, human ecologist and mental-health planner in private practice
in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK.
- To write:
- James R. Allen M.D.
Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
PO
Box 26901
Oklahoma City, OK 73190-3048
*TAJnet reprint of the 1972 article Scripts - the Role of
Permission, by James and Barbara Allen...
|
