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Scripts, as Berne[3] pointed out, are
designed to last a lifetime. They are based on continually reinforced parental
programming and on firm childhood decisions. These decisions, in turn, are
based on four interdependent sets of factors: (1) those parental messages which
the child accepts, (2) his existential position, (3) his limited life
experience, and (4) his level of cognitive development.
From infant and child observation in pre-nursery and child
psychiatric settings, the authors have been struck by two factors which have
not been sufficiently stressed in the literature of transactional analysis.
First, a child does not necessarily pick up the permissions and injunctions of
his parenting figures. Some children actively seek alternative programming from
nursery school attendants, the parents of other children, or even a fantasized
parent. Secondly, as Piaget [13] his students and his
critics have made clear, the cognitive style of a child is distinctively
different than that of a "miniature grown-up." One three year old girl, for
example, became progressively more agitated by the comfort grown-ups tried to
give her as she went about pointing to the cast on her arm and wailing "It
broke". For her, the word "broke" was very concrete: she expected her arm to
fall off.
On such bases as these, however, each of us decides how life
is to be and then selectively interacts with and screens the world to support
and reaffirm this decision. To change one's script, a person needs to re-decide
his early decisions. Dusay and Steiner[7] have drawn our
attention to the importance of permission, protection and potency in this
process.
A Progression of Permissions
Clinical experience has led the authors to hypothesize that
the permissions each child - and each patient - needs can be gathered together
into a hierarchical series. Each level is necessary and important in its own
right, but it is also dependent upon the solidity of the preceding levels.
Cutting across standard diagnostic categories, these permissions may be
outlined as follows:
- Permission to exist.
- Permission to experience one's own sensations, to think
one's own thoughts, and to feel one's own feelings, as opposed to what others
may believe one should think or feel.
- Permission to be one's self as an individual of
appropriate age and sex, with potential for growth and development.
- Permission to be emotionally close to others.
- Permission to be aware of one's own basic existential
position.
- Permission to change this existential position.
- Permission to succeed in sex and in work; that is, to
be able to validate one's own sexuality and the sexuality of others, and to
"make it."
- Permission to find life meaningful.
This progression of necessary permissions fits with
Erickson's assumptions[9] that the human personality
develops according to steps which are predetermined by the individual's
readiness to be aware of and to interact with a widening social radius, and
that society - at least in principle - tends to invite and meet this succession
of potentialities, and encourages the optimal rate and sequence of their
unfolding.
The authors' conceptual model of a progression of
permissions implies, as does Erickson's epigenetic model, that psychosocial
development proceeds through critical turning points. It also implies that each
level of permission and its corresponding psychosocial strength is related to
all the others, that they each are dependent on the proper development of all
the others, and that each level exists in some form before its critical time
arrives.
While mindful of the warnings of Steiner[15] and Lee[12] that the therapist not be
caught up in the patient's ongoing personal drama triangles, we have found this
conceptual framework useful in suggesting specific levels of therapeutic
concentration. Throughout his life, Berne sought ways to "cure" people more
quickly. It seems inefficient, at the very least, to sit each patient down
before a seven-course banquet if he needs only the salad! Here is one method of
determining which course an individual patient is likely to find most
useful.
The authors consider it important that the patient receive
permissions in the order in which they are outlined. If therapeutic work is
pitched at a high level in the series when the lower levels have not been
satisfactorily worked through, the work may be untherapeutic if not downright
dangerous. For example, however much a bright young schizophrenic patient may
be interested in questions of level eight, exclusive emphasis on such
philosophical-mystical questions is unlikely to be profitable to him, and
indeed may rapidly exacerbate his symptomatology.
Although varying with the potency of the therapist, most of
the numerous modes of psychotherapeutic intervention which are currently
popular resonate at more than one level in this permission hierarchy. However,
each therapeutic style does tend to emphasize one particular level; for
example, Steiner's[16] "permission classes" seem to be
pitched at levels one and two. Fanita English',; techniques for dealing with
rackets[8] much of the work of Hilde Bruch [5] the sensory explorations of Elsa Gindler, Charlotte Selver
and their pupils[14] Gestalt awareness training,
bio-feedback training[11] and some aspects of Yoga and
movement therapies[1] are pitched primarily at level two. In
contrast, Frankl's logotherapy[10], psychosynthesis,
peak-experience therapy[4] and the current flowerings of
religious and mystical practices are pitched at level eight.
This conceptual framework, we believe, makes clear the role
of the therapist: he helps the patient balance the various tendencies within
his development, and thereby to get on with his total growth and development.
Ultimately, the patient will need to give these permissions to himself. In so
doing - that is, changing - this often brings up some combination of four
specific catastrophic expectations:
- "If you change, you will he destroyed or at least
punished" (lose love, approval and "strokes").
- "If you change, someone (mother) will be destroyed."
- "If you change, the world (family) will be destroyed,"
(or at least ravaged).
- "If you change you won't stay that way " (the family
homeostatic mechanisms will restore the status quo).
Mankind projects these themes into cosmic significance; they
play an active role in our myths. The first theme is found in the myths of
Paradise, and in the tale of Icarus. The second is found in the myths of
Orpheus, and the third in the myth of Pandora. The myth of Oedipus is a
triumph: it combines all three.
To face these catastrophic expectations and to deal with
transitional periods of "despair," when he is unwilling to continue on as he
had and yet is uncertain as to what to do in its place, the patient needs the
other two of the three great p's from his therapist: potency and
protection.
REFERENCES
[1] Allen J. R.: "Drop-Outs and Wonderers
of the Hip Generation", in The American Handbook of Psychiatry, Volume
3, Aricti S. Caplan, G. (ed), Basic Books, in press.
[2] Assagioli R.: Psychosyn thesis,
Viking Press, New York 1965.
[3] Berne E.: Sex in Human Loving,
Simon and Schuster, 1970, p163.
[4] Bindrim P.: "Facilitating Peak
Experiences", in Ways of Growth, Otto H. and Mann J. (ed), Viking Press,
1968
[5] Bruch H.: "Obesity" in Adolescence:
Psychosocial Perspectives, Caplan G. and Lebovici S. (ed), Basic Books.
1968
[6] Campos L.: "Transactional Analysis of
Witch Messages", Transactional Anal. Bull. 9:34, 1970
[7] Dusay J. and Steiner C.: "Permission
Protection and Potency" in Comprehensive Group Psychotherapy, Williams
and Wilkins, 1971, p198.
[8] English F.: "The Substitution Factor:
Rockets and Real Feelings" Trans Anal. J. 1:4, Oct., 1971, pp225-230.
[9] Erikson E.: Childhood and Society,
Norton & Co., 1950
[10] Frankl V.: "Beyond
Self-Actualization and Self -Expression", J. of Existential Psychiatry, Volume
1, 1960.
[11] Green E. and Green A.: "On the
Meaning of the Transpersonal" J. of Transpersonal Psychology 3, 1971
[12] Lee R.H.: "The Psychotherapist as
Rescurer", Transactional Anal. J. 112, April 1971
[13] Piaget J.: Psychology of
Intelligence, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1950
[14] Selver C. and Brooks CVW: Chapter in
Exploration in Human Potentialities, Otto H. (ed), Charles Thomas,
1966.
[15] Steiner C.: "Script and
Counter-script", Transactional Analysis Bull, 5:18, April 1966
[16] Steiner C. and Steiner V.:
"Permission Classes", Transactional Analysis Bull, 7:28, October 1968
Copyright © James R.
Allen & Barbara A. Allen, all rights reserved.
See also the 1998
addendum by James and
Barbara Allen...
About the Authors
In 1972, at the time of this article's writing,
James R.Allen, M.D. was Associate
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health
Center.
Barbara A. Allen, M.S.W., M.P.H.
was Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma
Health Center.
*This article was
originally published in the Transactional Analysis Journal, vol.
2, no. 2, April 1972, pp. 72-74. |
