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I am grateful to the editorial board of TAJnet for this
opportunity to revisit the original miniscript article and to update the
applications and research done for the last twenty eight years on the concept,
and its offsprings, the Process Communication Model and Process Therapy.
In 1972 I conducted a research project [1] correlating drivers, ego states,
psychological needs, life positions, rackets, script injunctions, scripts,
roles, games, and myths. I administered the Kahler Transactional Analysis
Script Checklist, which I had created for my dissertation [2], to 1,200 people. With completed
responses by 982, six of the ten Drivers (five from Child and five from the
Parent) were selected as the most experienced: Please you, Try hard for you, Be
strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be
strong for me, and Be perfect for me. Although this study did not demonstrate
significant correlations between these six major groupings of driver (types)
and expected item responses, there were significant correlations among
non-driver related item responses constituting a natural loading on six
clusters. For example, there was a strong correlation between and among, -CP,
frustration, NIGYSOB, I'm OK - You're Not OK, Don't have fun, and the Until
script. The mutually exclusive and significant factor loadings strongly
suggested that six patterns were representing at least 95% of the negative
behaviors, as identified by these T.A. terms. I had shared many of these
correlations with a good friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Ware, who had read
Shapiro's work [3] and later postulated
six adaptations [4]. We both seemed to be
on the same track, from differing directions.
I started teaching and writing about the six patterns and
their correlations, calling them Overreactors, Workaholics, Doubters,
Manipulators, Disapprovers, and Daydreamers, adding a seventh to identify some
of the clinically unaccounted for population, and called this adaptation
Cyclers [5].
About 1975, I began to travel and lecture a great deal, and
slowly shifted away from clinical presentations to personal awareness and
growth seminars, and then to business application conferences. With my role at
NASA in 1978 in the selection and placement of the astronauts, came an obvious
need for more efficient ways of interviewing hundreds of candidates.
The timing was perfect. Although I had not focused any more
on clinical or miniscript applications, I had looked and thought a great deal
about the positive behavior patterns of these primary six adaptations, and I
began calling them personality types. It was time for more research.
For several years, I had been looking at personality
structure as a layering of these six (positive) personality types. I trained a
group of Parent Educators in Florida over a period of twenty years. They in
turn taught about ten thousand parents (an average of 500 parents of two
through five-year olds in ten Lab Schools each year) how to assess personality
structure, connect with their children, motivate them, and deal with their
negative behaviors. We hypothesized that this ordering of these six personality
types within an individual was mostly “set” by age seven. Subsequent
test-retest research [6] has substantiated
that personality structure remains consistent over time.
In about 1978 I made perhaps the most important theoretical
discovery of my life, including the miniscript [7]. I called it “phases”. I was
searching for a key to unlock such questions as:
- Why people were motivated by different psychological
needs at different times in their lives?
- Why a person's primary driver never changes even though
he or she might have a [negative][*]
miniscript sequence that will correlate to a [positive] personality type other
than the one associated with this primary driver?
- Why people will or can have a different predominant
script at different times of their lives?
- Why people can demonstrate not just one, but two
[negative] miniscripts?
In order to answer these questions I began another study,
finished in 1982 [8], that included a
research a paper and pencil inventory, and expanded the questions to connect
personality types with character traits, environmental preferences and
management styles. It also tested for phases, the emergence of a foreground
personality type that determines, to some extent, what our new psychological
needs will be, and what the new [negative] miniscript will be.
This research also tested for what had been observed in the
perceptions of each of the six personality types. This was a consistent and
logical outgrowth from Paul Ware's model [9] of expanding Berne's feeling, thinking
and behaving designations. I renamed “feelings” to
“emotions”. I observed the singularity “thoughts” to be a
mixture of thoughts and opinion). And I observed “behaving” divided
into action, reaction, and inaction. Results indeed indicated significant
correlations between Reactors and emotions, Workaholics and thoughts,
Persisters and opinions, Promoters and actions, Rebels and reactions, and
Dreamers and inactions.
Three “experts” in assessing these six Personality
types independently interviewed 100 people. All six Personality types were
represented in the sample. All three judges agreed on 97 assessments, yielding
an interjudge reliability significant at >.001.
These same experts were to determine phase. Using again
Kendall's coefficient of concordance, W, and testing this significance with the
critical values of chi-square, interjudge reliability was again significant at
>.001.
An additional number of people were assessed and selected by
the judges independently so that a minimum number of 30 persons were available
for each classification of Personality type, yielding a total sample of 180
identified “assessed” people.
Two hundred and thirteen items including extractions from
the original study item pool were administered to 112 randomly selected
subjects. Analysis of this data indicated once again a natural loading on six
criteria - - the six Personality types.
Two hundred and four of these items were administered to the
180 identified Personality types. Only items with a correlation of greater than
.60 (significant at >.01) were accepted for inclusion in the final
Personality Pattern Inventory (PPI).
I was elated not only with the results of the research, but
with using it to reinterpret the 1972 research findings.
To illustrate with a typical example:
| (Promoter) |
Be strong |
for me |
| (Dreamer) |
Be strong |
|
| (Persister) |
Be perfect |
for me |
| (Rebel) |
Try hard |
|
| (Reactor) |
Please you |
|
| (Workaholic) |
Be perfect |
|
In the original research, if a person had a primary Be
perfect driver, it was hypothesized that he or she would then experience the
following cluster of behaviors: -CP, Don't have fun, frustration, NIGYSOB,
Until, I'm OK - You're Not OK, etc., as these all were highly correlative.
Yet to be realized was the most important human behavioral
factor, phases. In the above example, if the person had “phased” and
was currently in the second floor identified as “Please you”, then
even though his primary, that is, most used observable driver, was still
“Be perfect”, the actual [negative] miniscript behavior will start
with “Please you” and contain such correlatives: “I'm Not OK -
You're OK”; “-AC”, “victim”; “Stupid” and
“Kick Me”; confusion; “Don't feel” your anger;
“Almost”; etc. With such concurrent and predicative validity results,
we could conclude that when a person does not get his/her
phase-psychological-needs met positively, they will attempt to get the
very same needs met negatively by coping and defending with the [negative]
miniscript pattern that correlates with that phase personality type.
Therefore, since each person's behavior can be observed,
described, explained, categorized, and monitored second by second with this
model, I liken personality structure to a six floor condominium, complete with
an elevator. The order is determined by birth (probably the first floor) and by
environment (probably floors two through six.) There are 720 unique
combinations, and with the identification of the phase, this yields a total of
4,320 unique personality structures, each floor of which has “energy”
that can be measured from 1 to 100%. In other words, one could interpret that
there are millions of positive miniscripts.
Although originally I identified five drivers from the
Parent (i.e., I'm OK - - You would be if...) and five from the Child (i.e.,
You're OK - - I would be if...), only six of these ten drivers significantly
correlated with other six factor loadings: Please you, Try hard for you, Be
strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be strong for me, and Be perfect for me. In
other words, observation and research suggests that six [negative] miniscript
sequences describe and encompass a significant percentage of the general
population.
Another result of the second research endeavor was the
production of a paper and pencil inventory that gives these business, personal,
and clinical correlations in the forms of profile reports and seminars. More
than 500,000 people have now been profiled, in more than 20 countries, in 10
different languages, complete with reliability and validity scales. 135 people
have been certified in the U.S. and 170 internationally.
Although it is not my purpose here to give a treatise on
Process Therapy, I would be remiss if I did not caution the reader on several
points postulated in the original article. Most importantly, drivers should
neither be confronted directly, nor should they be “eliminated.” The
phase driver starts a [negative] miniscript sequence that connects that driver
and a decisional consequence at the script injunction level. Therefore, the
driver functions as a defense mechanism and should be treated as such: (As I
recall, Bob and Mary Goulding identified this correctly and offered this
caveat) There are, however, preferred transactions and perceptions to use when
you transact with a person in a driver. Furthermore, just providing
“permissions” relating to drivers or stoppers (functional script
injunctions) is not likely to be profitable.
For those who would like an annotated research, including
ten dissertations, and a presentation list or an overview of Process Therapy,
including [negative] miniscript sequences, please e-mail me at
kahlercom@aristotle.net. Please note that any teaching or training of
non-clinical applications of the miniscript model (a.k.a. Process Communication
Model) is copyrighted and requires certification by Kahler Communications, Inc.
in the U.S., and Taibi Kahler Associates, Inc. in all other countries.
*I wish I had called the Not-OK
miniscript the negative miniscript - - it's a bit more descriptive and a little
less evaluative.
Footnotes
[1] Kahler, Taibi,
Ph.D., “Personality Pattern Inventory Validation Studies”. Kahler
Communication, Inc., 1982.
[2] Kahler, Taibi,
Ph.D., Purdue University, 1972. Dissertation. “Predicting academic
underachievement in ninth and twelfth grade males with the Kahler Transactional
Analysis Script Checklist.”
[3] Shapiro, David,
M.D., “Neurotic Styles”. Basics Books, 1972
[4] Ware, Paul, M.D.,
“Personality Adaptations”. Transactional Analysis Journal,
January 1983
[5] Kahler, Taibi,
Ph.D., “Process Therapy in Brief.” Human Development
Publications, 1979.
[6] Stansbury, Pat,
“Report of Adherence to theory discovered when the Personality Pattern
Inventory was administered to subjects twice.” Kahler Communications,
Inc., 1990.
[7] Kahler, Taibi, Ph.D.
with Capers, Hedges, “Miniscript”, Transactional Analysis
Journal, January 1974
[8] Kahler. op.cit.
[9] Ware, op.cit.
Copyright © Taibi Kahler, all rights
reserved.
About the
Author
 Taibi Kahler holds a Ph.D. in Child Development and
Family Life from Purdue University, is a licensed psychologist, and is the
originator of the Process Communications Model - used in sales, management,
education, parenting, mentoring, relationships, team work, assessing and
predicting of personal and professional distress sequences.
He is the recipient of the 1977 Eric Berne Memorial
Scientific Award for the Miniscript. In 1978, he was invited by Dr. Terry
McGuire, NASA's psychiatric consultant, to be an interviewing psychologist. As
a result, astronauts have taken Dr. Kahler's profile as part of their selection
process and have used his communication and team-building model in their
training program.
He has held membership in 13 national and international
organizations, 4 high-I.Q. societies, and has been the guest speaker at more
than a dozen international congresses, and 400 local and national conventions.
A prolific writer, Dr. Kahler has authored 3 books and more than 40 articles,
booklets and profile reports.
He was hired as the psychodemographer in the Clinton/Gore
1996 campaign, and is a consultant to the President.
TAJnet
reprint of the 1974 article The Miniscript, by Taibi Kahler and Hedges
Capers... |
