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This article,
first published in 1966, is one of the founding articles of transactional
analysis. It, along with many other articles and books, established Dr. Steiner
as a major transactional analysis theoretician. A close associate of Eric
Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, Dr. Steiner made major
contributions in a number of TA areas.
This article proposes the idea that we develop an apparently
positive set of goals that are supposed to offset the negative aspects of the
script, or life plan. For example, a person who has a "don't be successful"
injunction in his or her script, might also have a "be a financial tycoon" in
his counterscript. Thus messages, conclusions, and decisions exist, in my
experience, in a complementary way that are somehow attached or connected. This
idea of a counter to negative messages was part of the reason Dr. Steiner was
the first recipient of the Eric Berne Award in 1971. The other is that he began
laying the foundation for the analytical school of transactional analysis, the
other two, as TAJ editor Tony Tilney says, are the operational and the
narrative.
Regarding possible implications in Dr. Steiner's article,
the editor's of TAJnet advise anyone working with alcoholics to be extremely
cautious. Although Dr. Steiner does not, in this particular article, directly
state that once "script cure" is achieved, some alcoholics can resume drinking
in moderate ways, the editors feel that no such implication should be drawn by
readers. Dr. Steiner's later works, and his present positions do indeed support
the idea that alcoholics, once cured, can drink socially.
Dr. James Callahan the Executive V.P. of the American
Association of Addictive Medicine asserts that alcoholics cured in a script
sense, and then they being able to drink socially and in moderation, "is a
contradiction in terms". In today's scientific and medical community, an
alcoholic is defined as someone who is so severely addicted to alcohol that
when taking a drink he or she will not be able to control the desire for more.
As the AA slogan states: "One is too many, and a thousand isn't enough" That is
to say unequivocally, that the alcoholic is afflicted with a disease to which
the only known cure is complete and total abstinence. Dr. Callahan
distinguishes alcoholics from problem drinkers, people who drink too
much but who do not exhibit most of the physical symptoms that alcoholics do.
Dr. Callahan says he has no disagreement with Dr. Steiner's ideas if they are
directed toward the category of problem drinkers.
Therefore, given this single reservation and editor's
caution, Dr. Steiner's early contribution to transactional analysis script
theory should be read and digested by every serious student of transactional
analysis. It forms a significant part of the platform for much advanced script
theory that followed.
Alan Jacobs, Editor
TAJnet reprint of the
1966 article Script and Counterscript by Claude Steiner...
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