A SUMMARY OF TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
CONCEPTS I USE
By Fanita English
(From “How Did You Become a Transactional
Analyst?“ Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 35 , #1 Jan 2005)
“How did you become a transactional analyst?” I am
often asked that question when I tell people what I do. I answer that
originally my training as a therapist was in Freudian psychoanalysis and
included eight years of personal psychoanalysis. I practiced as such for l4
years, treating both children and adults. Increasingly, the process seemed
overly ponderous, time consuming and therefore not cost effective for patients,
but I could find no better techniques.
Then, in l965, I read Dr. Eric Berne’s (l961)
"Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy” and soon after I took time off
from my practice in Chicago to go to California to train with the late David
Kupfer at the then recently founded Transactional Analysis Training Institute
in Carmel. While there I also had many stimulating contacts with Berne and
personally experienced what many, including myself, call the life-saving value
of “TA”. On returning to Chicago I transformed my practice to
Transactional Analysis, started doing workshops to teach this method, and have
been a dedicated transactional analyst ever since, although nowadays, partially
retired, I limit myself to conducting workshops in various countries.
Inevitably, after finding out how I became involved, there
follows a question such as: “And just what is Transactional
Analysis?” Sometimes the questioner is just curious; at other times he or
she is considering making a referral or perhaps signing up for a workshop or
joining a TA Association. To some, I give a long answer, covering a good deal
of information, with others I summarize briefly.
It occurred to me it might be of use to those interested in
either a long or a short version of my answer to write it down in one place,
which is what I have done in this article. Whether you read carefully through
the entire article or just focus on a few sections, I hope this will be of use
to those who are interested in the question of what Transactional Analysis is
and how it is practiced.
Like many other therapies, Transactional Analysis therapy is
primarily “talk therapy”. We work on the basis of a specific body of
theory originally developed by Dr. Eric Berne and elaborated in various ways by
others of us in the field since Berne’s premature death in l970.
Berne was a practicing psychoanalyst before he developed the
theory and practice of Transactional Analysis. Originally it was used in
psychotherapy or treatment, as he called it, particularly in group treatment,
but it soon became clear that it was also useful in a wide variety of fields,
including counseling, organizational work , and education.
Although Berne’s first published book, "The Mind in
Action" (l947) offered a simple description of basic psychoanalytic concepts,
he became increasingly critical of psychoanalytic therapy. As a result, he
began the San Francisco Psychiatry Seminars (which eventually became the
International Transactional Analysis Association), to teach his own approach.
He also spelled out his theory in his basic books, “Transactional Analysis
in Psychotherapy,” (l961), “The Structure and Dynamics of
Organizations and Groups,” (l963), and “What do you say after you say
Hello?” (l972) the latter of which was published posthumously. By now,
about 40 years later, through many books and journals and conferences around
the world, several generations of transactional analysis practitioners have
debated and added much to the Berne’s basic theory and practice.
For my part, I have dared to offer some major modifications
of Berne's concepts, particularly regarding what he called “games”
and “scripts”, as well as developing a new view of what he referred
to as “rackets” and racketeering. I discuss these later in this
article, but before I do, I want to summarize the concepts and techniques that
I consider indispensable to working as a therapist using transactional
analysis. I will do so as simply as I can, so some of the theoretical material
I will present here may suffer from some oversimplification and even some
distortions, although I stand behind it.
Since Berne called himself a “better Freudian than the
psychoanalysts” (E. Berne, personal communication, August l965), I will
begin by mentioning some general psychological assumptions based on Freud's
discoveries They were revolutionary in their time, more than l00 years ago, but
are now so much a part of common discourse that they may seem obvious. However
I will list them hereunder because they underlie all “talk therapy”.
However you may want to skip to the next section for tenets of TA.
UNDERLYING TENETS FROM FREUD
1. However rational, conscious, and capable of exerting will
power human beings may be, they are nevertheless highly influenced, (often even
governed) by instincts and/or drives that "energize" their thoughts and
feelings and often determine their behavior.
2. These instincts and/or drives usually affect us outside
of conscious awareness. They operate in the unconscious, which, as the name
implies, differs from consciousness of self, or the “ego” (I, me,)
that represents our identity.
3. To the conscious ego, Freud added the
“super-ego”, which corresponds to conscience, and the “Id”,
a cauldron of diverse untamed instincts and drives operating unconsciously.
These keep affecting the individual, even as the ego seeks to control them, or
to "sublimate" (transform) their manifestations into more socially acceptable
channels. (e.g. the wish to murder and "cut up" people may be sublimated by
becoming a surgeon who saves lives by “cutting up” patients.)
4. Classic psychoanalytic treatment focuses on bringing
unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness so the client can gain new
insights about seemingly unacceptable feelings or thoughts. The hope is that
incapacitating symptoms are allayed when repressed wishes of the id are made
conscious, but this is easier said than done and usually necessitates extensive
analysis.
5. Originally Freud posited two basic drives, the
self-enhancing survival drive of the ego, and the pleasure seeking sexual drive
of the id. As a good Darwinian, Freud was impressed by how all creatures are
driven by sexuality to create the next generation. . Later Freud became
convinced that there is also a death drive. Rather than posit three drives, he
lumped together the self-enhancing survival drive with the sexual drive and
called it “libido’ or the life drive, as opposed to the death drive,
which Berne later named “mortido”. For Freud, mortido included
aggression which he believed represents a way to deflect and turn outwards the
attraction of death.
6. Whether we posit a battle in the unconscious between the
ego-enhancing drive and the sexual drive, or between libido and mortido, or
between the superego and the id, the important psychological issue is that
there can be constant unconscious conflict going on about what feelings and
thoughts may be brought to light or manifested as behaviors. Conflicts often
relate to the super-ego's high standards and the ego's inability to distinguish
between awareness of forbidden wishes and the feared likelihood of enactment of
these wishes. As a result, we are likely to repress, and then deny, awareness
of certain "forbidden" impulses, particularly those related to the sexual
drive. However, some dim awareness of such "forbidden" feelings may appear in
various forms of "acting out" and/or in fantasies, thus generating additional
feelings of shame or guilt and further internal conflicts. Such conflicts may
cause various psychosomatic ailments or symptoms such as anxiety, panic,
phobias, and so on.
7. In disguised form, "unacceptable" wishes may appear in
dreams or slips of the tongue or incidents of forgetfulness, offering clues
about unconscious conflicts.
8. One of Freud’s essential contributions was showing
the extent to which we are influenced by childhood experiences: - how such
experiences are not forgotten, but stored and usually combined with various
feelings such as fear and shame. We resist bringing painful or scary childhood
memories and fantasies to consciousness in order to avoid experiencing terrible
feelings in the present, and instead rely on a whole system of psychological
defenses to maintain repression.
9. Freud's work also led to the currently accepted
recognition that just as we go through certain stages of physical and mental
development before reaching adulthood, (e.g. there are specific age-periods at
which a child can walk or talk, comprehend abstract concepts, enter puberty,
etc.), so are there stages of emotional development that we must master in
order to move on to emotional maturity.
10.Thus, it is no longer disputed that childhood
experiences and fantasies play an important part in determining the character
and emotional stance of each individual, and that these must be considered,
along with genetic factors, in treating seemingly intractable psychological
disorders such as panic, anxiety, irrational phobias and sexual and relational
problems in adults.
TENETS OF TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS. Like Freud, Berne
acknowledged that the self is not fully rational and conscious. However, while
fully recognizing the importance of developmental stages and the impact of
caretakers' messages during childhood, he was more concerned with a
"here-and-now" practical approach to treating personality and communication
problems than with establishing the historical origin of symptoms.
Ego states
Berne saw that in addition to the Freudian id and super-ego,
the conscious self, or ego, - that we each experience as “me” - is
itself not one unit. Actually, we each operate with at least three co-existing
systems, or “ego-states,” as he called them. He gave them the
colloquial names of: “Parent”, “Adult”, and
“Child”.
Berne (l972) defined ego states as "coherent systems
of thought, feeling, manifested by corresponding patterns of behavior”
(p.11). Actually I prefer to substitute the words “body language” for
“behavior,” because the impulse for the corresponding behavior is not
always evident, although it is experienced internally. The important issue
about Berne’s discovery of ego states is that each ego state is a
distinct system of interacting feelings, thoughts and potential behaviors
that differ from those of the other ego states.
This idea represents a significant departure from other
theories and therapeutic approaches, which may distinguish between feelings,
thoughts and behaviors, but fail to recognize that there are at least
three different actively operating systems within which
different kinds of thoughts and feelings may combine to determine behaviors
in at least three potentially different ways.
For instance, there are times when I can almost hear it when
I say to myself: "You are an idiot to have done (or said) that!" or
"You’re brilliant to have thought that”. This kind of dialogue may
also take place non-verbally, for I may feel pangs in my stomach when a part of
me feels scared of someone in authority, another part feels like lashing out
against that person, and still another says “stop!” Then who is it
that represents "me" in relation to others, and who is it who communicates with
whom?
A transactional analyst will say that it was my Parent ego
state who was addressing my Child ego state by criticizing her as an
“idiot” or by praising her as “brilliant”. And then,
perhaps, my Child wanted to lash out in anger, but my Adult suddenly said
“Stop and think !” In so doing my Adult was asking me to check out
reality rather than allow my Child to react against someone just because of
anger at my Parent.
My Child ego state (the word Child is capitalized when
referring to as an ego state, by contrast to a reference to a chronological
child) represents all the children I used to be, pictures or whom you might see
in a series of snapshots taken of me as I was growing up. These children
thought, felt, and acted over the years and continue to exist within me, not
only as memories, but, most significantly, as systems of thinking, feeling and
acting in the "here-and-now". Just as I did when I was little, my Child today
may sometimes seek approval and adapt to what seems like an expectation of me,
and at other times my Child may feel angry at an expectation and rebel.
My Parent ego state developed as I was growing up, taking on
ideas, ways to behave, and values (including prejudices) from my different
caretakers and the culture around me. This conglomerate often determines my
values today, what I "should" be, or how I "should" act. Thus my Parent ego
state may be supportive of my Child or that of others, or highly critical,
according to values and ideas I have internalized. Lastly, in terms of
development, my Adult grew out of experiences with "reality" and my increasing
ability to reason and check assumptions with facts. (I put the word reality in
quotes because some of reality is determined by the prevailing culture.)
Ideally, this Adult can help me deal rationally with others so that I function
well in the world. Theoretically, I could be "mature" all the time by using my
Adult. (This is the assumption in psychoanalysis, where the goal is to reach
total maturity.) In truth, however, it is not possible to achieve total
maturity all the time; - nor is it desirable, for the world would be a dull
place if peopled only by computer-like individuals. So, while it is important
to learn how to call on one's Adult, especially in times of crisis, for me it
is equally important to use both my Child and Parent. In fact, it is mostly
thanks to my Child that I developed the sense of self that connects me to my
genetic roots and my potentials in life.
Strokes and Transactions
The human infant is born helpless, ill equipped to attend to
his/ her survival. Berne used the term “strokes" for units of care, as
first registered by the infant on being held and caressed. What he demonstrated
is that we continue to need both actual strokes and symbolic strokes throughout
our lives, which is why and how we are interdependent. Whether it be the actual
touch of a handshake or the symbolic “touch” of a smile, or even of a
telephone call, we continue to depend on strokes from others for a sense of
existence. In fact, this underlies all communication among people. As Berne put
it, we “transact” with others by exchanging strokes, just the way we
might exchange goods in the market place for mutual benefit.
If you consider that each one of us operates interchangeably
out of three different ego states, which ego state of mine is it that may
transact with any one of yours? How can I be sure to reach the ego state in you
that I hope to address in order to obtain the strokes I want in exchange?
For instance John might say to Susie, “Here, let me
show you the way” when he comes upon her wandering in confusion in the
hallway before a meeting. His helpful comment might be met with a grateful
response, yet the following week the same offer will be met with a frown and
indicating “mind your own business!” Why? In both instances he was
operating with a “rescuing” Parent, (although perhaps his Child also
wanted to relate to Susie). But whereas the first time Susie had been worried
about being late and so responded with her Child, the second time she was in
Parent, busy with her thoughts and resentful of the interruption. So, much to
John’s dismay, she responded with her Critical Parent ego state instead of
from the Child ego state he expected.
Transactional analysis gets its name precisely from the idea
that unsatisfactory transactions between people, - or what we call
“crossed transactions” that are frustrating to one or both parties -
can be “analyzed” without having to resort to an analysis of total
personalities. Thus, misunderstandings can be clarified, especially when both
parties want to foster a relationship or partnership of any kind.
What my Child wants and expresses, or what my Parent values
do not necessarily correspond to what others like or approve of, and their
response to me may lead me to feel vastly misunderstood or to react in ways
that may anger or hurt others. Then they, in turn, may react in ways that may
hurt or anger me, and so on. In most instances we can recognize when, how or
why specific transactional patterns go wrong (or continue to go wrong). We can
thus help clients to understand better what occurs in others or themselves in
different situations and to make better choices to further their goals.
I will not go into detail here about how different
transactions can be analyzed (as “parallel”,
“complementary”, or “crossed”) or how we distinguish
between “here-and-now” transactions and those that are habitual for a
particular individual who seeks help, so he or she keeps setting up the
likelihood of frustrating crossed transactions.
However I do want to add here that strokes are not always
experienced as "positive", like pleasant caresses or "negative", like blows,
and that what I may like when I am in one ego state I may dislike in another,
or under different circumstances, as in the example of Susie above. There are
also "crooked strokes" that seem positive, but have negative effects, thus
generating what other schools of therapy call "double bind" consequences.
Ultimately, any kind of strokes may be preferable to none,
for otherwise a person may feel "discounted", like a piece of unimportant
furniture. Some individuals can become quite provocative when they feel
discounted, and they may seek to obtain attention at all costs. There are also
people who actually prefer to invite negative or crooked strokes, because such
input corresponds to the kinds of strokes they were raised on and thus feel
like "homemade soup." Even though it may contain some poisonous ingredients, it
is reminiscent of what they were “fed” in childhood. It may take some
time for them to develop a taste for healthier forms of nourishment.
One reason why it is useful to work with clients in groups
rather than in individual sessions is that in a group it is easier for both the
client and therapist to recognize helpful or harmful patterns of transactions.
However, for practical reasons, treatment, counseling or coaching can also take
place in individual sessions. TREATMENT CONSIDERATIONS
The Contract
An essential first step in transactional analysis treatment
is to establish a "contract" with the client’s Adult. This may be
accomplished quickly or require several sessions, depending on how upset the
client is and how willing he or she is to use his or her Adult to determine,
with the therapist, what the goals of treatment can be rather than maintain
unrealistic magical expectations that can never be met. Sooner or later, it is
important for therapist and client to spell out what both seek to achieve, and
how they intend to go about it.( In what follows I will use the pronoun
“she" for therapist or counselor, and "he" for client.)
Character Type.
What I call a person’s “character type” is
based on his preferred ego state. Roughly, I distinguish between two types of
individuals, with subdivisions for each: namely Type I, or “Undersure",
and Type II, or "Oversure".
Type I tends to want help and guidance even in situations
where he is clearly able to decide for himself. Thus, he tends to function a
great deal in the Adapted and/or Rebellious Child ego state.
Type II spends more time in the Parent ego state than in
Child, insisting on his values and/or view of the world, and giving advice
either as a Rescuer" or Critical Parent.
The basic character type tends to get established in
childhood, usually between the ages of 2 – 6.
Persons who develop a Type I character have usually
experienced a good deal of domination from caretakers, either in a critical, or
in a suffocating, “loving” manner. As a result, they learned that
they were better off obeying, adapting and/or depending on the leadership or
control of others than seeking to become independent. When they are assertive,
it is likely to be in the form of rebellion.
Persons who develop a Type II character have had to take on
much more responsibility, during childhood than was appropriate for their age
(e.g., with sick or non-functioning parents) or they were pushed to excel and
show off beyond their own intrinsic needs. They feel valuable only when
"rescuing" or getting others to follow them.
Neither one of these character types is good or bad per se,
unless the person lacks flexibility and rigidly tries to keep functioning most
of the time in accordance with his type rather than allowing Adult assessment
of a given situation and other people. Such individuals are functioning
primarily according to type on a "third degree" level, which is pathological.
Transactions according to type
In the course establishing a contract, I seek to determine
for myself, as therapist, at least tentatively, what the client's character
type is, because it is crucial for identifying patterns of harmful, repetitive
transactions.
Obviously Type I and Type II persons are likely to engage in
what we call "complementary' transactions, whereby Type I will seek advice
(Child to Parent of the other) and Type II will be glad to give advice (Parent
to Child of the other). So, for a while, an Undersure and an Oversure person
may get along beautifully.
Eventually, however, either one or the other may not be as
motivated to function according to type as is the other. So there may come a
time when Undersure, whose Child expects support from Oversure, may be
disappointed because Oversure may be using the Critical Parent instead of the
Rescuing Parent or, - worse! Oversure wants to use his own Child (or Adult) for
a change. The result is a crossed transaction. Similarly Oversure, eagerly
dispensing advice to Undersure, may feel "discounted" (i.e. not suffiently
appreciated) if Undersure responds rebelliously or wants to use his own Parent
for a change. It is easy to imagine any number of variations of the painful
frustration can occur for either type when seeking to communicate with the
other in a way that once seemed satisfactory but now fails to generate the
desired responses. If either partner or both operate at a "third degree" level,
crossed transactions can lead to very dangerous behavior. Communication can
become just as bad or worse between two persons of a similar type if they
operate on a “third degree” level. After enjoying much agreement for
a while, two Type II persons may eventually become too competitive, or two Type
I persons may feel let down by the other at crucial times, and sink into
depression.
A (sad) Merry-go-Round
Sometimes, in a relationship, one partner may initiate
transactions as a "Victim" and the other may operate as a "Rescuer". However,
if either one becomes frustrated, because transactions are not going according
to expectations, he or she may switch ego state and suddenly become a
"Persecutor" of the other, after which they may both end up as victims. The
words Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor were first used by Karpman (l968) in
describing such changes under the name “drama triangle” by analogy to
changes of roles in Greek tragedies. The way out of this pattern is with the
help of the Adult, preferably that of both participants, and perhaps with the
help of the therapist’s Adult to analyze both the “parallel”
transactions that seemed to go well and the reasons for the shifts that led to
crossed transactions. An inexperienced therapist who does not recognize what is
going on between the two parties may herself end up as a victim by rashly
entering the fray as the unwary Rescuer of one or another of the parties.
Survival conclusions Human babies and young children
lack the kinds of life-saving instincts that keep other animals from recklessly
endangering themselves. Toddlers may cheerfully crawl off a balcony or into a
swimming pool or a fire unless they are conditioned to appropriate caution by
means of messages given with positive or negative strokes ("Darling, watch
out!" or "Don't let me catch you going there!" ) Such cautions get integrated
into the Child's implicit memory as "survival conclusions". Later they
influence behavior just the way self-protective instincts influence other
animals. For instance we would recoil seemingly automatically if someone seemed
likely to push us out of a window, although such a reaction was developed
during childhood without our consciously remembering exactly when and how we
learned it.
Unfortunately, many survival conclusions that may have been
useful in the context of a person's childhood family no longer serve the grown
individual and may be downright harmful. We call them "archaic" survival
conclusions, to distinguish them from the ones that continue to be useful. For
example, when John's boss came into his office slamming the door, John felt an
almost irresistible impulse to hide under his desk. After he identified the
archaic origin of this impulse – learning as a child to hide when his
violent father slammed the door on coming home drunk - John as able to use his
Adult to maintain his composure after a door slammed, even though he sometimes
still felt a little twinge of fear when his boss slammed the door. Archaic
survival conclusions can also be set when someone is shamed in childhood.
Children are particularly vulnerable to shame during the 2 - 4 year age period,
and some people carry some unnecessary tendencies to be ashamed about perfectly
normal wishes or behaviors, for instance in the sexual arena. In many
instances, the unwanted symptoms, phobias, anxieties, inhibitions or behavior
patterns about which people may come into treatment are related to a variety of
archaic survival conclusions carried by their Child, sometimes reinforced
and/or contradicted by subsequent remembered instructions integrated into their
Parent.
To identify particular archaic survival conclusions that
may generate unwanted problems, I seek information from the client to visualize
one or another early situations that may have generated such a conclusion
during the client's childhood. We might proceed by trial and error, or
transactions among the participants of a treatment group or even an erroneous
hypothesis will stimulate a long-lost memory, either of the events that caused
a harmful archaic conclusion, or of family anecdotes that described what
happened. If we are quite clueless, I might use the ”hot-seat”
technique developed by Fritz Perls ( l969). This involves asking the client to
temporarily let go of his Adult and to dialogue with an empty chair
representing various authority persons from childhood that are now still
powerfully integrated into his Parent and/or Child, or are projected onto
others. I use the hot-seat technique only occasionally, however, because even
though the results can be immediate and quite startling, they are often not
maintained sufficiently after the client leaves treatment due to the fact that
the client’s Adult is not involved in the process. However, with a
temporary sub-contract, the Hot Seat technique can be useful to identify lost
memories of painful childhood experiences or to work with significant
repetitive dreams. Data obtained in this manner can also help the client later
to modify harmful archaic conclusions.
Substitute feelings and attitudes It is also during
the 2 - 6 year age period that children learn words that correspond to their
emotions, so they can correctly name and identify a feeling or an attitude
(e/g. "I'm scared", or….happy, angry, jealous, sad, etc. Unfortunately in
many families certain emotions are mislabeled or discounted; children from such
families may grow up either without the ability to recognize some of their own
feelings or emotional reactions, or believing that certain feelings are
monstrous, while the manifestation of other feelings or attitudes will gain
them approval. For instance, a child may told when his dog dies: “at the
death of his little dog: "Aren’t you lucky! Be happy you're getting a
bigger dog!" without any recognition that he/she may feel sad and need to
grieve. Having been stroked if he seems glad and discounted if he seems sad,
the idea that he might be sad at times just does not exist in his
consciousness. He may grow up showing cheerful happiness or a “stiff upper
lip”, whenever grief tries to surface, even at times of severe loss. This
is how some people learn to substitute anger for sadness, or sadness for anger
or fear, or generosity for greed or envy, and so on. Once such individuals are
grown, people around them often sense that there is something phony when they
exhibit such substitute feelings. Berne called such feelings "rackets", because
he thought that people who manifested what were obviously phony feelings or
attitudes were extorting strokes the way gangster racketeers extort
"contributions" to false charities. In my opinion, he did not sufficiently
allow for the fact that the substitution process develops at such an early age
that it is unconscious and not deliberately exploitative. Unfortunately, using
the term "rackets" to refer to substitute feelings or attitudes is sill part of
transactional analysis vocabulary.
Emotional Racketeers.
We use the term “racketeers” to describe
individuals who transact with others by repeatedly displaying substitute
feelings or attitudes. Actually, racketeers are quite pathetic, although often
annoying, because they are not aware of how they substitute artificial feelings
or attitudes for underlying feelings. Since they nebulously sense that
something is wrong, without quite knowing what, they may keep exhibiting their
phony feelings in transacting with others, al the while hoping for compensatory
strokes. This often backfires disastrously. In their desperate quest for
compensatory strokes, because they themselves often feel inchoately that there
is something wrong with their approach to others, they will often reinforce
their character type to a second or third degree. Eventually they are likely to
meet with rejection (through crossed transactions), even from partners who may
have been supportive initially. Excessive frustration generates inner chaos and
provokes sudden, abrupt switches of a racketeer's habitual ego state to the
opposite one (e.g. if the usual preferred ego state was Child, a sudden switch
to Parent, and vice versa. As a result, there may be unexpected violence if the
racketeer operates on a third degree level. Shakespeare offers classic examples
of this process. For instance Hamlet, a Type I Undersure character, after
repeatedly feeling that he lacks support from his mother and Ophelia, finally
switches from his habitual ineffectual depressed Child ego state to a murderous
Parent. Or Othello, a Type II Oversure character, operates habitually from
Parent with substitute attitudes of invulnerability and lack of jealousy until
he becomes convinced of Desdemona's alleged infidelity, at which point he he
collapses as a convulsive, inarticulate Child. Then, when shamed about this by
Iago, he sees no other way than to kill Desdemona and then himself.
To help racketeers if they seek treatment, - which many of
them do, precisely because of the nebulous feeling that something is going
wrong in their relations to others, - they must first be supported so they feel
safe in the group context. Then, rather than continue to offer them strokes to
their rackets, which many inexperienced therapists do in the mistaken
assumption that they should keep offering support, it is important to nudge
these clients to recognize what they actually experience under stress and then
correctly name unacknowledged feelings or attitudes if or when these are
stimulated. To acknowledge harboring certain disallowed feelings can be very
frightening for these clients. For instance, a client may feel, “If I
allow myself to feel murderously angry, I might do something terrible!”
They need help to realize that acknowledging a feeling and naming it does not
necessarily mean acting on it, because they can use their Adult to decide on
behavior in each instance. This is particularly important for persons whose
underlying feelings involve rage, envy, or jealousy, which they may have
learned to cover up, even to themselves, with, for instance, “charitable
attitudes”.
What about Games?
Berne's (l964) book "Games People Play" was a best-seller in
the mid-sixties, perhaps because of the catchy titles of the "games" he listed.
I do not recommend this book except for the introductory chapter which
summarizes transactional analysis theory, because I think it trivializes
behavior and does not distinguish between racketeering and games. After its
publication, Berne modified his early definition of games by emphasizing that
there has to be a switch of ego state by one or both parties before the final,
concluding crossed transaction.
In my opinion it is not necessary to struggle with details
about games. The aforementioned descriptions of Undersure and Oversure third
degree racketeers, and how frustration about not receiving the desired strokes
for their rackets may lead to a switch of ego state, and, thereby, to a final
crossed transaction, (possibly with violence,) adequately describes the
process. Different games are simply variations on the Oversure and Undersure
kinds of complementary transactions ending with a crossed transaction as
mentioned earlier (English, l977a).
Unconscious Motivators
As indicated previously, TA treatment focuses primarily the
here-and-now without seeking to analyze deeply into the unconscious. However,
it is undeniable that many important choices in life can be motivated by
unconscious drives. Their impact must be recognized, particularly when a client
deals with major life commitments or changes (e.g. regarding career or
marriage) or wonders about having engaged in certain past behaviors that now
seem strange.
To address such situations, I have added the concept of
unconscious motivators to basic transactional analysis. I use the term
“motivators” rather than drives because my definition of these
differs significantly from Freud’s. (see English, l998, 2003).
The three Motivators are: The Survival Motivator, the
Expressive or Passionate Motivator, and the Transcendence or Quiescence
Motivator. Each Motivator has distinct functions and can affect our ego states
with its particular attributes, yearnings or feelings.
Specifically the survival motivator functions for
individual survival. It stimulates feelings and needs for action to ensure such
survival. Therefore it brings on attributes such as hunger, thirst, feeling
cold, fear, and need for protection and strokes; it also promotes survival
conclusions.
The expressive/passionate motivator functions for species
survival. In all animals this occurs thanks to procreation, so sexuality is an
important attribute of this motivator. However procreation alone would not have
sufficed for the survival of the human species; we would have been annihilated
long ago by more powerful animals. Fortunately our species has evolved by
adding many more attributes to this motivator. For instance it promotes
curiosity and attraction to adventure and risk-taking. These attributes led our
forbearers to the creative inventions, discoveries and explorations that have
enabled our species to survive and become the most powerful on earth.
Lastly, the transcendence/quiescence motivator functions to
maintain our quiet connection to the universe and to transcend daily life
through, for example, spirituality, meditation, and also by sleep. It fosters
peacefulness, restfulness, harmony, and detachment from overwhelming anxiety.
Scripts. Berne noted that most of us seem to operate
with "an unconscious life plan" to which he gave the name of "script". Scripts
are adaptations of early childhood reactions and experiences, and although
Berne (l961) wrote that "neurotic, psychotic and psychopathic scripts are
almost always tragic," he also added that “a practical and constructive
script ......may lead to great happiness".( p..116) Unfortunately there has
been a tendency among some transactional analysts to forget that Berne
indicated that constructive scripts can lead to happiness. They thus sometimes
erroneously confuse scripts with dysfunctional archaic survival conclusions.
Yet just because someone may be functioning with certain harmful archaic
survival conclusions that need to be changed, it does not mean that their
entire script should be thrown overboard. Quite the contrary, as I have spelled
out elsewhere (English, l977b, l979, l988)
On the basis of clinical experience, I believe Berne was
correct to emphasize that a child of about 3-6 years creates an initial script
to guide his or her future. This script is influenced both by inborn tendencies
and the child’s limited world view, which includes exposure to fairy
tales, myths, perceptions and misperceptions about the environment and the
wishes of caretakers. This initial script primarily serves the child’s
emerging self as an organizing structure to deal with time, space, boundaries,
relationships, activities and ideas about the world and the future. However,
like the first draft of a movie script, the early script is but a tentative
outline. It continues to be revised throughout a person’s life and may
develop quite differently from the initial design, with unexpected outcomes
that are affected by how the person manages to balance his or her inner
motivators in the course of living.
Even a script generated under the worst family circumstances
contains within itself the child's genetic sense about how he or she might
fulfill inner goals creatively if certain malevolent fairies and cobwebs could
be neutralized. Without a script a child would be operating out of a vacuum of
time and space, with no content with which to connect past and future, feeling
rootless, like a leaf in the wind. I suspect that this happens with certain
confused adolescents and that certain cases of psychosis represent lack of
script formation, rather than the reverse. As a person grows, eventually a
script becomes a rather complex production, with some scenes that follow
sequentially and some that do not, with ups and downs of success and failure,
and with magical reversals and assumptions. Thus, scripts contain genetic
elements and patterns related to experiences, fantasies and beliefs that
are woven together into the fabric of a personal
mythological story with many possible variations and allowances for plenty of
improvisations in the course of life. Script analysis requires a different kind
of contract from a treatment contract, where the aim is to change harmful
existential patterns. In the script workshops I conduct, the aim is to work
with clients’ fantasies and stories in order to gain a deeper
understanding of their inner needs and tendencies, and a better sense about the
creative processes of their lives, without necessarily planning for particular
changes.
Hot Potatoes and Episcripts
Within families or tight-knit groups, sometimes there is a
phenomenon like a psychological contagion whereby a disturbing condition, (e.g.
anxiety, depression, suicidal wishes, etc.) may be passed from one person to
another, or over several generations. This happens sometimes when a potential
“donor” of pathology believes, consciously or unconsciously, that he
or she can become magically free of troublesome symptoms by passing them on to
someone who thus becomes a “vulnerable recipient.” At the root of
this process are magical beliefs like those that existed in primitive tribes.
I refer to such transmissions, which have a hypnotic
quality, as "passing on a hot potato". (English, l969). In addition to
transmissions within family groups, hot potato transmissions can occur whenever
one partner of a dyad is in a psychologically more powerful position than the
other, (e.g. teacher/student, or priest/ parishioner, therapist/client, etc.
and patient, especially if the donor of the hot potato is an Oversure character
type and the vulnerable recipient is an Undersure type. Sometimes the
transmission is quite deliberate, in relation to total life-projects, although
the donor might deny this. Accordingly, one or more vulnerable recipients might
take on specific harmful goals for their lives while believing they are making
voluntary choices. Such instances, which are far more complex and harmful than
transmissions of hot potatoes, are referred to as “episcripts”.
Tragic examples of these include the suicide bombers who struck the United
States on September ll, 2001, after taking on episcripts to destroy from Osama
Bin Laden, and Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel after having been
episcripted by Yasir Arafat or some zealous cleric.
It is important not to confuse episcripts with scripts, any
more than one would equate cancerous growths with normal development.
Episcripts, as the name implies, are taken on from others outside the self,
whereas scripts correspond to personal development and blossoming into life.
FINALLY, AND TO CONTINUE…..
Like Einstein, who stated that a physicist did not
understand relativity if he could not explain it to a l2 year old, Berne
insisted that transactional analysis should be comprehensible to an 8-year old.
Indeed this is why TA can be very useful for child therapy and in educational
contexts. However, ultimately it is empathetic sensibility combined with solid
therapeutic skills that are the essentials for good practice. Therefore the
International Transactional Association has developed high standards for,
qualification, training and ethics.
In l970 Berne died suddenly of a heart attack. He did not
live long enough to fully refine his theories although he was working at them
continuously until the end of his life. After his death, the very simplicity of
basic transactional analysis was misused by some, so that in the public mind it
became erroneously viewed as a pop psychology. Fortunately there were already
enough competent well-trained transactional analysts to spread it TA in the
rest of America and the world, especially throughout Europe, Latin America,
India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the scholarly TA
Journal was maintained as well as many other publications. Sadly, Berne did not
live to see this expansion.
To this day I know of no more effective therapy when
practiced by responsible, sensitive practitioners. This has been confirmed by
comparative research (Novey, 2002) and, as mentioned earlier, transactional
analysis has proven effective in many fields. There are many ways to find out
more about transactional analysis. (For more ideas on how, visit the ITAA web
site at http://www.itaa-net.org and the
US organization (USATAA) web site at http://www.usataaconference.org/and
forthcoming conferences and meetings.) However I hope this article has given
you at least a beginning understanding of what it is all about.
REFERENCES
Berne, E. (l947)The Mind in Action. New York: Simon &
Schuster
Berne, E. (l961) Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy.
N.Y, Grove Press.
Berne, E. (l963) The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations
and Groups. N.Y, Grove Press
Berne, E. (l964) Games People Play. N.Y., Grove Press.
Berne, E.(l972 ) What do you say after you say Hello? N.Y.,
Grove Press.
English, F. (l969) Episcripts and the Hot Potato Game.
Transactional Analysis Bulletin , 8(32),77-82
English,F. ( l977a)Rackets and racketeering as the root of
Games. In R. Blakeney (ed.) Current issues in transactional analysis (pp.3-28)
N.Y. Brunner-Mazel
English, F. l977(b) What shall I do tomorrow?
Reconceptualizing transactional analysis. In G. Barnes(Ed), Transactional
Analysis after Eric Berne: Teachings and practices of three TA schools
(pp.287-347). New York: Harper’s College Press.
English, F.(l988) Whither Scripts? Transactional Analysis
Journal l8, 294-303
English, F. (l998) The Forces within us. (Video Recording
)– International Transactional Analysis Association).California
English, E. (2003) How are you? And How am I? Ego states and
inner Motivators. In C.Sills & H. Hargarden(Ed)Ego States (pp.55-72).
London W9, Worth Publishing, Ltd.
Karpman, S.B. (l968) Fairy tales and script drama analysis.
Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7 (26) 39-43
Novey, T. (2002) Measuring the effectiveness of
transactional analysis. An international study. Transactional Analysis Journal
32 8-24
Perls, F. (l969) Gestalt therapy verbatim. Lafayette, Ca.
Real People Press.
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