Erskine 2010 - Life-Scripts-A-Transactional-Analysis-of-Unconscious-Relational-Paterns.pdf

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CHAPTER TITLE

LIFE SCRIPTS

LIFE SCRIPTS A Transactional Analysis of Unconscious Relational Patterns edited by

Richard G. Erskine

First published in 2010 by Karnac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT

Copyright © 2010 to Richard G. Erskine for the edited collection, and to the individual authors for their contributions. The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 85575 662 5

Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk e-mail: [email protected] Printed in Great Britain

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CONTENTS

ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

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FOREWORD

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CHAPTER ONE Life scripts: unconscious relational patterns and psychotherapeutic involvement Richard G. Erskine CHAPTER TWO The lived and narrated script: an ongoing narrative construction Maria Teresa Tosi CHAPTER THREE When parting is not such sweet sorrow: “Mourning and melancholia”, projective identification, and script analysis Helena Hargaden CHAPTER FOUR Script or scripture? Jo Stuthridge

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CHAPTER FIVE Whose body is it? Somatic relations in script and script protocol William F. Cornell

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CHAPTER SIX The “three ways out”: escape hatches Ian Stewart

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CHAPTER SEVEN From a child psychiatry practice James R. Allen

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CHAPTER EIGHT The individual in context: how do I fit in around here? Rosemary Napper

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CHAPTER NINE Scripts: then and now Claude Steiner

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CHAPTER TEN It takes a lifetime to play out a script Fanita English

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CHAPTER ELEVEN Life scripts: an existential perspective Birgitta Heiller and Charlotte Sills

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CHAPTER TWELVE Transgenerational scripts: the unknown knowledge Gloria Noriega

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN The script system: an unconscious organization of experience Marye O’Reilly-Knapp and Richard. G. Erskine INDEX

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James Allen received his BA and MD degrees from the University of Toronto. His psychiatric training was at McGill University; Baylor Medical College; and Harvard Medical School. A fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Canada, he is certified in both general and child-adolescent psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is Professor, Vice Chair, and the Rainbolt Family Chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He is a workshop leader and the author of several papers and books, including Therapeutic Journey: Practice and Life, written with his late wife, Barbara Allen. William F. Cornell, MA, TSTA, has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, many exploring the interface between TA, body-centred, and psychoanalytic modalities. Cornell is editor of the ITAA Script newsletter and co-editor of the Transactional Analysis Journal. He is the editor of The Healer’s Bent: Solitude and Dialogue in the Clinical Encounter, the psychoanalytic writings of James McLaughlin, for which Bill wrote the introduction; with Helena Hargaden he is co-editor of From Transactions to Relations: vii

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The Emergence of Relational Paradigms in Transactional Analysis. He is the author of Explorations in Transactional Analysis. Bill maintains an independent private practice of therapy, consultation, and training in Pittsburgh, PA. Fanita English is a Teaching Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association. She has a Diploma in Psychology from the Sorbonne University, (Paris) and an MSW from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. She had psychoanalytic training at Paris Psychoanalytic Institute and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, as well as Gestalt therapy training with Fritz Perls. She founded the Eastern Institute for TA and Gestalt in Philadelphia in l970. Since l981, she has been conducting workshops at various institutes and universities in Western Europe. She has written four books in German, two in French, one in Italian, and has contributed many articles and chapters in books in English. Richard G. Erskine has been the Training Director at the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy in New York City since 1976. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, licensed psychoanalyst, certified clinical transactional analyst (trainer and supervisor), a certified group psychotherapist, and a UKCP and EAPA certified psychotherapist. He is the author of numerous articles on psychotherapy theory and methods and has twice received the Eric Berne Scientific/Memorial Award for advances in the theory and practice of transactional analysis. He has co-authored four psychotherapy books that have been published in several languages, the most recent with Janet Moursund, entitled Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship (2004, Thompson: Brooks/Cole). Gloria Noriega, PhD, has a Master’s degree in clinical psychology and a doctorate in science. She is a certified teaching and supervising transactional analyst (TSTA) in psychotherapy and the director of Instituto Mexicano de Análisis Transaccional (IMAT) in Mexico City. Gloria works internationally by invitation as a conference keynote speaker, and conducts psychotherapy, training, and supervision groups. She is a former president of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) and the winner of the 2008 ITAA Eric Berne Memorial Award for her new theory on the mechanisms for transmitting transgenerational scripts.


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Helena Hargaden, BA (Hons); MSc Psychotherapy; PhD, is a teaching and supervising transactional analyst and a UKCP registered integrative psychotherapist. She has a private practice in South London and is a visiting tutor at the Metanoia Institute. She is Director of Relational TA Studies and teaches at TA and integrative institutes in the UK and abroad. She is co-author, with Charlotte Sills, of TA: A Relational Perspective, co-editor, with William Cornell, of From Transactions to Relations, and is author and co-author of several articles on relational psychotherapy, including the themes of intersubjectivity and the role of the erotic in relatedness. Birgitta Heiller, PhD (Psychology), MSc (Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy), is a BPS chartered counselling psychologist, a UKCP registered psychotherapist and a teaching and supervising transactional analyst in private practice in Guildford. She has retained a keen interest in existentialist philosophy since her study days at the University of Vienna, Austria, and is curious about how to combine philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific insights with psychotherapeutic technique. Rosemary Napper lives in Oxford. She provides TA supervision and training in organizational and educational applications, as well as counselling alongside psychotherapy. Rosemary is a coach, counsellor, and consultant to individuals, teams, and organizations, and an author of a variety of books on subjects including the application of transactional analysis to adult learning processes and youthwork management. She is an accredited counsellor, with a Masters in Education, as well as a qualified practitioner, trainer, and supervisor in each of three fields of transactional analysis: counselling, education, and organizations. Rosemary is currently the President of the International Transactional Analysis Association (2009–2012). Marye O’Reilly-Knapp, PhD, RN, is an associate professor at Widener University School of Nursing and a certified transactional analyst. She maintains a private practice as a psychotherapist and certified clinical nurse specialist in adult psychiatric/mental health nursing. She is a frequent presenter at international conferences and has published on the psychotherapy of trauma, dissociation, and the schizoid condition. Marye is an associate of the International

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Integrative Psychotherapy Association of New York, and has contributed to the development of theory in both transactional analysis and integrative psychotherapy. Since 1997, she has served as a lecturer at the Moscow Transactional Analysis Institute in Moscow. Charlotte Sills, MA, MSc (Psychotherapy), Dip. Systemic Integrative Psychotherapy, CTA (ITAA), is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and Visiting Professor at Middlesex University. Charlotte is a psychotherapist in private practice and a supervisor, trainer, coach, and consultant in a variety of settings. She is a qualified transactional analysis clinician and a teaching and supervising transactional analyst (psychotherapy field), and was for many years the Head of Metanoia Institute’s Transactional Analysis Department. She is the author or co-author of a number of publications on counselling and psychotherapy, including Integration in Counselling and Psychotherapy, by Lapworth, Sills, and Fish (Sage, 2002) and Transactional Analysis—A Relational Perspective, by Hargaden and Sills (Routledge, 2002). Claude Steiner, born in 1935 in Paris, is a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan. He was Eric Berne’s disciple, his colleague, friend, collaborator, and, with him, a founding member of the International Transactional Analysis Association. His books include: Games Alcoholics Play; Scripts People Live, The Other Side of Power; When a Man Loves a Woman; Readings in Radical Psychiatry, as well as the ubiquitous fable of The Warm Fuzzy Tale. He has been teaching on the subject of emotional literacy since 1975 and his most recent book is Emotional Literacy: Intelligence With a Heart (2003). Ian Stewart, BA(Oxon), PhD, MPracNLP, TSTA(P), is Co-Director of The Berne Institute, Nottingham. He is accredited by ITAA/ EATA as a teaching and supervising transactional analyst with psychotherapy speciality. He is also a UKCP registered psychotherapist and a master practitioner in neuro-linguistic programming. He is co-author of TA Today (Lifespace, 1987) and of Personality Adaptations (Lifespace, 2002). Ian has contributed books on transactional analysis to three widely-read series published by Sage: TA Counselling in Action (3rd edn, 2007), Eric Berne (1992) and Developing TA


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Counselling (1996). In 1998, he was awarded the EATA Gold Medal “for outstanding services to transactional anaysis in Europe”. Jo Stuthridge MSc, is a teaching and supervising transactional analyst (psychotherapy) and member of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists. She is co-director of the Physis Institute, which provides training in transactional analysis. She maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Dunedin, New Zealand. Maria Teresa Tosi, PhD, is a licensed psychotherapist and a certified transactional analyst with degrees from the University La Sepienza, Rome. She is Professor at the Salesian University and the Institute for Training and Research in Education and Psychotherapy, where she provides training in transactional analysis. She lives in Rome, where she conducts a private practice in psychotherapy. Dr Tosi is the past president of the Italian Society for Transactional Analysis and the current president of the European Association for Transactional Analysis. Her publications focus on the integration of transactional analysis theory with modern psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology theory and research.

FOREWORD

Richard G. Erskine

Life Scripts: A Transactional Analysis of Unconscious Relational Patterns is an exciting collection of contemporary writings on life script theory and psychotherapeutic methods. Each chapter describes an evolution of Eric Berne’s original theory, and brings together a stimulating range of international perspectives, theoretical positions, clinical experiences, and psychotherapy practices. Each chapter contains a psychotherapy story that illustrates the theory. The concept of life scripts has frequently been associated with the determinism represented in theatrical scripts, yet, this book offers some new and diverse perspectives; a few chapters address the significance of early childhood experiences in forming a life script, while other chapters reflect the perspectives of postmodernism, constructivism, existential philosophy, neuroscience, developmental research, mythology, and the importance of narrative. “Life scripts” was a term I first heard in 1967, from Fritz Perls, the co-innovator of Gestalt Therapy. I was in a professional training workshop with Fritz, where he talked at length about how life scripts were formed from incomplete experiences that became fixated as habitual patterns of attitudes and behaviours. He made passing reference to Eric Berne’s theory, but I assumed the concept xiii

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of life scripts to be a part of Gestalt therapy theory, although there was nothing written about it in Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951). Two years later, I attended a transactional analysis training programme conducted by David Kupfer, the first president of the International Transactional Analysis Association. Dr Kupfer often spoke about the concept of life scripts when he was explaining the intricacies of a psychotherapy session. He credited his Carmel, California office partner, Eric Berne, who had written the popular book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships (1964) and a professional book, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry (1961) with the development of the theory of scripts. In his 1961 book, Berne elaborated on the psychoanalytic theory of ego and ego states and proposed a transaction-by-transaction analysis as a way to understand the archaic transferential phenomena of life scripts. David Kupfer described the discussions he had with Eric Berne about life scripts as he taught us the theory and used it in the supervision of our clinical cases. As students, we were in the forefront of a developing theory. I was excited and wanted to learn more. However, there was only one chapter in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy that was devoted to scripts. It began with: Games appear to be segments of larger, more complex sets of transactions called scripts. Scripts belong in the realm of transference phenomena, that is, they are derivatives or, more precisely, adaptations of infantile reactions and experiences. But a script does not deal with a mere transference reaction or transference situation; it is an attempt to repeat in derivative form a whole transference drama, often split up into acts, exactly like the theatrical scripts which are intuitive artistic derivatives of these primal dramas of childhood. Operationally, a script is a complex set of transactions, by nature recurrent, but not necessarily recurring, since a complete performance may require a whole lifetime. [Berne, 1961, p. 116]

Later in my clinical training, Hedges Capers read us a draft transcript of what was to become Eric Berne’s last book, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny (1972). I remember one of the quotations:

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Each person—under the powerful influence of his parent—writes in early childhood the script that will govern the general course of this life. Your script dictates what kind of a person you will marry . . . how many children you will have . . . even the kind of bed you will die in, and who will be present when you do. It determines whether you will be a winner or a loser, a spendthrift, or a skinflint, a tower of strength or a doomed alcoholic. Some people have scripts that call for them to fail in their professions, or to be repeatedly disappointed in love, or to be chronic invalids. Some have scripts that end in suicide.

The concepts in that book sparked many lively discussions about life script theory and how to apply the theory in actual clinical practice with our own clients. I became intrigued with Berne’s theories and completed the training to become a certified clinical transactional analyst. Subsequently, I also became a licensed psychoanalyst in my endeavour to understand more about intrapsychic conflict and how it is played out through the transferences of everyday life (Freud, 1912b). Over the past forty years, I have remained intrigued by how the unrequited needs and traumas of early childhood are repeatedly re-enacted in adult life transaction-by-transaction in intimate relationships, at work, in a myriad of social situations, and in the course of psychotherapy. Each of the authors in this book has also been intrigued, in his or her own way, with the theory of life scripts. They are all certified transactional analysts who have studied other schools of psychotherapy, such as traditional and contemporary psychoanalysis, including object-relations theory, self-psychology, and intersubjective and relational perspectives. In addition, Gestalt therapy, bodycentred psychotherapy, constructivism, existential philosophy, group dynamics, and family therapy are part of the professional backgrounds of this international collection of contributors. Their theoretical ideas have been influenced by the current research in child development, neuroscience, and both the qualitative and empirical research into the effectiveness of psychotherapy. In essence, this illustrious group of authors has integrated a broad professional perspective into their understanding of a theory of mind, theories of personality, and the methods of psychotherapy. Each chapter provides a unique theoretical perspective; some of the chapters are provocative and challenge Berne’s and others’ long

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held notions about life scripts. Every chapter includes a clinical case of an actual client that illustrates how the theory of life scripts is used in psychotherapy. The thirteen chapters in this book begin with my own chapter, “Life scripts: unconscious relational patterns and psychotherapeutic involvement”, which articulates the theory of life script by integrating concepts from transactional analysis, contemporary psychoanalysis, and the current psychotherapy literature. This chapter provides a comprehensive definition of life scripts as a complex set of unconscious relational patterns based on physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, explicit decisions, and/or self-regulating introjections, made under stress, at any developmental age, that inhibit spontaneity and limit flexibility in problem-solving, health maintenance and in relationship with people. The chapter reviews the transactional analysis literature that has traditionally emphasized life scripts as being formed in childhood from destructive messages from care-takers while under-emphasizing the significance of unconscious experiential conclusions and physiological survival reactions that form the core, or “protocol and palimpsest”, of the life script. I propose that cumulative neglect and early childhood trauma result in physiological survival reactions and experiential conclusions that establish unconscious relational patterns that may dominate a person’s life and are expressed through the “transferences of everyday life”. Included in this developmental perspective of life scripts is the concept that the script is held within the body as a self-protective, inhibited, and rigidified physiological reaction. In the section “Whose script is it?” I suggest that it may be necessary to engage in a psychotherapy of the introjected parent as a way to decommission an important dimension of the client’s life script. In the next chapter, “The lived and narrated script”, Maria Teresa Tosi (Italy) expresses the idea that human beings need to define their own identity to both themselves and others though the creation of autobiographical stories. She describes life scripts as a narrative construction with personal, interpersonal and cultural meaning. A life script is an interaction between implicit and explicit memories, as well as current knowledge, and has the purpose of helping the individual build his or her own identity, anticipating

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other’s reactions and giving perspective on life. Dr Tosi defines selfnarratives as not only an expression of a life script, but also as a creation of an interpersonal contact that can shape and reshape the script by finding new meanings and integrating both new and old experiences. Helena Hargaden (UK) has written the third chapter, entitled “When parting is not such sweet sorrow: “Mourning and melancholia”, projective identification, and script analysis”. This chapter illustrates the psychotherapist’s task of finding “an affective link to the client’s unconscious” in order to elicit the multiple meanings inherent in an unconscious life script. She presents a case wherein the nuances and subtle aspects of script dynamics emerge through transferential relatedness. She demonstrates a willingness to take part in the whole transference drama and to allow her own countertransference to form and inform about both the relational unconscious and the deficits in the client’s earliest traumatic experiences. She draws on Freud’s essay “Mourning and melancholia” to understand her client’s melancholic fear of losing in relationship—a terror of abandonment he had known intensely in his early life and had been lost to consciousness. The fourth chapter is by Jo Stuthridge (New Zealand). “Script or scripture?” incorporates recent understandings from developmental research into script theory. She states that a theory must keep abreast of empirical research to prevent the concepts from becoming rigid or dogmatic. Her chapter, drawing from recent literature in neuroscience, infant research, and relational psychoanalysis, presents a re-conceptulization of life script theory as an unconscious self-narrative that organizes the mind, life experiences, and a sense of identity. This internal process is expressed through an emotional, embodied pattern of relating to self and others. She sees therapeutic change in a client’s life script as emerging from an interpersonal attunement that stimulates the development of a coherent, flexible and dynamic self-narrative. Bill Cornell’s (USA) chapter “Whose body is it? Somatic relations in script and script protocol” presents an exciting supervision case where both client and therapist sought an outside consultation for a therapy that had reached an impasse. As a consultant, Cornell was able to bring new sight, insight and emotional/physiological resonance to the therapeutic process. His body-centred perspective

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provided a new window of exploration on both the client’s life script and the psychotherapist’s sense of protectiveness and bewilderment. Cornell brings our attention to the somatic components of emotional experience that are sensory motor and visceral (affective–limbic) elements of sub-symbolic mental processing. He defines psychotherapy as the integration of the sub-symbolic, nonverbal symbolic, and verbal symbolic domains of experience, so that all three domains are accessible to one another, open to new stimuli, and fluid in response to the environment. Cornell’s chapter is a reminder of the importance of the early “protocol” in script formation—the repetitive, affectively intense patterns of relatedness preceding the capacity for language and symbolic processing. Ian Stewart (UK) addresses three possible tragic endings of life scripts: suicide, homicide, or psychosis. He uses the colloquial term “escape hatches” to describe how one can exit from the overwhelming problems of a tragic transference drama. In his chapter, “The three ways out: escape hatches”, Stewart presents both a scholarly review of the transactional analysis literature and a practical means for reversing tragic life scripts. He describes how a psychotherapist can use both the methods of redecision therapy and therapeutic contracts to facilitate the client closing his or her escape hatches. He goes on to describe how the possibility of going crazy, harming others, or harming one’s self are the “king-pins” of a negative script, and why the closure of these tragic outcomes of a life script may be essential in enhancing the process of change. Chapter Seven, entitled “From a child psychiatry practice”, by James Allen (USA), begins with a review of Greenspan’s model of child development and then addresses how it may be applied in the psychotherapy of an adult. He draws on the neuroscience literature to explain the formation of a life script. Then, in the case study of an eighty-year-old depressed man, Allen describes the importance of both emotional regulation and permissions in converting the client’s social isolation to social interaction. The treatment focused on co-constructing experiences that facilitated the capacities associated with each of Greenspan’s developmental levels. Allen challenges the traditional view that the psychotherapy of life scripts needs to focus on early childhood issues. Rosemary Napper’s (UK) chapter, “The individual in context”, takes the position that social context provides the clues to interper-

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sonally connect and differentiate from others, establishes our psychological frame of reference, and embeds relationships with meaningfulness both in and out of awareness. Each contextual situation may trigger complex transferences to the “person-in-context”. She shares the perspective that people in their humanity can only exist and be experienced through their roles. A core issue for individuals is how to be consistent across all their various roles rather than the roles becoming fragmented or rigidly held. She proposes that many roles involve being part of a larger system, such as family, associations or organizations which are consciously chosen because they provide both a mirror and a paradox of one’s personal life script. Napper looks at social context and how an individual’s script determines the roles they will play in a larger social system or organization. This chapter is particularly important for those who are conducting couple, family, or group psychotherapy, or who are working as educational or organizational consultants. In Chapter Nine, Claude Steiner (USA) writes about “Scripts: then and now” with a fifty-year retrospective on how the theory emerged. He describes how his contribution to the development of script theory began with investigating the transactional transmission of scripts in alcoholic clients and resulted in his development of the script matrix diagram. The script matrix illustrates which of the parents’ transactions are relevant to script formation. Steiner identified the source of toxic messages as coming from the parents’ acting out their own scripts and passing the script down to the next generation. He uses an ego state model to illustrate the injunctions, attributions, and counter-script messages that the offspring synthesize and develop into a personal narrative that influences the course of his or her life. Steiner describes the transferential components of a “loveless script”, which are affection and love, strokes, stroke hunger, and stroke exchanges. Fanita English begins Chapter Ten with a folksy story of how children form survival conclusions from parental messages about who they are and what will happen to them over the course of life. In her chapter “It takes a lifetime to play out a script”, she states, “A script is first developed by a child as an imaginative organizing structure that supports his or her development and the evolution of his or her innate potential. It becomes a protective mental bulwark against becoming overwhelmed by a multiplicity of internal and

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external stimuli”. Throughout her chapter, she takes the position that life scripts are not pathological phenomena, but, rather, a natural outgrowth of the need to form meaning. She does account for how some children are inescapably bound to implement particularly harmful messages from “pathological care-takers”. She uses the term “episcript” to describe the transmission of tragic scripts from one generation to another. She builds her theory around three motivators: survival, expressive, and quiescence. Birgitta Heiller’s (UK) and Charlotte Sills’ (UK) “Life scripts: an existential perspective” draws on the ideas of several existential authors. They propose that life scripts are the expressions of existential dilemmas and that the childhood neglects, stresses, and/or traumas that shape the script are themselves in the context of these existential dilemmas. They include how to relate to self and others, exercising control over life events, understanding and making use of the freedom of choice, managing the complexities living in the here-and-now, and accepting the unpredictability of when we will die. In Chapter Twelve, Gloria Noriega (Mexico) has written about “Transgenerational scripts: the unknown knowledge”. She describes her research into the passage of unconscious life scripts from one generation to another. In doing so, she uses the concept of ulterior transactions to explain how the life stories and emotions of grandparents may be repeated in the lives of clients who are stuck in their therapy process. She illustrates how shame and family secrets are transmitted and then enacted by a later generation as a result of ulterior transactions, psychological games, transference dynamics, and projective identification. An ego state model is used to illustrate the transgenerational transmission of life scripts. Marye O’Reilly-Knapp and I wrote the last chapter, “The script system: an unconscious organization of experience”, to provide the psychotherapist with a useful blueprint of how a life script can be active in life today. The script system illustrates the client’s unconscious organization of experience that provides a distraction against awareness of past experiences, relational-needs, and related emotions while, simultaneously, being a repetition of the past. By therapeutically attending to physical sensations and bodily experiences, behaviours and functions of behaviours, fantasies and dreams, conscious and implicit memories, affective and relational-needs, and

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the client’s script beliefs about self, others, and the quality of life, the psychotherapist facilitates changes in the client’s life script. The case presentation provides an example of how a relationally focused psychotherapy that emphasizes phenomenological enquiry, affective and developmental attunement, and a committed therapeutic involvement can be enhanced through the psychotherapist’s understanding of the client’s script system. It is an honour to be the editor of this collection of life scripts theories. I have learnt a great deal from reading each author’s perspective. I hope that you will find these chapters informative and stimulating, contributing to therapeutic effectiveness with your own clients.

References Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1972). What do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny. New York: Grove Press. Freud, S. (1912b). The dynamics of transference. S.E., 12: 97–108. London: Hogarth Press. Perls, F. S., Hefferline, R. F., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Julian Press.

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CHAPTER ONE

Life scripts: unconscious relational patterns and psychotherapeutic involvement Richard G. Erskine

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ife scripts are a complex set of unconscious relational patterns based on physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, explicit decisions, and/or self-regulating introjections, made under stress, at any developmental age, that inhibit spontaneity and limit flexibility in problem-solving, health maintenance, and in relationship with people (Erskine, 1980). Scripts are often developed by infants, young children, adolescents, and even adults as a means of coping with disruptions in significant dependent relationships that repeatedly failed to satisfy crucial developmentally based needs. These unconscious script patterns most probably have been formulated, reinforced, and elaborated over a number of developmental ages as a result of repeated ruptures in relationships with significant others. Life scripts are a result of the cumulative failures in significant, dependent relationships! Such life scripts are unconscious systems of psychological organization and self-regulation primarily formed from implicit memories (Erskine, 2008; Fosshage, 2005) and expressed through physiological discomforts, escalations or minimizations of affect, and the transferences that occur in everyday life. 1

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These unconscious relational patterns, schemata, or life plans influence the reactions and expectations that define for us the kind of world we live in, the people we are, and the quality of interpersonal relationships we will have with others. Encoded physiologically in body tissues and biochemical events, affectively as sub-cortical brain stimulation and cognitively in the form of beliefs, attitudes, and values, these responses form a blueprint that guides the way we live our lives. Such scripts involve a complex network of neural pathways formed as thoughts, affects, biochemical and physiological reactions, fantasy, relational patterns, and the important process of homeostatic self-regulation of the organism. Scripts formed from physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, relational failures, prolonged misattunements and neglects, as well as chronic shock and acute trauma, all require a psychotherapy wherein the therapeutic relationship is central and is evident through the respect, reliability, and the dependability of a caringly, involved, skilled real person (Erskine, 1993).

Literature review Eric Berne, in articulating the theory of transactional analysis, termed these unconscious patterns, schemata, or archaic blueprints a “script” (1961). Berne originally defined a script as an “extensive unconscious life plan” (ibid., p. 23) that reflects the “primal dramas of childhood”; they “are derivatives, or more precisely, adaptations of infantile reactions and experiences” (ibid., p. 116). Later, he referred to script as a “life plan based on decisions made in childhood, reinforced by parents, justified by subsequent events and culminating in a chosen alternative” (1972, p. 446). Fritz Perls, who co-developed Gestalt therapy, also described such self-confirming, repetitive conclusions and patterns (1944) and called it a “life script” (Perls & Baumgardner, 1975) that was composed of both an “early scene” and a resulting “life plan” (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951, pp. 305–306). Alfred Adler referred to these patterns, or schemata, as “life style” (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956); Sigmund Freud used the term “repetition compulsion” to describe similar phenomena (1920g); and contemporary

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psychoanalytic writers have referred to a developmentally preformed pattern as “unconscious fantasy” (Arlow, 1969a, p. 8) and as “schemata” (Arlow, 1969b, p. 29; Slap, 1987). In psychoanalytic self-psychology the phrase “self system” is used to refer to recurring patterns of low self-esteem and self-defeating interactions (Basch, 1988, p. 100) that are the result of “unconscious organizing principles” termed “pre-reflexive unconscious” (Stolorow & Atwood, 1989, p. 373). In dynamic systems theory, the terms “preferred attractor states” is used to describe repetitive patterns of organizing affective and cognitive experiences and relating to others (Thelen & Smith, 1994). John Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) also wrote about unconscious relational patterns and described the biological imperative of prolonged physical and affective bonding in the creation of a visceral core from which all experiences of self and others emerge. Bowlby referred to these patterns as internal working models that are generalized from past experiences. Bowlby’s theory provides a model for understanding how an infant’s or young child’s physiological survival reactions and implicit experiential conclusions may form an “internal working model”, the antecedents of an unconscious life script. The general psychology literature has described such schemata, unconscious plans, or life scripts as “cognitive structures” that reflect an individual’s organization of the world into a unified system of beliefs, concepts, attitudes, and expectations (Lewin, 1951); “personal constructs” (Kelly, 1955); “self-confirmation theory” (Andrews, 1988, 1989); “internalized relationship patterns” (Beitman, 1992); and as a self-reinforcing system or “a self-protection plan” referred to as both the “racket system” (Erskine & Zalcman, 1979) and the “script system” (Erskine & Moursund, 1988). Each of the authors cited above describes some aspect of unconscious relational patterns, or life scripts. Each author suggests a therapy that involves some combination of analysis, interpretation, explanation, interpersonal relatedness, or behavioural change. It is my opinion that in order to do a thorough “script cure”, it is necessary to provide a relational psychotherapy that integrates affective, behavioural, cognitive, and physiological dimensions of psychotherapy so that unconscious experience may become conscious (Erskine, 1980).

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Unconscious processes The purpose of a serious in-depth psychotherapy is the resolution of a client’s unconscious script inhibitions or compulsions in relationship with people, inflexibility in problem-solving, and deficiencies in health care. Such a “script cure” involves an internal reorganization and new integration of affective and cognitive structures, undoing physiological retroflections, decommissioning introjections, and consciously choosing behaviour that is meaningful and appropriate in the current relationship or task rather than behaviour that is determined by compulsion or fear or archaic coping reactions. The aim of an in-depth and integrative psychotherapy is to provide the quality of therapeutic relationship, understanding, and skill that facilitates the client becoming conscious of what was previously unconscious, so that he or she can be intimate with others, maintain good health, and engage in the tasks of everyday life without preformed restrictions. What most people generally consider as “conscious memory” is usually composed of explicit memory—the type of memory that is described as symbolic: a photographic image, impressionistic painting, or audio recording of what was said in past events. Such explicit or declarative memory is usually anchored in the capacity to use social language and concepts to describe experience. Experience that is “unconscious” usually lacks explicit recall of an event because it is sub-symbolic, implicit, and without language. Subsymbolic or implicit memories that are problematic or unresolved are potentially “felt” as physiological tensions, undifferentiated affect, longings, or repulsions, and pre-reflective relational and selfregulating patterns (Erskine, 2008; Fosshage, 2005; Kihlstrom, 1984). Bucci (2001) describes such physiological sensations as unconscious communication of emotional information processing. Such physiologically sensed affective memories are forms of experience that are neither linguistically descriptive nor verbally narrative. Physiological and affective experience may be revealed in body language that signals the person’s unconscious story. I find it important to think in developmental terms and concepts, not only in terms of unconscious process as reflecting either trauma or repression. I generally conceptualize unconscious process (pre-symbolic, sub-symbolic, procedural, or implicit memory)


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as being composed of several developmental and experiential levels: pre-verbal; never conceptualized; never acknowledged within the family; the absence of memory because significant relational experiences never occurred; actively avoided verbalization as a result of punishment, guilt or shame; and pre-reflective patterns of self-in-relationship that are composed of attachment styles, strategies of self-regulation, relational-needs, script beliefs, and introjections (Erskine, 2008). When we define script as a complex set of unconscious relational patterns based on physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, explicit decisions, and/or self-regulating introjections, made under stress, we are including script patterns that are formed from explicit memory embedded in conscious or preconscious decisions of a previous developmental period. We are also describing the structured result of pre-symbolic and implicit memory, as well as unconscious procedural ways of relating to others, unconscious bodily processes, the unconscious aspects of acute trauma and dissociation, the unconscious effects of cumulative misattunement and neglect, unconscious introjection and/or pre-reflective unconscious organization of attachment styles, relational-needs, and self-regulation. Each of these antecedents of a life script requires a specific form of therapy to enable the unconscious experiences to become conscious and to facilitate the emergence of new patterns of thinking, feeling, body process, behaviour, and interpersonal contact.

Injunctions and decisions: explicit memory Berne (1972), English (1972), Steiner (1971), Stuntz (1972), and Woolams (1973) have each described script as being formed by parental injunctions and a child’s acquiescence to the parents’ messages. Their ideas vary in how injunctions are communicated, the critical developmental periods when a child is most susceptible to such messages, and the psychological lethalness of both injunctions and the resulting compliance. Each of these theorists basically views script as an interaction of injunctions, counter-injunctions, compliance, and early developmental protocol. Generally, therapy of these script dynamics is described by these authors as consisting of explanation, illustration, confirmation, and interpretation.

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Steiner (1971) put particular emphasis on the coercive power of the parents’ overt and ulterior messages to lethally shape a child’s life, while Bob and Mary Goulding (1978) described a list of such injunctions that formed the basis of a child making script decisions. Their examples of script decisions are examples of explicit memories wherein a scene from childhood is consciously remembered, a corresponding parental injunction is identified, and the child’s original decision to comply with the injunction is articulated. Because these memories and the resulting script decisions are explicit forms of memory, they may be amenable to a redecision therapy. As a result of this conscious awareness of how the script was originally decided, with an awareness of the lifelong consequences, and with the therapist’s support, a life changing redecision is possible (Erskine, 1974). Several examples of how redecisions are an effective form of script therapy when the script dynamics and decisions can be explicitly remembered are in Mary and Bob Goulding’s book Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy (1979) and their videotape “Redecision therapy” (1987), as well as in Erskine and Moursund’s Integrative Psychotherapy in Action (1988). Allen and Allen (1972) suggested that the therapists’ permissions to live differently than the parental injunctions dictate are an important element in counterbalancing or altering the effects of such script-forming memory because the permissions provide new explicit memories of an involved other person who is invested in the client’s welfare. In a 1980 article, I identified the behavioural, intrapsychic, and physiological dimensions of “script cure” and established the theoretical basis for the script system, originally referred to as the racket system (Erskine & Zalcman, 1979). The script system provides a model of how a life script is formed from explicit decisions, implicit and pre-symbolic experiential conclusions, fixated patterns of self-regulation, and/or introjections, and are actually lived out in current life, where they are expressed through behaviour, the quality of relationships, fantasy, internal physical sensations, and selected explicit memories (Erskine & Moursund, 1988). The script system describes how the life script is operational now as core beliefs about self, others, and the quality of life. The script system is composed of internal experience, perception, imagination, and conceptualization that are augmented by generalizations and elaborations that construct a


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“reality” of ourselves, others, and the quality of life. It leads us to be afraid of, or angry about, what may never occur, to be deeply hurt by our anticipations, and to suffer unnecessarily in current relationships because of the self-reinforcing nature of script beliefs. The chapter in this book entitled “The script system: the unconscious organization of experience” explains the components of the script system, provides a useful diagram, and illustrates, through a case example, how an unconscious script was operational in a client’s day-to-day life.

Implicit memory: cumulative misattunements and experiential conclusions Not all life scripts are based on parental injunctions or script decisions, contrary to what is emphasized in much of the literature on script theory. Unconscious conclusions based on lived experience account for a major portion of life scripts. Implicit experiential conclusions are composed of unconscious affect, physical and relational reactions that are without concept, language, sequencing of events, or conscious thought. Implicit script conclusions may represent early childhood pre-verbal or never verbalized experiences that, because of the lack of relationship, concept, and adequate language, remain unconscious (Erskine, 2008). Later in life, these unconscious conclusions are experienced and expressed through a sense of unfulfilled longing or repulsion and unexpressed or undifferentiated affect. They may also be sensed as confusion, emptiness, uncomfortable body sensations, and/or a procedural knowledge for caution in relationships. These physiological sensations are subsymbolic or pre-symbolic non-verbal affective memories. In my clinical experience, many clients’ life scripts are an expression of procedural, sub-symbolic, and implicit memories of conditioned affective and sensorimotor responses, repetitive selfregulating behaviours, and preemptory, anticipatory, and inhibiting reactions that culminate in unconscious conclusions. Such implicit experiential conclusions provide a variety of psychological functions, such as orientation, self-protection, and a categorization of experiences. Implicit memory refers to the processing of subliminal stimuli, physiological sensations, and affect, as well as lived

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experience that, rather than becoming conscious as explicit memory, remains non-symbolized and therefore unconscious until there is an interested and involved other person who facilitates internal contact, concept formation, and linguistic expression. Implicit script conclusions may unconsciously express developmental needs that were not satisfied, crucial relational interactions that never or seldom occurred, and the repeated failure of optimal responsiveness by primary care-takers. When primary care-takers are repeatedly distressed, anxious, or angry, crucial infancy and early childhood relational interactions may never have occurred. Examples of such crucial parent–child interactions are vital eye-toeye contact, soothing touch, or the reflective mirroring on the parent’s face as the child is either delighted or distressed (Beebe, 2005; Field, Diego, Hernandez-Reif, Schanberg, Kuhn, & Yando, 2003; Weinberg & Tronick, 1998). Such repeated parental failure to attune and respond to the developmental needs of the young child constitutes psychological neglect. These failures are not necessarily—or even usually—the result of deliberate and conscious choices on the part of care-takers. They are more often caused by parental ignorance, fatigue, or preoccupation with other concerns; or the parents may be depressed and tangled in script patterns of their own that are incompatible with meeting the child’s needs. The child, however, is unlikely to understand adult preoccupation, depression, fatigue, or script manifestations and may well fantasize intentionality when none is present. “Mum has no time for me”; “I’m not important enough”; “Dad doesn’t even look at me; he must be really mad at me because I am so bad.” Such implicit experiential conclusions, over time, form an unconscious life script. Children who grow up with, or go to school in, an environment of psychological neglect, prolonged affective misattunements, or repetitive ridicule, often fail to develop a sense of competency, selfdefinition, or the capacity to make an impact on others. Their necessary sense of security, self-value, efficacy, and agency, or selfdefinition, can be slowly and repeatedly undermined by disparaging comments, ridicule, or humiliating remarks from parents, teachers, siblings, and other children. The result may be a pervasive sense of shame and the conviction that “something’s wrong with me” (Erskine, 1994). In some situations, children and adolescents may unconsciously overcompensate by becoming extremely


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competent, demandingly self-definitive, or insistent on making an impact on others. The affective memories of such repetitive neglect, misattunement, or criticism (although implicit and/or procedural rather than explicit or conscious) shape conclusions about self and a style of relationship that may linger for many years. The result of such neglect is referred to as cumulative trauma. Cumulative trauma is a delayed reaction to scores of implicit and/or procedural memories of significant relational disruptions and repeated non-verbal conclusions about self, others, and the quality of life (Lourie, 1996; Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999). Many personally disturbing feelings and script beliefs about self-value, belonging within a group, or the capacity to learn have their origin in the unconscious physical and affective responses to the cumulative criticism, disregard, and rejections that may have occurred in school or on the playground. As well as the early child– parent–sibling interactions, the interpersonal dynamics between peers from pre-school to university have a significant influence in forming unconscious procedural patterns and script beliefs about self, others, and the quality of membership in a group. The attitudes and behaviours of teachers may also be significant in shaping unconscious identification and/or experiential conclusions.

Cumulative trauma Berne (1961) differentiated between “traumatic neurosis” caused by a specific trauma at a specific time in life, and “psychoneurosis”, emerging from an ongoing series of misattunements over a long period of time. Khan (1963), who coined the term “cumulative trauma” to describe the unconscious effect of repetitive negative or neglectful events, recognized that relationship failure is the primary cause. He writes, “Cumulative trauma is the result of the breaches in the mother’s role as a protective shield over the whole course of the child’s development, from infancy to adolescence” (p. 290). Even though it can lead to the same sort of script pattern typical in the cases of acute trauma, cumulative trauma is initially developed in a different way. Rather than protecting oneself from the pain of a specific incident, the person must deal with a slow but constant accumulation of tiny, almost insignificant misattunements,

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hurts, neglects, or criticisms. Over time, the person comes to accept this pattern as simply a part of the way he/she/others/life has to be. Like the slow drip of calcium-laden water that builds over the years into a stalactite or stalagmite, the drip of cumulative trauma results in the slow building up of script beliefs in the caverns of one’s mind. There is often very little to point to in later life, no way to say, “That is what happened to me, and this is how I reacted.” Each early childhood neglect and misattunement in and of itself may not be traumatic, but they lead to script-building consequences cumulatively and are recognized (if one eventually becomes conscious of the pattern and understands the influence) only in retrospect. Lourie (1996) defines cumulative trauma as “the totality of the psychological failures, or misattunements, that a child endures from infancy through adolescence and beyond” (p. 277). When parents are not consistently contactful, or do not resonant with the child’s expression of affect, they fail to acknowledge or validate the child’s relational-needs. Children whose affective expressions and relational-needs are not acknowledged and validated have no social mirror in which to view themselves, and, therefore, lack the necessary relational partner whose mirroring response or explanation may provide an articulation and possible reversal of the emerging script conclusions. Cumulative misattunement to the child’s emotional expressions, developmental needs, and emerging relational patterns and conclusions interferes with the child’s opportunity to discover and create themselves as unique and emotionally supported individuals within a matrix of social relationships (Trautmann & Erskine, 1999). “A severe consequence of cumulative trauma”, says Lourie (1996), “is the loss of trust in and knowledge of self resulting from the vast assortment of parental misattunements . . . that the child endures” (p. 277). These children may conclude that at their core they are inadequate and unlovable; they hide this conclusion and resulting belief from others—and from themselves—and the result may be an inability to form a lasting and satisfying intimate relationship. They may withdraw from the company of others or may chain themselves on a treadmill of endless and superficial social activities; they may constantly demand attention and caretaking; or they may make themselves over-responsible for the needs of those


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around them. As a result, there is a loss of both internal and interpersonal contact (Erskine & Moursund, 1988; Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951). The person may lose contact with his or her own sensations, feelings, needs, thoughts, or memories, as well as interrupting interpersonal contact with others. All of these contactinterrupting cognitive and/or behavioural manifestations of the experiential conclusions serve to distract the person from the implicit memory of loneliness, emptiness, and misattunement that the child may have actually experienced. These script-based beliefs, fantasies, and behaviours do not satisfy the unrequited childhood relational-needs (and, over the long run, actually prevent the satisfaction of current relational-needs), but the internal and external interruptions to contact distract from an awareness of such needs for a time, dulling the pain and providing temporary relief (Moursund & Erskine, 2004). Interruptions to contact (such as denial, disavowal, desensitization, retroflection, introjection, relational distancing) reduce the awareness and distress of relational failure. They may temporarily alleviate anxiety and the memory of neglectful or traumatic events while distracting from the sense of interpersonal loss. They are “normal” in that they are human, adaptive reactions to repeatedly unmet biological and relational-needs. When used repeatedly, or to an extreme degree, contact interruptions interfere with the important integration of affect, physiology, and memory by creating perceptual distortion, emotional confusion, limitations in information processing and a lack of awareness of relational-needs. Relational needs include many dimensions of interpersonal contact and attachment, such as affective and rhythmic attunement, mutual influence and validation, and the shared use of language to communicate phenomenological experience. Some of the many dimensions of relational-needs are: a sense of security in relationship; validation of one’s affect and internal experience; a sense of reliance, dependability, and consistency from a significant other person; a shared experience; self-definition; the capacity for having an impact in relationship; to have the other initiate; and to express one’s appreciation and gratitude (Erskine, 1998; Erskine & Trautmann, 1996; Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999). The experience of prolonged neglect of these relational-needs interrupts internal contact and forms the core of implicit script conclusions.

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Body script Life scripts are often encoded biochemically within bodily tissue. In almost every case of script, whether formed by explicit decisions, unconscious experientially-based conclusions, or survival reactions, there may be a corresponding biochemical and physiological response within the body. Because of the intense sub-cortical brain stimulation and biochemical activity at the time of script conclusion or decision, the person may be unable freely to express emotions and act in accordance with needs (Damasio, 1999). The amygdala and limbic system of the brain are overwhelmed and the natural physiological and affective expression may be turned inward—a physiological retroflection (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951). This physiological retroflection, which is paired with a lack of safety, an unexpressed protest, unexpressed fear, or a shutting down of the body’s natural action, is often maintained years later as a physiological structure, habitual action, or inhibition of expression. When misattunement and neglect from significant others have persisted over time, these inhibiting retroflections actually become the person’s physiological sense of “this is me”. The stiff neck, the muscle pain in the shoulders, the grinding of teeth, the clenched fist, is what the client has always known. These manifestations of body scripts are encoded as physiological, as well as psychological, structures. Life scripts that have an origin in either acute or chronic trauma, or even cumulative neglect, are almost always physiological—the script is within the body—as a result of the survival reactions within the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axes of the brain and the corresponding muscular tension (Cozolino, 2006). These psychological survival reactions often reoccur as automatic and sudden responses that involve various organs, muscle groups, or even the total body, because of the brain’s stimulation of neurotransmitters and hormones that affect every organ system (Van der Kolk, 1994). The sudden reactivation of physiological survival reactions are not conscious (until after they have occurred) because the associational networks of the brain have become “fear conditioned” and are paired with other script dynamics such as core script beliefs, behavioural patterns, and a conglomerate of emotional memories (LeDoux, 1994).


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When stress or neglect occurs early in life, is prolonged or extreme, brain functioning and behaviour become organized around fear, rigidity, and an avoidance of stimulation and exploration (Cozolino, 2006). Several writings and research reports on early child development support the idea that script is formed by sub-symbolic physiological survival reactions, self-regulation patterns, and unconscious conclusions in response to the quality of both early and ongoing significant relationships (Beebe, 2005; Bloom, 1997; Field, Diego, Hernandez-Reif, Schanberg, Kuhn, & Yando, 2003; Lyons-Ruth, Zoll, Connell, & Grunebaum, 1986; Tronick & Gianino, 1986; Weinberg & Tronick, 1998). The earlier the misattunement, neglect, or physical and emotional trauma, the more likely the script will be within the body and not accessible through language or a narrative form of therapy and, in many cases, not available to consciousness. An effective and complete psychotherapy aimed at script cure must identify and ameliorate the physiological restrictions, inhibitions, and body tensions that interfere with affect, expression of current relational-needs or the maintenance of good health. When I engage in body script therapy, the treatment goal is to energize the body tissue that was inhibited and rigidified when developmentally based physical and relational-needs were unsatisfied and primal feelings were repressed. Body script therapy may be the entrance into doing affective or cognitive therapy as a means of bringing unconscious experience to awareness, or it may be a concluding step in the treatment of specific script restrictions. Interventions at the level of body script include those approaches that lead to somatic change, such as attentive awareness to bodily process, gentle touch, deep massage work, tension relaxation, or proper diet, exercise, and recreational activities that enhance the flow of energy and movement of the body. Script cure at the physiological level is a letting go of tensions, body armouring, and internal restrictions that inhibit the person from living life fully and easily within his or her own body. Changes in body script are often evident to an observer as a more relaxed appearance, freer movement, increased energy, and an established weight level that is appropriate for the person’s frame. After experiencing an effective psychotherapy orientated to resolving physiological restrictions, inhibitions, and retroflection, people

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report having a greater sense of vitality, an ease of movement, and an increased sense of well-being. A description of the methods that are useful in the cure of physiological aspects of life scripts is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it is the responsibility of the psychotherapist to focus on bodily processes, retroflection, physiological survival reactions, early childhood coping strategies (such as freezing, flailing, turning away), and even minute movements or silences. Each of these may be an expression of a physiological response to relational disruptions that are imbedded in a life script.

Introjection: whose script is it? Introjection is an unconscious self-protective identification with aspects of the personality of significant others that occurs in the absence of full contact, where crucial needs were unfilled in a dependent relationship. Introjection provides a psychological compensation for unsatisfied relational-needs and disruptions in essential interpersonal contact. An external relational conflict is avoided, but the conflict is, instead, internalized, where it is seemingly easier to manage (Perls, 1978). Therefore, introjection is often accompanied by physiological survival reactions and retroflections. (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1950). Many aspects of a person’s life script may be the result of introjecting parents’, teachers’, or significant others’ feelings, bodily reactions, attitudes, script beliefs, behaviours, and relational patterns. It may be imperative in a thorough treatment of life script to identify the origin of the client’s depression, disappointments, bitterness, spitefulness, or internal criticism. Are such attitudes, beliefs, anticipations, and behaviours the result of one’s own life experiences, conclusions, and decisions? Or are these the assumed thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and coping systems of a significant other that have been introjected? Is the script the result of a self-criticizing defence against awareness of the internal influence of an introjection (Erskine, 1988)? The therapeutic explanation and identification of the many aspects of introjection and the necessary psychotherapy are important in the treatment planning and selection of methods that lead to script cure. The specific methods in the


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treatment of introjection or vehement self-criticism and actual case examples are detailed in several other writings (Erskine, 2003; Erskine & Moursund, 1988; Erskine & Trautmann, 2003; Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999; Moursund & Erskine, 2004). In a thorough psychotherapy aimed at script cure, it may be essential that the psychotherapist addresses the internalized elements of the personality of significant others and either provides a therapeutic interposition or a complete decommissioning of the introjection (Berne, 1961).

Transferences of everyday life Although life scripts may be formed at any developmental age, in my clinical experience, tenacious life scripts are not formed by explicit decisions alone, but are most commonly formed from a composite of implicit experiential conclusions, survival reactions, and introjections. The implicit memories of these script-forming conclusions, survival reactions, and introjections are not directly available through the client’s explicit memory or in any organized narrative about his or her early life experiences. Such early memories and implicit conclusions are revealed through bodily reactions, pre-reflective relational patterns, transference within the therapeutic relationship and, most commonly, through the transferences of everyday life (Freud, 1912b). The hurts and angers with family or friends, or the fearfully anticipated reactions of co-workers, the disregard for one’s health or general welfare, and the habitual worry, repetitive fantasies, or obsessions are examples of the unconscious transference of early emotional memory into the current events of everyday life. Berne defines scripts as “transference phenomena” that may be re-enacted over a lifetime and that are derived and adapted from “infantile reactions and experiences” and the “primal dramas of childhood” (1961, p. 116). In an effective psychotherapy, it is often necessary for the psychotherapist to help the client construct a narrative of his or her early emotional and relational experiences in order to gain an understanding and resolution of his or her transferential reactions. This is often accomplished through the therapeutic method of implication, wherein the therapist co-constructs

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with the client meanings for his or her experience and provides both concepts and a sense of the significance to the affective and physiological memories. Transference, both within the therapeutic relationship and the course of everyday life, is often an expression of “the first traumatic experience, the protocol” and the cumulative “later versions or palimpsests” (ibid., p. 124) of the script—the unconscious experiential conclusions. Transference within a therapy relationship, and, even more commonly and frequently, in the relationships and activities of everyday life, is an expression of the effects of previous relational disruptions and failures, as well as an expression of relationalneeds and a desire to achieve intimacy in relationships. It is an unconscious enactment of past affect-laden experiences and psychological functions, such as self-regulation, compensation, or selfprotection (Brenner, 1979; Erskine, 1993; Langs, 1976). Transference is a manifestation and expression of the unconscious dynamics of life scripts.

Elizabeth: an unconscious search for love The following case example of Elizabeth’s unconscious search for her mother’s love is an illustration of how her life script was the result of implicit experiential conclusions, cumulative parental misattunement to her affect and relational-needs, and an explicit script decision. In Elizabeth’s psychotherapy, we explored her bodily sensations and physiological survival reactions and how she may have introjected her mother’s depression when she was an infant and pre-school child. My phenomenological and historical enquiry, affective, developmental, and rhythmic attunement, and therapeutic inference revealed that the very young Elizabeth was deeply affected by her mother’s depression. One of our therapeutic tasks was to separate her own unconscious reactive early childhood depression from the introjected depression of her mother and to provide a sensitive therapy to both aspects of the depression. Our psychotherapy focused on making her unconscious affect and physiological experience conscious and attending to her developmental needs for a dependable, consistent, and involved relationship. Interwoven through this case illustration are some examples of how the script was manifested in everyday life and the necessity


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for a relational and integrative psychotherapy aimed at achieving a script cure. Elizabeth looked like a lost child when she began her psychotherapy. She described herself as “empty, lost, and confused”. In her initial sessions, she wondered if she had “inherited a depression” because she often felt “so empty inside”. She dressed poorly, even though she had a well-paying job. Her clothes neither fit her well nor did the colours or patterns match. Her hair often looked uncombed and in need of a cut. My early impressions of Elizabeth were that she was a neglected and unloved child. Elizabeth was married, and described her relationship with her husband as “we mostly just live together” without much physical contact. She saw no problem with her marriage, because she and her husband often did things together, such as going to many cinemas and she was pleased that he did the grocery shopping and all the cooking. Elizabeth’s father once angrily told her that Elizabeth’s mother was “depressed” and that the depression was why her mother “abandoned” the family when Elizabeth was five years old. Her father would get angry and critical if Elizabeth ever asked any questions about her mother. There were no photos of Mother, nor was there any contact with members of Mother’s family. Mother ceased to exist. There was never any conversation between Elizabeth and her father about her mother’s disappearance. Elizabeth’s father never made any acknowledgement of Elizabeth’s emotional loss of her mother and certainly no validation of her intense grief and need to be loved. She unconsciously concluded during her childhood years that her feelings, emptiness, and longings meant “I’m a bother to people”. Elizabeth could not consciously remember anything about her mother. She could not recall what her mother looked like. Father admitted that he had destroyed all of the photographs of Mother, including wedding photos and photos of Elizabeth with her mother when she was a baby and pre-school child. The result was that she walked the streets of New York City searching for a face that could be her mother’s. Elizabeth’s longing for love was unconscious. She was only aware of the emptiness inside and of a desperate “search”. She had no consciousness of her needs for mothering and loving. Whenever I enquired about any relational-need Elizabeth

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might have, or about her mother, she would unconsciously stroke her lips or hair. I recognized these unconscious gestures as a need for security and early mothering, even though she could neither think about nor verbalize her needs. Her self-soothing initially had no meaning to her until we talked about her lip and hair stroking many, many times and related the self-soothing to the need for mothering affection and soothing touch. Even though she had no consciousness of her need for mothering, she acted out her unconscious needs in the transference through her helplessness and demeanour of neglect. Elizabeth found it incomprehensible that I would think about her between sessions. She had no sense that she could make an impact on me. Unlike other clients, Elizabeth never missed me when I travelled. She often said that she did not know what to talk about in our sessions. She expected me to be critical of her. In our early sessions, she was able to identify this expectation of my potential criticalness and related it to explicit memories of her father’s “constant criticism of everyone”. During this phase of therapy, she became conscious of having made an explicit script decision between the ages of ten and twelve to be cautious of everyone because “people are critical”. Elizabeth could recall some stories and explicit memories of interactions with her father, particularly about special events or vacations where they did activities together, such as going to football games or swimming, but Elizabeth had no capacity either to conceptualize or talk about feeling cared for in a relationship, nor did she have any awareness of her relational-needs. During the psychotherapy, Elizabeth’s implicit memories were transformed into explicit stories. Elizabeth described how she would tighten her body in bed rather than snuggle into her husband. Through ongoing phenomenological enquiry about her sensations, affect, and internal images, she eventually said, “I think I could not snuggle into my father. His embrace was hard and he was always in a hurry or critical.” This comment was the opening in our examining several transferential reactions in her marriage and also to the realization of her disavowed anger at her father for the absence of loving in her family. She began to wonder about the cause of mother’s alleged depression and why the mother might have left the family.


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I never did any therapy with Elizabeth’s possible introjection of her father’s attitudes or feelings. If I had had the opportunity, I would have investigated if it was also he who was depressed, particularly after his wife had left him when Elizabeth was five years old. It is possible that his “constant criticism of everyone”, his destroying all the photographs, and his not ever speaking about Elizabeth’s mother was an expression of either his depression or bitter resentment or both. By the third year of therapy, I gently and persistently enquired about Elizabeth’s early relationship with her depressed mother. I felt an intense tenderness for the little girl she once was and an attunement to the needs of a neglected baby and pre-school child. I realize that I kept my eyes on her all the time, particularly on her eyes whenever I caught a glimpse of her downward- or inwardlooking gaze. I experienced a simple innocence in her and a willingness to “please at any cost”. My tender comments and reflections of her possible childhood needs were met with confusion and/or distracting comments—comments unrelated to her vulnerability, needs, or relationship with her mother. These juxtaposition reactions included Elizabeth’s disregard of my caring gaze, words of tenderness, or descriptions of the relational-needs of a young child—a juxtaposition between what she desperately needed from both parents and for which there were neither implicit nor explicit memories. Her deflection and distancing comments also expressed the unconscious script belief, “I don’t need anything”. Elizabeth had neither explicit nor implicit memory of either mother’s or father’s vital eye contact, caring gestures or words, or any attention to her loss, vulnerability, or needs. Elizabeth had no concept of relational-needs, only the longing, empty searching for “something”. Her internal working model, an implicit memory—or, in this case, her non-memory because the events had never occurred—shaped her sense of confusion, distress, and emptiness in response to each of my caring comments. She could not be conscious of the cumulative trauma of what never happened but what should have happened in a loving family relationship. Instead, her unconscious conclusion built up over many years of neglect was “I’m not loveable”. My psychotherapy with Elizabeth often focused on her physical sensations as an unconscious expression of possible needs that were

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not responded to and remained unsatisfied while she was a child. I was particularly sensitive to her unconsciously expressed needs for security, validation, and to rely on someone who is consistent, dependable, and attuned to her affect. The relational-need to make an impact on a significant other, or to have the other initiate any caring gestures, was conspicuously absent in her sparse narrative about her family life. Each of these needs became an integral part of our psychotherapy together. I repeatedly identified, validated, and appreciated these essential needs. Interwoven in our therapy was a careful therapeutic attentiveness to Elizabeth’s sense of shame—a shame she felt with her school peers about coming from a one-parent family and having a mother who had disappeared. Elizabeth described how she had often lied to the other children by telling them about a dramatic childbirth in which her mother had died heroically. Through a great deal of phenomenological enquiry and explanation of the normal needs of children, and, by inference, her own needs, Elizabeth and I co-created a story that began to make sense to her of her longings and self-neglect, her frequent soothing gestures, her emotional discomfort with both eye contact and affectionate touch, and her endless search for a mother’s love. My affective and developmental attunement served to continually inform both of us of the unrequited needs of a young child. The tenderness, kindness, and gentleness that I strove to bring to the therapy provided an involved therapeutic relationship—a relationship that facilitated Elizabeth’s valuing, for the first time in her life, her vulnerability and needs. At the same time, I was facilitating her identification and understanding of the unconscious script conclusion that “life is an empty search”. Putting this unconscious conclusion into words in a number of sessions became important to Elizabeth, because it gave meaning to her longings, emptiness, and search for her mother. She slowly became secure enough in our therapeutic relationship to finally grieve for her lost mother and to acknowledge her anger at her father’s criticalness and emotional distancing. Her appearance improved slowly over time. Periodically, she was dressed in something new that fitted her attractively. One day, in the fifth year of therapy, she surprised me with a new, stylish haircut and colouring—an adult form of self-soothing. She experimented in asking her husband to do things for her and to be


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more affectionate. As a result, she reported an increased intimacy with her husband. She no longer searched for her lost mother’s face on the streets of New York City; her unconscious search for love became conscious. She experienced being loved.

Psychotherapeutic involvement For clients who are similar to Elizabeth, script cure necessitates a relational psychotherapy that addresses affect and cognition, developmental and current needs, the transferences in everyday life, behaviour, and fantasy, physiological reactions and health maintenance, and the psychological functions that perpetuate continual reinforcement of script beliefs. Throughout Elizabeth’s psychotherapy I focused on many of her attempts at avoidance. We explored how each intrapersonal interruption to contact signalled a significant interruption to internal contact with feelings, bodily sensations, needs, memories, or longings. My therapeutic involvement included periodically identifying when and how I was misattuned to her. She was surprised when I took responsibility for my therapeutic errors (Guistolese, 1997). Both the content and affect of my communication were such juxtapositions with how her father related to her (Erskine, 1993). My initial impression of Elizabeth as a neglected and unloved child, and her descriptions of the relationship with her husband, are only two examples of the unconscious communication of a life script through the transferences of everyday life. Her husband represented the longed-for good mother who did all the grocery shopping and cooking while making no sexual demands. In the early phases of the psychotherapy, there appeared to be no transference with me. She was not bothered when I went away. Yet, the apparent absence of transference was the transference! Elizabeth’s avoidance of interpersonal contact with me was a repeat of how she coped with the feelings, relational-needs, and significant dialogue that was absent in her relationship with father. Elizabeth required an involved psychotherapist who was sensitive, authentic, and fully present. It is necessary in a relational and integrative psychotherapy that the psychotherapist provides an ongoing enquiry into the client’s phenomenological experience of each developmentally dependent

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relationship, which includes the influence of parents, family members, teachers, and peers, on forming his or her relational patterns and script beliefs. Such a therapeutically useful phenomenological enquiry can only occur in an atmosphere of the psychotherapist’s sustained attunement to the client’s affect, rhythm, developmental level of functioning, cognitive style, and relationalneeds. In the case of Elizabeth, Father did not acknowledge or validate her grief over the loss of Mother. There was no conversation, no soothing gestures, no way for Elizabeth to resolve her grief and retain any precious memories of Mother. The photographs were destroyed and there was no relationship with the mother’s family. As a result of the unacknowledged mother–daughter relationship and resulting grief at the loss of the relationship, Elizabeth lost conscious memory of anything about her mother. In the psychotherapy, I continually brought up the absence of mother and enquired about Elizabeth’s grief and the missed opportunities between a mother and daughter. I often explained what a growing girl needs from a mother, and would then enquire further about her feelings, bodily sensations, associations, and fantasies. We began to co-create a narrative about her previously unconscious and untold life story—a story that had been acted out by searching for mother’s face.

Conclusion In the psychotherapy of life scripts, it is important that the psychotherapist understands and appreciates that life scripts are a desperate and creative attempt to self-regulate while managing and adjusting to the failures that occurred in significant and dependent relationships throughout life. Scripts are a self-protective way of compensating for what was, and may still be, missing in relationship while ensuring a semblance of relationship. The process of script formation is relationally interactive and personally creative— an assimilation and accommodation (Piaget, 1954) to the neglects, misattunements, relational requirements, or even demands, of significant others (Block, 1982). It involves a generalization of specific experiences and an unconscious anticipation that these generalized experiences will be repeated throughout life.


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The psychotherapy of life script necessitates an understanding and appreciation of each individual’s unique temperament as well as these creative adjustments, coping and adaptive styles, and resulting internal and external interruptions to contact. The psychotherapist’s sensitivity to, and understanding of, physiological survival reactions, unconscious experiential conclusions, contact interruptions, and the unique relational nature of the therapeutic involvement is essential for an in-depth psychotherapy that focuses on the resolution of archaic relational patterns, current relational disturbances, and fixated systems of psychological organization. An effective relational psychotherapy includes the psychotherapist’s acknowledgement of the client’s psychological experiences, validation of his or her affect and attempts at meaning making, and normalization of the client’s developmental attempts to adapt and cope with family and school stressors. It also provides an interested, involved, and caring presence of a real person who communicates to the client that he or she is valued. Script cure is the primary goal of an integrative psychotherapy. Script cure is the result of an integration of affect, cognition, and physiology so that important aspects of one’s life are available to consciousness, and that behaviour, health maintenance, and relationships are the result of flexible choice rather than compulsion or inhibition. People who are no longer functioning in a restrictive life script report that they have the capacity to express themselves in a contactful way in relationship; internally they are emotionally stable because they are both unfettered by predetermined and restrictive script beliefs, and they are aware of their current needs in relationship. They have a sense of self-definition, agency, and authenticity; their behaviour is both contextual and sensitive to other people’s relational-needs. Interpersonally, they are conscientious, gracious, curious, personable, and intimate. Life scripts formed from a composite of physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, relational failures, prolonged misattunements, and neglects require a psychotherapy wherein the therapeutic relationship is central and is evident through the respect, reliability, and dependability of a caringly involved, skilled real person. Life scripts are the result of cumulative failures in significant and dependent relationships and, therefore, an involved relational psychotherapy is necessary for script cure.

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Postscript A detailed description of the philosophy, therapeutic perspective, ethics, and methods of a relational and integrative psychotherapy suitable for facilitating a cure of these tenacious life scripts is described in Integrative Psychotherapy in Action (Erskine & Moursund, 1988), Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-inRelationship (Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999), and Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship (Moursund & Erskine, 2004).

References Allen, J. R., & Allen, B. A. (1972). Scripts: the role of permission. Transactional Analysis Journal, 2: 72–74. Andrews, J. (1988). Self-confirmation theory: a paradigm for psychotherapy integration. Part I. Content analysis of therapeutic styles. Journal of Integrative and Eclectic Psychotherapy, 7(4): 359–384. Andrews, J. (1989). Self-confirmation theory: a paradigm for psychotherapy integration. Part II. Integrative scripting of therapy transcripts. Journal of Integrative and Eclectic Psychotherapy, 8(1): 23–40. Ansbacher, H. L., & Ansbacher, R. R. (1956). The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. New York: Atheneum. Arlow, J. (1969a). Unconscious fantasy and disturbances of conscious experience. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 38: 1–27. Arlow, J. (1969b). Fantasy, memory, and reality testing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 38: 28–51. Basch, M. (1988). Understanding Psychotherapy: The Science Behind the Art. New York: Basic Books. Beebe, B. (2005). Mother–infant research informs mother–infant treatment. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 60: 7–46. Beitman, B. D. (1992). Integration through fundamental similarities and useful differences among the schools. In: J. C. Norcross & M. R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (pp.202–230). New York: Basic Books. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1972). What do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny. New York: Grove Press.


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Block, J. (1982). Assimilation, accommodation, and the dynamics of personality development. ChildDevelopment, 53: 281–295. Bloom, S. L. (1997). Creating Sanctuary: Towards the Evolution of Sane Societies. New York & London: Routledge. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment. Volume 1 of Attachment and Loss. NY: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1973). Separation: Anxiety and Anger. Volume II of Attachment and Loss. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1980). Loss: Sadness and Depression. Volume III of Attachment and Loss. New York: Basic Books. Brenner, C. (1979). Working alliance, therapeutic alliance and transference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 27: 137–158. Bucci, W. (2001). Pathways to emotional communication. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 21: 40–70. Cozolino, L. (2006). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. New York: W. W. Norton. Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. English, F. (1972). Sleepy, spunky and spooky. Transactional Analysis Journal, 2: 64–73. Erskine, R. G. (1974). Therapeutic intervention: disconnecting rubberbands. Transactional Analysis Journal, 4: 7–8. Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 172–173). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G. (1980). Script cure: behavioral, intrapsychic and physiological. Transactional Analysis Journal, 10: 102–106. Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 151–155). San Francisco: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G. (1988). Ego structure, intrapsychic function, and defense mechanisms: a commentary on Eric Berne’s original theoretical concepts. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18: 15–19. Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 109–115). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G. (1993). Inquiry, attunement and involvement in the psychotherapy of dissociation. Transactional Analysis Journal, 23: 185–190. Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 37–45). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997.

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Erskine, R. G. (1994). Shame and self-righteousness: transactional analysis perspectives and clinical interventions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 24: 86–102). Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 46–67). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G. (1998). Attunement and involvement: therapeutic responses to relational needs. International Journal of Psychotherapy, 3: 235–244. Erskine, R. G. (2003). Introjection, psychic presence and the parent ego state: considerations for psychotherapy. In: C. Sills & H. Hargaden (Eds.), Ego States: Key Concepts in Transactional Analysis Contemporary Views (pp. 83–108). London: Worth. Erskine, R. G. (2008). Psychotherapy of unconscious experience. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 128–138. Erskine, R. G., & Moursund, J. P. (1988). Integrative Psychotherapy in Action. Newbury Park, CA: Sage [reprinted in paperback, Highland, New York: Gestalt Journal Press, 1998.] Erskine, R. G., & Trautmann, R. L. (1996). Methods of an integrative psychotherapy. Transactional Analysis Journal, 26: 316–338. Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 20–36). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G., & Trautmann, R. L. (2003). Resolving intrapsychic conflict: psychotherapy of parent ego states. In: C. Sills & H. Hargaden (Eds.), Ego States: Key Concepts in Transactional Analysis Contemporary Views (pp. 109–134). London: Worth Publishing. Erskine, R. G., & Zalcman, M. J. (1979). The racket system: a model for racket analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 9: 51–59). Reprinted in: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 156–165). San Francisco, CA: TA Press, 1997. Erskine, R. G., Moursund, J. P., & Trautmann, R. L. (1999). Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-Relationship. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel. Field, T., Diego, M., Hernandez-Reif, M., Schanberg, S., Kuhn, C., & Yando, R. (2003). Pregnancy anxiety and comorbid depression and anger: effects on the fetus and neonate. Depression and Anxiety, 17: 150–151. Fosshage, J. L. (2005). The explicit and implicit domains of psychoanalytic change. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 25(24): 516–539.


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Freud, S. (1912b). The dynamics of transference. S.E., 12: 97–108). London: Hogarth. Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S.E., 18: 3–64). London: Hogarth. Goulding, M. M., & Goulding, R. L. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1978). The Power is in the Patient. San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1987). Redecision Therapy. San Francisco, CA: International Transactional Analysis Association, 110-minute video. Guistolese, P. (1997). Failures in the therapeutic relationship: inevitable and necessary? Transactional Analysis Journal, 4: 284–288. Kelly, G. A. (1955). The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Volume 1: A Theory of Personality. New York: Norton. Khan, M. N. (1963). The concept of cumulative trauma. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 18: 286–306. Kihlstrom, J. F. (1984). Conscious, subconscious, unconscious: a cognitive perspective. In: K. S. Bowers & D. Meichenbaum (Eds.), The Unconscious Reconsidered (pp. 149–210). New York: Wiley. Langs, R. (1976). The Therapeutic Intervention: Vol. 11. A Critical Overview and Synthesis. New York: Jason Aronson. LeDoux, J. E. (1994). Emotion, memory and the brain. Scientific American, 270: 50–57. Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper & Brothers. Lourie, J. (1996). Cumulative trauma: the nonproblem problem. Transactional Analysis Journal, 26: 276–283. Lyons-Ruth, K., Zoll, D., Connell, D., & Grunebaum, H. U. (1986). The depressed mother and her one-year-old infant: environment, interaction, attachment, and infant development. In: E. Z. Tronick & T. Field (Eds.), Maternal Depression and Infant Disturbance. New Directions for Child Development (pp. 61–81). San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Moursund, J. P., & Erskine, R. G. (2004). Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship. Pacific Grove, CA: Thomson: Brooks/Cole. Perls, F. S. (1944). Ego, Hunger and Aggression: A Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method. Durban, South Africa: Knox Publishing. Perls, F. S., & Baumgardner, P. (1975). Legacy from Fritz: Gifts from Lake Cowichan. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.

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Perls, F. S., Hefferline, R. F., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Julian Press. Perls, L. (1978). An oral history of Gestalt Therapy, Part 1: a conversation with Laura Perls, by Edward Rosenfeld. The Gestalt Journal, 1(1): 8–31. Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books. Slap, J. (1987). Implication for the structural model of Freud’s assumptions about perception. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 35: 629–645. Steiner, C. (1971). Games Alcoholics Play. New York: Ballantine Books. Stolorow, R., & Atwood, G. (1989). The unconscious and unconscious fantasy: an intersubjective developmental perspective. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 9: 364–374. Stuntz, E. C. (1972). Second order structure of the parent. Transactional Analysis Journal, 2: 59–61. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. (1994). A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Trautmann, R. L., & Erskine, R. G. (1999). A matrix of relationships: acceptance speech for the 1998 Eric Berne Memorial Award, Transactional Analysis Journal, 29:14–17. Tronick, E. Z., & Gianino, Jr, A. F. (1986). The transmission of maternal disturbance to the infant. In: E. Z. Tronick & T. Field (Eds.), New Directions for Child Development: Vol. 34, Maternal Depression and Infant Disturbance (pp. 5–11). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Van der Kolk, B. A. (1994). The body keeps the score: memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1: 253–265. Weinberg, M. K., & Tronick, E. Z. (1998). The impact of maternal psychiatric illness on infant development. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 59(Suppl. 2): 53–61. Woolams, S. J. (1973). Formation of the script. Transactional Analysis Journal, 3: 31–37.

CHAPTER TWO

The lived and narrated script: an ongoing narrative construction Maria Teresa Tosi

“. . . the object of script analysis is to close the show and put a better one on the road” (Berne, 1961, p. 118)

E

ric Berne believed that the script is “an ongoing program, developed in early childhood under parental influence, which directs the individual’s behaviour in the most important aspects of his life” (Berne, 1972, p. 462). A few years earlier, in Transactional Analysis and Psychotherapy, Berne (1961) had affirmed that scripts belong in the realm of transference phenomena . . . that is, they are derivatives, or more precisely, adaptations, of infantile reactions and experiences . . . an attempt to repeat in derivative form a whole transference drama, often split up into acts. [p. 116]

According to Berne, the script consists of three aspects: protocol (the unconscious family drama that is first played out to an unsatisfactory conclusion in the earliest years of life), script proper 29

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(a preconscious derivative of that ancient drama), and adaptation (a compromise between the script and the real possibilities) (ibid., p. 117). Berne saw scripts as limiting and sometimes very destructive story lines, which could be repeated over and over from childhood to adulthood. According to Berne, scripts are based on a child decision, and are biased by the context in which the child is raised. This means that both attachment and survival needs are the principal motivators for the child to decide very self-limiting life plans. Berne considered theatrical scripts as intuitive derivatives of these family dramas (1961) and he also believed that, beginning from protocol experiences, the child is then inspired by fairytales when building his own script (1972). Myths, fairytales, and personal histories resemble each other. According to Berne, destructive scripts follow the Aristotelian rules of tragedy: “. . . there is a prologue, climax and catastrophe, with real or symbolic pathos and despair giving rise to real tragedy” (1961, p. 117). Dramas, seen as consequences of childhood experiences, should be brought back to their origins, so that the person can retake control of her or his own destiny (1961). Berne quoted Glover (1955) as the author who, describing transference neurosis, came closest to the idea of script: the history of the patient’s development, leading up to the infantile neurosis, is re-enacted in the analytic room—the patient plays the part of actor–manager, pressing into service (like a child in the nursery) all the stage property that the analytical room contains, first and foremost, the analyst himself. [Berne, 1961, p. 126]

Berne underlined the difference with Glover: “But Glover is speaking only of what takes place in the analytical room” (ibid., p. 126), while the script is performed in all daily relationships. I consider these passages from Berne’s books a straight link with the narrative point of view in psychotherapy, which started to form thirty years ago. That is because, even though Berne often underlines how script is a limiting and compulsive story that does not allow the autonomous development of a person, it is not far from this conception to consider identity per se linked to the unfolding of a life story. In fact, in some passages of his books, Berne himself

THE LIVED AND NARRATED SCRIPT

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formed the hypothesis that scripts can also be constructive, not only destructive. For example he stated that “. . . the object of script analysis is to close the show and put a better one on the road” (ibid., p. 118), and “The important thing is to free her [the patient] from the compulsion to relive the situation, and start her on some other path” (ibid.). Many authors, after Berne’s death, put forward the idea that scripts concern a general attitude to construct and organize reality. Cornell (1988), English (1988), Friedman & Shmukler (1992), Loria (1995), Doan (1997), Parry (1997) and Newton (2006) are among the authors who understand scripts in this “open” frame of reference.

Theoretical underpinnings of a narrative script theory A narrative point of view about scripts is in the same theoretical perspective, because it encompasses the idea that human beings “need” a story to define their own identity. Many research works in the cognitive field (Bruner, 1990), in schema theories (Mandler, 1984), in clinical psychoanalysis (Schafer, 1980; Spence, 1982; White, 1989), in child development (Stern, 1985), and neurological findings (Siegel, 1999; Kandel, 2005), show the importance of narrative processes to understand the development of identity. I am mentioning only a small number of authors from what could be called a change of paradigm in the study of identity. The idea of a “narrator self” appeared in the 1980s and had a major impact on psychotherapy. A central idea in narrative therapy is that people define who they are for themselves and for others through autobiographical stories. Their narratives have the primary goal of integrating their experiences in a coherent story, compatible with the culture to which they belong. People create meanings in cultural contexts that help them give shape to their life and represent also an unavoidable limit to the possibilities offered to them. The stories narrated in therapy refer to an agent with intentions. A person can also reauthor her or his own story in a way that opens new options in her or his life. According to McLeod (2004), we can group the several ways in which the narrative perspective has been used in psychotherapeutic

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models in two major traditions. One is related to those authors who studied patient narratives in order to have access to hidden psychological processes. For example, Luborsky and Crits-Cristoph (1990) created the core conflictual relational theme (CCRT) method to analyse patients’ spontaneous narratives. In this way, they found which conflictual themes are more pervasive and influencing the transference relationship. Another tradition, which McLeod (2004) called “post-psychological therapy”, developed at the end of the twentieth century. The post-psychological therapy is primarily a social rather than a psychological process. Individual difficulties are understood in terms of their relationship with the culture to which they belong. In these models, narratives play a central role because they include different dimensions. A personal dimension is related to the unique story life created by the story-teller. The interpersonal process is important because to tell a story means to have an audience whose responses give shape to the unfolding of the story. Last, as individual stories refer also to cultural resources, the cultural dimension is appreciated in this perspective. One of the main observations of the post-psychological narrative approach is that the person is a community of selves (Doan, 1997), each self has a story to tell, but also different selves will be active according to different psychosocial contexts. In a former article (Tosi, 1997) I showed how the CCRT method (Luborsky & Crits-Christoph, 1990) can be used in a transactional analysis frame of reference to analyse significant interpersonal/ intrapsychic transactional patterns. I also hypothesized a narrative approach to script theory (Tosi, 1993) in order to bypass the risk of determinism inherent in the Bernian theory of script (Ferro, 1991) and to reconnect transactional analysis to its phenomenological– humanistic theoretical underpinnings. In fact, Berne, more or less explicitly, embraced a phenomenological perspective (Berne, 1961, 1966; Nuttall, 2006; Tosi, 2008) that, in psychotherapy, underlines how the basic attitude of human beings is the search for a sense of meaning. The shared work of patient and psychotherapist gives priority to the possibility of “understanding” the patient’s experience rather than “explaining” it. An active vision of human beings, who construct the meaning of their experience from their specific point of view, is advocated also by the constructivist approach, when it affirms that all perceptions


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and human thinking are a construction rather than a mirror of “reality”. So, each idea or perception is in part a function of the person who is perceiving or thinking. I underline “in part” because each construction is subject to the limits of reality. The phenomenological–hermeneutic tradition has been developed by Erskine (Erskine & Trautmann, 1996) in an integrative model of transactional analysis that puts the concept of contact at the centre of the therapeutic relationship. In transactional analysis, Allen and Allen (1997) espouse the constructivist philosophical stance specifically, underlining that the psychotherapist will be in a dialogical position with her or his patient when considering the meaning of her or his experiences. They affirm that, as concerns the script, “the meanings can emerge and disappear in the context of our interactions” (ibid., p. 91). Among modern psychoanalytical theorists, Gill (1994) pointed out that even the patient is not the final “arbiter” of her or his subjective experience, because there is an unconscious dimension which she or he needs to explore and understand, with the psychotherapist’s help, to give full meaning to her or his experience. In the transactional analysis literature, Hargaden and Sills (2002) reflect this perspective. The above-mentioned theoretical vision, applied to script theory, gives prominence to a narrative approach because it greatly values the hermeneutic search of the patient’s meanings in creating her or his life story. The patient is not a “text” to interpret because she or he answers and interacts with the therapist; she or he is a live text. So, an ongoing interpersonal dimension is intrinsically part of a hermeneutic analysis in psychotherapy. The person is considered to be actively involved in a context, with purposes and intentions. The hermeneutic and narrative approach does not exclude the essential contribution of evidence-based research, as, for example, in Bruner’s thought (1990), narrative and scientific thinking are both essential for knowledge. New findings in neurological research explain the functioning of different memory and knowledge systems, both implicit and explicit. The studies about autobiographical memory are particularly important for my discussion. Berne’s intuition, as indicated in his definitions of script, was to make a distinction between a “core” unconscious story (the

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protocol) and a “preconscious” story (the script) developed during childhood. I think this hypothesis, which is linked to the classical developmental psychoanalytical point of view (much of what is in the “here and now” depends on the “there and then”), is essentially still valid, as attachment theories show (see Siegel, 1999, for a review of these studies). However, recent clinical and neurological research (Siracusano & Rubino, 2006) makes things more complex, giving prominence to a systemic–relational functioning of the mind. The interplay of different systems (explicit and implicit, interpersonal and intrapsychic, cognitive–affective–sensorial, old and new psychological schemas, etc.) shapes psychological life. In this sense, I suggest studying scripts as a meaningful bridge between basic existential positions and more interpersonal and cultural processes. What is really modern in Berne’s thinking is his emphasis on the psychosocial dimension of human beings. In fact, Berne was influenced by his psychoanalyst Eric Erikson (1950), whose research is one of the most significant expressions of the psycho-social approach in psychoanalysis. Scripts need more than one actor to go on, they need a whole company to come on stage. Transactional analysis psychotherapy focuses specifically on the interplay between the intrapsychic and the interpersonal stage, showing how interpersonal processes can support old scenarios or create new ones. So, instead of offering a new definition, I propose a narrative perspective on scripts, linked to the pioneering work of Cornell (1988), who defined scripts as an ongoing process of psychological construction of reality, self-defining and sometimes self-limiting, and of English (1988), who indicated that without a script a child would grow up in a vacuum of space and time. New intersubjective theories on transference (Goldstein & Goldberg, 2004) support the idea that transference is not a pre-set programme from the past within the patient. On the contrary, transference is affected also by the therapeutic relationship in the “here and now”. So, the ongoing process of psychological construction of reality is intertwined with the psychotherapeutic experience. I see the script as a narrative construction which benefits from the interaction between explicit and implicit memories as well as current knowledge and has the purpose of helping persons build their own identity, anticipating others’ reactions and giving


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perspective in life. It has a personal, interpersonal, and cultural meaning. Script is both lived and narrated. Important and meaningful expressions of scripts are the spontaneous autobiographical narratives that can be analysed according to their content or form. Narratives are not only an expression of the script, but also a way of shaping and reshaping it, of finding new meanings and integrating new and old experiences. Narratives create interpersonal contexts: they are influenced by, and can influence, cultural contexts. In this way, narratives offer further options to change one’s script. Berne’s script definition would be a sub-set of this more inclusive way of understanding scripts.

How does autobiographical memory work? There is strong consent among researchers in considering the child’s attachment experiences as the foundation of the self and the interaction between neurophysiological processes and interpersonal experiences as the foundation of the mind (Siegel, 1999). Starting from the first pre-verbal experiences, and, later, in the course of repeated experiences in relation with significant persons or in significant relations with peers, a child forms images of itself and of others as well as of the existing relationships between itself and others. These experiences and representations are the basis of those “mental schemas” that will allow it to orientate itself in the world and to anticipate what might happen. Different types of memory join in creating such schemas. Particularly important for a narrative vision of scripts is the development of autobiographical memory. Nowadays, we commonly speak of two large interacting systems: the system of explicit memory and the system of implicit memory (Kandel, 2005). Implicit memory includes three phenomena: 1. 2.

Procedural memory: the “knowing how”, the memory of senso-motorial experience, which is also associated to primary emotions. Priming: a phenomenon through which a piece of information is retrieved faster if another piece of information closely tied to

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it has recently been retrieved or released, even at a subliminal level. Affective memory: very important for psychotherapists, it is formed starting from the affective and emotional experiences of the first phases of life and possibly gestation.

We know that implicit memory influences the formation of the content of the later explicit memory (semantic and episodic memory) and of the “ form” or “structure” of the narratives that are an expression of autobiographical memory (Siegel, 1999). We also know that the two cognitive systems are often called upon to work together in coding different aspects of sensorial patterns of stimuli that present themselves to the person (Siracusano, 2006). Autobiographical memory is a kind of explicit memory (and knowledge) associated with the perception of the “I am remembering” and “knowing that”. The explicit system of memory encompasses the “semantic” (or “noetic”)—”I am good”—and the “episodic” (or “autonoetic”) memory—”that time my mother reassured me with a smile”. When explicit memory (or knowledge) concerns noetic and autonoetic aspects connected to one’s life, we speak of autobiographical memory. This kind of memory always implies a profound sense of self in time and in space and time relations among the different autobiographical episodes. According to several studies (Liotti, 2001; Siegel, 1999) one is inclined to hold that noetic and autonoetic memory are distinct processes connected to different areas of the brain. The latter is specifically tied to the idea of “a journey in time”. The basis of explicit autobiographical memory is formed during the second year of life, when the child starts developing a sense of self, of the physical world, of time and of the succession of events. The first representational maps and the early forms of expectations develop in parallel to the development of the hippocampus, the “cognitive organizer”. The cortical areas that are implied in the development of autobiographical memory have a rapid experience dependent growth during the first years of life and then keep evolving, probably for a human’s entire life span (Siegel, 1999). During the course of the third year of life, the child starts constructing its own stories in close connection to the people who take care of it. This is a very important aspect of development


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because it begins to account for the relation between the nature of the attachments and types of communication the child has with adults and its stories. The representations the child begins to construct about itself and others are shaped by the nature of the dialogue between it and its care-givers. It is also true that the first experiences of attachment, that take place before autobiographical memory is formed, not only influence the content of autobiographical stories but also their structure and form. Recent studies (McLean & Thorne, 2006; Pasupathi, 2006) underline the importance of the listener in daily conversations for the construction of the self, for the whole life. This research supports the idea that the child starts to create its script by connecting together different sources of information related to procedural and affective memories and the type of communication it has with care-givers. Cornell (2008), Erskine (2008), Leone Guglielmotti (2008), Pierini (2008), Tosi (2008) are among the authors that sustain the re-evaluation of the unconscious experience in transactional analysis, integrating the research on the models of implicit relational knowing. Cornell and Landaiche (2006) consider protocols as “ongoing, unconscious templates for making judgements about the significant figures and encounters in our lives. Yet protocols are not necessarily pathological; they embody an innate human capacity for making unconscious sense of life with others” (p. 203). The creation of an autobiographical story has an important function in integrating various representations and mental models of the self and of the self-in-relation to others. Empirical evidence confirms that children like to construct stories, especially when they have to explain the meaning of episodes that represent an exception and not the rule (Bruner, 1990, Liotti, 2001). Bruner (1990) cites an experiment in which it appeared that children having to explain an unusual event or behaviour (like the fact that a certain girl was unhappy on her birthday) produced a set of creative and abundant stories compared to children reporting usual events. Autobiographical memories are not unchanging. When persons retrieve their memories, they become flexible and subject to a consolidation process, as shown by neurological and psychological studies (Tulving, 2002).

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According to Tulving (2002), the process of retrieval is fundamental to understanding how memory, and especially autobiographical and episodic memory, works. Retrieval is an active process, a new “construction”. The complex debate around narrative or historical truth, which has been heavily influencing psychoanalysis, finds significant issues to consider in this research. In psychoanalysis, Spence expanded on this theme, related to the prominence given to the construction or reconstruction processes in clinical work. Spence (1982) believes that when the psychoanalyst makes an interpretation, he finds a narrative site to an anomalous event. He thinks that to “construct” a meaning, to explain a bit of reality left unfinished, is more important than to “reconstruct” a historical truth about patients’ lives, as the basic need of human beings is to give a sense of completeness and coherence to their own experience. Even if autobiographical memory does not guarantee the correspondence with historical truth, it has the function to develop and maintain identity. So, the way a person experiences her or himself in the present has an impact on her or his memories and their evaluation and, on the other hand, the experience of self is influenced by past memories. The experience of self is a function of the relational context in which the person is constructing the meaning of her or his experience. Liotti (2001) underlines that implicit memory has epistemological and time supremacy over explicit memory, just as semantic memory has supremacy over episodic memory. This observation gives priority to the relational and very early experiences in the construction of the “basics” of the way we think of ourselves in the world. Emotions are fundamental in the choice of what one remembers. However strongly traumatic experiences block explicit memory mechanisms, a dissociation between explicit and implicit memory can happen and, as a consequence, the autobiographical memory of that event can be jeopardized (Siegel, 1999). The process of “retrieval” seems especially significant for psychotherapeutic intervention. According to clinical practice, patients retrieve and talk about their hurting memories when they feel safe in the therapeutic relationship. When an affective memory is retrieved, there is the possibility to reframe the meaning of


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important episodes of the patient’s life. So, both a specific memory and the meaning the patient gives to that memory can be considered a “construction” that derives from the patient–therapist interaction. In a case history, Erskine (2008), writing about the psychotherapy of unconscious experience, illustrates how an involved therapeutic relationship fostered his patient’s retrieval of a non-conscious trauma. Erskine’s patient reconstructed her previously unconscious traumatic hospital experience into volunteering as a care-giver in a children’s hospital (ibid.). Often, after working through a painful memory, a new story can be constructed that will give new sense and perspective to the patient’s perception of her or himself and other important people. For example, the same episode of child abuse which influenced a desperate script decision such as “I will not be close to anybody any more”, could be reframed as an episode that can help the person to develop the responsibility to protect her or himself and her or his children. I consider a person’s life “history” the sequence of real facts in her or his life that can be reconstructed. “Stories” are the personal constructions made by a person (or by the patient– psychotherapist couple) when she or he gives meaning to the episodes and experiences in her life. We cannot change our histories, just as a person’s white hair is not reversible, but we can change our stories, depending on the way we want to give meaning and create relationships among our experiences.

Are narratives a reliable mirror of the script? Narratives are a mirror of the script, but not the only mirror. Script is both lived and narrated. Scripts are lived even in the therapy room, as Berne pointed out (1961). However, the patient’s narratives are also an important and independent source of data for their content and their form. As an example of analysing the content of the narratives, I want to mention Luborsky and Crits-Cristoph’s famous work on the core conflictual relational theme (CCRT) (1990), which is an assessment system to make a hypothesis about the central patterns used by persons in their relationships. Luborsky and Crits-Cristoph stated that patients’ spontaneous narratives inform the psychotherapist about the nature of their relational

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models and the conflicts inherent in themselves. The method for elaborating the CCRT requires one to extract the relational episodes from patients’ narratives and to analyse them according to three categories: wishes, needs, and intentions of the person (explicit or implicit), responses from other (real or expected, positive or negative), and responses from self (expressed or non-expressed, positive or negative). CCRT is a combination of the most frequent wishes, responses from other, and responses from self across all the relational episodes. For example, a patient’s CCRT could be, “I want to be close and to be loved, but the others reject me, so I react by feeling resentful and guilty”. This method proved to be an objective analysis of transference because the relational experiences of a patient with her or his psychotherapist are parallel to those related to other significant people, especially if we consider the categories of “wishes” and “responses from self”. The CCRT method implies a certain degree of inference when analysing patients’ narratives, gives prominence to the phenomenological experience of persons, and is based on an object relational psychodynamic approach. For these reasons, I think it is compatible with the transactional analysis model, offering an independent and already tested model to verify basic observations made in the transactional analysis frame of reference, such as, for example, ego states diagnosis, impasses, script decisions, transference and countertransference analysis. The use of CCRT in a transactional analysis frame of reference (Tosi, 1997) also provides a method for making hypotheses about the implicit “story line” in the person’s life and the conflicts that need attention. CCRT is complementary to the “racket” system (Erskine & Zalcman, 1979). With racket system analysis, the therapist can organize the main constrictive beliefs and ways to bring forward a story line (Berne’s theory of script) that limit flexibility and inhibit spontaneity. The racket system creates a coherent assessment that allows the therapist to choose many different levels of intervention (intrapsychic, interpersonal, behavioural, cognitive), all potentially useful to change the patient’s script (Erskine, 1980). CCRT is a way to consider, from the point of view of that patient, how she or he is creating functional or dysfunctional ways to cope with her or his needs or intentions in relational contexts. CCRT is a good measure of “change” because, according to the changes in narratives during treatment, the therapist can have feedback about


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the psychotherapeutic process. According to Luborsky and CritsCristoph’s research, the good outcome of a psychotherapy is related to a change in the “responses from other and self”, that become more positive (Luborsky & Crits-Cristoph, 1990). The construct of “wishes, needs, and intentions” seems to remain the same as at the beginning of treatment. Therapeutic work has the goal of clarifying repetitive self-defeating patterns which can limit the person’s growth and help the person to take responsibility for her or his own wishes and intentions. According to my experience, which, I think, is confirmed by a study made with the offspring of Holocaust survivors (Wiseman & Barber, 2004), in destructive patterns implicit wishes can be a sign of deep conflicts or non-integration of certain needs or intentions. In this case, more therapeutic work is needed in order to create a safe relationship and a dialogue to help the patient to verbalize what is not verbal. A second way in which narratives are mirroring script is through their form. The research on attachment showed that narrative style changes according to attachment style. Siegel (1999) presents an interesting review of the studies that show how to analyse narratives during the adult attachment interview (AAI) to evaluate the adult’s state of the mind regarding the attachment during the interview. During the AAI, the person has to retrieve her or his memories while communicating them in a co-operative and well developed way (Hesse, 1996). For example, the style of communication is analysed according to the four rules of speech that, according to Grice (1975), are based on the general co-operative principle. The rules to be regarded are: (1) quality: to be honest and to give elements to sustain your observation; (2) quantity: to be succinct and thorough; (3) relationship: to explain yourself in order to be easily understood by the other, being precise and relevant; (4) mode: clear and ordered. These rules are indicators of the internal coherence of the narrative and the attitude of the person towards the interview or the interviewer (Siegel, 1999). Looking at narratives from the point of view of their “form” also means to observe “how” the patient is narrating her or his story. A meaningful, implicit, non-verbal dimension will inform and influence the psychotherapist’s countertransference.

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Another way to consider narratives as a mirror of script is according to their “literary genre”. A script and the narrated story connected to it can be an adventure story, a novel, an essay, a Greek tragedy, etc. According to Berne (1972), fairy tales inspire children when they create their own script. The literary genre can be an expansion of this idea because it represents “symbolically” the way of a patient’s being in the world. The therapist has to “enter” into and understand patients’ genre, to create a good therapeutic alliance, otherwise there will be conflict about who is the “author” of the patient’s story. In a similar perspective, an interesting study was carried out by Alon and Omer (2004) regarding master narratives that have evolved in the psychotherapeutic culture and influence both psychotherapists and patients. Specifically, two master narratives were explored and contrasted: the demonic and the tragic narrative. Exploring the basic assumptions in the demonic narrative, the authors find that the split between good and evil is the central theme. A dualistic overview, typical of demonic narratives, can help in providing clarity and channelling frustration. In the tragic narrative, by contrast, “suffering is not seen as the result of an evil conspiracy but as the outcome of an interplay of factors whose end stage often reflects a paradoxical reversal of some of its contributing forces” (Alon & Omer, 2004, p. 30). For example, this narrative suggests that suffering is part of life. This research is very inspiring, because it allows us to reflect on the patient’s master narratives, but also on the psychotherapist’s attitude and on the psychotherapeutic model orientation regarding the meaning of “cure”. Being aware of this distinction, transactional analysts can consider the consequences of choosing a demonic or tragic narrative of script, at both a psychic and social level, to decide which narrative is most associated with psychological health and psychosocial maturity for each specific patient.

One or more scripts? Berne quite clearly assessed that people decide on one script and play different games to carry it out.


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As we have seen, narratives and autobiographical memories seem to have the goal of creating a coherent plot that brings together the different important experiences in a person’s life. In this way, the person is trying to have a vision of her or himself coherent with her or his own explicit self image. Analysing the interview with a middle-aged man who was talking about his work, Gregg (2006) found that multiple images of the self are related to each other in terms of their oppositionality, like thesis and antithesis in dialectic. Gregg contrasts the idea that an identity is constructed like a tree of superordinate and subordinate categories, because he thinks that “it is in the generation of continually shifting and often inconsistent surface contrasts and of an implicit heroic plot structure that an identity is fashioned and performed” (ibid., p. 83). He thinks that metaphoric thought helps to create relationships between contrasts and new meanings. Identity emerges as a synthesis of opposed selves. McAdams and Logan (2006) interviewed fifteen academics and analysed their stories of creative work and personal lives. They found a multiplicity of personal experience and the organization of multiplicity within a dialectical pattern. They pointed out that the narrator encounters an important problem or question in his childhood or adolescence that guides his intellectual search. This question generates an “ideal” to pursue, a personal “aesthetic”. Like Gregg, these authors think that a dialectic organizes contrasting aspects or trends of the narrator’s life. Raggatt (2006) proposes a different point of view, because he thinks that identity is “an open-ended dialogical and narrative engagement with the world, having multiple origins and trajectories” (p. 32). The primary metaphor for the self is a conversation among different voices, not a single one. So, this author underlines the multiplicity and contradiction found in life narratives, instead of their integrating function. In a similar perspective, Hartman Halbertal and Koren (2006) studied the narratives of people whose lives and inclinations deviate from cultural scripts and found that their narratives show the coexistence of two different selves in a dialogic relationship. From this short summary of recent research on narratives, different opinions emerge about the extent to which narrative identity espouses unity or multiplicity in the self.

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My main conclusion is that it is important to look at scripts as dynamic and not static systems. A principal theme often guides a person’s life story and that theme can organize a dialectic of different selves. This is quite close to the experience people make of themselves. As we have seen from different studies and research, the person strives to find coherence in her or his life and to identify with “one” major self. However, analysing narratives, minor themes and/or dialectic selves and/or unknown selves appear and can give new perspective to the person, especially if an “other” will give emphasis to it. New stories can be co-created starting from these new experiences. Research in socio-cognitive theories reaches similar conclusions (Scilligo, 2006). In my opinion, according to the method used to analyse script, psychotherapists will find repeated patterns or multiple stories. From a clinical point of view the psychotherapist has to develop the sensitivity for understanding the “doubts” or conflicts intertwined with the patients’ story. The concept of script decision seems to hide the intrinsic dialectic of the human experience and way to perceive.

Is narrative a relational experience? At eighty years of age, Giorgia started to suffer from heart disease and became depressed because she did not accept the consequences of her illness. For example, she could not walk as much or carry weights, as she was used to do, and had to take several drugs. She became less autonomous than she would have liked to be. After few counselling sessions, she decided to write her life story, as a way to use her time and to develop an old passion for writing. The experience of writing her story was painful and engrossing in the same time. She had to retrieve her memories and, in order to write them, she had to work through some very painful events in her life, such as her childhood with very conflictual parents, the Second World War, the death of her first child, and the illness and death of her husband. When she finished her autobiography, she decided to publish it, at her own expense, and gave it as a present to her children and grandchildren. The impact of this gift on her relatives was strong. They could acknowledge a new image of their mother and grandmother, and, consequently, they had a different point of view about certain


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important events in their life. They started to talk more with her, expressing more intimate feelings and thoughts. Giorgia’s biography started to circulate among friends and friends of friends. Many of them called her to express their appreciation for her beautiful book and deep empathy for her difficult life. Many were struck by her courage and love for life and wanted to become her friends. Giorgia started to feel much better, became more tender towards herself and tolerant of her limits. This story speaks by itself, if we think of narratives as relational experiences. The act of narrating is a relational experience and the narrator is performing in the presence of an audience, which can be external or internal, such as a different self, or a person in the past. When Giorgia is writing her story, she is in a deep relationship with herself but she is also “talking” with her relatives, both alive and dead. According to Pasupathi (2006), we can distinguish between reflective and dramatic modes of life-story telling. The reflective mode tends towards self-construction, while the dramatic mode is transactional and involves the others in the construction of meanings and selves. Berne (1964) thought that different levels of intimacy shape social life, all of them being important to feel in contact with others. Narrative theories suggest similar conclusions. From everyday narratives to deeper and more serious stories, they all have the important function of engaging people in psychosocial contexts and help to develop identity in constant interaction with others. The distinction between reflective and dramatic modes has interesting implications if we think of the therapist’s role. It seems to me that a therapist has to be aware of the different function she or he can play when listening to a patient. The reflective mode indicates a patient’s deep intimate relationship with her or his internal world, very important in exploring how the patient relates with her or himself. The dramatic mode indicates that the patient “looks for” the other, and wants to engage the other.

Case history Gabriele is a forty-year-old man, very depressive, with avoidant– dependent personality disorder traits. He is also suicidal. He has

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been married for two years and has one child. He works as a professional in economics. He became depressed after his mother’s death, several years before our meeting. He had been under medication for many years and in psychoanalysis for three years. He ended psychoanalysis because he felt a lack of empathy on the part of his female psychoanalyst. During his psychoanalysis he chose to get married, and this, as he said, meant “to choose life instead of death”. He thought of himself as a good father but not a good husband. He started psychotherapy because he was feeling worse and worse, unsafe, not up to life and his profession. He was guilty and hyper-critical towards himself. When I met him, I was particularly struck by his way of moving, as if he was in an armour. His mother had been severely depressed for many years. As a child, he developed a strong attachment to her, an honest and sensitive woman who loved him but was not physically warm towards him. Their relationship was based in part on a destructive role inversion: in order to feel loved by her and to guarantee her presence he became her “good” son, he did not want to create any problems for her and became her “protector” against his father’s aggressive behaviour. His father was described as an unstable man, very communicative with people outside the family and very critical and sometimes very aggressive towards the members of his family. When Gabriele was a child, his father could be irrationally violent and beat him in an unpredictable way, for example, if he was clumsy in doing something. His father was also very demanding towards him, even in social contexts. He expected Gabriele to be able to drive a car when he was ten. When Gabriele became an adolescent, his father became more intrusive and controlling. Gabriele could not go out in the evening with his friends when he was eighteen. The relationship between his father and mother was characterized by a persecutor–victim mode. His father was very critical towards his wife, who adapted to him “to keep unity in the family”. Gabriele’s younger brother was the “weakest” child, deserving protection. Gabriele learnt to be “perfect” and responsible and to have very high standards. Growing up, he felt responsible towards both his mother and father. He felt guilty because whatever he did was


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never enough (his mother died before he was able to “make” her happy) and angry because he never felt loved (his father never recognized his qualities). When he got married, he transferred this attitude towards his family, in that he worked hard to make “them” happy, but Gabriele never felt loved. His request at the beginning of psychotherapy was to feel authentic in his choices and to enjoy little things in life. I will highlight specifically how a narrative vision of therapy was guiding some of my observations and therapeutic choices at the beginning of Gabriele’s psychotherapy. The analysis of his narratives with the CCRT method revealed two typical patterns: when Gabriele had relationships with men, usually at work, he had an implicit expectation of being recognized and respected by them, but their responses were perceived by him as if the scenario suddenly changed and men became aggressively competitive with him, so he felt persecuted and weak. When he was with affectively significant women, he implicitly wished to be loved and looked after, but he perceived women as distant or not interested in him, so he felt guilty and/or inadequate. So his CCRT could be summarized by the following sentence: “I want to realize myself and feel loved with tenderness the way I am, but others are competitive and distant so I feel lonely and guilty”. His narratives showed also how implicit his wishes were. I could infer his wishes or intentions, but he never expressed them clearly. The relational episodes showed that he was unaware also of the way he could induce responses in others. For example, as he was not openly asking for what he was expecting from others, or proposing himself in relationships, he could appear distant, serious, and passive and, as a consequence, people withdrew from him. I hypothesized that there was a connection between the lack of explicit wishes and intentions in the relational contexts narrated by him and the impossibility of having a meaningful perspective in his life. Apparently, he was like a “hero” without a mission to realize. Listening to his narrations, his actions did not generate any satisfaction. In the end he was an “actor” who was not compatible with, or adequate to, the scene. The unnamed element was his wish/goal for both motherly warm love and fatherly recognition and respect. Taking into account this observation, as a preliminary psychotherapeutic step I wanted to focus on the therapeutic alliance in

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order for him to dare to get in contact with his denied wishes. In the therapeutic relationship, my choice was to relate every “down” in his humour to a possible “break” in our relationship. So, my proposal to him, in order to explore the transference–countertransference relationship, was “let’s see if there is anything happening in our relationship, related to the way you feel . . .”. This gradually opened a space in our relationship to co-construct new patterns of relationships in which it was possible to share responsibilities and discuss negative feelings. So, in the therapeutic relationship scenario, if he could not get “satisfaction”, I was “sitting” close to him, available to understand which expectations he could have had, how he was considering them, and how we both, in our different roles, could construct actions to realize them. That was the beginning of a new story, in which there was space for co-operation and authentic wishes, and he started to develop a deep trust in the possibility of being recognized. His style of narrating was quite detailed if the relational episodes were in the present. On the other hand, if I wanted to have specific information about childhood events, his answers were more generic, which was a typical sign of an avoidant–anxious attachment (Siegel, 1999). Sometimes I felt controlled by his way of talking, which was very slow and hyper-detailed, without showing emotions. I felt trapped in a spider’s web, which indicated to me a possible way in which he was experiencing himself and preventing him from expressing some hidden identity that had no story. His style of narrating was almost always self-reflective and, at the beginning of the therapy, he never shifted towards a more “dramatic” or involving way of narrating. So, on one side he was somehow open to interpreting himself and to communicating meanings, on the other, I was not engaged by him in co-constructing a new story. The risk was that I could become another “ghost” in his life. The scenarios he described were often catastrophic: for example, “If I do not earn this amount of money, this year, I will go bankrupt”. He never experienced joy. Responsibility was the big burden of his life. So, in the bad moments (the “emergency sessions”, as he started to call them), he presented an “evil” scenario, where no salvation was possible for him. How could I help him to generate a new “tragic” narrative where bad and good experiences could coexist and therefore open a space for hope? From a classical Bernian


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point of view, his script decision was “I will be a good boy and I will work till I die and maybe you’ll love me at that point”, based on beliefs such as “I’m not worthy and lovable, I will be lonely all my life long”. However, the more he was considering and feeling the impact of his past experiences on his present life, the more his challenges started to emerge. Through a careful phenomenological enquiry and understanding of his implicit wishes, I started to understand that his challenges were all related to breaking the destructiveness he experienced in his life. He wanted to individuate himself and to express the way he felt. For example, his challenges were: how to be a successful man without becoming a “wolf in a world of wolves”, like my father; how to have a passionate love and feel accepted the way I am, differentiating from my mother; how to keep links with my real father and respect myself in order to break a “script” of sons who abandon parents (like his father did). I started to mirror his wishes and to highlight the new directions that were emerging (the hero had his own mission now). I started to interpret the “orientation” of his efforts and struggles, the personal aesthetic he wanted to pursue. While a new direction was emerging, the values embedded in it were also becoming clear and explicit. I paid attention to minor themes in his narratives that were showing new aspects of his identity in the course of therapy. He could talk about a film or a book by which he had been struck and, while exploring the meaning of his curiosity or emotions, he was starting to enrich his life with new passions or interests. The “responsible” Gabriele could live alongside the “creative” Gabriele and, as he said, “Salieri and Mozart could dialogue and coexist”.

Conclusions The script is lived and narrated. And when we live it and narrate it, we are in ever-changing contexts. In presenting my point of view on narrative scripts, I want to highlight their dynamic and psychosocial function. Scripts give shape to identity and show a human being’s striving for cohesiveness. Through narratives and relationships, people express and influence their memories and self organization. I have shown how psychotherapeutic processes can

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be enriched by narrative studies and I have suggested a method of analysis of script that is phenomenological, hermeneutic, and constructivist. Spontaneous narratives in psychotherapy are a rich source of data that help the psychotherapist to understand the world of meanings of the patient. The analysis of the content of narratives helps in understanding the theme(s) that are full of meaning in a person’s life—how she or he perceives it. The “wish” dimension is particularly important because it gives direction to person’s actions. When a person is more aware of her or his intentions, needs, or wishes, she or he can consider also the value dimension implicit in her or his actions. The non-verbal aspects of narratives give information about the transactional quality of the message given by the patient to the psychotherapist. The mode of the narrative informs the listener about her or his role, because different ways of narrating indicate whether the narrator wants to engage the listener in an active role or whether she or he wants to communicate especially her or his personal search for meaning. The psychotherapist should be open to understanding and mirroring different themes in the narratives and lives of her or his patients, and not to be too sure about what is the new integrated story of the patient, because the personal solutions and stories that a patient could choose to create for her or himself are often surprising and creative. So, my final question is: “How many stories of a client’s life can a psychotherapist hold in her heart and mind?”

References Allen, J. & Allen, B. (1997). A new type of transactional analysis and one version of script work with a constructivistic sensibility. Transactional Analysis Journal, 27: 89–98. Alon, N., & Omer, H. (2004). Demonic and tragic narratives in psychotherapy. In: A. Lieblich, D. McAdams, & R. Josselson (Eds.), Healing Plots, The Narrative Basis of Psychotherapy (pp. 29–48). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press [reprinted London: Souvenir Press, 2001].


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Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hallo? London: Corgi Books, 1975. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Cornell, W. (1988). Life script theory: a critical review from a developmental perspective. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18: 270–282. Cornell, W. (2008). What do you say if you don’t say “unconscious”? Dilemmas created for transactional analysts by Berne’s shift away from the language of unconscious experience. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 93–100. Cornell, W., & Landaiche, III, N. M. (2006). Impasse and intimacy: applying Berne’s concept of script protocol. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36: 196–213. Doan, R. (1997). Narrative therapy, postmodernism, social constructivism and constructivism: discussions and distinctions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 27: 128–133. English, F. (1988). Whither scripts? Transactional Analysis Journal, 18: 294–303. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton. Erskine, R. G. (1980). Script cure: behavioural, intrapsychic and physiological. Transactional Analysis Journal, 10: 102–106. Erskine, R. G. (2008). Psychotherapy of unconscious experience. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 128–138. Erskine, R. G., & Trautmann, R. L. (1996). Methods of an integrative psychotherapy. Transactional Analysis Journal, 26: 316–328. Erskine, R. G., & Zalcman, M. (1979). The racket system: a model for the analysis of rackets. Transactional Analysis Journal, 9: 51–59. Ferro, M. (1991). Il concetto di copione: revisione critica e future sviluppi [The concept of script: a critical review and future developments]. Papers of SIAT Conference, Venice, 1991, 109–122. Friedman, M., & Shmukler, D. (1992). The organizing matrix in the evolution of script. Transactional Analysis Journal, 22: 82–88. Gill, M. M. (1994). Psychoanalysis in Transition. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Glover, E. (1955). The Technique of Psycho-Analysis. New York: International University Press, Chaps VII & VIII. Goldstein, W. N., & Goldberg, S. T. (2004). Using the Transference in Psychotherapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc.

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Gregg, G. S. (2006). The raw and the bland: a structural model of narrative identity. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story, Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 63–88). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In: P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics:Volume 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Hargaden, H., & Sills, C. (2002). Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective. Hove: Brunner-Routledge. Hartman Halbertal, T., & Koren, I. (2006). Between “being” and “doing”: conflict and coherence in the identity formation of gay and lesbian orthodox Jews. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 37–62). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Hesse, E. (1996). Discourse, memory, and the Adult Attachment Interview: a note with emphasis on the emerging Cannot Classify category. Infant Mental Health Journal, 17: 4–11. Kandel, E. R. (2005). Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and the New Biology of Mind. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Leone Guglielmotti, R. (2008). The quality of the therapeutic relationship as a factor in helping to change the client’s protocol or implicit memory. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 101–109. Liotti, G. (2001). Le opere della coscienza [Works of consciousness]. Milan: Raffaello Cortina. Loria, B. (1995). Structure determinism and script analysis: a bringing forth of alternative realities. Transactional Analysis Journal, 25: 156– 168. Luborsky, L., & Crits-Christoph, P. (1990). Understanding Transference: The CCRT (Core Conflictual Relational Theme) Method. New York: Basic Books. Mandler, J. (1984). Stories, Scripts and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. McAdams, D. P., & Logan, R. L. ( 2006). Creative work, love, and the dialectic in selected life stories of academics. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story, Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 89–108). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. McLean, K. C., & Thorne, A. (2006). Identity light: entertainment stories as a vehicle for self development. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story , Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 111–128). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.


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McLeod, J. (2004). The significance of narrative and storytelling in postpsychological counseling and psychotherapy. In: A. Lieblich, D. McAdams, & R. Josselson (Eds.), Healing Plots, The Narrative Basis of Psychotherapy (pp. 11–28). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Newton, T. (2006). Script, psychological life plans and the learning cycles. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36: 186–195. Nuttall, J. (2006). The existential phenomenology of transactional analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36: 214–227. Parry, A. (1997). Why we tell stories: the narrative construction of reality. Transactional Analysis Journal, 27: 118–127. Pasupathi, M. (2006). Silk from sows’ ears: collaborative construction of everyday selves in everyday stories. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story, Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 129–150). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pierini, A. (2008). Has the unconscious moved house? Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 110–118. Raggatt, P. T. F. (2006). Multiplicity and conflict in the dialogical self: a life-narrative approach. In: D. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and Story, Creating Self in Narrative (pp. 15–36). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Schafer, R. (1980). Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue. Critical Inquiry, 7: 29–53. Scilligo, P. (2006). Il sé nelle teorie socio-cognitive [The self in socialcognitive theory]. Psicologia Psicoterapia e Salute, 12: 299–326. Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. New York: Guilford Press. Siracusano, A. (2006). Il rapporto tra neuroscienze e psicoterapia [The relationship between neurosciences and psychotherapy]. In: A. Siracusano & I. A. Rubino (Eds.), Psicoterapia e Neuroscienze (pp. 1–25). Rome: Il Pensiero Scientifico. Siracusano, A., & Rubino, I. A. (Eds.) (2006). Psicoterapia e neuroscienze [Psychotherapy and neurosciences]. Rome: Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore. Spence, D. P. (1982). Narrative Truth and Historical Truth. New York: W. W. Norton. Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View From Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books.

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Tosi, M. T. (1993). Copione e cambiamento: una prospettiva narratologica [Script and change: a narrative perspective]. Polarità, 7: 409– 416. Tosi, M. T. (1997). Il metodo di analisi di Luborsky del Tema Relazionale Conflittuale Centrale e il piano di trattamento in Analisi Transazionale [Luborsky’s method of analysis of the Core Conflictual Relational Theme and the treatment plan in Transactional Analysis]. Psicologia Psicoterapia e Salute, 3: 311–317. Tosi, M. T. (2008). The many faces of the unconscious: a new unconscious for a phenomenological Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 119–127. Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: from mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53: 1–25. White, M. (1989). Selected Papers. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. Wiseman, H., & Barber, J. P. (2004). The core conflictual relational theme approach to relational narratives: interpersonal themes in the context of intergenerational communication of trauma. In: A. Lieblich, D. McAdams, & R. Josselson (Eds.), Healing Plots, The Narrative Basis of Psychotherapy (pp. 151–170). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

CHAPTER THREE

When parting is not such sweet sorrow: “Mourning and melancholia”, projective identification, and script analysis1 Helena Hargaden

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ric Berne’s ability to put psychological phenomena into layman’s language is particularly evident in his choice of the term “script” (1961). Script suggests a story line, a plot, dialogue, denouements, comedy or tragedy, stereotype, archetype, and mythology: the very “stuff” of life. Script is simultaneously simple and complex. Script is the implementation of unconscious experiences that have influenced thoughts and feelings about self and other expressed in the form of narrative. Berne originally defined script as “an unconscious life plan” (Berne, 1966, p. 228). It is tempting to convert the word “plan” into a concrete reality. A combination of affective enquiry into conscious memory, behavioural observation, and cognitive deduction makes it seem as though it is possible to capture life script through a linear narrative. Yet, even consciousness “is fragmentary, discontinuous, and much too complex and inaccessible to be captured in a singular, true report” (Mitchell, 1993, p. 53). In this chapter, I propose that the main purpose of script analysis is to elicit the multiple meanings inherent in a person’s life script. To do this, the psychotherapist has to find an affective link to the client’s unconscious. The following case 55

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study demonstrates how the nuances and subtle aspects of script dynamics emerge through transferential relatedness between therapist and client. A relational understanding of projective identification provides an affective connection to the relational unconscious leading to deep emotional intimacy between therapist and client in which both participants are changed. When Duncan first came to see me he said he wanted “some transactional analysis” because he had issues with his wife. He did not need long-term therapy, he said, as he had just completed five years of psychoanalysis and did not want to get into such a commitment again. He reasoned with me that he did not need to come to weekly psychotherapy; he wanted, instead, an ad hoc arrangement as he was often away on business. He had the manner of someone who knew what he was talking about. Although I would normally question such an arrangement, I broke my own rules and went along with it. You might well wonder why I was not more sceptical. Why it was that I did not smell a rat? Instead, I was a willing recruit into Duncan’s internal world, ready to embark upon a journey where he needed to be in control. I reasoned that he might well know what he was talking about; after all, he had done a serious bout of psychoanalysis. And, in some ways, he did, because Duncan, without being conscious of it, required an attuned receptivity to his unconscious mental states. I believe that from the beginning of this psychotherapy there was an unconscious relational connection between therapist and client. This relational connection, although deeply unconscious, was reflected in my willingness to be recruited to his wishes. Unwittingly, I showed the type of flexibility that Bateman and Tyrer (2004) say is essential when working with someone who has a personality disorder. However, this was not my conscious intention when I agreed to Duncan’s terms for therapy. Transactional analysis can be readily applied to short-term contracts, so I reasoned that Duncan was quite justified in making a request for a short-term, ad hoc contract even though, as an integrative psychotherapist as well as a transactional analyst, I had mostly worked in the longer term. Instead of insisting that Duncan conform to my way of working, I persuaded myself that it would be interesting to do short-term therapy and to focus on a more cognitive–behavioural type of psychotherapy. This was how I convinced myself to proceed with the

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therapy contract offered, or, we might say, instructed, for that was how it felt, by Duncan. However, it was not to be. When Duncan attempted suicide a few months into the therapy, my increasing concerns about the seriousness of his mental condition were validated. We had arrived at a crossroads twelve weeks into therapy. We needed to get off the road and into the woods. We needed to engage with his unconscious. I remonstrated with myself for entering into such an uncontained therapeutic contract. I chided myself about what an idiot I had been to accept such a loose and suspicious contract for psychotherapy. But I had been in a “Catch-22” situation. I had needed to be “an idiot” for the therapy to get under way. From the beginning Duncan was insistent that he did not want to enter into another long-term relationship because he had spent the last five years on the couch (or, as it subsequently turned out, refusing to go on the couch for most of the time). He needed to be in control, he told me, and I obliged, finding myself quite taken over and controlled. I intuitively felt I needed to go along with his view of things and he has since acknowledged that if I had insisted upon a tighter contract from the beginning, he would have walked. It is as simple as that. Scripts belong in the realm of transference phenomena, that is, they are derivatives, or more precisely, adaptations, of infantile reactions and experiences . . . it is an attempt to repeat in derivative form a whole transference drama, often subdivided in acts. [Berne, 1961, p. 116]

It will become clear how the initial stages of this psychotherapy reflected Duncan’s earliest, traumatic experiences in infancy. Part of the art of psychotherapy involves the therapist’s willingness to take part in the whole transference drama. And, of course, this will, by its very nature, be unconscious. The unconscious process can only be known “indirectly—and with peculiar effects” (Meier, 1995). My reflections on my early enactment in this psychotherapy find a resource in Hoffman (1998), who maintains that we need to feel free to break our own rules, that a spontaneous response is often a creative one, linked to the uniqueness of the therapy. Nevertheless, these creative and intuitive acts usually occur within the therapeutic

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container, after some time has elapsed in which therapist and client can get a sense of each other. Why was I so readily recruited? I think part of the answer to this puzzle lies in the psychological readiness Duncan had already gained in his former psychoanalysis and my respect for that. I had a sense that Duncan had gone as far as he could with his former psychoanalyst, and that intuitively he was looking for someone who would be able to go to those places inside of himself that he needed to visit but had never been able to go to before. Williams (2007) observes that the deepest disturbance will be enacted through boundary violations. In those first few months we had, in effect, unwittingly enacted out the script protocol “the original experiences that pattern an individual’s life” (Berne, 1966, p. 302). In Duncan’s case, it was the original experiences contained in the unremembered trauma of his earliest experiences.

Duncan’s earliest experiences Duncan had been the first-born of a young mother, herself emotionally damaged. His father worked as an ambassador to an Eastern European country where brutal revolution had thrown the country into chaos: a bloody and terrifying event that coincided with Duncan’s birth. The circumstances of his birth and his earliest experiences were traumatic; his mother had been paralysed with fear and feelings of inadequacy while his father was caught up in an embassy under siege. Women and children are collateral damage. His life would certainly have been under threat, as would have been his mother’s. Duncan and I had unwittingly co-created an uncontained and dangerous environment. We had both nearly been killed off: he physically; I emotionally. We had gone through an experience together which had been risky, ill thought through, and yet, non-negotiable, thus, unwittingly, replicating the conditions surrounding his birth: a bloody revolution. Nevertheless, because I had been able to accept Duncan for therapy on his own terms, he sensed that I might therefore be responsive to him in ways which would enable him to let me come close to him and learn to trust me. After Duncan’s attempted suicide, I felt as though someone had put a gun to my head. I was like a blind woman who has suddenly regained her sight. It was now starkly obvious that the


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lack of therapeutic containment was not the appropriate therapeutic environment for someone with a harmatic (tragic) script. I was now able to say to him, unequivocally, that I was unable to work with him unless he came to see me twice a week and, in addition, joined the therapy group I ran once a week. After such a shock, I thought it important that I stress my terms. Duncan, subdued and medicated, acquiesced, although I suspected that a part of him would feel deeply resentful about adapting to my way of working. I felt as though I had passed a test. How many more times would I be challenged? The answer was: many. My work with Duncan (alongside collaborative work with other colleagues) influenced my theoretical direction towards the development of relational transactional analysis. In particular, the significance of the relational unconscious was clearly, from the beginning, an active part of my relatedness with Duncan. Our connectedness was linked to unconscious aspects of his experience (and, as it subsequently turned out, mine) and can best be understood through the theory of projective identification. In our relational perspective of projective identification (Hargaden & Sills, 2002) we draw upon Ogden’s description of projective identification, in which he proposes that the infant induces a feeling state in the other that corresponds to a state that he is unable to experience for himself. The recipient allows the induced state to reside within, and, by reinternalizing this externally metabolized experience, the infant gains a change in the quality of his experience (Ogden, 1992). We refer to this as the “transformational transference”. From a relational perspective, the therapist’s job involves her linking into what is unconscious in her own mind, a process which involves her in undergoing a change. The impact of the therapist’s change impacts upon the mutuality between client and therapist so that the space between them is altered. It is, thus, a bi-directional process in which the client experiences the therapist in a new and different way, one in which previous experience is contained. In this way, the client and therapist alter each other, and formerly unsymbolized experience becomes conscious and tolerable through an interpersonal relationship in which the therapist is willing to change. The theory of projective identification provides a framework for thinking about experiences that, by their very nature, require us to

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think the unthinkable, while a relational perspective endorses the role of mutuality in this transferential process. But theory can never prepare us for those times when we are caught up in the eye of the storm. When the twister comes, as in The Wizard of Oz, it carries Dorothy away, turns her world upside down, and when she lands in Oz everything is different. It is at such times that we are caught off guard. Duncan and I often got caught up in a whirlwind of emotional exchange, but one day the twister came, taking us over the rainbow and beyond. Would we survive? Unlike hurricanes, most people do not survive the eye of the tornado unless they are in a film called The Wizard of Oz! There had, of course, been a cumulative build up to the tensions which emerged before the day in question. For instance, the theme that stalked the therapy from day one was the issue of ending. Duncan’s fear of commitment was a mask for his fear of ending, his anxiety about abandonment, his terror of getting hurt again, and this fear strengthened, deepened, and intensified through the course of a therapy that gradually brought us into deep emotional intimacy. The closer we became, the more he struggled with the ending of the session. He told me this many times in a variety of different ways. He and I thought we could understand why it was so hard for him, because of his memories of returning to boarding school at the end of holidays. His dread was so intense that he had tried, with all his might, effort, and will, and with every fibre of his being, to make the traffic lights stay on red: forever. He was a particularly sensitive child, evidenced in comments made by other members of the family and outsiders. An uncle had returned from taking him to boarding school, pale and shaken, feeling very sad about having had to leave Duncan at the school. An outsider to the family had commented to his father: “Your son is a very sensitive young boy.” He had been particularly vulnerable to any separation, experiencing it as abandonment, and the subsequent macho life of the school, where bullying, humiliation, and fighting were daily occurrences, only made it worse. Duncan’s earliest experiences had left him with an unbearable sensitivity in which all separations were experienced as intolerable rejections and abandonment. In his relational essay, “Mourning and melancholia”, Freud describes how melancholia is more than just loss of the object:


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it proceeds precisely from those experiences that involved the threat of losing the object. For this reason the exciting causes of melancholia have a much wider range than those of mourning . . . In melancholia accordingly, countless separate struggles are carried on over the object, in which hate and love contend with each other; the one seeks to detach the libido from the object, the other to maintain this position of the libido against the assault. [Freud, 1917e, p. 250]

Duncan’s earliest experiences of object loss and the struggles he encountered as an infant reflect the melancholic process exactly. His experiences of abandonment, yearnings, needs, losses, and terror of near extinction eventually wound their way into the therapy sessions and became particularly pronounced in the way the sessions would end. We never seemed to be able to end on time. Although I would say, “We have now finished”, or, “We are ending”, or, “Time has run out”, or, “So we are ending for today”, Duncan would often not move for quite a while. When he did move, it seemed as though he had to drag himself out of the chair. I wondered about it, feeling somewhat paralysed myself about how to think or what to do about it. He began to wonder what I would do if he did not go at the end of sessions. Would I ignore him? Leave him to starve? Throw him the odd crust as he sat in my room wasting away, becoming a skeleton. I, too, would wonder what I would do. I felt nervous; after all, he was over six foot and had had some violent episodes in his past, with his wife. I reflected upon his desperation, his desire, his wondering about how sadistic I would be. For instance, would I leave him to die? How compassionate would I be, would I feed him? Would I throw him out? Although it sounded melodramatic, these questions were very real for Duncan and, indeed, for me. When we explored what it meant for him to leave me at the end of sessions, he said that as he walked out of the door he felt that he lost me, lost the warmth, the connection, the meaning, the life. His experience of abandonment was very stark. A cumulative sense of tension attached itself to this theme when one day he told me that when he left me, he sometimes felt so desperate that he parked around the corner, sometimes for one and a half hours, sitting paralysed, unable to move. Letting me know how much I meant to him was a risk that brought us even closer. Shortly after Duncan had told me this, I had to move a session from a Thursday to a

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Friday. On Friday, he told me that he had spent the previous day with his head in his hands, not knowing how he would be able to leave on Friday. I said how it sounded to me that he felt he would be crucified; and that I would be the one to condemn him to his destiny. I reflected on the image of Jesus on the Cross, crying out in despair, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” I was unsure how this image affected him, but it helped me get a sense of the sheer awfulness of the experience he was trying to communicate. I felt moved and helpless at the same time. I felt a huge pressure to do . . . what? I could not think. I acknowledged his profound sense of despair and desperation, but such a transaction felt too trite, for he already knew how he felt. I elaborated upon the metaphor of the crucifixion to empathize with his experience of isolation and bleakness. I expressed my sadness about such a forlorn state of affairs, but none of it made any difference to his desperate sense of abandonment. Neither empathy nor interpretation was sufficient. Some authors write as if the patient’s subjective experience can simply be uncovered, allowed to unfold in a receptive, empathic environment, much as Freud thought the analyst’s neutrality allowed the patient’s intrapsychic conflicts to emerge in an uncontaminated fashion. They overlook the extent to which the patient is always speaking selectively to a particular other person for a specific purpose. [Mitchell, 1993, p. 69]

Here, Mitchell points out the limitations of a one-person psychology, whether that is a humanistic one, with its emphasis on empathy as the “curative” factor, or psychoanalysis, with its emphasis upon detachment and interpretation as the crucial ingredient in cure. These features of detachment, interpretation, and empathy are, of course, significant aspects of psychotherapy, but we are left with the question, “How do we convey our understanding as psychotherapists?” We got closer to the crux of the matter when Duncan said one day, “I just don’t know how you can do it. How can you send me away at the end of the session? If you truly understood how I feel you would not do it. Oh, yes, of course I know intellectually why you do it,” he said despairingly, “but it makes no difference to me.”


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Words alone were clearly not deepening our communication. Duncan felt unmoved by my words, whether they were shaped into metaphors, interpretations, or reflected his feelings. Words became like a straitjacket between us, full of sound and fury, but often not able to signify the meaning. Many words were uttered, creating noise and sound, but thudding on to the floor at the end of sessions, leaving a sense that all we had said was as nothing compared to an unnamable “something”. In some ways, the volume of words captured the impossibility of communication between us. I sensed, with some dread, that we were gradually and inexorably moving towards an impasse. This is how impasses occur, slowly, subtly: with difficulty and a degree of certainty, we moved towards our dichotomous positions.

Moments of meeting Moments of change are sometimes referred to as “aha moments”. Daniel Stern describes them as “moments of meeting”, in which “each partner has actively contributed something unique and authentic of his or herself as an individual (not unique to their theory or technique of therapeutics) in the construction of the ‘moment of meeting’” (Stern et al., 1993, p. 913). To the untrained ear, these moments can seem unremarkable. One has to listen to the recounting of these moments with a certain sensibility. We need to be attuned to the bi-directionality of the relational unconscious; how we shape each other at every turn; that unless the therapist allows this shaping, she cannot change. If she cannot change, then no change will be possible. Yet, not only must she be shaped and changed, she has to find a way of thinking about what is happening and how to choose the words that will matter. We cannot plan for moments of meeting; when the intensity of exchange is at its height, we need to improvise. At the mercy of our integrity, pushed to the limits of our creative capacity, we realize we have come to the end of our theory and have dived into the sea of feelings (Eigen, 2007). Such moments invariably involve us in the dilemma about self disclosure. Even as we unconsciously reveal ourselves, we still have choices about what to verbally disclose.

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How to convey those moments of meeting? Duncan shuddered as he came into the room; “I cannot go there again,” he said portentously. I must not make him leave, he told me emphatically. I asked him why he thought I “made” him leave and he said, quick as a flash, that it was my inhuman part that made him go. That if I understood the pain he was in, how excruciating it was, how his head hurt, and as he spoke he again had a vivid recollection of willing the traffic lights to stay on red as he was being driven back to the boarding school, screaming inside with pain—but, he wailed, they never did, even now, seeming to be anguished by his inability to stop the dreaded journey. “So, why do you make me go?” he said insistently. He was clearly not in the mood for me to stay in a mode of enquiry into his mental states, to hear metaphors, interpretations, or receive empathy. Instead, I was to be put on the spot. I felt anxious. What on earth would I do if he did not move? What about the next client? How would I get him out of his chair? Under threat and unable to think, I grabbed a thought out of the air, which conveniently presented itself to me as a plausible one: “It is an existential issue,” I said, importantly and firmly, hoping this would provide containment. He looked at me with contempt—quite rightly so, as it was a pathetic response, I now readily concede. If not exactly an inhuman one, he experienced it thus, and, indeed, it was at least a rather detached offering. In hock to my severe sense of anxiety, I had attempted to set a boundary by pulling rank and citing a technical term that I hoped would subdue him. The tension in the air was palpable. His long legs were stretched out ahead of him, nearly touching me, as I sat still in my chair, feeling completely stuck. I had no idea what to say; my mind went blank and I could barely think. I started to feel sick, and overcome with tiredness. I thought I might throw up and started wondering about what I had had for breakfast. That thought jolted me into Adult awareness. This was somatic countertransference, I reasoned, but it made no difference to my nausea. I had to escape. I had enough presence of mind to translate my experience into a half-appropriate intervention: “I need to put a pause button on the session,” I said. “I have a tickle in my throat, and need to leave the room to get some water.” The colour of his eyes deepened with scorn and, as I followed the trajectory of his eyes moving from me


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to a space beside my chair, my heart beat faster as I heard him say, “There’s a bottle of water by your chair.” “Oh,” said I, with false brightness, “so there is”, and I picked it up and took a long swig, the way a condemned prisoner might ask for one last drink before being led away to the gallows: to my untimely fate. But the action was enough to change the atmosphere in the room. We had moved out of a direct relationship into one in which we talked about our relationship. I felt much better, the sickness went and I was curious to see where he was in himself. The tension had subsided. “So what do you think was going on between us just then?” I asked. He said, “Well, I think you used the water as a diversionary tactic to get us out of the mess we were in and it has worked because I am no longer feeling the pain of being inside that place.” What a sensitive man he is, I thought! He knows I have “bottled” it and he is annoyed. I tried to get back to the former situation. “Let us revisit that experience then,” I said. But, he said, he couldn’t, so I said, “Well, let’s talk about it.” He knew I had made a mistake and I felt that he was punishing me for it, but now, more restored by the water and the reduction in tension, I persisted. “How do you understand what was going on between us?” He answered, “Well, you were damned no matter what I said, because you could not get past the question: how can you send me away if you really understand my painful feelings?” As he said this, once more his face contorted as he reconnected with his pain. I was reconnected with my ability to think and be in the present moment: reconnected with my Adult ego state; back in my mind. I felt also a sense of being back in my body; my sickness had gone. From this experience of embodiment, I was able to recognize that I needed separation and space to take my time to engage with Duncan’s question; something I could not do when I felt hounded by his urgent and enraged requests for answers. I need time to think about it, I said. I need time to reflect. We sat together in silence and I began to reflect upon his question. As I did so, I began to feel tearful. A random memory came to me of when my younger son clung on to my coat to try to stop me leaving him at nursery. I had felt heartbroken at the time. I remembered it well. I thought about loss, the pain of it. A recent article came into my mind, by Darien Leader, a psychoanalyst, and author of a book entitled, The New Black (Guardian, 2008). Leader makes a scathing attack upon the

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cultural obsession with “depression” and the use of drugs to treat what really would be more accurately understood as the effects of mourning or melancholia. Leader refers to Freud’s 1917 essay, “Mourning and melancholia”. Leader had reminded me of Freud’s essay and I had recently re-read it several times. As I sat here with Duncan, I reflected on what I had read. Freud describes the difference between mourning and melancholia in which both have the same symptoms. He says the main difference is that melancholia is unconscious: “that melancholia is in some way related to an object-loss which is withdrawn from consciousness, in contradistinction to mourning, in which there is nothing about the loss that is unconscious” (Freud, 1917e, p. 254). Mourning is, therefore, a conscious process, whereas melancholia is linked to developmental losses about which we often know nothing consciously. Melancholia is the basis of narcissism. Instead of mourning, the person introjects the lost object and turns it against himself, as a result of which the person is left feeling low selfesteem, and with a deeply destructive hatred of self. He describes the distinguishing mental features of melancholia as a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that find utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment. [ibid., p. 252]

Freud’s essay is very helpful to the psychotherapist in making such a distinction, because it enables an empathic response to the melancholic state of narcissism. Freud’s essay points us in the direction of looking for what was lost and helps shape our countertransference when we may be inclined to feel callous, indifferent, irritated, and impatient. So, loss is at the bottom of it all. Loss of so many things: unknown, known, and ongoing. A simple-sounding word, yet so painful when we really engage with our losses. Freud said that life is difficult and that loss will always be painful; there is no way of making loss not painful. Bob Dylan (1967) describes love as a fourletter word, but at that moment, I thought, it is loss which is also a four-letter word. Loss is always painful. Loss is always painful. Those words were like a refrain.


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As I sat with Duncan, deep in thought, I felt the sorrow of life’s losses, feeling both soothed and moved by the wisdom and simplicity of Freud’s words. I was then able to know what I really wanted to say to Duncan. I told him that how, when we parted, I felt the loss of him. “It is not just the loss of you,” I said, “but when I feel the loss of you at the end of our sessions, it gets into all of my other losses, and it hurts; sometimes I cut it off, because I too don’t want to feel the pain of it.” As I said these words it occurred to me, for the first time, how traumatized I sometimes felt at the end of sessions with Duncan, where, at those times when there was space, I would sit in front of my laptop aimlessly playing a card game, in a paralysed condition, sometimes for up to half an hour. Duncan looked at me with astonishment. “My God, why do you do this job?” I felt vulnerable and exposed and thought to myself with feeling: “Why do I do this job?” In the spirit of the depth of honest exchange that had emerged, I said, “Because I love it, and because I have had many losses, and in engaging with the pain of those losses, I continue to feel healed by working with people who have also suffered losses which feel intolerable and unbearable.” He gave a joyful laugh. His face had changed, his body looked different, and he seemed full of life. “I feel that you have hugged me,” he said, smiling, and said he wanted to hug me back. “How extraordinary,” he said, “you are extraordinary.” You might think, oh dear, “idealization”, but, as Richard Erskine has pointed out (Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999), idealization is the client’s unconscious request for protection. Of course, Duncan was, at this point in the therapy, idealizing me. He needed my extraordinary understanding and protection from the infant’s abandonment by his mother’s emotional distress during the revolution and the child’s abandonment to the boarding school. For Duncan, it was a truly extraordinary thought and experience, that it was possible to feel one’s losses, feel the pain of them, and the vulnerability of it, and, at the same time not to be ashamed of feeling so painfully vulnerable. He had also discovered something quite extraordinary about me: I had a heart! I was like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz, who finds he has a heart after the tornado had taken Dorothy and her companions to a new place. We, too, had both moved into a new place where I had become a human being.

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And if I was extraordinary, then, so was he, although we may ask why, after all, is it so extraordinary to mourn our losses? According to Leader (2008), it has indeed become an extraordinary thing to acknowledge and feel the vicissitudes of living instead of reaching for something, anything, which promises to take away our pain. He believes that this has become increasingly pandered to by a culture that seems not to want to recognize the place of mourning in life and that life is hard.

Further reflections Since Freud (1917e), subsequent research into infant development (Stern, 1985) and the development of neuroscience and the links made to development of the brain (Schore, 1994) have supported Freud’s idea of unconscious loss as the root of melancholia. Freud referred to this as losses which are unconscious but affect us in the here and now. When Duncan’s losses were not readily available through memory, he found a convincing script narrative in his remembered experiences of boarding school. Erskine (2008) has also shown in his examples how our earliest experiences contribute to representations of interpersonal (object) relationships but do not form part of a remembered narrative. However, these memories alone could not account for the intensity of Duncan’s sense of abandonment, a feature that was also commented upon by the family friend, who recognized a traumatized soul and described it as a type of sensitivity. The boarding school experience provided Duncan with a narrative in the absence of conscious declarative memory. It is, therefore, essential that any serious script analysis take into consideration countertransferential phenomenon as a route through to the client’s non-verbalalized experience. In the case of Duncan, the only way to gain access to his earliest object relations was through the intensity of the exchange between us. His earliest wishes and fantasies reveal themselves through his wondering aloud with me how I would treat him if he refused to go. “Would I leave him to die? Would I save him? Would I love him? Would I hate him?” I struggled to be open enough to engage with Duncan at this level. I worried for my safety: for example, what would I do if he refused to leave, initially ignoring Duncan’s


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attempts to relive unrepeatable script experiences. But Duncan was intelligent and he trusted in his intuitions and the promptings from his unconscious. He needed to access my unconscious mental functioning and, when I allowed it to happen, when I could eventually share my mind with him and admit my vulnerability and humanness, it brought about a deep emotional intimacy between us. This experience changed him and me. We both knew each other differently after this exchange and nothing could turn the clock back. When I referred back to this session several meetings later, Duncan had only a dim memory of what had happened. He said that it was misty, reminding me of Monet’s impressionistic, misty, but impactful paintings. It was unusual for Duncan not to remember details, but as he said the word “misty”, his eyes filled, his face softened, and his body relaxed, as though he was reliving the experience of connectedness once more. Impasses are an essential and predictable part of any psychotherapy. They will naturally occur as the tension between the past and the present merge through the therapeutic relationship. Yet, when caught in the vortex of the tornado, it can be very difficult to think. We need a degree of freedom and we need to learn how to think in those moments. I got stuck in the tension between us; the inhumanness that Duncan had experienced in his infancy and at the boarding school was mirrored in the transferential relationship. The projective identification initially evoked a traumatized part of my psyche in which I could not receive Duncan’s loss. All I could manage was the emotionally removed response that felt callous and inhuman, in much the same manner that Duncan had once experienced his misattuned mother and his absent father. He tries to reach another part in me, but all he gets is the icy and unresponsive part: “It is a question,” I say, “of the existential.” How icy can you get?! I am sickened, maybe by my inability to be humane; I do not wish to know about my icy, callous part. Maybe my disturbance and sickness is about the experience of the bad object in me, the part which mirrors him and is so accurately observed by Duncan when he notes how I used a “diversionary tactic” to get away from him. Duncan brought to my attention previously disassociated parts of my suffering and melancholic preoccupation. It is only when I get back my mind, and connect with my reflective capacity, that I find my humanity and am able to communicate

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with Duncan in a way he can receive. For Duncan, no platitudes would do, no “therapeutic” interpretations, no fabricated compassion would reach him: he needed truth—he needed to make me into a human being, into someone who could reflect. He not only made me reach my humanity, he made me recognize my inhumanity, too: a part that sickens me and makes me want to escape from myself. “It takes one to know one.” Duncan and I share similar traits. He has made me recognize that nothing really changes unless the therapist changes. I had to yield and let myself be known in a nondefended way. In this script analysis, projective identification enabled Duncan and I to communicate at a very deep level of emotional intimacy. From a relational perspective, I worked with the projective identification by engaging with my self states, which are, as we have seen, unique to my script. Someone else sitting with Duncan would have done something quite different. For instance, they may have been more inclined to stay with Duncan’s experience of the therapist’s inhumanity and explore his experience from that perspective. The point was that I had stopped thinking, because he had engaged my inhuman part so successfully. His experience of my vulnerability, his access to my unconscious, enabled Duncan to change his script and to feel, at last, understood, and to let go of the shame that had haunted him all his life for feeling so weakened by his vulnerability. For the first time, Duncan was able to leave, feeling that he carried me with him, instead of losing me at the door.

Note 1.

Aspects of this chapter were presented at the Metanoia Relational TA conference on 5th July, 2008.

References Bateman, A. W., & Tyrer, P. (2004). Psychological treatments for personality disorder. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 10: 378–388. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press.


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Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. Oxford: Oxford University Press [reprinted Menlow Park, CA: Shea Books, 1994]. Dylan, B. (ca.1967). Love is just a four-letter word. Performed by Joan Baez, Columbia Records. Eigen, M. (2007). Feelings Matter. London: Karnac. Erskine, R. G. (2008). Psychotherapy of unconscious experience. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38: 128–138. Erskine, R. G., Moursund, J. P., & Trautmann, R. L. (1999). Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact In Relationship. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel. Freud, S. (1917e). Mourning and melancholia, S.E., 14: 237–258. London: Hogarth. Hargaden, H., & Sills, C. (2002). Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective. London: Routledge. Hoffman, I. (1998). Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Leader, D. (2008). The New Black. London: Hamish Hamilton. Meier, C. A. (1995). Personality. Switzerland, Einsiedeln: Daimon. Mitchell, S. (1993). Hope and Dread. New York: Basic Books. Ogden, T. (1992). Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. London: Karnac. Rustin, S. (2008). The psychoanalyst Darian Leader says we’ve forgotten how to mourn, and that our understanding of relationships and our emotional life is ‘catastrophic’. So, are you sitting comfortably? Guardian, 26 January. Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Stern, D., Sander, L., Nahum, J., Harrison, A., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A., Bruschweiler-Stern, N., & Tronick, E. (1998). Non-interpretative mechanisms in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: the “something more” than interpretation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79: 903–921. Stern, D. N. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books. Williams, P. (2007). Contribution made on 17/5/2007: IARPPColloquium Series: No. 10, 5/14/07 to 5/28/07 Topic: “When the frame doesn’t fit the picture” Author: Anthony Bass. Moderators: Bruce Reis and Daniel Shaw.

CHAPTER FOUR

Script or scripture? Jo Stuthridge

A

fluid, coherent, and dynamic theoretical narrative is capable of integrating new ideas and changing over time. This chapter incorporates recent understandings from developmental research into a transactional analysis theory of script. Our theory must keep abreast of empirical research to prevent script becoming scripture—a rigid or dogmatic narrative. The mind is no longer understood to be an autonomous disembodied entity. Neuroscience, infant research, and relational psychoanalysis have all converged around the idea that the mind is embodied, relational, and functions like a complex system (Aron, 1996, p. 3; Bromberg, 2006; Cozolino, 2006; Siegel, 1999; Stern et al., 1998). These ideas invite a re-conceptualization of script in transactional analysis theory and practice. Script is broadly understood as a series of decisions, formed as coping strategies in childhood, which continue to shape the life course outside of awareness (Berne, 1972; Erskine, 1980). The theory developed from an early emphasis on determinism and pathology (Berne, 1961; Steiner, 1974) towards a concept of script as meaning making, which includes healthy as well as self-limiting decisions (Allen & Allen, 1987; Cornell, 1988; English, 1988). More 73

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recently, script has been viewed through a constructionist lens as the co-construction of narrative identity (Allen & Allen, 1997; Loria, 1995; Summers & Tudor, 2000). There has been a gradual shift in emphasis away from internal and cognitive processes (decisions, injunctions, or beliefs) (Goulding & Goulding, 1976) towards interpersonal and affective processes (Cornell & Hargaden, 2005). My aim here is to further this development by putting forward a notion of script as an internal narrative process, which manifests externally as a predictable embodied, emotional pattern of relating to self and other. This definition includes two key processes: the internal and external. Internally, script is essentially a self-narrative process that organizes the mind, life experiences, and sense of identity (Allen & Allen, 1997; Erskine & Moursand, 1988). This scripting process shapes identity by defining content (the nature of memories, beliefs, and feelings) and, perhaps more powerfully, by structuring experience. Narrative can either link or fragment our sense of self. My focus here is on the structure of script rather than content, the relative coherence or incoherence, rigidity or flexibility of the selfnarrative. Attachment research provides compelling evidence that the structure of self-narrative is more crucial to psychological health than the content of the narrative. Coherent self-narrative in a parent (regardless of content) is the most robust predictor of secure attachment in a child (Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991a; van IJzendoorn, 1995). This stunning finding throws new light on how we think about script and the therapeutic relationship. The development of coherent self-narrative may be key to preventing the intergenerational transmission of self-limiting script patterns. Externally, script is concerned with unconscious relational patterns. Berne’s use of the term “script” evokes images of the theatre, providing a wonderful metaphor for the concept of an unconscious life plan that unfolds as “a dynamically progressive transference drama” (Berne, 1961, p. 174). Parent and Child ego states form the cast of characters who occupy the mind’s stage, interacting with the minds of others to play out a story. In an interpersonal context, then, script is manifest as a drama enacted by shifting constellations of ego states externalized in patterns of transference

SCRIPT OR SCRIPTURE?

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and countertransference. Behind the scenes, a script dictates the action. This chapter explores the interplay between the interpersonal drama and the intrapsychic narrative. My proposal is that interpersonal attunement is essential for the development of a capacity for internal narrative coherence. Relational patterns shape the structure of self-narrative. A lack of contingent interaction will lead to the formation of incoherent, rigid, or fragmented self-narrative. Experience that is not integrated into narrative is re-enacted in the present through transferential drama. To access this disowned experience, the therapist must utilize her own subjectivity and attend to non-verbal affective transactions in the present. Development in therapy is concerned more with process than unearthing script content. The ultimate goal of therapy is to foster the client’s capacity for coherent flexible and dynamic self-narrative through a process of collaborative contingent attunement. The first section briefly outlines a contemporary understanding of mind and relates this to transactional analysis. The next section summarizes recent empirical evidence concerning the development of self-narrative. The consequences of this developmental process are discussed in terms of coherent narrative and impaired selfnarrative function. The final section considers the implications for therapy and therapists. Two client vignettes illustrate the use of an intersubjective process to enhance the capacity for coherent selfnarrative.

Mind as an embodied, relational, complex system Developmental science and psychoanalysis have recently met at a crossroads where there is a common understanding that the mind emerges from interaction between neurophysiological processes and early relationships (Cozolino, 2006; Klin & Jones, 2007). Research in Dunedin, New Zealand has amply demonstrated the complex interaction between genetics and social relationships (Caspi, Sugden, Moffitt, Taylor, & Craig, 2002). Artificial separations between mind and body, and between cognition and feelings, have been replaced by a view of the mind as embedded in relational, affective, and bodily experience.

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Attachment theorists, neurologists, and psychoanalysts use different concepts to explain how interpersonal experience is aggregated and internalized to form multiple representations of self and other which form the building blocks of the mind. These internal models are variously understood as: internal working models (Bowlby, 1973); representations of interactions that have been generalized (Stern, 1985); implicit relational knowing (Lyons-Ruth, 1998); relational configurations (Mitchell, 1988); or repetitive patterns of neural firing which form enduring states of mind (Siegel, 1999). There is some consensus that these patterns are encoded in implicit memory (Cozolino, 2002; Siegel, 1999). This means that they cannot be consciously recalled, but they can be activated in the present, unconsciously influencing perceptions of current relationships. The idea that interpersonal experience forms the basis of the intrapsychic structure of the mind is a foundational tenet of transactional analysis. Repetitive transactions between infant and caregiver are internalized to form a series of Child and Parent ego states. As Berne (1961) put it, the mind contains “relics of the infant who once actually existed, in a struggle with the relics of the parents who once actually existed” (p. 55). The term “ego state” denotes “states of mind and their related patterns of behaviour” (p. 11). Child ego states are archeopsychic, that is, derived from past experiences of the self, while Parent ego states are extereopsychic, originating from outside or from experiences of the other. This internal matrix of ego states comprises chunks of lived experience that determine characteristic patterns of feelings, bodily sensations, and behaviours. In functional terms, these early blueprints for relating form a “protocol”, which Berne (1966) described as “the original experiences that pattern the individual’s life” (p. 302). Cornell and Landaiche (2006, p. 203) suggest that the protocol “is a latent level of somatic and relational organisation that precedes the formation of script and operates outside of conscious awareness”. The protocol is the origin of later transferential patterns and script drama (Berne, 1961). Several theorists suggest that the mind operates like a complex non-linear system that exists in a constant state of flux with other minds (Bromberg, 2006; Siegel, 1999; Stern et al., 1998). Borrowing from complexity theory (a series of mathematical principles [Gleick,


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1987]), this model suggests that a healthy mind develops when differentiated self-states are integrated to create a complex, flexible, and coherent system (Siegel, 1999). Complexity theory proposes that stability is achieved by movement towards maximal complexity, which requires a balance between continuity and flexibility. A lack of integration will lead to a mind characterized either by excessive rigidity, fragmentation, or disorganization, all of which result in poor mental health. Arguably, this integrative process determines the structure of script as an internal self-narrative. There are two key outcomes, then, of early interaction between the infant and care-giver: a shifting matrix of multiple Child and Parent ego states representing self–other experiences and a process of integration which can be conceived as a function of the Adult ego. The Adult ego is described as neopsychic, meaning present centred. Following Erskine (2003, p. 87), the term “Adult ego” is used to represent the concept of Adult as a process rather than an ego state. This view of the mind depicts a dynamic open system of ego states that is always interacting with other minds. Transactions shape ego states and ego states influence transactions, forming a constant exchange between the interpersonal and intrapsychic. The Adult ego’s capacity for self-narrative allows us to create a sense of continuity and identity out of changing experiences. Script theories based on a Cartesian view of the mind have focused on cognitive and internal processes. This thinking led to the premise that “if the child decides her script she can re-decide”. Methods of change focused on intrapsychic processes such as decontamination or redecision. A contemporary view of the mind gives rise to a new premise that “if relationships form script they can also transform script”. Accordingly, we need therapeutic methods focused on interpersonal processes to bring about healing.

The development of self-narrative Berne (1964) assumed that infants are born with an intact Adult ego or innate capacity for integration: “the infant starts off in an autonomous state” (p. 182). This idea was consistent with Cartesian assumptions at the time about the subjective self as universal and innate. Conversely, developmental research suggests that a capacity

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to integrate experience into a coherent self-narrative is a developmental achievement. Hargaden and Fenton (2005) conclude that developmental research alters our understanding of the Adult ego, suggesting that Adult capacities for integration are contingent on complex relational processes. Research from the fields of infant development, attachment, and neuroscience agrees that a capacity for narrative coherence is dependent on developmental processes rather than being a genetic given that is present at birth. LeDoux (2002, p. 3) states that “people don’t come preassembled but are glued together by life”. Infants are not born with a unitary subjective sense of self (ibid., p. 31).

Infant development Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target (2002) and Gergely (2007) all argue that, at birth, an infant has a primary bias towards attending to others but very little awareness of her own emotional self states. Infant researchers such as Stern (1985) and Trevarthen and Aitken (2001) have demonstrated that the infant is hardwired to seek contact with care-givers. Gergely (2007) cautions that evidence such as the infant’s propensity for imitative interaction, turn taking, and preferences for the human face, can be explained as innate without evoking a capacity for innate intersubjectivity or subjective sense of self in the infant. The neonate’s propensity to seek the mother’s smell, nipple and gaze are reflexes controlled by the brainstem (Cozolino, 2002). The subjective awareness of emotional states depends on the infant’s affective experience being adequately mirrored and “marked” by the care-giver (Gergely & Watson, 1996). Markedness describes how a care-giver resonates with, and then mirrors, an infant’s affect in a way that lets the infant know that this is not for real. For example, a mother shows her infant that she understands he is distressed but that she is not actually distressed herself. The infant then internalizes a representation of himself as seen, felt, and touched by the mother that is congruent with his core bodily affective state. The representation can then be accessed as a subjective feeling state. This experience is the beginning of an Adult ego capacity to create self-narrative or a subjective sense of self. The narrative self is a social construction, which is dependent on the


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care-giver’s ability to read her child’s mind, rather than being universal or innate. When this complex mirroring process is poor or incongruent, the child’s ability to represent experience is impaired. The Adult ego’s capacity to integrate disparate Parent and Child ego states into self-narrative is compromised. Experience that is not attuned to cannot be integrated or felt. Consequently, the internal world may be experienced as fragmented, emotionally chaotic, or flat, empty, and rigid. These experiences are typically described by clients who suffer from self-pathologies such as narcissistic or borderline disorders. Intersubjective relationships are crucial to the development of the subjective self.

Attachment research Attachment research confirms the link between infant–care-giver interactive patterns and internal narrative process in adults (Siegel, 1999). The Infant Strange Situation (ISS) measures behavioural patterns of approach and avoidance, classifying infants as either secure, avoidant, resistant, or disorganized (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) measures an internal narrative process in adults. These interviews focus on how a story is told, rather than its content, by analysing transcripts of conversation. Transcripts are categorized as “secure autonomous” when the speaker is consistent, coherent and clear, regardless of whether early experiences were positive or negative. Incoherent narratives are characterized by violations of Grice’s rules of discourse concerning quantity, quality, manner, and relevance. Incoherent narratives can be either restricted, with excessively brief sentences (classed as “dismissing”); confused and grammatically entangled, with overly long sentences (classed as “preoccupied”); or incongruous and fragmented (classed as “unresolved/ disorganized”) (Hesse, 1999). A parent’s adult attachment pattern will predict their child’s attachment pattern with a high degree of accuracy (Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991a; van IJzendoorn, 1995). A parent with coherent narrative is likely to have securely attached children, while incoherent narrative in a parent will usually lead to insecure attachment patterns in children. The parent’s ability to make sense of life is

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more important than the actual events in their history. The stability of these results indicates that the AAI is measuring a fundamental internal process. The evidence (van IJzendoorn, 1995) suggests that coherent self-narrative in a parent can prevent the intergenerational transmission of script patterns and insecure attachment. Longitudinal studies (Roisman, Padron, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2002) have shown that a group of infants with an insecure attachment in infancy could achieve coherent narratives as adults. These findings, which examine an “earned security of attachment”, suggest that a significant relationship such as marriage or therapy is the most common pathway from incoherent to coherent functioning of the mind (Siegel, 1999). This discovery, which is crucial for psychotherapy, verifies that it is possible to transform a self-limiting script. Fonagy and colleagues (2002) shed further light on the development of coherent narrative. They suggest that the importance of secure attachment is to equip the child with a capacity for “mentalization” or “reflective function”. Mentalization is defined as an ability to understand the mental states underlying human behaviour in one’s self and in others. This involves an ability to access and label one’s own feelings and to read intentions accurately in others. Fonagy and colleagues’ research shows that a capacity for mentalization is dependent on early secure attachments and does not develop until 4–5 years of age. Children with insecure attachment styles at five years rely on earlier, more primitive modes of functioning, which limit the ability to reflect on experience. Fonagy and colleagues (2002) argue that the capacity to name subjective states and ultimately create a subjective sense of self is acquired through attuned interaction. Mentalizing in adults can be correlated with psychological health, continuity in the subjective sense of self, and enhanced intersubjective communication (ibid., 2002). Mentalizing in parents is predictive of secure attachment in children (Fonagy, Steele, Moran, Steele, & Higgitt, 1991b). This reflective function may be central to the formation of coherent self-narrative within the mind and therefore critical to effective psychotherapy. Contingent attunement in a therapy relationship, as in a parenting relationship, is likely to facilitate the client’s ability to mentalize and integrate experience into a more congruent sense of self.


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Neuroscience Several writers in the field of neuroscience (Cozolino, 2006; Damasio, 1999; LeDoux, 2002) suggest that the brain uses narrative as a tool for neural integration. As Cozolino notes, “an inclusive narrative structure provides the executive brain with the best template and strategy for the oversight and coordination of the functions of mind” (2006, p. 306) . Furthermore, Cozolino (2006) proposes that the role of narratives in brain integration may explain the strong correlation between mental health and coherent selfnarrative which is evident in the attachment research. Schore (1994), in a vast compilation of neurological research, concluded that the middle prefrontal regions of the brain are dependent on attuned social interaction for healthy development. This area of the brain is associated with co-ordinating a range of functions including affect regulation, autobiographical memory, and interpersonal communication. Schore (1994) found that “energetic transactions embedded in the socio-emotional interchanges between an adult and a developing brain indelibly shape the child’s emerging capacity for self-organization” (p. 537). Siegel (1999) argues that responsive attunement, mediated by the prefrontal region, facilitates neural integration in the brain, promoting capacities for coherent self-narrative, empathy, and emotional regulation. Likewise, a lack of attunement will lead to impairment in these functions. He suggests that incoherent narrative patterns revealed by the AAI reflect this lack of neural integration. Thus, interpersonal attunement is essential for the development of neural integration, coherent self-narrative, and, ultimately, a unified sense of self. The adaptive illusion of a unitary self is a developmental achievement with a neurological substrate (LeDoux, 2002; Siegel, 1999).

Coherent self-narrative “I am the story” (Winterson, 2000, p. 5). Evidence from developmental studies and neuroscience implies that the Adult ego capacity to integrate disparate experiences into a coherent self-narrative arises from sensitive contingent transactions between infant and carer.

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Subjectively, coherent self-narrative might be imagined as a fluid process where the mind flows easily across multiple perspectives, connecting the past with the present, positive with negative experience, and feelings with events into a story that makes sense. This is not a cognitive linear narrative process. Rather, it is an embodied story, an emotional and visceral experience where various elements are brought together to create a harmonious whole. A complex self-narrative creates a sense of well being, in the same way that an orchestra score creates music from a diverse range of instruments and notes. As Virginia Woolf puts it, The most successful practitioners of the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronise the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. [Woolf, 1928, p. 221]

Berne posits the goal of therapy as “autonomy” (1964), or “freedom from script” (1966). The Adult ego provides a portal into objective reality once it is freed from the contaminations of Child and Parent ego states. Berne’s notion of autonomy is rooted in a positivist epistemology and classical ego psychology. His methods reflect a one-person psychology (Stark, 1999), which emphasizes insight as a solution to intrapsychic conflict. Autonomy is perhaps an anachronistic concept in a postmodern world where reality is constructed by the observer and the myth of the isolated mind has been replaced by a notion of mind as inherently social (Aron, 1996). However, Berne’s (1964, p. 178) description of autonomy as being manifested by capacities for “awareness, spontaneity and intimacy” sits more comfortably alongside a relational constructionist perspective on script. Coherent self-narrative is intrinsically related to capacities for intimacy. Sensitive attunement allows diverse states of mind to be linked through self-narrative creating internal coherence. Knowing oneself intimately is a precursor to developing intimacy with others. Coherence in the mind of a parent fosters intimacy and secure patterns of relating in a child (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002; Siegel, 1999). Vice versa, secure relationships are necessary for the development of mentalizing (Fonagy, Gergely,


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Jurist, & Target, 2002) or awareness of mental states in oneself and others. Thus, interpersonal attunement or intimacy is both a cause and effect of internal coherence. Berne’s (1964) notions of awareness and spontaneity refer to the ability to gain full access to sensory perception, allowing for a range of spontaneous responses to current stimuli. His writing vividly describes how an individual can be enslaved by limited or scripted ways of seeing and being in the world (1966, 1972). A care-giver selects the internal states that an infant’s developing self can phenomenologically experience or be aware of through socio-affective transactions (Gergely, 2007; Schore, 1994). Social interaction can serve either to expand or limit awareness of mental states in the self and other. These transactions also encode information about transitions from one state to another, thereby enabling the infant to modulate internal disruptions (Schore, 1994). For example, when a mother picks up her crying baby and sings to him, she enables her infant to shift from a state of distress to a state of comfort. Later, he learns to self-soothe, moving from one state to another. A coherent mind develops as these interactions are internalized, forming a complex, fluid, and flexible system (Siegel, 1999) enabling full awareness of a whole spectrum of internal mental states and an ability to move with ease between diverse states of being. Internal coherence is manifested as capacities for awareness and spontaneity as the individual responds appropriately to the flux of internal and external stimuli. Schore (1994, p. 493) speculates that a sense of self emerges from “the ability to adaptively oscillate between different internal states, phenomenologically experienced as different states of awareness”. This dynamic flexible organization within the mind allows a person to change while maintaining continuity in the sense of self. In transactional analysis terms, we might say that the Adult ego weaves together Parent and Child ego states into a flexible narrative that creates a sense of continuity across time and context. Coherent self-narrative acknowledges the impact of archaic emotional experience and significant others on present perceptions. The mind gathers conflicted and disparate states of awareness, like scattered beads, with a narrative thread. Narrative integration creates the subjective experience of being a singular self (Siegel,

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1999). It might be concluded that the self is located in a narrative, or, as Jeanette Winterson puts it, “I am the story” (2000, p. 5).

Incoherent self-narrative When the care-giver does not show in her face a reflection of the child’s experience, the capacity for self-narrative may be impaired and result in fragmented or rigid scripts. A lack of contingent mirroring will lead to aspects of the child’s experience remaining unsymbolized (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002), or unformulated (Stern, 1999), creating unintegrated ego states. These moments of non-recognition are often associated with shame and remain difficult to regulate emotionally (Schore, 1994). Because parenting is never perfect, most of us will experience some degree of fragmentation. With a reasonable ability for selfnarrative, the ordinarily neurotic mind can plaster these cracks with a good-enough story. Miss Garnet, an ordinary character in an ordinary novel, illustrates this process when she wonders to herself, “Perhaps when there was something you could not face you wove a fiction around yourself to keep the unbearable from you?” (Vickers, 2000, p. 269). Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target (2002, p. 13) describe this process as “narrative smoothing”, while Briere (2007) refers to a “good cover story”. In transactional analysis theory, this is counterscript, for example, “I’m OK if . . . I try hard, or please others”. A reasonable capacity for self-narrative will act as buffer to adversity in later childhood. The relative strength of a child’s capacity for integration (Adult ego) will determine her ability to negotiate both interpersonal relationships and internal ego state relationships associated with impasses and affect regulation. When the Adult capacity for self-narrative is insufficient to cover these gaps, or the gaps are too wide, as with trauma or neglect, an incoherent narrative process and a disconnected sense of self develop. Self-states that are not validated by the attachment figure remain unintegrated, experienced as “not me”, or Adult ego dystonic. For example, when negative feelings such as hate or rage lead to attack, withdrawal, or shaming by a parent, the child may exclude such experience from conscious thought (Bruschweiler-


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Stern, Lyons-Ruth, Morgan, & Nahum, 2007). Bromberg (2006) likens these dissociated experiences to snapshots that have not been put in an album. The parent’s ability to mentalize, as revealed through constraining patterns of interaction, has a direct impact on the structure of the infant’s self-narrative. Unthinkable thoughts or unintegrated experiences are passed from parent to child. In this way, the parent’s unconscious becomes the child’s first reality (McDougall, 1980, p. 251). The gaps in the parent’s self-narrative will constrain her ability to mirror the child’s experience. When mirroring lacks contingency, the child creates distorted representations of herself. “The maternal mirror is the basis of the ‘inner mirror’” (Holmes, 1999, p. 120). Winnicott’s (1971) insight that “when the mother doesn’t get the baby, the baby gets the mother” expresses the same idea. Thus, the structure of the family script is passed down from one generation to the next.

Rigid script Incoherent narrative is both adaptive and defensive. A rigid script process binds certain ego states together while isolating others, to form a structure that restricts awareness of self and others. Bromberg (2006) notes that rigid structures preserve self-continuity while sacrificing self-coherence. Berne (1964) emphasizes the defensive function of games and script in maintaining homeostasis, albeit at the cost of spontaneity and flexibility. The rigid script is like a canal that does not deviate from its course, held by concrete walls that effectively discount any new experience. Novel experience is responded to as if it conforms to past relational patterns; the result is transference. The individual becomes trapped by inflexible, selfdefeating patterns of relating. Severe rigidity is evident in character disorders.

Fragmented script Repetitive relational trauma or neglect may seriously undermine the Adult ego’s capacity for self-narrative, leading to the fragmented process evident in disorganized adult attachment. Basil van der Kolk (2000) asserts that trauma can create damaging

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biochemical changes in a child’s brain that culminate in a failure to integrate traumatic experience into autobiographical memory. This neural impairment leads to the persistence of sensations and feelings that are experienced in the present, rather than being integrated into autobiographical narrative. Fragmented script is apparent in post traumatic stress disorder and the unstable sense of self typical of borderline personalities. Internal distress, abrupt shifts in affective states, and difficulties with intimacy are probable outcomes of a disorganized mind (Siegel, 1999). While coherence is characterized by smooth transitions between states of awareness, leading to capacities for self regulation and spontaneity, incoherence results in abrupt switches between distinct ego states. These sudden switches are a key feature of psychological games in transactional analysis theory, leading to repetitive interpersonal problems (Berne, 1972). Classical transactional analysis, embedded in a Cartesian, positivist view of the self as innate and universal, assumes that splitting of the ego occurs through introjection and other active defensive processes, resulting in fixation (Erskine, 1988). A constructionist perspective suggests a more passive process, where, in the absence of adequate mirroring, a unified self fails to develop, and fragmentation results. Consequently, the mind becomes dominated by dissociative processes that create a series of unlinked ego states, rather like an archipelago of isolated islands. When trauma impairs the capacity to link experience through narrative, the unintegrated experience is inevitably re-enacted in the present (Stuthridge, 2006). The fragmented script reveals itself as the past intrudes into the present through vivid re-livings of archaic feelings or relational patterns. Thus, incoherent narrative is brought to life through transferential transactions in a therapy relationship. The internal script unfolds in a drama as Parent and Child ego states are alternately active, internally influencing, or projected.

Implications for therapy and the therapist This section discusses the implications for therapy when script is viewed as an embodied self-narrative constructed out of early interactions.


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How, not what This concept of script development places less emphasis on what parents tell children (injunctions and permissions) and is more concerned with how the child’s experience is reflected. It is the mode of interaction that determines a child’s capacity to create selfnarrative and it is this capacity that is crucial to psychological health. It follows that therapy should be more concerned with the development of an interactive process rather than any particular content. The focus needs to be on learning how to think and feel and less about what the client is thinking or feeling (Fonagy & Bateman, 2006). The developmental data suggests that the nature of the transactional flow between two minds will determine the internal coherence or organization of the mind. Contingent transactions lead to coherent self-narrative, while a lack of contingence will lead to a disconnected, confused, or fragmented narrative structure. The goal of therapy is to create a dialogue that will develop the client’s capacity to create coherent narrative or mentalize.

Bodies and beliefs Contemporary neuroscience calls into question the place of “script decisions” in the development of script. Damasio (1994) presents a convincing argument that cognitive decisions depend on feelings, which originate in the body. He postulates that changes in bodily states are perceived and represented in the brain. For example, muscle changes in the face, or visceral changes in the stomach, heart, or lungs, send messages to the brain, which then forms a representation, or “somatic marker”. The mind creates second- and third-order neural maps of the body’s changing states, which give rise to conscious feelings and, ultimately, symbolic thought. Thus, contrary to Descartes’s assumption, “I think therefore I am”, it seems that thought is dependent on bodily awareness. Script decisions, then, might be more accurately understood as later elaborations of a primary script pattern that emerges in early bodily and relational experience. Non-verbal transactions between infant and care-giver create an embodied, affective, intersubjective pattern that is internalized as a wordless representation. Allen

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(2003) suggests that these early interactions create “non-conscious organizing principles” (p. 131) that underlie later script decisions. For example, when an infant is wrapped up in a loving embrace, and her gaze meets a warm familiar smile, this set of sensations forms a wordless story. This early story defines core script themes, experienced as a gut feeling of warmth, love, and safety. With the development of explicit memory and symbolic processes, details about the plot, characters (goodies and baddies), and the ending are elaborated. The child forms a set of script beliefs that justify and explain life experiences. She decides that “I’m lovable and others can be trusted”. An infant held in the tense grip of an anxious parent, used to seeing distress on her mother’s face, will create a very different self-narrative; “I’ll have to hold on tight because others can’t be relied on”. The popular 1970s’ view of script as a series of beliefs or injunctions that can be brought to light with script questionnaires is rooted in a Cartesian view of the mind and in an upside-down view of mind and body relationships. This perspective assumes that change occurs within the symbolic realm of script beliefs, focusing therapy on verbal interaction, content, and cognition. Damasio’s (1994) theory supports a reverse approach: that fundamental change occurs at the level of bodily affective interaction. Script is embedded in the body. Feelings determine thoughts and decisions. Thus, cognitive challenges to beliefs about self, other, and life are unlikely to produce lasting change. Therapeutic processes need to focus on bodily sensations, sensorimotor communication, identifying feelings and shifts in affect, both within the client and the therapist. The therapist’s body becomes a rich resource in terms of understanding countertransference. Damasio’s (1994) hypothesis suggests that script change requires a shift in bodily affective experiencing.

Interpersonal and intrapsychic realms Infant researchers suggest that defensive intrapsychic processes begin in early interpersonal patterns (Bruschweiler-Stern, LyonsRuth, Morgan, & Nahum, 2007). For example an avoidant infant at twelve months “knows” that attempts to seek comfort through touch will be shunned. She learns to avoid the parent and


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suppresses her desire for comfort. This knowing is represented in implicit bodily and relational patterns long before linguistic capacities for cognitive decisions emerge. Explicit decisions develop from non-verbal interaction, but do not replace implicit forms of knowing. The avoidant infant’s defensive strategy is initially organized at the level of transactions and continues to be conveyed through affective interaction in adult relationships. Therefore, these defensive processes are readily discovered by attending to “specific exchanges at the local level of the interaction” (ibid., p. 1) rather than to intrapsychic dynamics. Transactional analysis methods that rely on enquiry into internal processes to reveal the underlying script restrict the model to a one-person therapy. This approach tends to assume that intrapsychic organization is primary and determines the interpersonal realm. Infant research (Bruschweiler-Stern, Lyons-Ruth, Morgan, & Nahum, 2007; Lyons-Ruth, 1999) suggests, instead, that interpersonal experience is primary and generates the intrapsychic world. Early relational patterns are internalized to form the core of the script, which is then played out with the therapist though transference transactions. “Operationally, a script is a complex set of transactions” (Berne, 1961 p. 117). Script beliefs need to be viewed as secondary abstractions, while the primary script action is revealed at the level of transactions. Script originates in non-verbal transactions, not beliefs. Therefore, it is at the level of transactions that change occurs, rather than via challenges to internal beliefs about self, others, and life. Through the analysis of moment-to-moment transactions (including sensations, emotions, gestures, silences, perceptions, and fantasies), transactional analysis provides a model for a two-person (Stark, 1999) approach to therapy. Contingent collaborative transactions between client and therapist build a more complex dialogue. The fluency of the dialogue enhances the client’s capacity to reflect and integrate experience into a more coherent self-narrative.

Reciprocity in script development and the role of the parent The attachment evidence shows that a child’s attachment pattern can be reliably predicted before birth by the parent’s internal narrative pattern (Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991a). Narrative coherence in

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the parent directly influences the development of the child. This finding challenges current thinking about reciprocity in script theory, with important implications for the therapeutic relationship. Berne’s (1972) and Steiner’s (1974) early writing on script leaned towards a deterministic perspective. Berne suggested that parents plant injunctions in a child’s head that act like electrodes, determining the child’s fate. Steiner (1974) described a unilateral process of script formation, which viewed the child as a hapless victim of powerful parents. This view of script was overturned by later writers (for example, Cornell, 1988; Matze, 1988; Newton, 2006; Summers & Tudor, 2000) who emphasized reciprocity and the child as an active agent. These models tend to assume that infants are born with an innate sense of self and a capacity for intersubjectivity, or an intact Adult ego. Alternatively, if the self is viewed as a narrative construction and a developmental achievement that is made possible by secure relationships, the role of the parent again becomes pivotal. The model of script outlined here allows us to integrate this new information without returning to bleak determinism. The evidence of earned secure attachments shows that relationships later in life can produce a capacity for coherent narrative that can free an individual from the confines of script. These findings do, however, require us to rethink the role of the therapist.

The therapist needs to change Previous discussions, here, suggest, first, that the most crucial factor for healing in psychotherapy is likely to be the therapist’s personal capacity for coherent self-narrative. The attachment evidence implies that the degree of coherence in a therapist’s self-narrative structure may well predict the outcome for a client’s ability to develop Adult reflective functioning. This idea raises some interesting questions about training and assessment processes. Second, if internal coherence arises from relatedness, it follows that a relational style of therapy is needed to foster the capacity to mentalize. Two minds are needed to further this development in a client. Incoherent narrative processes produce unintegrated ego states. These unintegrated experiences, which cannot be thought, emerge as transferential enactments in the therapy relationship (Bromberg, 2006). Immersion in the enactment is the only way of


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knowing what is being communicated. The therapist’s awareness of her subjective experience then fosters a reciprocal process in the client, developing the capacity for mentalizing. The therapist must put herself in the picture. Personally, I arrived at this conclusion via a long and bumpy clinical road. I used to work hard at trying to fix clients, proving something to my disapproving internal mother. Later, I learnt to sit back a little. However, sitting too far back and waiting for clients to pull rabbits out of a hat turned out to be rather like Berne’s (1966) story about the client who waits for the therapist to pull a cure out of his bottom drawer. Waiting just leads to rigor mortis. Eventually, I discovered that moments of transformation occurred when I shifted. Usually, this involved integrating some aspect of my experience that had previously been non-conscious. I believe that effective therapy requires a negotiation between two subjectivities (Aron, 1996; Benjamin, 1995). The following client vignettes illustrate attempts to use my own subjective experience to enhance the client’s Adult ego capacity for integrating experience into self-narrative.

Notes on a Scandal While watching the film, Notes on a Scandal, I noticed feelings of hostility towards a client, Lee. I was horrified. I could not think clearly about the incident for several days. The film portrays Barbara, a lonely embittered schoolteacher with sensible shoes who sets out to befriend a young colleague, Sheba. Barbara pins Sheba like a butterfly, quickly gaining her confidence and discovering that Sheba is having a sexual relationship with a student. Barbara is initially protective of the younger woman. However, a disturbing feeling grows as the audience realizes that Barbara’s diary notes reveal more about her own sadistic intentions than they do about the scandalous affair. Barbara ultimately blackmails Sheba, using her loneliness and suffering as the primary weapon of torture. While watching these events unfold, I became suddenly aware of the extent to which I had felt emotionally blackmailed by Lee. Like Barbara, Lee had used her suffering, including threats of suicide, to extort phone calls, emergency sessions, and care from me

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for years. My actions had been motivated by compassion for Lee. The negativity I now felt came as a shock. I identified simultaneously with both Sheba as a victim and also with the blackmailer’s destructive hostility. Although this might be explained as projective identification, I believe the feelings that were evoked in me also have a home in the nether regions of my own mind. When I had gathered my thoughts, I told Lee a story about Red Riding Hood, a little girl who loses her loved grandmother and ends up on her own with a ravenous wolf. She discovers that she is alone with her own ravenous need for love. Her loneliness has grown teeth, big eyes and ears, and threatens to devour others. It gets easier to hate and be hated than to long for love, and she even learns to find pleasure in hating. My initial attempts were met with much gnashing of teeth and the suicide threats got louder. I tried variations on this story over the following weeks. These offerings were mostly spat back at me. Then Lee told me a story, sharing her favourite suicide fantasy. It was a funeral scene and there I was in the front pew, lined up with her psychiatrist and several others who had cared for her, found guilty at last. Lee revelled in her coffin while she watched me suffer a miserable defeat. This was her moment of triumph. Lee recognized the hostility in this fantasy—it was very like her father’s cruel behaviour. He had sexually abused her over many years. The funeral scene was clearly directed by a sadistic Parent ego state. Lee was shocked to find this quality within herself. However, her insight allowed the unintegrated ego state to find a place in a more complex self-narrative. The demands for phone calls, extra sessions, and suicide threats all quieted as the enactment turned to reflection. Lee’s physical agitation in sessions calmed down. I believe the key to this shift was discovering the unintegrated hostility within myself. While reflecting on my decision to include this story, I wonder if my notes say more about me than my client.

Alex Alex opened the session with a story about nominating his friend for the bowling club committee. Alex was president of the committee. He had chosen this person deliberately, hoping he might


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sabotage an unholy alliance between two other members whom he felt threatened by. The unconscious communication in the story seemed to convey a sense of shame (Novellino, 2005). I asked Alex if he felt ashamed or guilty in relation to me for some reason. He shoved his hands into his pockets, his whole body seemed to contract, and his face screwed up in a tense grimace. “Are you pulling yourself together?” I asked. He smiled, relaxed a little, and took his hands out of his pockets. This old defensive response was familiar to us both—a repetitive transferential transaction. We both understood that this was Alex feeling like the child he once was (Child ego state), reacting as if I was his emotionally unavailable mother (projected Parent). Alex’s mother had committed suicide when he was an adolescent, but had disappeared emotionally, long before this event. Alex had spent years in therapy waiting for me to disappear. He had fantasies of turning up and finding me gone. Back on slightly safer ground, he went on to describe how he felt seen when I mentioned shame in a way that made him feel terribly vulnerable. He had wanted to hide. He said he did feel embarrassed about coming today. Something to do with wanting to be here so much, he wasn’t sure why. My mind wandered to a recent memory of my twelve-year-old son sitting on my knee at breakfast. This image seemed some how relevant to being with Alex. I felt vulnerable, it was an image that I did not want others to see or judge. I was vaguely aware that I somehow kept Alex at arm’s length. I felt a discomfort with him that I did not want to know about and mostly ignored. The image of my son suddenly made sense of my discomfort: big boys need cuddles too. Perhaps I had been distancing my own need as much as his. Something melted inside me. “Do you feel embarrassed about needing me somehow today?” I ventured. Alex leaned forward earnestly, “Yes yes yes!” This somewhat orgasmic response was perhaps a moment of “feeling felt” (Siegel, 1999). Later events would confirm that the moment signalled a shift in emotional and sexual desire. Alex’s body softened and his eyes filled with tears that did not quite spill over. He tentatively began to describe the shame he felt about a feeling of longing: a desire to be held, to be safe, “I feel safe in this room like I never have before.” This needy vulnerable Child ego state had previously been experienced as “not me”. Alex was

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not the kind of guy who needed cuddles from therapists. And I was not a particularly cuddly therapist. We both began to feel less awkward about the big kid in the room who was still seeking the comfort he had never had as an infant. The following week, Alex moved seats. For the first time in four years he sat on the couch rather than the single chair. The move seemed to represent the internal shift in his way of being in the world. He was more comfortable with his emotional needs. We both were. Alex’s move to the couch might be understood as a shift in implicit relational knowing, or a new way of being and relating. In later weeks he described the deepening intimacy in his relationship with his wife, from whom he had felt alienated for many years. Alex had withdrawn from the sexual relationship with her as his mother had withdrawn from him (an active Parent ego state). The unintegrated archaic need that had been enacted in the transferential relationship was translated into an appropriate adult relationalneed (Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999). This unintegrated ego state had hovered like a ghost between us, creating a distance, until it was experienced and named. Stern and colleagues (1998) describe moments like this as “moments of meeting”, when client and therapist both grasp a shared understanding of what is happening between them in the present. The therapist’s job in these precious moments is to develop a shared story that includes aspects of both the client’s and therapist’s experience. Non-linear systems theory assumes that a very small change can alter the trajectory of a whole system. Hence, these authentic encounters have the potential to rearrange the client’s internal matrix of ego states, and create new ways of being. However, the lasting significance of such moments is in the new way that dialogue is opened up, thus enhancing the capacity for mentalizing in both client and therapist. Alex and I were both able to integrate lost parts of the self into a more coherent self-narrative. The intersubjective flow became more fluid, flexible, and complex.

Conclusion: joining the dots Script is portrayed here as a self-narrative process that organizes the mind and is manifested through predictable ways of being and


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relating. The capacity for coherent self-narrative is a developmental achievement that is experienced phenomenologically as well being, intimacy, flexibility, awareness, and a congruent sense of self. A contemporary understanding of the mind as a relational embodied system challenges the Cartesian paradigm that is inherent in classical script theory. This perspective assumes the existence of an innate autonomous self and privileges internal and cognitive processes over affective and interpersonal experience. Descartes’s dictum might be modified to read, “I am because my care-giver perceives me as a feeling being”. The subjective sense of self is no longer understood to be innate, universal, or autonomous. Rather, it is viewed as a social and narrative construction that arises from affective transactions between the infant and her care-givers. It follows that processes of change must focus on the interpersonal more than the intrapsychic, on affect more than cognition, and on the structure of script rather than its content. This chapter argues for a shift away from a one-person approach to therapy that is concerned with the detection of intrapsychic script beliefs in the client. It favours a move towards a two-person process of collaborative attunement, which fosters the development of coherent self-narrative. The therapist’s facility for reflective functioning is likely to be a key determinate in this endeavour. As the client’s “sense of authorship” (Allen & Allen, 1997, p. 97) is enhanced, she is able to join the dots in her self-narrative to create a continuous sense of self. The Adult ego connects the previously disconnected Parent and Child ego states to form a more coherent “I” from all the various “me’s”. Following William James (1892), we can think of the subjective self, or “I”, as being located in an internal narrative and each “me”, or objective self, as an actor in the external script drama. Siegel (2007) suggests that a healthy mind moves toward complexity, flowing like a river between two banks with chaos on one side and rigidity on the other. Rigid script patterns lead to stagnation, while fragmentation results in emotional chaos. A healthy self-narrative provides an “optimal structuralization” (Stolorow, Atwood, & Brandshaft, 1994, p. 22) for the mind, balancing conflicting needs for continuity and predictability on the one hand and change on the other. The client stories presented here reveal something of the personal struggle involved in this age-old existential

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dilemma of how to love and live in a world without permanence. Effective therapy develops the client’s capacity for creating dynamic self-narrative, providing continuity between past and present while still being open to growth in the future.

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Fonagy, P., Steele, H., Moran, G., Steele, M., & Higgitt, A. (1991b). The capacity for understanding mental states: the reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 13: 200–217. Gergely, G. (2007). The social construction of the subjective self: the role of affect-mirroring, markedness, and ostensive communication in self-development. In: L. Mayes, P. Fonagy, & M. Target (Eds.), Developmental Science and Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac. Gergely, G., & Watson, J. (1996). The social biofeedback model of parental affect mirroring. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 77: 1181–1212. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking. Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1976). Injunctions, decisions and redecisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1): 41–48. Hargaden, H., & Fenton, B. (2005). An analysis of nonverbal transactions drawing on theories of intersubjectivity. Transactional Analysis Journal, 35(2): 173–186. Hesse, E. (1999). The adult attachment interview: historical and current perspectives. In: J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications (pp. 395–433). New York: Guilford Press. Holmes, J. (1999). Ghosts in the consulting room. Attachment and Human Development, 1(1): 115–131. James, W. (1892). Psychology: Briefer Course. London: Macmillan. Klin, A., & Jones, W. (2007). Embodied psychoanalysis? Or, on the confluence of psychodynamic theory and developmental science. In: L. Mayes, P. Fonagy, & M. Target (Eds.), Developmental Science and Psychoanalysis: Integration and Innovation. London: Karnac. LeDoux, J. (2002). The Synaptic Self. New York: Viking. Loria, B. (1995). Structure determinism and script analysis: a bringing forth of alternative realities. Transactional Analysis Journal, 25: 156–167. Lyons-Ruth, K. (1998). Implicit relational knowing: its role in development and psychoanalytic treatment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 19: 282–289. Lyons-Ruth, K. (1999). The two person unconscious: intersubjective dialogue, enactive relational representation, and the emergence of new forms of relational organisation. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 19: 576–617. Matze, M. (1988). Reciprocity in script formation. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18(4): 304–308.


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McDougall, J. (1980). Plea for a Measure of Abnormality. New York: International Universities Press. Mitchell, S. (1988). Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Newton, T. (2006). Script, psychological life plans and the learning cycle. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36(3): 186–195. Novellino, M. (2005). Transactional psychoanalysis: epistemological foundations. Transactional Analysis Journal, 35(2): 157–172. Roisman, G. I., Padron, E., Sroufe, L. A., & Egeland, B. (2002). Earned–secure attachment status in retrospect and prospect. Child Development, 73(4): 1204–1219. Schore, A. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Siegel, D. (1999). The Developing Mind. New York: The Guilford Press. Siegel, D. (2007). The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-being. New York: W. W. Norton. Stark, M. (1999). Modes of Therapeutic Interaction. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Steele, H., Steele, M., & Fonagy, P. (1996). Associations among attachment classifications of mothers, fathers, and their infants: evidence for a relationship-specific perspective. Child Development, 67: 541–555. Steiner, C. (1974). Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. New York: Grove Press. Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books. Stern, D., Sander, L., Nahum, J., Harrison, A., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A., Bruschweiler-Stern, N., & Tronick, E. (1998). Non-interpretative mechanisms in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: The “something more” than interpretation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79: 903–921. Stern, D. B. (1999). Unformulated experience: from familiar chaos to creative disorder. In: S. Mitchell & L. Aron (Eds.), Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition (pp. 77–108). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Stolorow, R., Atwood, G., & Brandshaft, B. (1994). The Intersubjective Perspective. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Stuthridge, J. (2006). Inside out: a transactional analysis model of trauma. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36(4): 270–283. Summers, G., & Tudor, K. (2000). Cocreative transactional analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 30(1): 23–40.

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Trevarthen, C., & Aitken, K. (2001). Infant intersubjectivity: research, theory and clinical applications. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42: 3–48. van der Kolk, B. A. (2000). Trauma, neuroscience and the etiology of hysteria: an exploration of the relevance of Breuer and Freud’s 1893 article in light of modern science. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 28(2): 237–262. van IJzendoorn, M. (1995). Adult attachment representations, parental responsiveness and infant attachment: a meta-analysis on the predictive validity of the Adult Attachment Interview. Psychological Bulletin, 117: 387–403. Vickers, S. (2000). Miss Garnet’s Angel. London: Harper Collins Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Winterson, J. (2000). The PowerBook. London: Jonathan Cape. Woolf, V. (1928). Orlando. London: Bloomsbury.

CHAPTER FIVE

Whose body is it? Somatic relations in script and script protocol William F. Cornell

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rotocol is a kernel of non-verbal, somatic experience that may be touched or triggered in intimate relationships. Such moments are often impregnated with both hope and dread. When the experience of a therapeutic relationship evokes protocol, the Child ego state is deeply opened, and the transference dynamics that may be played out become more anxiety provoking and more difficult to tolerate, understand, and resolve for both client and practitioner (Cornell, 2008a; Cornell & Landaiche, 2008). It had been a year since I last consulted with Lara and Emily. The previous year, Lara had asked that I meet with her regarding her client, Emily, with whom she had been working quite productively for three years addressing Emily’s eating disorder, body shame, and sexual anxieties. Emily was a successful young attorney, then involved in her first serious relationship. She was “fed up” (so to speak) with her constant preoccupation with her eating and weight and fearful that her bodily shame and preoccupations would ruin this loving relationship. The therapeutic work to this point had enabled Emily to value herself and be able to stand outside her “issues” enough to pursue this relationship. But, as this man became more important to her, her body anxieties came 101

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flooding back. Lara, deeply saddened by Emily’s struggle, became trapped in a cycle of reassurance, while Emily’s sense of self-worth seemed to collapse into series of images of a fat, undesirable body. They were at a point of impasse and decided to seek consultation. Emily felt it important to have the point of view of a male therapist; Lara agreed, and was particularly interested in a body-centred perspective. We agreed on a rather unusual structure for the consultation: Lara and Emily would discuss their experience of their work together and of the current point of impasse with me listening; I would then do a therapeutic session with Emily with Lara watching and probably participating; then the three of us would discuss the work together. Listening to the opening conversation between Lara and Emily, two things were immediately apparent: first, there was a deep affection and intimacy between the two; second, Emily’s experience/accounting of her body was almost exclusively in visual terms (i.e., how she saw herself and imagined others saw her). This visual frame of reference unconsciously directed both Emily’s and Lara’s attention to the surfaces of her being. Emily’s use of a visual frame of reference was so dominant and familiar that it had become “invisible” to Lara and Emily, which I thought was contributing to the impasse in the therapy. Emily experienced herself only as a visual object, constantly subject to scrutiny by herself and others. This experience of being looked at from the outside was so familiar and compelling to both Emily and Lara that it was re-created within their way of relating, even though the intentions of their looking at Emily’s body was benign rather than judgemental. As I myself have so often experienced in seeking consultation at points of impasse, the consultant (or peer group) is an outside force, not so intimately subjected to the states of being and relatedness induced within the therapeutic relationship, and, thus, more able to see, feel, and imagine things anew. What seemed so familiar to Emily and Lara seemed sad and limiting to me. In keeping with our contract for body-centred exploration, I wondered what it would be like for Emily to use her eyes actively and aggressively in response to those around her. Eyes became the focus of this first consultation. I worked with Emily to use her own eyes actively rather than lose herself in the

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actual or imagined gaze of others. We experimented with her using her eyes to repel unwanted expressions from others, to make demands on others, and, most importantly, to hold Lara’s eyes in her gaze. These experiments were a relief and a source of excitement for Emily. As the body-centred work came to an end, the three of us then spoke of the meaning of these somatic experiments, both in Emily’s literal use of her eyes in relation to those around her and as a kind of metaphor for shifting from passive–receptive reactions to emotionally significant people to active–aggressive engagements. A year later, Emily’s relationship was deepening, the work with her eyes continued to foster a sense of independence and mastery, and eating was not at the centre of her concerns. But gradually, as her years-long vigilance about food waned, Emily had put on a few pounds. While virtually invisible to anyone else—except, not coincidentally, her mother and her maternal grandfather—Emily’s perceptions of herself again became graphically distorted. She once again saw herself held and judged disgusting in the eyes of others. She abruptly cancelled a beach vacation with her boyfriend. She knew this time that her reactions were entirely irrational, but was unable to contain them. Lara, for her part, was bewildered and feeling ferociously protective in ways she knew might not be productive. They decided to have another in-person consultation. As we began the new session, Emily told me that, in her mind, everyone could see the extra weight, that people stared, joked about her behind her back, found her disgusting. “I know it’s not true, but that is how it feels, and it feels entirely real.” She was deeply upset with herself for this setback. She felt it started when she went to lunch with her maternal grandfather, and he commented constantly on how FAT everyone around them was. She was certain (and very likely correct) that he had noticed her weight gain and was indirectly commenting on it. Her mother (now in her sixties and bulimic for at least forty years) had immediately noticed the weight gain and told Emily that her boyfriend would soon leave her. As I listened, I wondered (but did not say) if the deepening intimacy with her lover might also have triggered a step back into the safety and familiarity of a script-based focus on weight and undesirability. Her mother was convinced that Emily’s father had abandoned them because he found his wife too fat, and that her weight was the

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fatal cause of the ending of every relationship she had ever had. Emily described the experience of her sense of her body changing and being invaded again by the gazes of others. She felt helpless, unable to hold on to her gains from her therapy. She became convinced that Lara was just saying nice things to make her feel better. Then she said to me, “My body is unhappy when it is fat.” I responded with, “You mean that you feel happier with your body when it is thinner. You are unhappy with your body when you put on weight, and you imagine everyone else is, too.” “No,” she insisted, “my body is happier when it is thin, not me. My body is unhappy when it weighs too much. My body knows when it puts on weight.” “My god,” I thought to myself, “what an extraordinary statement.” I suddenly found myself imagining this body of Emily’s literally absorbing the anxiety and disgust of her mother’s body towards itself and towards Emily’s body when one, the other, or both were “too fat”. I imagined Emily’s young body literally an unhappy body in the grip of another’s/mother’s unhappy body in a symbiotic fusion, the sensations merged, the sensation of literally making her mother’s body unhappy, disgusted. Only thinness brought some possibility of relief, acceptance, and fleeting happiness. I imagined the literal, unspoken, flesh-to-flesh transactions that must have impinged on Emily’s body from birth. A phrase kept flashing through my mind, “The weight of the gaze of others”. I felt that weight in my own body as well as a sadness and fierce protectiveness toward Emily. I could identify with Lara’s wish to ward off the mother, reassure Emily of her worth and attractiveness, argue with her Parent ego state, and protect her. As we prepared to work more directly at a body level, we moved to the floor, sitting on a thick mat. I asked Emily to close her eyes and bring our conversation into her body. How was she sensing/feeling our discussion in her body? Could she put words to the experience of her body? “I feel heavy . . . heavy like fat and heavy like sad . . . weighted down,” were Emily’s first words. She continued, “The eyes of the others are always so heavy.” I repeated her words, slightly amplifying their intensity. I suggested she begin to feel the eyes of others surrounding her, intruding, judging, shaming, weighing her down. I asked that she feel how it is to be noticed only for her exterior, the surface and size of her body. “What is it that


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people see and know (or think they know) about you when they see your size and surface?” I asked her quietly, several times over. “What is it about you that is not seen? What is it that is of no interest to these eyes at the surface?” I did not want Emily to speak in response to my questions, but to be with the questions in her body. I asked Emily to feel the weight of the eyes on her body. As time passed, I asked her to both describe and show what was happening in her body. “I’m being crushed. It crushes me.” “Show me the crushing,” I urged. Her body began to collapse, I moved behind her, and Lara moved in front to take my place. As her body began to collapse against me, Emily suddenly said, “I want to crush them!” She opened her eyes, looked at Lara, took Lara’s hands, and began to press her back forcefully into my chest. She pushed long and hard until I finally gave way. Then she pulled herself forward into Lara’s arms, crying. Gradually, Emily opened her eyes, locking them on Lara’s, challenging her mother in a torrent of words, and speaking of Lara’s importance to her with the force of both gaze and voice growing. In time, she shifted her gaze from Lara to include me and began to reflect on the experience of her body. We spoke of the literalness of her body being happy rather than she herself being happy, of her sense of herself being so concretely tied to her bodily perceptions and sensations. Emily asked how this was possible and what to do about it. I described to her my fantasy that the “happy/unhappy body” was originally that of her mother, not her, but as her mother could literally not tell herself apart from her daughter, it all felt like one and the same. How could her body as a baby or a growing girl be happy when enveloped, nearly possessed, by her mother’s profound anxiety and unhappiness with her own body? I wondered aloud about the confusion Emily may have felt in the midst of these crazy, destructive projections on her mother’s part that were also ferociously loving and protective in their intent. Her mother seemed (and seems) to have had no sense of self separate from the external appearance of her own body, so how could she have helped Emily develop that separation? Emily needed to develop a new relationship to her “unhappy” body and to explore the conflict between these two felt, sensate aspects of her self experience (Stern, 2004; Wood & Petriglieri, 2005). She needed to find ways to bring her “unhappy” body to her

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boyfriend, to Lara, and eventually to others who enjoy and value her so as to experience others’ bodies that were happy to be with her, whatever the state and shape of her body. She knew this in her mind, but her body quite literally did not “know” this and needed very much to learn it.

Twenty years ago Consistent with the implications of contemporary research with babies and brains, we must begin to reconceptualize that level of bodily and emotional organization from that of Child ego states to that of fundamental and ongoing processes of neural activation, organization, and change. We can then conceptualize transactional analysis psychotherapy as a means and place for the activation of desires, the exploration of possibilities, and an enlivened, rough and tumble relatedness. [Cornell, 2003, p. 51]

Before taking up a detailed discussion of the second session with Emily and Lara as an exploration of the nature of script and possibilities of script intervention, I want to take a theoretical interlude that can help inform the case discussion. It has been twenty years since I wrote “Life script theory: a critical review from a developmental perspective” (Cornell, 1988). It turned out to be the first in a series I have written challenging some of the basic tenets of transactional analysis theory and practice. At the time, I was troubled by several aspects of script theory and its clinical applications: were the developmental stages as clear-cut as we were taught them? Was developmental arrest as permanent and causal in script formation as our theories suggested? Were scriptrelated childhood events so readily available to recall? Was most script decisional? Was script inherently defensive or pathological? Were there just ten or twelve script injunctions or exactly five miniscript drivers? Did what we were teaching hold up to contemporary developmental research? In my article, I strongly argued that creativity, meaning making, and mutuality of influence were inherent in the process of script formation and enactment. I concluded: Script theory has become more restrictive than enlivening. Script analysis as it has evolved over the years is overly psychoanalytic in


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attitude and overly reductionistic in what it communicates to people about human development. In addition, the incorporation of developmental theory into script theory has been too often simplistic and inaccurate, placing primary emphasis on psychopathology rather than psychological formation. [ibid., p. 281]

I smile now as I read the bit about script theory being “overly psychoanalytic in attitude”, as I was then not at all a fan of psychoanalysis and am now often accused by some of my TA colleagues of trying to turn transactional analysis back into psychoanalysis. The aspects of psychoanalysis I was quarrelling with in the late 1980s were essentially the same as those Berne was arguing against in the 1950s and 1960s. Ironically, right at the time I was writing my script critique article, I was discovering the work of Winnicott, Bollas, and McLaughlin, psychoanalysts who were not the least bit reductionist in their thinking. Their work opened new vistas for me, and my interest in contemporary analytic work has grown ever since. During this same period, I discovered the work of Stephen Mitchell, and, in 1991, Psychoanalytic Dialogues started publication, introducing me to the emerging relational theories of contemporary psychoanalysis. At the time that I was writing my 1988 critique, I was quite nervous about whether I was accurately representing the developmental researchers and theorists whose work I only knew through their writing. I sent each of them the first draft of the article to check on the accuracy of my understanding. To my surprise, almost all wrote back thoughtfully and with significant interest. I was particularly touched by a letter from Stella Chess, handwritten from her hospital bed after hip surgery. She wrote that she was delighted to know that “TA was still around”; she said that she and Alexander Thomas (Chess & Thomas, 1984) had been quite enthusiastic about transactional analysis, but thought it had died out. She went on to say how much it meant to her as a researcher to see their work understood and applied clinically, that they often felt their work had little impact on the actual practice of psychotherapy, and that practitioners did not read research. That experience began my practice of circulating early drafts of my papers to authors whose work I reference in major ways, especially those outside of my personally known circle of colleagues.

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That process has constantly informed and pushed my learning, introduced me to new colleagues among diverse disciplines, and let people outside the TA community know that transactional analysis is still very much alive. Since writing the 1988 article, my understanding of script and how to work therapeutically with script-based processes has continued to evolve. My attention has been particularly drawn to what Berne called the “tissue level” of script (1972, p. 111) and to script protocol (1961, p. 117, 1963, p. 228). This interest has grown, in part, out of my enduring interest in the somatic component of psychological and emotional experience. But the driving motivation for my exploration of the body (in theory and practice) is the fact that most of my clients have had very difficult lives, so the issues brought into treatment are anchored at a somatic, “tissue” level and simply are not affected in any enduring way by the traditional transactional analysis means of cognitive–interpretive interventions. At the point when I was writing the critique of script theory, my clinical work was carried out in two parallel modes—one based in the cognitive–behavioural/interpersonal model of transactional analysis and the other grounded in a neo-Reichian, body-centred cathartic model. I was not happy with either the process or the results. Windows of new understanding began to open as I read people like Bollas and Winnicott, the relationalists, and the mother– infant researchers. Through supervision with Bollas and Stan Perelman, a Jungian analyst in Pittsburgh, I began to learn how to work more effectively with affective and unconscious states through the transference–countertransference matrix. I became more effective in working with states of both intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict, and the therapy became more intimate. My work with script emphasized conscious and unconscious efforts at meaning making and the creation of psychological structure in addition to dvelopmental fixation and defence. But my body-centred work, stuck in the Reichian model of confronting muscular armour and promoting emotional discharge, evolved more slowly. Reading Winnicott gave me new insights into the gestural–communicative meanings of non-verbal behaviour (Cornell, 1997). Body-centred theorists were beginning to speak of three realms of mental–somatic organization—the cognitive,


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sensorimotor, and visceral (affective/limbic)—that needed to be integrated in somatically based psychotherapy. This was my first real break from the cathartic model, and my work began to change. However, the door of my thinking about the body and somatic processes blew wide open when I read a series of articles and a book by Wilma Bucci (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2002) elaborating her research into the interface of cognitive science and psychoanalytic theory, utilizing what she calls “a multiple code theory of symbolic and subsymbolic processing” (1997b, p. 153). It is her work that I wish to elaborate here and then use in my discussion of the case consultations with Lara and Emily. After that, I will apply it to my current understanding of script theory and the therapeutic process.

Applying Bucci’s multiple code theory to script and script protocol We are not accustomed to thinking of nonsymbolic processes, including somatic and sensory processes, that cannot be verbalized or even symbolized and that may operate outside of intentional control, as systemic and organized thought. It changes our understanding of pathology and treatment when we are able to make this shift. [Bucci, 2008, p. 58]

The “multiple codes” of Bucci’s model are three major interacting and interdependent systems of mental and emotional representation and processing: symbolic verbal, symbolic non-verbal, and sub-symbolic. These systems are fundamental and lifelong, although the verbal symbolic is the last to come “online” in psychological development. The symbolic verbal is the dominant mode of most psychotherapy, counselling, and psychoanalysis, even though it may not actually be the dominant mode of all experience. It is the mode most readily available in languaged cognition, elements of history recalled in verbal narratives, and relatively open to reflection. This is the mode in which script decisions are made, recognized, communicated, and changed. The decisional aspect of script formation, that is, defensive psychological structures, was emphasized in Berne’s later writing and is central to such script theorists as the

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Gouldings (1979) and Steiner (1974). The decisional model centres on the developing child’s conscious adaptations to family and social environments. The symbolic non-verbal is the realm of psychological organization that is both known and shown through non-verbal behaviour and non-verbalized processing, probably experienced and/or expressed in visual, auditory, motoric, or tactile modalities. Although lacking words, the non-verbal symbolic generates reflective meaning that can be brought into words. Bucci suggests that this is the mode currently theorized in psychoanalysis as transference–countertransference enactments, that is, experience that is shown first as a way of becoming known and may then be available for languaged reflection. I suggest that this is the mode that Berne characterized as ulterior communication—that level of script which Berne characterized as parental injunctions imposed on the child’s psyche like electrodes implanted in the brain, that is more accurately characterized as the introjects of the unspoken parental patterns and expectations. The sub-symbolic mode includes affective, sensory, somatic, and motoric modes of mental processing that are not experienced in language, although they may be brought into language to some degree. As described by Bucci (2001), sub-symbolic processing is experientially immediate and familiar to us in the actions and decisions of everyday life—from aiming a piece of paper at a wastebasket or entering a line of moving traffic to feeling that the rain is coming, knowing when the pasta is almost done and must be drained to be “al dente,” and responding to facial expressions or gestures. Subsymbolic processing accounts for highly developed skills in athletics and the arts and sciences and is central to knowledge of one’s body and to emotional experience. While subsymbolic functions maybe highly developed and organized and may occur within attentional focus, the special nature of the computation is such that it cannot be expressed fully in words.We should emphasize that the prefix “sub” here denotes the subsymbolic as underlying symbolic representation, not as an inferior or primitive mode. [p. 48, original emphasis]

Bucci draws on the writing of Bollas to illustrate the emergence of sub-symbolic processing as an essential part of the therapist’s


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own process of discovery and understanding within the therapeutic process. She quotes Bollas’s (1987) self-description: “I know I am in the process of experiencing something, but I do not as yet know what it is, and I may have to sustain this not knowing for quite some time” (p. 203); she also uses his now-famous phrase, the “unthought known”, to illustrate sub-symbolic processing. She (Bucci, 2001) goes on to distinguish subsymbolic knowing from the standard conceptualizations of the unconscious: This experience occurs on a level that has been characterized as unconscious; the analyst knows, however, that he is “in the process of experiencing something”; the state that Bollas describes is not unconscious but involves consciousness—knowing and thinking— of a specific sort. [p. 56, original emphasis]

While thinking about the therapeutic process from a psychoanalytic perspective, Bucci (2008) challenges certain aspects of psychoanalytic biases (and, without knowing it, some of those of transactional analysis as well): Whereas Freud’s deep and generative insight concerning the multiplicity of the human psychical apparatus remains valid, the psychoanalytic premise of lower or more primitive systems—unconscious, nonverbal, irrational—being replaced by more advanced ones needs to be revised in the light of current scientific knowledge. We now recognize that diverse and complex systems exist, function, and develop side by side, within and outside of awareness, in mature, well-functioning adults throughout life. . . . The goal of treatment is better formulated as the integration, or reintegration, of systems where this has been impaired, rather than as replacement of one system by another. [p. 52]

The access to, and interaction of, all three modes (which Bucci [2008, p. 54] calls “the referential process”) is essential to psychological health and functioning. From Bucci’s perspective, it is the interference or dissociations within the referential process that underlie psychopathology, and the goal of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is to re-establish and strengthen the referential capacities among these three modes of experience and expression. When our childhood and developmental environments (and I would include here our adult life environments as well) are reasonably

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predictable, relevant, and responsive, these three domains of experience are more likely to remain accessible to one another, open to new stimuli, and fluid in response to the environment and within the intrapsychic referential process (see Figure 5.1). It is important to recognize that no one mode of experience/ organization is seen as “healthier” than the others. One mode is not privileged over the others in Bucci’s thinking, although theoretical models and clinical practices have tended to privilege (or idealize) one mode while relegating the others to less desirable (or defensive) statuses. All three modes are valid, essential, and lifelong means of experiencing, learning, and organizing. Health has to do with the capacity to utilize all three modes, to shift among them consciously and unconsciously so that each can inform the other (i.e., the referential process). Therapy can be understood as a process to facilitate and reinforce an openness and awareness of all three modes. From my clinical experience, the body-centred modalities open up

Figure 5.1. Components of the multiple code system (adapted from Bucci, 2008, p. 54).


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avenues to both access sub-symbolic organization and work directly within it to enhance self experience and somatic levels of communication. I found in Bucci’s work a way to more fully understand the three levels of psychological games and script (Berne’s colloquial terms for defensive processes) and the levels of intrapsychic impasse described by the Gouldings (1979). Berne characterized the first level of psychological defence as enacted at the social level of discourse—easily brought into conscious awareness and relatively easy to change through insight: that is, maintained and changed at the symbolic level of experience. While Berne’s model stressed the interpersonal, the Goulding model extended Berne’s thinking to the identification of degrees of intrapsychic impasse. The first-degree impasse, being created by the introjected attitudes of developmentally significant others, interferes with the acknowledgment of the needs and desires of the growing child. It is carried at the symbolic level of organization. At the second-degree level of games and script, Berne saw a fundamental split between overt (conscious) and ulterior (unconscious) communication, the “real” message being contained in the ulterior level. The second-degree impasse in the Gouldings’ model is the internal conflict created by the introjection of parental emotions and needs, which may result in either intrapsychic conflict or symbiotic fusion of one’s own needs and emotions with those of others. The impactful, organizing level of communication is in the non-verbal—ulterior in Berne’s model, non-verbal symbolic in Bucci’s. Berne evoked the sense of “tissue” and “tissue damage” to characterize the third-degree level of games and script, the most pathological level of defence, rooted in the internalization of lethal parental injunctions. Within this sense of tissue, he meant to both suggest that this level of script is held quite literally in the body, and can foster psychosomatic symptoms, physical illness, or suicidal or homicidal impulses. Also, at this third level of psychic organization, Berne suggested there is a level of unconscious, psychic structure that he called script protocol, which he understood as the internalization (I would suggest “incorporation”) of one’s earliest experiences of how it feels to be alive and living in a world of others, which is not inherently pathological or defensive. In the

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Gouldings’ model, the third-degree impasse is experienced as a matter of identity, that is, who I am and who I must be. The thirddegree level of defence in the language of transactional analysis is that which Bucci characterizes as the sub-symbolic, and, while some aspects of the sub-symbolic may be conscious and other aspects unconscious, this level of experience provides a fundamental structure of organization and motivation. We are working here within the realms of experience and relatedness that are reflected in the contemporary psychoanalytic conceptualizations of transferential and countertransferential enactments. The clinical implications of this aspects of transactional analysis theory and enactments is further explored in Cornell and Landaiche (2008, pp. 23–39). The beauty of Bucci’s work is that it is independent of any particular theoretical frame of reference, as she sees these processes being carried out (although not always intentionally) in a variety of therapeutic modalities. I have found it enormously clarifying in my thinking about both transactional analysis and body-centred psychotherapy, as well in relation to the blind spots and limits of psychoanalytic thinking and technique. Traditionally, somatic experience and expression were viewed in psychoanalytic theories as primitive or regressive modes of being, in contrast to fundamental and lifelong, as Bucci argues. Influenced by neuroscience and infant research, contemporary psychoanalytic theory has become increasingly attentive to bodily phenomena, but psychoanalysis—as the talking cure—has been so phobic of the body, physical movement, and touch that it has yet to develop a coherent system of techniques for working with bodily experience. I think the case illustrated here demonstrates a coherent, meaningful, and communicative involvement of direct, somatic exploration. While there is an obvious kinship between sub-symbolic realms and those levels of experience now described in terms of implicit/procedural memory and knowledge, there is an important corrective balance in Bucci’s conceptualization of the sub-symbolic and its centrality in human experience. In the clinical field, the model of implicit memory is best known and most often applied within the context of mother–infant research and the notion of implicit relational knowing (Lyons-Ruth, 1998). Bucci’s model offers a vital correction in noting that not all sub-symbolic or implicit knowing is relational and relationally based. The sub-symbolic


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also includes vast arenas of somatic- and self-learning, organization, and expression that are not interpersonal, but fundamentally intrapsychic and sensorimotoric (Cornell, 2008b). The sub-symbolic shapes, experientially and often unconsciously, explicit memory and the verbal symbolic. It is the sensorisomatic container within which much of our symbolic and verbal capacities develop. Alan Fogel (2004), a developmental researcher and theorist, offers a succinct synthesis of perspectives on implicit memory: Implicit memory is primarily regulatory, automatized, and unconscious (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Implicit memories do most of the work of mediating between perception and action, as when stimuli are unconsciously evaluated, approached or avoided. Implicit memories are operating all the time and account for the organization and regulation of most of our adaptive behavior. [p. 207] Regulatory implicit memories, then, seem to be composites of repeated early experiences rather than accurate records of single incidents (Epstein, 1991; Stern, 1985). These generalizations create an unconscious predisposition to act or feel in particular ways in particular situations. . . . They are unconscious and, under ordinary conditions, unable to be explicitly accessed. [ibid., p. 209]

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are, of course, interpersonal processes designed to enhance both self-cohesion and interpersonal capacities. Fogel has expanded the concepts of implicit and explicit memory to include that which he calls “participatory memory”, a concept I see as very relevant to our thinking about script, script protocol, and the case material I present in this chapter. Fogel (2004) suggests, “There is a third type of memory, participatory memory, that forms a bridge between implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) experience and may be one of the primary pathways for integrating infancy experiences into the autobiographical self” (p. 207). He argues further: Participatory memories are lived reenactments of personally significant experiences that have not yet become organized into a verbal or conceptual narrative. . . . When experiencing a participatory memory, one is not thinking about the past. One is directly involved in a past as if it were occurring in the present. [pp. 209–210, original emphasis]

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A recent conversation with a colleague about enactment offers another illustration of somatic, sub-symbolic processing, this time with the experience centred within the body of the analyst. Enactments within the therapeutic relationship are now seen as an inevitable and instructive process, an essential form of unconscious communication between patient and analyst (Aron, 1996; Cornell, 2008c; Cornell & Landaiche, 2008; Hargaden & Sills, 2002; Hirsch, 2008; Mann & Cunningham, 2008; McLaughlin, 2005; Stern, 2004). Berne’s theories of script, with its somatic signals, predated the conceptualizations of enactments but anticipated their evolution. Berne, for example, observed: For each patient there is a characteristic posture, gesture, mannerism, tic, or symptom which signifies that he is living “in his script,” or has “gone into” his script. . . . The script signal is usually first perceived intuitively by the therapist’s Child (preconsciously, not unconsciously). Then one day it comes into full awareness and is taken over by his Adult. [1972, pp. 315–316]

Berne’s stress of the therapist’s preconscious recognition is based on an assumption of the therapist’s perceptions being free of countertransference. If countertransference (the therapist’s own script, in Berne’s language) is involved, we see a different scenario: By remaining independent of the patient’s maneuvers, and sticking strictly to his job of analyzing her resistances, her instinctual vicissitudes, and when necessary, the transference, the analyst avoids the possibility of being seduced physically, mentally, or morally. Countertransference means that not only does the analyst play a role in the patient’s script, but she plays a role in his. In that case, both of them are getting scripty responses from each other, and the result is the “chaotic situation” which analysts speak of as making it impossible for the analysis to proceed to its proper goal. [1972, p. 352]

We now realize that if either therapist or patient recovers their observing wits to some degree, this chaotic situation can produce understanding and intimacy within the therapeutic dyad. The conversation with my colleague reflects this shift from a deadening enactment to an opening of intimacy and renewal of the


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therapeutic relationship. In this case, the analyst and patient, after several years of productive, once a week psychotherapy, were discussing termination—the possibility having been raised by the patient. They had accomplished their stated therapeutic goals (which both acknowledged) and the work had gone rather dead (which neither mentioned). Something in the discussions of termination bothered the analyst. In between sessions, as he sat with his disturbance, he consciously recalled how he felt in his body sitting with this particular patient. He felt a heaviness in his chest, a restriction of his vitality, a kind of deadening. As he let his body sustain this experience, he suddenly recalled a statement the patient (himself a psychotherapist) had made at the beginning of treatment. The patient had heard the analyst make a rather radical case presentation in a consultation group and found himself envying the analyst’s freedom in his work. In explaining at the start of therapy why he had sought out this particular analyst, the patient had related this story and said, “I want that kind of freedom in my life and my work.” Removed from the patient’s presence in session, my colleague sat with his own somatic reactions to being with this man. He realized that he had somehow given up his freedom with this particular patient. He felt the “carefulness”, the caution that overtook his body while working with this man. He knew that he did not experience this patient as fragile, so it was not a protective or containing caution. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked himself (his body included in his self-querying). He slowly began to recognize that his body reacted to a persistent, unspoken message from the client to “Leave me alone!” He realized that his body reacted strongly to this unspoken message and that in his reaction he had given up both the freedom and the intensity that he brought to his work. What followed was a series of associations to the patient’s efforts as a young boy to get his lonely and distressed mother to leave him alone. His best moments as a boy were in solitude, and he still fell readily into solitary silence in his daily life and in sessions. This was now communicated unconsciously to the analyst, who had begun to feel his own energy and interest in his patient to be intrusive, a kind of nuisance to this man. My colleague took this exploration of his somatic countertransference back to his patient. Both the process of the analyst’s self-

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examination and the content of what he realized was unfolding in the therapeutic dyad deeply touched the patient and echoed patterns in other intimate relations. The therapy was renewed.

Case discussion: script protocol in action As maternal love is the first field of sexual foreplay, the hysterical mother conveys to her infant’s body an anguished desire, as her energetic touches bear the trace of disgust and frustration, carrying to the infant’s body communication about sexual ambivalence, “rolfed”, as it were, into the infant’s body knowledge, part of the self’s unthought known (Bollas, 2000, p. 48). Thirty years later, verbally and non-verbally, Emily’s mother is still communicating the same, affect-laden messages to her daughter and her daughter’s body. As I reviewed my notes in preparation for writing this chapter, I asked myself what it was about this single consultation that came to mind as I imagined the issues I wished to address here. Why did this particular session stay in my mind in such a compelling fashion? I realized that there was something very moving in the stark contrast between the closeness of Lara and Emily and their dedication to her well being and the malignant, incessant intrusion of Emily’s mother, both unconsciously in Emily’s being and in her actual, present-day interactions with her mother. Whose body is Emily actually experiencing? Who is in treatment: Emily, her mother, her maternal grandfather, the dyad of Emily and Lara, perhaps all of them? This fusion and confusion of bodily experience was profound between Emily and her mother; it had re-emerged between Emily and Lara. Script protocol is not typically discovered through conscious recall, but through the lived experiences in the here and now typically enacted within primary (and often one’s therapeutic) relationships: Protocol is not a set of adaptive or defensive decisions like a script. It is not remembered in a narrative fashion but felt/lived in the immediacy of one’s body. Protocol is the literal embodiment of the repetitive, often affectively intense, patterns of relatedness preceding the infant’s capacity for ego function. [Cornell & Landaiche, 2008]


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Historically, there had been no father, or some other third person of emotional significance to either mother or Emily, to bifurcate the mother–Emily unit. Now Lara and Emily were calling in a third, a male third. It was Berne’s observation that script decisions became conscious and available to change as people came up against the inadequacies and failures of their coping and defence mechanisms. The somatic/relational foundations that Berne labelled the protocol are not inherently defensive in function or intention; protocol is the bedrock within which we first learn what it is to be alive and involved with others. I think it most often re-emerges at points of fundamental change and deepening intimacy, be that intimacy with one’s self or with another. To return to Emily and Lara, in keeping with work at the level of script protocol, I did not base my interventions with Emily on behaviour change, behavioural permissions, support, cognitive interpretation, or empathic interventions. My interventions were fundamentally somatic and experiential, sensing and feeling our conversation and the eyes of others in Emily’s body—the subsymbolic level of organization. Her experience was first expressed in sensation and movement, within the sub-symbolic. In my mind were a tumble of such notions as maternal hysterical “rolfings”, enigmatic signifiers, and maternal narcissistic possession. These notions helped to open my body to Emily’s bodily struggles and to find a way to bring that struggle alive in the room within her body and among the three of us, in what Fogel (2004) would call “a participatory memory” (p. 207). The focus in my first consultation with Lara and Emily was on the somatic level, working directly with her eyes. The initial consultation had been quite useful and self-sustaining until strained and ultimately overwhelmed by the deepening erotic intimacy with her boyfriend (my interpretation) and the encounters with her mother and grandfather. Emily could not sustain her ownership of her body. When the impasse is rooted at the “tissue” level, client and therapist must typically enter the suffering and live it together in order to experience an understanding in the mode in which the problem is being held and enacted. Emily captured this level of reality when she said, “I know it isn’t true, but that is how it feels, and it feels entirely real.”

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When Emily said, “My body is unhappy,” I initially heard this statement as a script belief. I redefined what she meant by saying, “You are unhappy with your body.” But Emily meant what she said in exactly the way she said it—this was a description of experience at the level of protocol (the sub-symbolic). I realized then that a different level of intervention and involvement would be needed. I slowed myself down, shifted my attention into myself, noticed the ideas, fantasies, images, and body sensations that came up in me as I stayed with her statement: “My body is unhappy.” Bits and pieces of things I have read came to mind, as did a few of my own clients. As I mentioned earlier, the phrase “the weight of the gaze” kept floating through my mind. I began to feel a continuity with what happened in my first session with Emily and Lara a year earlier and what was happening now, that is, a shift from Emily’s experience of her own eyes to the impact of the eyes of others, real and imagined. As I often do, I was trying to experience in my own body what Emily was describing in hers, and I began to sense a place to start: the sense of being weighted down. We shifted to the subsymbolic level of experience as I asked Emily to bring our conversation into her body, to feel our conversation in her body; I was, in essence, inviting her to think with and through her body rather than to think about it. This was a grounding in the sub-symbolic, a grounding for an evolving referential process of connecting to other modes of experience. “Show me the crushing” is a very different intervention from “tell me about the crushing feeling”; the former anchored the work in her body and body movement. We reached an understanding in her body, through her somatic experience, rather than through her (or my) cognition. Emily’s spontaneous rush of words against her mother and her physical move towards Lara, unleashed by the expression of aggression in her body, began the shift from the sensate/somatic sub-symbolic experience to that of the non-verbal symbolic and then to the verbal symbolic. She was then able spontaneously to include me in the dialogue with Lara, and the three of us could begin to reflect on the meaning of what had happened as well as to look to the future. It is a testimony to the quality of the work and the level of trust between Emily and Lara that we were able to cover so much ground in a single session. It is probably no coincidence that the


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presence of a third person—especially a male—helped to open the physical, sexual space between Emily and Lara for action and exploration (but that is probably the topic of another paper). Emily will need, repeatedly, to bring her body physically (sub-symbolically) to her boyfriend and Lara; she will also need to bring her body experience verbally (symbolically) to those who can support and delight in her separation from her mother and her reclamation of her body and sexuality. My encouragement to Emily at the end of the consultation—to begin to bring her “unhappy body” to her boyfriend, to Lara, and eventually to others—was not intended as support or permission. It was an instruction for the continuity of her therapy, the undertaking of a complex, difficult challenging of her experience of her body in relation to others. When somatic–relational experience is located at a protocol level, there is often no clear distinction between self and (m)other. I opened this subsection with a quote from Bollas in which he describes the mother’s bodily/sexual experience being “rolfed” into the infant’s body knowledge. Emily’s mother could not (and still does not) make the distinction between her own body and that of her daughter, between self and other. Mother’s body is incorporated into Emily’s body in a psychosomatic fusion/confusion of selves. Elmendorf (2007) captures this confusion at the level of protocol: If the mother is stirred by her infant in a way that she herself cannot contain, instead of offering back to the infant a metabolized version of the infant’s experience, she may induce in the infant her own reactive affect. In such cases, the infant is faced with the mother’s experience rather than the mother’s reflection of the baby’s experience. [p. 82]

Emily had little experience at a body level that others’ perceptions were different from her mother’s, that others’ bodies would receive her body differently from how she was perceived/received by her mother’s body. For her, something new needs to be known at a body level as well as at a cognitive level. Verbal permission, empathy, or support would have been rendered useless by the depth and pervasiveness of the “reality” of her somatic–relational protocol. Over and over, in the face of anxiety, shame, and doubt, Emily will need

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slowly to experience her body evoking responses in the eyes and touch of others in ways that are different from those that she has forever known through her mother. At the level of protocol, it is extremely hard to tell who is having what experience, to whom a feeling or fantasy belongs. In this terrain, I have learnt most from the writings of Green (1986), Bollas (1999, 2000), Laplanche (1995, 1997, 1999), McLaughlin (2005), and Stein (1998a, 1998b, 2007). It was the work of these authors that came to my mind when Emily insisted that it was her body, not her, that was unhappy with its weight. It was the work of these authors that helped me comprehend the impregnation of Emily’s body by that of her mother. Stein (2007) summarizes a central point of Laplanche’s perspective, that of the enigmatic signifier: The enigmatic signifier . . . is a perplexing and impenetrable communication that is overloaded with significance, not only for the child who is its receiver, but for the adult who is transmitting it as well. . . . These messages introduce themselves into the infant’s world through the most innocent and mundane gestures. . . . Such messages implant themselves as foreign bodies, haunting questions, in the child’s psyche. [ibid., pp. 179–180] Obviously, the Laplanchian notion of a mother who normatively and regularly mystifies her child is quite different from the view in which the mother co-constructs a mutual choreography with it. . . . Such a picture is far from a “harmonious mix-up” (Balint) or attunement–disruption–attunement moments (Stern). [ibid., p. 182]

We might think of Emily’s therapy and her relationship with Lara as being a fundamental reclamation project that involves extracting her body and sexuality from that of her mother.

Conclusion In preparing for this essay, I thought about Emily, my own therapy, the young man about to be married, and others. How does it happen that, for some, one’s heart, one’s mind, one’s body, one’s sexuality is not one’s own? There are, to be sure, important things to be learnt from the infant–parent research, attachment theorists,


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and models of implicit/procedural memory. These are avenues of study that have fundamentally altered our understanding of our work. And yet, in my experience at least, there is something more irrational, more compelling, more anguished at the foundation of the human psyche, at what we in transactional analysis would think of as the level of script protocol. There is something essential within the realms of the sexual, erotic, unconscious experience that are absent in theoretical models based on systems of memory and patterns of attachment. These models, while informative, are a bit too far removed clinically from the disturbances that we often live with in our intimate relationships and self-conflicts. It is no accident that the level of protocol, participatory memory, and enactment occurs often during periods of the most intense personal growth, the most intimate stages of psychotherapy, or the deepening of our intimate relationships. I have often remarked that it was an aspect of Berne’s genius that he conceived a therapeutic system that could be applied in many realms of therapy, counselling, education, with a system flexible enough to utilize cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal interventions (Berne, 1963, 1966). His model continues to be tested by its practitioners, to evolve, and to extend its reach and efficacy. Work at the somatic level significantly extends our effectiveness in working with the non-verbal, foundational levels of psychic organization. It is my hope that the presentation and discussion of the session with Emily and Lara will illustrate the meaning of subsymbolic organization and ways of thinking about and working with the somatic realms of script protocol.

References Aron, L. (1996). A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1963). The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. New York: J. B. Lippincott. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press. Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: The Shadow of the Unthought Known. New York: Columbia University Press. Bollas, C. (1999). The Mystery of Things. London: Routledge. Bollas, C. (2000). Hysteria. London: Routledge. Bucci, W. (1997a). Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science: A Multiple Code Theory. New York: Guilford Press. Bucci, W. (1997b). Symptoms and symbols: a multiple code theory of somatization. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 17: 151–172. Bucci, W. (2001). Pathways of emotional communication. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 21: 40–70. Bucci, W. (2002). The referential process, consciousness, and the sense of self. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22: 766–793. Bucci, W. (2008). The role of bodily experience in emotional organization. In: F. S. Anderson (Ed.), Bodies in Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension (pp. 51–76). New York: Analytic Press. Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1984). Origins and Evaluation of Behavior Disorder: From Infancy to Early Adult Life. New York: Brunner/ Mazel. Cornell, W. F. (1988). Life script theory: a critical review from a developmental perspective. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18: 270–282. Cornell, W. F. (1997). If Reich had met Winnicott: body and gesture. Energy & Character, 28(2): 50–60. Cornell, W. F. (2003). Babies, brains, and bodies: somatic foundations of the child ego state. In: C. Sills & H. Hargaden (Eds.), Ego States (Key concepts in transactional analysis: contemporary views) (pp. 28–54). London: Worth Publishing. Cornell, W. F. (2008a). Explorations in Transactional Analysis: The Meech Lake Papers. Pleasanton, CA: TA Press. Cornell, W. F. (2008b). Self in action: the bodily basis of self-organization. In: F. S. Anderson (Ed.), Bodies in Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension (pp. 29–50). New York: Analytic Press. Cornell, W. F. (2008c). Loves and losses: enactments in the disavowal of intimate desires. In: D. Mann & V. Cunningham (Eds.), The Past in the Present: Therapy Enactments and the Return of Trauma (pp. 82–101). London: Routledge. Cornell, W. F., & Landaiche III, N. M. (2008). Impasse and intimacy: applying Berne’s concept of script protocol. In: Explorations in Transactional Analysis: The Meech Lake Papers (pp. 23–39). Pleasanton, CA: TA Press.


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Elmendorf, D. M. (2007). Containment and the use of skin. In: J. P. Muller & J. G. Tillman (Eds.), The Embodied Subject: Minding the Body in Psychoanalysis (pp. 81–92). Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson. Fogel, A. (2004). Remembering infancy: accessing our earliest experiences. In: G. Bremmer & A. Slater (Eds.), Theories of Infant Development (pp. 204–230). Oxford: Blackwell. Goulding, M. M. & Goulding, R. L. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecison Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Green, A. (1986). On Private Madness. London: Karnac. Hargaden, H., & Sills, C. (2002). Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective. Hove:Brunner-Routledge. Hirsch, I. (2008). Coasting in the Countertransference: Conflicts of Self Interest Between Analyst and Patient. New York: Analytic Press. Laplanche, J. (1995). Seduction, persecution, revelation. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76: 663–682. Laplanche, J. (1997). The theory of seduction and the problem of the other. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 78: 653–666. Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge. Lyons-Ruth, K. (1998). Implicit relational knowing: its role in development and psychoanalytic treatment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 19: 282–289. Mann, D., & Cunningham, V. (Eds.) (2008). The Past in the Present: Therapy Enactments and the Return of Trauma. London: Routledge. McLaughlin, J. M. (2005). The Healer’s Bent: Solitude and Dialogue in the Clinical Encounter, W. F. Cornell (Ed.). New York: Analytic Press. Stein, R. (1998a). The poignant, the excessive and the enigmatic in sexuality. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79: 259–268. Stein, R. (1998b). The enigmatic dimension of sexual experience: the “otherness” of sexuality and primal seduction. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 67: 594–625. Stein, R. (2007). Moments in Laplanche’s theory of sexuality. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 8: 177–200. Steiner, C. M. (1974). Scripts People Live. New York: Grove Press. Stern, D. B. (2004). The eye sees itself: dissociation, enactment, and the achievement of conflict. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 40: 197–238. Wood, J. D., & Petriglieri, G. (2005). Transcending polarization: beyond binary thinking. Transactional Analysis Journal, 35: 31–39.

CHAPTER SIX

The “three ways out”: escape hatches Ian Stewart

“The Child thinking usually associated with escape hatches takes the form: ‘If things get bad enough, I can always kill myself/kill someone else/go crazy.’ No matter how extreme these three tragic outcomes may seem, they are experienced by the Child . . . as ultimate solutions to intolerable situations” (Boyd & Cowles-Boyd, 1980, p. 227)

I

n his pathbreaking formulation of the theory of life script in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961), Eric Berne portrayed the script as taking the form of a story—a “transference drama”—and suggested that this story included a planned ending, with the main character “moving inexorably toward a pre-ordained destiny”. He also postulated that the script, including its final scene, might be either “tragic” or “practical and constructive” (Berne, 1961, pp. 117, 174). In the subsequent development of transactional analysis theory and practice, three possible tragic endings to the script have become the focus of particular attention. These are suicide, homicide, and 127

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psychosis. In the colloquial language of current transactional analysis, these three tragic outcomes are collectively referred to as escape hatches. These three options can all be seen as “ways out of” the negative script. However, the “way out” that any individual chooses may be either destructive or constructive. The destructive “way out” is illustrated in the epigraph from Boyd and Cowles-Boyd: the person entertains a belief—arrived at originally in early childhood—that in a fantasized, worst-case scenario, he can always find an exit from his problems by killing or harming himself, killing or harming someone else, or going crazy. On the constructive side, the theory of escape hatches proposes that the person can facilitate her movement out of negative script—find a positive “way out”—by discovering what escape hatch or hatches she decided upon in childhood, and neutralizing this decision through a therapeutic procedure known as closing the escape hatches.

Ego states: concept and terminology Like any discussion of life script, the present chapter makes frequent reference to another key concept in transactional analysis theory: that of ego states. To avoid repetitive explanation in the coming pages, a brief introduction to this concept and its associated terminology will be given here. Eric Berne, following Federn (1952), used the term “ego state” to mean a particular consistent set of internal experiences and external behaviours by which the person might manifest the ego (Berne, 1966, p. 364). In Berne’s theory, three different types of ego state are distinguished. He defined them as follows: ●

●

●

Parent ego state: a set of feelings, attitudes, and behaviour patterns which resemble those of a parental figure (Berne, 1961, p. 66). Also referred to as: a borrowed ego state (Berne, 1966, p. 366). Adult ego state: an autonomous set of feelings, attitudes, and behaviour patterns which are adapted to the current reality (Berne, 1961, p. 67). Child ego state: a set of feelings, attitudes, and behaviour patterns which are relics of the individual’s own childhood

THE “THREE WAYS OUT”: ESCAPE HATCHES

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(Berne, 1961, p. 69). Also referred to as: an archaic ego state (Berne, 1961, p. 25). The initial capitals—Parent, Adult, Child—are a device to show that we are speaking of the ego-state labels, rather than of actual parents, adults, or children. To express the fact that a person is experiencing and exhibiting, say, a Child ego state, we may use the phrase ‘she is in a Child ego state’. This may often be further shortened, to say simply: ‘She is in Child’. Examples of this terminology can be found in the epigraph to this present chapter.

Structure of this chapter The chapter falls into two sections. In the first section, I trace the development of the theory of escape hatches and of related recommendations for clinical practice. At some points, I add comments of my own in which I suggest the significance of a particular development in theory or practice, or discuss its place in the overall history of these ideas. To distinguish my comments from the reported work of the various authors, I label each one with the word “Comment”. The second section of the chapter is a case illustration of current practice in this field, drawn from my own work with clients.

Escape hatches: development of theory and practice When Eric Berne formulated his theory of script in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961), he gave various case illustrations of negative script outcomes, but did not list the three script endings that later came to be known as the “escape hatches. However, two years later, in a brief case-study article written with two of his colleagues in the San Francisco seminar (Haiberg, Sefness, & Berne, 1963), Berne lists these three outcomes quite specifically, giving them their first explicit mention in the literature of transactional analysis.

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The three tragic outcomes of script “Each individual”, say Berne and his colleagues, “has four destiny choices . . .: getting better . . . homicide . . . psychosis . . . [or] suicide’ (Haiberg, Sefness, & Berne, 1963, p. 59). The therapeutic implication was that the therapist should first of all be alert to the presence of any of the three tragic outcomes in the script. If one or more were detected, the therapist should tell the client about them “in language his Child can understand”. The writers go on: “Only by a clear understanding between the patient’s Child and his Adult can the march towards doom sometimes be reversed by the Adult taking control” (ibid., p. 60, my emphasis). Comment. In a way that is typical of Berne’s writing, this last phrase—included here as almost a throwaway line—provides one of the basic tenets on which later writers have built the theory of escape hatches. That is: the person takes protection from the tragic outcomes by exerting control of her own behaviour, using her Adult ego state. In their 1963 case study, Berne and his co-writers also tell us that: “[the client’s] first choice was . . . to kill” (ibid.). In the event, however, “Andri” did not kill anyone; instead, he killed himself. During the single therapy session that the client had attended, the therapist had “boxed out” (in Berne’s words) the options of killing others or going crazy, and so the client, in Child, chose to take what he saw as the only remaining way out. Comment. This feature of the case sowed the seed of another central idea that would be developed by later writers: that the three tragic outcomes are seen by a person in a Child ego state as substitutes, one for the other.

Hamartic scripts Berne’s close colleague, Claude Steiner, focused particularly on the role of tragic scripts in the lives of persons who abused alcohol or other substances (Steiner, 1967, 1974). Steiner coined the term hamartic to describe scripts that led to tragic endings. He drew the term from the writing of Aristotle, whom he quotes as suggesting that: “. . . [the] flaw in the tragic hero, hamartia, is the feature that characterizes tragic scripts and it is this flaw that finds expression


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in . . . active and knowing self-destruction . . .” (Steiner, 1967, p. 69). The “flaw”, here, lies in the early decision made by the child in response to the injunction Don’t Exist, often accompanied by Don’t Think. The tragic quality of the hamartic script drama, Steiner points out, is that the child makes her self-destructive decision with a positive purpose in mind, because she believes it is the only way to gain parental approval and protection. Comment. Steiner’s writing laid another of the foundations of escape-hatch theory, one that Berne had implied but not made explicit. That is, a tragic script ending, no matter how destructive, does not signal some kind of mistake in the script; nor is it merely a “failure of impulse control”. The truth is quite the contrary: the hamartic outcome is itself the purpose of the script. Self-destruction is seen by the person in a Child ego state as a fair price to pay in order to retain the approval and protection of the internalized Parent (Steiner, 1967, p. 70). Putting Steiner’s idea together with Berne’s postulate that the three hamartic outcomes are mutual substitutes, it is a short step to the proposition that these three tragic endings—killing or harming self, killing or harming others, or going crazy—can all be viewed as “king-pins” of the script. (The term “king-pins” is my word, not Berne’s or Steiner’s.) This is another notion that would later become central to the theory of escape hatches.

Suicidal decisions and no-suicide decisions In a brief article, “Suicidal decisions”, Harry Boyd (1972) reinforces the suggestion that the decision to kill self forms the king-pin, or powerhouse, of the script. He reports that when clients let go of their suicidal decisions, either spontaneously or by deliberate decision in the course of therapy, their process of personal change becomes much easier and more rapid. Boyd supports his clinical observation by reference to the work of therapists in modalities other than transactional analysis who had written on suicidal ideation. He writes: As long as the suicidal decision is unchanged the patient must continue to collect stamps to justify the eventual suicide; I believe that no real therapeutic process in the changing of rackets or stamps can be made until the suicide decision is re-made. [Boyd, 1972, p. 87]

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Boyd goes on to suggest that after a no-suicide decision, “. . . the whole script structure is looser and more amenable to change” (Boyd, ibid., p. 88). The obvious corollary is that the therapist can facilitate change by inviting the client to make no-suicide decisions. Comment. Boyd’s 1972 article does not include any description of a systematic technique for inviting these decisions; nor does he extend his argument to the other two hamartic script endings. He would do so eight years later, in an article written together with Laura Cowles-Boyd in 1980. One further remark that Boyd makes in his 1972 article would be a central issue in further discussion of theory and practice. He writes: “The suicidal script decision supports all other script elements and rackets and thus should have priority whether or not the patient is immanently [sic] suicidal” (ibid., p. 88, my emphasis). In other words, Boyd is suggesting that the therapist should invite nosuicide decisions with all clients, whether or not they present as suicidal. Writing at the same time as Boyd, Robert Goulding (1978) also describes the use of no-suicide decisions as a step in redecision therapy. In a transcript of a group therapy session, Goulding asks his client to make the statement: “By God, no matter what happens, I am going to live. I’m not going to kill myself, accidentally or on purpose—ever.” Goulding explains to the client: “I’m not asking you for a promise. This is a decision for you, not a promise to me. I’m here asking you to look at it, and decide it, for you” (Goulding, 1978, p. 52). Comment. By offering his client a check statement, and emphasizing that he is asking the client to make a decision for himself, not a “promise” to the therapist, Goulding is demonstrating a specific technique designed to invite closure of the suicide hatch by the person in an Adult ego state. Goulding’s description marks the first time this technique had been described explicitly in the transactional analysis literature.

“Shut the escape hatch” The term “escape hatches” makes its first appearance in a monograph by William Holloway (1973). He gives a reprise of the suggestion by Haiberg, Sefness, and Berne (1963) that the three


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tragic outcomes of script are suicide, homicide, and psychosis. Holloway proposes that these three script endings are decided upon by the child as an integral part of a negative early decision, reached in response to parental injunctions. These outcomes, Holloway suggests, are more than just “choices of destiny”, as Berne had written, and more than just expressions of the overall purpose of the script, as proposed by Steiner. The Child actively adopts them as “ultimate options”—ways out of the script that the person will follow if things just get bad enough. In Holloway’s model, the child decides to obey the injunction, then adds the decision: “. . . when the situation gets unbearable I can always: (1) kill myself, (2) kill them (others), (3) flip out (go crazy, drop out, etc.)” (Holloway, 1973, p. 16). Holloway coins the term “Escape Hatches” (his capitals) to describe these three tragic ways out. Holloway registers the therapeutic usefulness of the no-suicide decision as proposed by Goulding (1978). He points out, however, that such a decision addresses only one of the three escape hatches, suicide, and, therefore, may not have impact when the individual’s preferred escape hatch is either homicide or psychosis. When this is so, Holloway recommends, the effective therapeutic move is to invite the client to close the corresponding escape hatch, by taking the decision “I will never accidentally or on purpose kill another”, or “I will never flip out” (Holloway, 1973, p. 17). He goes on to say: Thus far the experience has been that a decision to close the appropriate Escape Hatch is a powerful therapeutic maneuver. . . . When the decision to close the Escape Hatch is from the Adult, the person experiences life as having new potential by choosing a pathway of change to autonomous living. . . . What seems to be occurring is that in closing the Escape Hatch the person in effect “cancels the big show”. Since the grand performance is cancelled, the multitudinous “rehearsals” of everyday living (in the form of rackets and games) no longer make sense. [ibid., p. 18]

This suggested rationale for the therapeutic benefits of escapehatch closure is, thus, very much the same as that suggested by Boyd (1972) and Goulding (1978); but Holloway extends their reasoning to the other two escape hatches as well as to the suicide hatch.

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Holloway’s model reinforces the proposition that Berne and his colleagues had put forward in their seminal article in 1963: that to be fully effective, the decision to close an escape hatch needs to be taken by the client in a clear Adult ego-state. In Holloway’s words: Obviously, the decision to close the Escape Hatch is most meaningful and effective when that decision is from the uncontaminated Adult. If the decision is only the “promise” of the Adapted Child, its effect will be limited in scope and duration. Therefore, the therapist has a responsibility to work carefully so that the decision is Adult. [Holloway, 1973, p. 18]

Comment. By this point, then, the literature was emphasizing the function of escape hatches as “king-pins” of the negative script, and advocating the use of escape-hatch closure as a therapeutic move to help the client loosen up the structure of the script and achieve desired changes.

Monitoring suicide risk However, writing in the same year as Holloway, Drye, Goulding, and Goulding (1978) shift the focus back to the other main function of hatch closure: to guard against the physical eventuality that the client may go through one of the hatches. Their article proposes a means of monitoring and managing suicide risk through the use of a no-suicide decision. It provides, they say, “. . . a simple, rapid method by which patients with any suicidal ideas can determine for themselves and the evaluator what risk actually exists”. They describe their method as follows: As soon as we believe that patients are aware of their fantasies, we ask them to make this statement: “No matter what happens, I will not kill myself, accidentally or on purpose, at any time,” and to report their internal responses to this statement. If the patient reports a feeling of internal confidence in this statement, with no direct or indirect qualifications, and with no incongruous voice tones or body motions, the evaluator may dismiss suicide as a management problem. [Drye, Goulding, & Goulding, 1978, p. 128, my emphasis]

Comment. I have added the emphasis to this quotation to underline a central feature of the no-suicide decision process, which has since


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become equally crucial in the general procedure for escape-hatch closure. That is: the facilitator offers the client a set of words, which specify unconditionally and without time-limit that the client will forego the use of the escape hatch. But this is not simply a matter of asking the client to “mouth off” the statement. The words themselves are used merely as a “handle”—a device that will enable the facilitator then to observe the qualifications and/or incongruities, if any, in the client’s report of his confidence in what he has just said. Drye and the Gouldings assert categorically: “The patient for whom suicide is an important issue will either object to or qualify the statement about suicide” (ibid., p. 128). They then devote the next three pages of their article to a discussion of the various specific behavioural clues that are likely to indicate an objection, qualification, or incongruity in the client’s commitment to the statement. It is the observation of these clues by the evaluator—and not simply the client’s repetition of the words—that is central to the monitoring and management of suicide risk.

Escape-hatch closure as a step in redecision In their landmark book, Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy, Goulding and Goulding (1979) return to the suggestion that Bob Goulding had briefly put forward in his 1972 article: namely, that no-suicide decisions have a therapeutic purpose—as an important step in the process of redecision (that is, changing early script decisions and replacing them with updated decisions appropriate to the person’s adult resources)—as well as serving a protective purpose as a means of assessing and managing the physical risk of suicide. (In their 1979 book, the Gouldings use the word “contract”, not “decision”, to describe the client’s commitment not to use the suicide, homicide, or go-crazy options. From context, it is clear that they are, nevertheless, referring to what Bob Goulding had earlier called “decisions”—that is, undertakings made by the client for herself with the therapist as witness, in contrast to agreements between client and therapist. Since I think this distinction is very important in understanding the process of hatch closure, I have taken the liberty here of using Goulding’s earlier term, “decision”, to describe what they write about in Changing Lives.)

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For the first time in their writing, the Gouldings also report that they invite clients to take protection against the other two tragic script outcomes by making no-homicide and/or no-psychosis decisions, in cases where the client has a presentation or history of harming others or of psychotic episodes (Goulding & Goulding, 1979, pp. 55–69). Although they do not use the term “closing escape hatches”, they follow Holloway and Berne in emphasizing that the self-protective decision to forego the option of a tragic outcome is made by the client in an Adult ego-state. Such decisions, they say, “take precedence over any other contracts” that the potentially suicidal, homicidal, or psychotic client may desire (ibid., p. 55). The Gouldings underline the distinction between an Adult decision not to kill self, kill others, or go crazy, and a redecision to live, which the person makes in a Child ego-state. The protective Adult decision is seen as a way-station in the process of redecision. It has the effect of providing a period of respite for the client, during which she can devote energy to making the more fundamental change in a Child ego state—namely, the redecision to live. The suicidal client, say the Gouldings, “. . . may report immediate relief that he has a period of rest from his anguished obsession of ‘to be, or not to be’” (ibid., p. 58). For paranoid clients in particular, “a no-homicide contract [i.e., decision] can be vastly relieving” (ibid., p. 60), since the theme of harming others is central to the paranoid script. Importantly, the Gouldings specify several client groups for whom the three protective decisions are unlikely to hold, and for whom the procedure of inviting such decisions is, therefore, usually contraindicated (ibid., p. 58). These include clients who are imminently suicidal or homicidal (that is, those who are not willing to make a no-suicide or no-homicide decision for even the shortest period); persons who are brain-damaged or currently actively psychotic; individuals who are currently abusing alcohol or drugs; and those who are “living in such difficult social or economic circumstances that their environment is seen to be overwhelmingly supporting suicide or homicide”. The crucial criterion in each case, say the Gouldings, is that: “The therapist and client assess each client’s ability to contract and any client who cannot or will not make a firm no-suicide or no-homicide contract should be hospitalized until he has made such a contract” (ibid., pp. 58–59).


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Suicide: being killed, killing, and dying Writing in the same year as the Gouldings, Ken Mellor (1979) builds upon the work of Steiner on hamartic scripts and protection, and of Drye and the Gouldings on no-suicide decisions. He points out that suicide entails killing (initially, of self) as well as dying, and proposes that this is one reason why the Child sees the tragic options of suicide and homicide as alternatives one for the other. Mellor suggests an extended version of the check statement: “I will not hurt myself or kill myself in any way, accidentally or on purpose, and I will not set it up for anyone else to do it to me” (Mellor, 1979, p. 183). The statement for no-homicide is similar. Mellor also recommends that, for some clients, it is useful to invite them to make a positively worded “life decision”. Here, the therapist offers the client the wording, “I will live a healthy, full life and promote the same in others” (ibid., p. 186). Like the Gouldings, Mellor emphasizes that the therapeutic value of either the no-harm decision or the life decision lies not in the mere mouthing of the words, but, rather, in the therapist’s observation of the client’s congruence as she makes the statement. If the client appears to show incongruence, the therapist feeds this back to the client, and the client’s “resistance” to making a congruent statement then becomes the focus of the therapy. There is one other important practical point on which Mellor agrees with the Gouldings. That is: to close an escape hatch may, for some clients, take many sessions to accomplish. Even when the client becomes willing to make a congruent closure, he may only feel able to do so for a limited period, and it is the therapist’s responsibility to keep track of the end-point of that period and ensure that the issue of escape-hatch closure is revisited before the earlier closure expires.

Blocking tragic scripts The following year saw the publication of a brief article by Boyd and Cowles-Boyd (1980), in which they crisply summarize the script implications of the three escape hatches and propose a protocol for applying escape-hatch closure in practical psychotherapy. Their three-page article was to be the touchstone for the theory and

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practice of escape-hatch closure over the subsequent ten years. It was also, arguably, the unwitting source of a swathe of confusion and misunderstanding that surfaced in the transactional analysis literature and in the “folklore” of transactional analysis from the mid-1990s onwards. I shall return to this point below. The Boyds take as their starting-point the work of Haiberg, Sefness, and Berne (1963) and Holloway (1973), including Holloway’s term “escape hatches”. They echo Holloway in their summary of the magic thinking of the person in Child, in which the hatches are seen as “ultimate options” if things just get bad enough (see the epigraph to this chapter). They go on to specify the therapeutic implications of this model: Patients with escape hatches open are committed to maintaining a reservoir of bad feelings in order to keep the tragic script option available, thus making hard contracts and change-oriented contracts unworkable. When a practitioner allows patients to be in therapy without first deliberately and specifically closing escape hatches with that patient, he or she is limiting the course of treatment for the patient to soft contracts and/or awareness contracts. [Boyd & Cowles-Boyd, 1980, p. 227]

This is the point that Harry Boyd had made eight years earlier (Boyd, 1972) except that it is now extended to all three of the escape hatches, not just to suicide. It leads to the same recommendation as Boyd had made in his earlier article: We believe that the escape hatches should be closed routinely with all patients as early in the course of treatment as possible and without waiting for diagnostic confirmation of the existence of hamartic script outcomes. [Boyd & Cowles-Boyd, 1980, p. 228, my emphasis]

The Boyds follow Berne, Holloway, and the Gouldings in stressing that the closure of escape hatches is to be regarded as a decision and not a contract, and that it is, by definition, done from an Adult ego-state: . . . the patient is capable of making a permanent, Adult decision to close each escape hatch; this decision does not require consensus


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with the Child ego-state. Therapists should pay careful attention to distinguishing Adult (A2) functioning from over-adaptation of the Adapted Child in making these decisions. The outcome, at this point, will be social control of the hamartic script, not resolution of the underlying script issues. [ibid., p. 228]

“Social control” is a term coined by Eric Berne (1961, pp. 86, 160–165) to mean a stage in personal change where the client in therapy attains the ability to exert control over script-driven behaviour using her Adult ego-state, though this control may still be at odds with impulses emanating from Child or Parent. With the final sentence in the paragraph quoted, the Boyds echo the Gouldings’ proposition that escape-hatch closure is not the same thing as redecision. Describing their procedure for inviting escape-hatch closure, the Boyds report that they offer their client the check statement: “I may feel like (killing myself, going crazy, killing someone else) and I will not”. They ask the client to make the statement separately for each of the three hatches, and on each occasion they then follow up with the question: “Are you willing for that statement to be true for you?” It is with the client’s response to this question, say the Boyds, that the actual decision is made. The therapist looks out for “any resistance by the patient” in responding to this question. If any sign of such “resistance” is observed, the therapist assumes that the client’s response is not from clear Adult, hence that the hatch has not been congruently closed. Therapy then concentrates on helping the client resolve whatever script issues lie behind the “resistance” (Boyd & Cowles-Boyd, 1980, pp. 228–229). When the therapist does receive a congruent agreement to the check question, she then asks one further follow-up question: “If you find that you have left loopholes, will you close them immediately?” (ibid., p. 228). The aim is to convey to the client that it is his responsibility, not the therapist’s, to maintain closure of the escape hatches. Comment. At some time in the mid-1990s, what can only be described as an “urban myth” began to circulate among some transactional analysis trainees. This was to the effect that escape-hatch closure needed to be done “by rote”. The myth sometimes translated as “escape hatches should be closed in the first session”, “I

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will only work with clients who have closed escape hatches”, or in a report that the trainee set the closure of escape hatches as a ground-rule. This myth initially surfaced in supervision, in trainees’ written case studies, and in discussions at workshops and conferences. As the reader will be aware from everything that has been written so far in the present chapter, this idea of “rote closure” is, in fact, the complete obverse of the true process and purpose of closing escape hatches. In a further and even more bizarre development, articles began to appear in the transactional analysis literature giving damning “critiques” of this supposed version of escape-hatch closure, starting from the presupposition that the process was indeed done “by rote”. (For an example of this, see Hargaden, 2001; my rejoinder can be found in Stewart, 2001.) I believe this entire “urban myth” may well have originated in an over-literal interpretation of two phrases in the influential article by Boyd and Cowles-Boyd (1980), quoted above. They are: “escape hatches should be closed routinely”, and “as early in the course of treatment as possible”. With the aim of countering the “myth of rote closure”, I have, therefore, suggested the following explanation of these phrases. “Routinely”. When the Boyds recommend that you invite escapehatch closure “routinely”, they mean that you should ask every client to close escape hatches as standard practice, whether or not the client brings a presenting problem of self-harm, harming others, or going crazy. They . . . do not mean that escape-hatch closure can ever be a matter of “mere routine”, or that it can ever be done “by rote”. . . . “As early as possible”. In suggesting that you should invite escapehatch closure “as early as possible” in treatment, the Boyds mean that you should do so as early in counselling as it is possible for that individual client to carry the process through from Adult, with full congruence. They . . . do not mean that you should invite every client to close the hatches in the first session or the first few sessions. There are a minority of clients who may indeed be able to close escape hatches congruently after only a few sessions; but for other clients, it may be months or years before they can get to this point. [Stewart, 2007, p. 105, original emphasis]


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Escape hatches and the dynamics of the script My textbook, Transactional Analysis Counselling in Action, first appeared in 1989; it is currently in its third edition. It includes a chapter on closing escape hatches (Stewart, 2007, pp. 101–118). The procedure I recommend for closing the hatches is based primarily on the writing of the Boyds, though I suggest a somewhat different check statement, which is an amalgam of that used by the Gouldings with versions I had learnt in various workshop presentations. As background to the book’s practical guidance on the technique of hatch closure, I also suggest an expansion of the underlying theory. My aim is to explain even more strongly why the escape hatches act as “king-pins” of the negative script, and why the closure of the hatches therefore has such a marked effect in “loosening up” the structure of the script and enhancing the process of change. I suggest first that the script “is not a rigid structure built up from isolated units. Rather it is a dynamic, interactive system. If one element of the system is changed, other elements are likely to change in response” (ibid., p. 95). I next suggest that, during the process of script formation, the child may adopt one script decision as a defence against another. She accomplishes this by making what I call a compound decision. Its general form is: “I can avoid obeying this destructive message so long as I obey another of my parents’ messages that is a bit less destructive.” For example, the child who receives the injunctions Don’t Exist and Don’t Be Important may make the compound decision: “It’s OK for me to stay alive as long as I stay unimportant to people”. Or a counterscript decision may be used as a defence against a decision in the script proper, for example, in the common compound decision, “It’s OK for me to stay alive as long as I keep on working hard”. The impact of this for the Child may be better understood if the compound decision is rephrased as its logical equivalent: “If I stop working hard, I’ll drop dead”. From my own clinical experience, I suggest that: “. . . in the great majority of cases the function of the compound decision is to defend against [the decision] I Mustn’t Exist” (ibid., p. 96). Like other contributions to escape-hatch theory, this is based on ideas that had already been put forward by earlier writers. The

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Gouldings had drawn attention to the possibility that a counterscript decision to Work Hard might defend against the injunction Don’t Exist, or that a relatively “light” decision in the script proper, for example around the injunction Don’t Be Close, might be used as a similar defence, with the child deciding, “I’ll never again be close to anyone, so I won’t have to kill myself” (Goulding & Goulding, 1978, pp. 148, 217). The Gouldings, however, had not made an explicit connection between these defensive decisions and the “king-pin” role of the three escape hatches in maintaining the structure of the negative script. My suggestion is that the Child often clings to negative decisions because he sees them as his only means of avoiding destruction. I, therefore, make the following practical recommendation for therapists: “Always set up protection against tragic script outcomes before you invite the client to change any other part of the script” (Stewart, 2007, p. 99). And my suggested way of setting up this protection is to invite the client to close escape hatches—and not only invite him to, but stick with it until he does—before you go ahead with any therapeutic move that invites him to make changes in his script. I agree with the Boyds that is worth while to invite hatch closure without waiting to discover whether the client has made a significant script decision to kill or harm self or others or go crazy: the simple reason for this is that you may not uncover such a decision until the client actually begins to dismantle the dynamic structure of the script. My account disagrees with the Boyds’ in one respect. In their article they express distrust of time-limited closure, regarding it as so risky that “the therapist should avoid [it] if at all possible” (Boyd & Cowles-Boyd, 1980, p. 229). In my textbook chapter, by contrast, I suggest that time-limited closure, if it is congruently decided upon from a clear Adult ego state, is a great asset to the progress of therapy, since so long as therapist and client are still within the time limit, it will be safe to make any script change that could be made under full closure (Stewart, 2007, p. 116). In taking this view, I follow Goulding and Goulding (1979, p. 55) and the evidence of my own clinical experience. I point out that it is the therapist’s responsibility, and not the client’s, to ensure that the question of escape hatch closure is raised again with the client before the period of closure runs out.


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Case illustration The client “Alan” was a man in his mid-thirties, self-employed. He was in a live-in relationship, currently of some three years’ duration, with his girlfriend “Janet”. I saw Alan in my private practice, and we worked together for a total of twenty sessions.

Presenting problem Alan felt he loved Janet, and he wanted their relationship to be permanent. Yet, he had frequently been getting into quarrels with her, and these had been growing more severe as time went on. During one of these rows in the past week, he had slapped her. Janet had responded by threatening to leave him. Alan recognized that he had played out a similar pattern with two earlier girlfriends, both of whom had eventually left him. He wanted to avoid doing the same again. Yet, he felt he did not know how to control his temper, and was scared he might end up losing Janet in the same way as he had lost his past girlfriends.

Referral criteria In Alan’s immediate presentation, I noted nothing that pointed to possible psychosis or personality disorder. He confirmed that he was not suffering from any medical complaint, and was not taking any kind of medication. I therefore judged that the way was clear for Alan and me to proceed to intake, as the first step in a number of initial exploratory sessions. He agreed to this.

Intake As we worked through the intake questionnaire, I was able to confirm that Alan had no history of psychiatric problems, and that there was no history of mental disorder in his immediate family. He had shown violence to others on two occasions, when he had slapped a female partner. He had never contemplated nor attempted suicide, but had occasionally engaged in self-harm: when feeling frustrated or angry, he had beaten his fists against a

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wall or door, making his knuckles bleed. Alan also reported smoking about five cigarettes per day.

Initial diagnosis Even before proceeding to formal script analysis, it was clear to me that Alan had the escape hatches of homicide (harming others) and suicide (self-harm) open. The repetitive script pattern that Alan reported—that of breaking one relationship after another by “testing to destruction”—is typical of the paranoid personality adaptation (Joines & Stewart, 2002, pp. 79–83, 279–298). My hypothesis was that Alan’s script contained an early decision that is central to the paranoid personality, which is, “I can never trust others not to reject me”. This decision, in turn, is often based on an earlier Child belief, “I can hurt or kill others simply by being around”. When the person in adult life experiences the possibility of being abandoned by an important other, he feels the terror he first felt as an infant, but immediately covers that fear with anger, which may be expressed as jealousy or suspicion, and may be escalated to violence, as in Alan’s case. Often, the response of the other person is to leave the relationship, thus “confirming” the paranoid person’s script belief, “I’ll be rejected”. The crucial escape hatch for the paranoid to close is that of homicide or harming others (Joines & Stewart, 2002, p. 222), since this closure directly confronts the early belief “I damage others just by being around”. Because of constraints on space here, the paragraphs that follow will describe only those aspects of the treatment plan and treatment process that were directly related to escape-hatch closure. The closure of escape hatches was, in any event, the crucial element of the case.

Treatment plan I had already registered that Alan showed no indications of psychosis, personality disorder, or substance abuse, any of which would have been a contraindication to inviting the closure of escape hatches (Stewart, 2007, pp. 107–109). I noted also that while homicide or harming others was the “hot” hatch for someone with Alan’s personality adaptation, I would, nevertheless, always ask


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him to address all three hatches during the procedure, until and unless he had made a congruent and non-time-limited closure of any one hatch. This was to take account of Mellor’s hypothesis that closure of only one hatch may increase the likelihood of the client’s going through one of the other hatches (Mellor, 1979). I viewed the compound decisions in Alan’s script as having been made in response to a combination of two injunctions (Goulding & Goulding, 1979). These were Don’t Be Close and Don’t Exist. I hypothesized that, in the dynamics of Alan’s script, the first of these was a defence against the second, with the compound decision being “It’s OK for me to exist as long as I don’t get close to anyone”. Because Alan’s early Child decision had translated the existence issue into “harm of others”, the compound decision could alternatively be phrased as “If I let myself get close to anyone, I’ll harm or kill them”. In terms of treatment sequence, I was, therefore, clear that Alan would need to take protection against hamartic outcomes before the issues of closeness and trust could be safely be addressed. Closing the escape hatches, I foresaw, would be the means by which he could take this protection. I next considered timing. My usual practice is to wait until at least the fifth session of therapy before even raising the topic of hatch closure with the client, and then allow “as much time as it takes” for the process of actually inviting closure and for the client to decide upon their response. Because of the central role of trust issues in Alan’s script, my thought was that I might well extend these timings; my first objective was to give his Child ego state enough time to begin to see me as someone who at least might possibly be trustworthy. I was clear that I would not invite Alan to make any script change until he had decided upon at least time-limited congruent closure of all three escape hatches. However, the time up to that point would be by no means wasted. I would invite Alan to engage in exploratory work—script analysis, problem formulation, and exploration of possible treatment contracts—using the rich variety of analytical models that transactional analysis has available for these purposes. As well, I would introduce the topic of escape-hatch closure at an Adult ego state level, giving Alan information about the purposes of the procedure and responding to any questions he had about it. In the time taken to do this, his Child ego state would

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have still further opportunity to test me for consistency and trustworthiness.

Treatment process The first four sessions went according to the plan I have just outlined. Formal script analysis supported my initial “hunch” diagnosis of Alan’s script content. Alan entered energetically and proactively into our analytical activities, making good use of the acute Adult ego state functioning that typifies the paranoid adaptation. I decided, therefore, to go ahead and open the topic of escape-hatch closure at the beginning of session five. Explaining the process to Alan, I stressed as strongly as possible that closure of the hatches did not entail merely mouthing off the words of the check statements, and that the decision to close hatches, if he took it, would be a decision he made for himself and not a “promise” to me. As many clients do, Alan raised a question about the meaning of “go crazy”. In a standard response (Stewart, 2007, pp. 114–115), I turned the question back to him, asking, “What do you mean by it?” He replied, “Well, it would be like completely losing control—shouting, yelling, thrashing about, going red in the face.” I gave him the information that for the purposes of hatch closure, “going crazy” means engaging in any form of behaviour or thought pattern that would be likely to attract a psychiatric diagnosis of “psychotic”. Alan immediately commented congruently, “Oh, that’s no problem, then—I’ll never do that.” On the principle “strike while the iron is hot”, I decided at that point to change my treatment plan and go straight to inviting Alan to close the escape hatches, beginning with the go-crazy hatch. I offered him the check statement for that hatch: “Under no circumstances will I ever go crazy, try to go crazy or set up to go crazy, accidentally or on purpose”. I reminded him yet again that if he chose to make the statement, it would be an undertaking to himself and not a promise to me. Alan then made the statement with fully congruent wording and body language. I checked with, “Is that statement true for you?”, and he congruently answered that it was. I finally asked, “And if you become aware of any loophole in that undertaking, will you close it immediately?” Alan confirmed, again congruently, that he would. Therefore, I judged that


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he had closed the go-crazy escape hatch, and congratulated him on doing so. I then invited the same procedure for the other two hatches: harming self and harming others. However, Alan did not feel able at that time to make unconditional and permanent closure of either hatch. He said he did not trust himself not to strike Janet again. While he was sure he would never kill himself, he was not willing to commit himself to refrain from punching hard surfaces if he should feel frustrated. My next step, again a standard move in the procedure (Stewart, 2007, pp. 115–117), was, therefore, to ask Alan if he was willing to make time-limited closure of these two hatches. I asked him, “So, for how long are you willing to undertake that you won’t, under any circumstances, kill or harm yourself or kill or harm anyone else? Like, till our next session, or for a fortnight, or a month?” He replied congruently that he would keep both these hatches closed until our next session. I entered a reminder to myself in my case notes that I must, without fail, raise the subject with him again at that coming session and ask if he were willing to take a further time-limited closure. Alan did renew his time-limited closure throughout the period between our fifth and eleventh sessions. In the first two of these weeks, the closure was from one session to the next. Subsequently, Alan undertook to keep the hatches closed for two-week periods, until his eventual unconditional closure. I believe that time-limited closure of this kind provides experiential learning for the person in Child, giving “practice” at keeping the hatches closed. At an Adult ego state level, we engaged in many discussions about hatch closure during these six sessions. The fundamental issue at stake was Alan’s ability to take responsibility for his own conduct and thinking—above all, to confirm that he could take Adult control over his impulses towards self-harm or harming others. In our eleventh session, Alan said he was now ready to close the remaining hatches without time-limit. He did so, with congruent wording and body language. (I also asked him to revisit the gocrazy hatch and check that it was still closed, which it was.) As he allowed the significance of his decision to sink in, Alan’s immediate emotional response was not one of elation or relief, but rather of unease. He said to me disconsolately, “But this means I’ve lost

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my comfortable way out!” Asked what he meant, he replied that by closing the self-harm hatch he had deprived himself of the chance to beat his fist against walls or doors when he felt frustrated. Cowles-Boyd (1980) has drawn attention to this negative Child ego state response that clients may show immediately after hatch closure; it may sometimes be exhibited in psychosomatic symptoms or feelings of disorientation. To the client in a Child ego state, the escape hatches have represented ultimate solutions held in reserve for use if things ever get bad enough. Now, suddenly, these ways out are blocked, and the Child needs time to adjust to the new situation. When Alan came into session twelve, he reported to me that he had given up smoking. He had done this without any specific request from me. By the end of our work together he had still not smoked another cigarette. I interpreted this as meaning that Alan’s Adult ego state commitment not to harm self had already been “heard” by him in a Child ego state, and that he had made a spontaneous move to redecide his early decision “I Mustn’t Exist”. With the hatches closed, the process of change now moved ahead rapidly. In session twelve also, Alan took a behavioural contract: “I will take time to listen to Janet and tell her how I’m feeling in response, at least two times in the coming week.” He fulfilled this contract, and continued it in subsequent weeks. By this change in his behaviour, he had made an important challenge to the early decision “I Mustn’t Be (emotionally) Close” that had been one of the mainstays of his script. In the following two sessions, he took two more behavioural contracts to further this overall goal. One was to share with his parents how he felt about them (session thirteen). The other was to be open with Janet about his fear that she might leave him, and tell her he wanted her to stay with him (session fourteen). He carried out both these contracts. My interpretation was that, by closing the hatches, Alan had made it safe for his Child ego states to experiment with closeness to others. I next decided to invite Alan into redecision work (Goulding & Goulding, 1979), and he agreed. In session fifteen, he completed a piece of two-chair work in which he told his “father” on the other chair, “I don’t need to be like you, Dad. I can ask directly for what I want without getting violent.” Throughout the remaining sessions, he continued behavioural practice of his redecision. In


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session seventeen, I asked Alan to place his parents and parentfigures, one by one, on another cushion in imagination. I invited him to assert to each one in turn that, whatever happened, he was going to stay alive and healthy, was going to let others stay alive and healthy, and was going to stay sane. Alan did so. As he spoke to his “mother”, Alan first got in touch with furious rage, which he released by beating up the cushion. Next he shifted into terror, as he re-experienced his early fear that his “mother” might now go away and leave him totally abandoned. As he brought his here-andnow resources into this experience, Alan told his “mother”, “I can survive without you.” With this piece of work, Alan was revisiting and strengthening the redecision to exist that he had already begun to make by session twelve. At session eighteen, Alan reported, “My friends say I’m looking different—healthier and more relaxed.” This was a further indication to both of us that he had made effective redecisions. He said he was continuing his practice of asking Janet openly for what he wanted instead of getting aggressive with her. He had not used physical violence against Janet at any time since he entered therapy, and felt confident that he would not do so in future. During our final debrief in session twenty, Alan and I agreed that the turning point in his work had come with his closure of escape hatches in the eleventh session.

References Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Grove Press (originally published by Oxford Unversity Press). Boyd, H. (1972). Suicidal decisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 2: 87–88. Boyd, H., & Cowles-Boyd, L. (1980). Blocking tragic scripts. Transactional Analysis Journal, 10: 227–229. Cowles-Boyd, L. (1980). Psychosomatic disturbances and tragic script payoffs. Transactional Analysis Journal, 10: 230–231. Drye, R., Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1978). No-suicide decisions: patient monitoring of suicidal risk. In: R. Goulding & M. Goulding

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(Eds.), The Power is in the Patient. San Francisco, CA: Transactional Publications (first published in 1973). Federn, P. (1952). Ego Psychology and the Psychoses. New York: Basic Books. Goulding, R. (1978). New directions in transactional analysis: creating an environment for redecision and change. In: Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (Eds.), The Power is in the Patient (pp. 17–55). San Francisco, CA: Transactional Publications (first published in 1972). Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1978). The Power is in the Patient: a TA/Gestalt Approach to Psychotherapy. San Francisco, CA: Transactional Publications. Goulding, M., & Goulding, R. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Haiberg, G., Sefness, W., & Berne, E. (1963). Destiny and script choices. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 2: 59–60. Hargaden, H. (2001). Escape hatches: sacred rite or useful tool? Transactional Analysis Journal, 58: 33–34. Holloway, W. (1973). Shut the Escape Hatch. Monograph IV, (mimeo). Joines, V., & Stewart, I. (2002). Personality Adaptations: A New Guide to Human Understanding in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Nottingham and Chapel Hill: Lifespace. Mellor, K. (1979). Suicide: being killed, killing and dying. Transactional Analysis Journal, 9: 182–188. Steiner, C. (1967). The treatment of alcoholism. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 6: 69–71. Steiner, C. (1974). Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. New York: Grove Press. Stewart, I. (2001). Closing escape hatches: always therapeutic, never routine. Transactional Analysis Journal, 60: 1–2. Stewart, I. (2007). Transactional Analysis Counselling in Action (3rd edn). London: Sage.

CHAPTER SEVEN

From a child psychiatry practice James R. Allen

H

aving heard I was a psychiatrist who listened and had a way with medications, Mr G came for treatment. The antidepressant doses he was taking were very high but had not helped, and a recent prolonged stay in a psychoanalyticallyorientated institution had been of little value—except, perhaps, he added, the occupational therapy. Now nearly eighty, he had been depressed most of his life. As a young man in Vienna, he had contacted Freud. In return, he received a postcard, recommending that he see Alfred Adler. He did, did well for a number of years, and eventually moved to the USA. With a variety of later therapists, however, he failed to replicate the success he had had with Adler. What could I do, I, who am not a psychopharmacologist per se, but a child psychiatrist? What from my knowledge of transactional analysis, child and neurodevelopment might be useful in treating this elderly gentleman? At birth, the human brain has biological potentials but, as studies of the unfortunate children in understaffed orphanages have repeatedly shown, we depend on experience to help wire it, and to facilitate the development and linking together of its component 151

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parts. This chapter addresses the development of our brains, conceptualized as assemblies of cells and their connections, and our minds, conceptualized as flows of energy and information between different parts of our brains and between us and others (Siegel, 1999; Schore, 2001, 2003), and how I used some of our current knowledge linking developmental psychology and depth psychotherapy to treat this man before me. Traditional models of child development tended to emphasize single domains such as the motor, language, emotional, cognitive, or psychosocial. Children, however, do not develop this way. As Anna Freud noted over forty years ago (Freud, A., 1963, 1965), they develop as integrated wholes. A recent model, the developmental, individual difference, relationship-based (DIR) model (Greenspan, 1989; Greenspan & Shanker, 2005; Greenspan & Wieder, 1998) has expanded this perspective. It emphasizes stage-specific, functional– emotional developmental capacities (D) in the context of the child’s unique neurologically-derived sensory-motor individual differences (I) and relationships (R). The model has also been found useful in the treatment of adults (Greenspan, 1997). The functional-emotional developmental milestones are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Homeostasis and interest in the world. Engagement. Two-way purposeful social–emotional communication. Social problem-solving and the emergence of a behavioural self. Concept creation. Linking ideas together.

Stage 1: Homeostasis and attention to the sights and sounds of the world At birth, infants can recognize patterns, as can be seen, for example, in their responses to sights and sounds. They make rhythmic movements in response to their mother, perhaps synchronizing their legs and arms with the sound of her voice. They also show purposeful movements, such as turning towards her. In such responses, we can see the importance of affect. The baby turns to mother’s voice, presumably, because it is pleasurable. If a

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stimulus becomes too much, it turns away. That is, the baby is showing not an inflexible sensory-motor response, but, rather, a motor response mediated by intervening affect. Affect is experienced as sensations, but sensations do not occur alone. Social–emotional cues influence how they are perceived. In early co-regulation, the mother soothes or energizes the baby, but the baby also soothes or energizes her.

Stage 2: Engagement Sometime between 2–4 months, the baby begins to take special interest in the human world. This manifests in beatific smiles and an ever-broadening range of social–emotional responses—pleasure, displeasure, protest, and excitement—that care-givers help to upand down-regulate. Attuning to the child’s level of arousal and sensory processing preferences, the sensitive caregiver lets the child control the level of intimacy and warmth (Ayres, 1964; Brazelton & Cramer, 1990; Escalona, 1969). Too much stimulation or intrusion and the child will become avoidant. Gradually, the child develops a more textured and nuanced range of affect. This may not occur in institutionalized children. They are often limited to the emergency emotions of fight, flight, or freeze.

Stage 3: Two-way purposeful interaction, the use of affect and gestures to show intent Between three and nine months, babies move from mere engagement with their care-givers to two-way purposeful communications. They signal and negotiate with emotions and gestures. Since the child can now signal some needs, she is no longer totally under the control of the catastrophic reactions of fight, flight, or shutdown. While the four-month-old may have kicked her legs in a rhythmic way in response to her mother, the eight-month-old has discovered that a smile gets a smile back. This is the beginning of cause-and-effect thinking. Reaching out and touching daddy’s nose

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requires co-ordinating motor actions purposefully with the visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems. Repeating the act strengthens sensory–affect–motor patterns. At this stage, the child is initiating actions and exchanges with the care-giver. There is a “me” doing something to a “not me” or “you.” “Me” and “not me” are experienced probably only in terms of behaviour; that is, in terms of the smiles, movements, and the sounds being exchanged. The child also discovers that she gets different responses to different sounds, and so learns to differentiate them.

Stage 4: Shared social problem-solving and the more complete emergence of a behavioural self The sensitive care-giver creates circumstances that encourage the child to become more engaged and interactive. Then he/she follows and harnesses the child’s interests, introducing as many intervening steps as possible in order to expand the child’s experiences, but is careful not to precipitate a melt-down. Motivations for interaction come from within the child: the child’s desire to do something and then the satisfaction that comes from doing it. Affects associated with desire and its satisfaction orchestrate and integrate a variety of neurological systems underlying sensory modulating, motor-planning and sequencing, combining sounds and behaviour and using sounds or words in a meaningful manner. The fifteen- or sixteen-month-old toddler can take daddy’s hand, lead him to the toy closet, and point to a toy high up. When daddy gives it to him, the child smiles. This common scenario involves a continuous flow of many back-and-forth circles of communication: nods, gestures, smiles, and sounds used in a purposeful pattern. Such long chains of interactions are the foundation of planning, sequencing, and problem-solving, as well as other important abilities. 1.

The child is learning to operate in terms of patterns around a wide range of emotions. She shows intention; that is, she takes in sensory experiences, develops ideas of what to do, and then plans, sequences, and executes them. Islands of “me”


2.

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gradually come together through longer and longer series of interactions with the care-giver, and she discovers that “I” am the product of my patterns. Mother is the product of my patterns with her, and different from what I can expect from daddy. Such patterns become the way the child defines herself and others: behavioural organizations of self and others. The child also is developing a sense of power. As a parent, you note this as your young Galileo drops the rattle from her highchair—again and again! By the end of this period, the child will have built up internal models of self with others. This has been conceptualized in a number of ways, such as internal working models (Bowlby, 1973) generalized representations of interactions (Stern, 1983, 1985), emotional schemata (Bucci, 2003), and structural processes (“rules”) to obtain or limit access to information (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985), each with somewhat different connotations. Berne referred to these organizing processes as protocol (Allen & Allen, 1991; Berne, 1961, 1972; Cornell, 2005). The process really is an extension of the child’s biological capacity to recognize patterns. The child seems to be forming multi-sensory mental images (sight, sound, and relationships). A cookie, for example, is something that tastes good, looks and feels a certain way, makes a certain sound when you throw it on the floor, and gets a certain reaction from mother when you do. That is, the child is learning a concept that is deeply and personally meaningful. When she learns the word “cookie”, it will be a short-form expression for what she already knows. How does the child come to form concepts? The younger baby is locked into fixed sensory–motor response patterns, but, as she learns to signal with emotions, she is no longer at the mercy of these patterns. Perception is separated from action. Free-standing perceptions involve many of the object’s properties, and become associated with a variety of affects. The concept of mother, for example, becomes associated with experiences of both nurturance and the deprivation. Now, what is a free-standing perception but a multisensory affectivethematic picture in the mind? This is a rudimentary concept (Greenspan & Shanker, 2004).

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With such social problem-solving as getting daddy to hand down the toy from the shelf, the child is becoming better coregulated. Social problem-solving also facilitates the development of attention, for attention involves sequencing many patterns of action in a row in order to reach a goal. It also makes it easier to internalize limits and patterns of mood regulation, as when mother says “uh . . . uh” with the particular affect and body signals that mean “no”.

Stage 5: Creation of ideas Towards the end of the second year, the child begins to form concepts. This manifests in pretend play and in the meaningful use of a few words, such as “potty now”, or “hit you”. While fragile between sixteen and twenty-four months, this capacity gradually becomes a dominant mode in organizing the child’s behaviour. Care-givers responding to the child’s developmental level help her to expand these abilities by joining in pretend play and elaborating it, as well as by engaging in back-and-forth chit-chat. All the time, they encourage the child to use words she knows or to learn new ones, using the child’s interests and desires (as opposed to rote learning). The child also begins to develop rudimentary reality-testing as she experiences her intentionality in relation to the intentionality of others. Children’s pretend play begins with little scenarios, the stories they have observed or heard in the family. Gradually, however, they begin to put their own stamp on them. While sensitive to the child’s sensory processing and regulation profile, the helpful care-giver expands and enriches the child’s play in terms of the range of its themes (such as dependency, curiosity, and aggression) by joining in and then introducing challenges and problems so that the child does not get stuck in stereotyped repetitions. We infer that, at this stage, the child’s sense of self now includes concepts (ideas) rather than being limited to the integrated patterns of behaviour observed at the previous developmental level. That is, there is a developing symbolic sense of “me” and of “you”. This manifests in the use of personal pronouns.


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Stage 6: Combining meaningful ideas together Between ages 21⁄2 and four, the child begins to link ideas together. It is the time of the “w-questions”, beginning with “why”. She can tell why she is happy or sad. The care-giver who is sensitive to developmental levels supports logical thinking, connecting past, present, and future, and encourages discussions of motivations (e.g., “why are you sad?”). This is early mentalizing. Play becomes more elaborate and rich. Motives are given to characters. Stories now have beginnings, middles, and endings. Understanding the logical bridges between different feeling states allows the child to connect different parts of “me” together. Connecting ideas logically is the basis of separating reality from fantasy.

Later stages Gradually, the child begins to engage in higher levels of thinking, first multi-causal thinking, then comparative and grey-area thinking, and, later, at about 10–14 years, reflective thinking. With each of these levels, her sense of self, others, and her possible life trajectories become more nuanced and complex. In progressively more complex ways, she asks and answers the great question, “who am I and what happens to people like me in this world?” (Berne, 1972). At the reflective stage, she has a secure sense of self and can consider such issues as how she feels as opposed to how she “should” feel or how she might feel under other conditions. Now she is ready to negotiate the tasks of adolescence and young adulthood, and to engage more fully in thinking of possible life trajectories. As the foregoing outline suggests, we build on earlier developmental levels as we mature, forming relationships and capacities that are increasingly more complex. However, previous levels persist. In response to stressors, we may regress to them. We may also function at a higher level in some domains than in others, for example, dealing better with aggression than with intimacy.

Sequelae of child development and their importance in the treatment of adults In treating adults, I have found four elaborations of or additions to this model especially useful.

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Social co-regulation What do we need to engage in warm social interaction? When I talk to a colleague in the hallway or in the coffee room, how do I know how close I should stand? When should I speak and when should I stop and listen? How do I sense how to pace myself? How do I show the flexible eye contact that derives from dynamic shifts of attention? Skills in the balance and rhythms of social interaction have nothing to do with conscious understandings, including the ability consciously to reflect on one’s life, but they do have much to do with social success. Taking in information from our senses, organizing and interpreting it, developing ideas of what to do, and then planning, sequencing, and executing them (praxis) require that many levels of the central nervous system work in harmony. This involves such skills as attending, social referencing, and involvement in long chains of interaction with the consequent ability to predict what will happen. These all are encoded in procedural (implicit) memory systems. We learnt them by nine months!

Emotional co-regulation in intimate relationships, including psychotherapy Within the intersubjective field of two people there exists a psychobiological expectation of moment-to-moment interaction. This is primarily non-verbal. Normally, when such interaction does not occur, it is experienced as a breach in the attachment system and repaired quickly enough to maintain a sense of attuned mutuality. In this process, we co-regulate visually through such cues as eye movement, posture, gesture, and auditorily through prosody. Such social–emotional signalling and reception involve the non-dominant hemisphere (Mandal & Ambady, 2004; Schore, 2001, 2003). It is subcortical and the processes are very rapid. When people speak of breaches, however, they generally say something such as, “Can I depend on you?”, or “Are you there for me?”—but this verbal level of processing involves slower, higher cortical levels. We depend on others to help calm, soothe, and regulate us. When we move into a committed relationship, whether patient– therapist or as a couple, each member becomes psychobiologically


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more dependent on the other, and this activates intensified proximity-seeking and contact-maintenance as well as adaptations of, and defences against, threats to our safety–security systems. People with avoidant attachment patterns, such as those labelled with antisocial, narcissistic, or schizoid diagnoses, then tend to self-regulate, while those with more ambivalent/resistant or fearful attachment patterns, such as those labelled as having borderline personality organizations, are more likely to seek external regulation (Holmes, 1996, 2004; Johnson & Best, 2003; Kernberg, 1975; Soloman, 1985; Tatkin, 2005). Intimates, including patients and therapists, also provide space for each other to organize and digest thoughts and feelings, particularly those of the implicit kind, which they cannot verbalize, but which seem to benefit from an intersubjective space within which to be experienced and organized. Waiting in the presence of the notyet-speakable experience facilitates the other’s ability to raise it to a symbolic, verbalizable level. The therapist’s physical and emotional acceptance and containment of such experience needs to precede its verbal processing.

Development from emergent to symbolic senses of self and then to an autobiographical self Child developmentalists have studied the gradual development of senses of self from a kind of emergent inner core through more organized behavioural partial selves to the more complex levels of self-reflective consciousness that allow a person consciously to think in terms of his or her life-story and possible futures. They have described these developmental processes in a number of different frameworks (Damasio, 1999; Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002; Schore, 2001, 2003; Siegel, 1999) but they all develop from the newborn’s biological givens: basic physiological patterns, such as stages of arousal and pattern recognition, and the capacity to engage in affective–social interactions. The end result is an autobiographical self- and life-narrative which connects past, present, and possible futures. To think consciously of and verbalize some sort of life-plan, lifenarrative, script, identity, or autobiographical self, as described in the work of Berne (1961, 1972), Damasio (1999), Adler (Adler,

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Ansbacher, & Ansbacher, 1964), Erikson (1959), Steiner (1974), and Vaillant and Mukamal (2001) requires abilities to think abstractly and to integrate a variety of experiences and feelings. One needs a sense of self, the ability to anticipate, some concept of history and development, and those higher levels of abstract thinking involved in multi-causal, grey-area, and self-reflective thought. However, these higher levels of thinking are based on earlier experiences. The ability to predict, for example, begins to emerge in exchanges of social–emotional signals originally developed during DIR stages three and four. At early symbolic levels, it involves the symbolizing of interactive and emotional patterns and the formation of logical links developed during DIR stages five and six. Gradually, these abilities become a core part of the child’s personality, aspects of frequently recurring states of mind and self-states, which integrate thinking, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and internal models at a given point in time (Allen, 2003). In transactional analysis, these are called early Child ego states. Good stories, including our life-plans or scripts, require a beginning, middle, and end, and certain roles. We learn these necessary story conventions during two-way purposeful interaction, social problem-solving, the emergence of a behavioural self, the use of meaningful ideas and logical connections between them, developed during DIR stages three, four, five, and six. Good stories also require some ability to think of oneself and others as motivated by internal states, dynamics, and cognitions. Sometimes called a “theory of mind” or mentalization, this is largely a medial prefrontal ability whose development is associated with attachment, imitation, and empathy (Allen, Bennett, & Kearns, 2004; Fonagy, 2001; Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002; Holmes, 1996), but also involves the integration of many other brain areas, including mirror neurons, insula, and limbic circuits. However, there are different levels of theory of mind. These are each derivatives of different levels of functional–emotional development, different sensory processing abilities, and breadth of experience. Theory of mind is not an all-or-none phenomenon.

Protection and permission Two hallmarks of transactional analysis have been the concepts of protection and permission (Allen, 1997, 2003; Allen & Allen, 1998;


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Allen et al., 1996; Nix, et al., 1999). Initially, they need to come from the outside, from important people in our lives and the larger community, but eventually we need to provide them for ourselves, from some internal nurturing function. All are important throughout life, but each needs to take different forms depending on a person’s developmental level, context, and sensory–motor profile. In therapy, they are given verbally, but also non-verbally through such things as the therapist’s attitude, assumptions, and body language, and handling of the patient’s deficits, intrapsychic dynamics, and past and current external circumstances, as well as in the highlighting of exceptions to the patient’s dominant pathological stories. We also give protection and permission through what the sociocultural theory of Vygotskii and Coles (1978) labelled “scaffolding”, figurative support as the individual seeks to master new tasks. Protection is directed towards stressors of various types: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Real and potential dangers. Absence of support and positive strokes. Inaccurate perceptions and knowledge, so that evaluations are unrealistic and plans are unlikely to succeed. External pathogenic messages. Internal pathogenic messages and fantasies. Pathogenic conclusions.

Like protections, permissions also need to take different forms, depending on a person’s developmental level, individual differences, and context. An atmosphere rich in permissions, it should be noted, is not an atmosphere of permissiveness or over-indulgence. In child-rearing, parent-coaching, direct therapeutic work, and in consultation with community organizations, the author (Allen & Allen, 1972) has found the following list of permission useful: ● ●

● ●

● ●

to exist; to be aware of one’s sensations and needs (mindfulness and, ultimately, awareness of awareness); to be oneself; to express one’s needs and have them met appropriately, have an impact; to live with zest (spontaneity and play); to be close yet separate;

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● ●

● ● ● ● ●

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to belong; to feel secure; to trust appropriately; to recognize oneself and others as separate subjects (intersubjectivity); to be OK while letting others be OK; to understand what is going on psychologically (reflective functioning, theory of mind); to think clearly; to be creative; to experiment and to use any failure productively; to have integrity; to be and to feel successful in love and work, however these be defined; to grow up and leave home; to find cultural nurturance; to make/find meaning in one’s own life and in existence in general.

Mentalizing and mindfulness Like good parents, as therapists we read the patient’s non-verbal cues implicitly and enlist the linguistic resources of our dominant hemisphere to reflect deliberately on their underlying meanings. Explicitly, we invite the patient to do likewise. This has the potential to free patients from embeddedness in their internal or external worlds, to open a space between experience and response, and to highlight the representational nature of subjective experience, thereby contributing to making habitual patterns of thinking and behaving less automatic. We invite patients’ mindfulness explicitly when we suggest they stay with their experience or direct their attention to what’s happening. This invites acceptance and surrender to the experience, and an awareness of awareness that can function as a secure base.

Scripts, life plans, and subserving neurophysiological processes as non-linear dynamic systems I consider scripts and life plans as co-constructed, and consisting of both the unconscious relational and somatic patterns and senses of


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self based on early and implicit learnings as well as on later verbalizable conscious decisions and their consequences. The difference between scripts and life plans, for me, is that scripts are based on stressors or deprivations and seriously restrict spontaneity and well being. A system is characterized by interacting sub-components, each of which influences, and is influenced by, the others (von Foerster & Varela, 1981; von Glasersfeld, 1987). At the psychological level, life plan or script formation and maintenance involve the integration of perceptions, various types of memory, presymbolic and symbolic thinking, various senses of self, physiological and somatic reactions, and efforts to make sense of one’s life. At the neurophysiological level, they involve the integration of left and right sides of the brain, cortical and subcortical regions, and implicit and explicit memory systems. That is, they involve several differentiated biological systems performing concurrently in an integrated manner, rather like the integration of several different instrument of an orchestra (Adolphs, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1996; Allen, 2003; Allen & Allen, 2005; Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2000; Le Doux, 2000; Mandal & Ambady, 2004). Both scripts and life plans, and the neurophysiological processes subserving them, can be conceptualized as non-linear dynamics. This concept captures repetitive cycles of interaction, circular processes of mutual influence, and unexpected outcomes as behaviour unfolds over many iterations (Allen, 2003; Fincham, Stanley, & Beach, 2007; Gottman, Swanson, & Swanson, 2002). Non-linear dynamic systems have three important characteristics, as detailed in the sub-sections below.

Self-organization As a system moves toward greater integration, it becomes more complex and produces a state that is more flexible, adaptive, coherent and stable, but it still allows for something new (Gleick, 1988; Siegel, 1999). These, I would suggest, are the characteristics of a healthy life plan as well as integrating ego states (Allen, 2003, 2008). From this perspective, script pathologies can be seen to fall into two main patterns: (1) excessive rigidity and lack of emergence as found in the obsessive–compulsive continuum and (2)

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fragmentation and lack of coherence as found in PTSD and borderline personality organizations.

A small change in any subcomponent can lead to change in others and significant changes in the overall system In clinical practice, this means that a therapist either may make small changes in his/her own ego states, transactions, or existential position, or facilitate change in the patient’s and have a significant impact on the patient’s co-constructed script (and possibly their own). Common clinical examples are the effects of changes in very early pre-verbal relationships (protocol) through new relationships and conscious redecisions.

Recursion As Donald Hebb noted in 1949, neurons that fire together wire together, and so are more likely to fire again. This means that new experiences can modify connections between nerves (synapses) and create new neural pathways and new psychological functioning (Allen, 2003, 2009; Kandel, 1998). Neural circuits that have a certain degree of complexity appear to have self-reinforcing qualities that maintain that level of functioning (Siegel, 1999). This, it seems, is the way that interpersonal transactions produce links among neural networks and so are able to effect the organization of brain structure. At the interpersonal level, people repeat the interactions that reinforce their expectations, earlier experiences, and conclusions.

Now, back to the patient before me What does all this theory and inference mean in terms of the patient before me? This is the question all we therapists must ask ourselves again and again.

Mr G’s history and current state Despite his life-long depression, Mr G had been quite successful, if somewhat compulsively self-reliant, in a professional career in


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which he clearly demonstrated abilities to engage in multi-causal and grey-area thinking and to make realistic plans based on probabilistic thinking. At one time, he had been actively engaged in politics in a way that demonstrated a strong sense of self and an ability to work off internal standards. However, in the realm of human relations, he functioned at a much lower level. He seemed to have little sense of self and his internal world, and had very little to say about relationships and attachment-related experiences. He said either that he did not remember, or that they were not important. He found it difficult to understand other people’s emotions and behaviour, showing the kind of split in abilities that Piaget, in the context of intelligence, termed décalage, the non-simultaneous attainment of different aspects of cognitive development during the same developmental stage (Piaget, 1962). He had been known as an excellent teacher in a technical area, but also as savagely critical and demeaning of anyone who did not immediately embrace his ideas. Although he had married and fathered a daughter, emotionally he had lived in not-so-splendid isolation. He described his wife, a musician like his mother, only in the most superficial of terms. He had been surprised when she would complain that he was distant. He dismissed this complaint by “going off somewhere” in his head and “not feeling anything”. However, he had been more depressed and angry since her death four years previously. His depression had become even worse when age led to his retirement two years later. Withdrawing more and more, he gave up activities such as tennis and skiing, which previously had brought him some pleasure. Thoughts of suicide led to a long hospitalization, which apparently had become antagonistic and unsatisfactory, and a variety of drug trials, none of which helped much. He came for treatment bereft of enjoyment and feeling helpless. He was socially withdrawn and isolated. Because of problems in concentration and memory, he no longer had either the interest or the ability to read. He suffered from insomnia, awakening multiple times each night, and had lost appetite and weight. He was estranged from his daughter, and was, he believed, merely tolerated in his previous place of employment, although his employer had kept an office for him. He had filled it with so many books he could find none, felt overwhelmed when there, and so avoided it. A similar problem existed in his cluttered home, suggesting, among

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other things, a problem in visual–spatial memory. Indeed, the only sources of order throughout his life seemed to have been his wife and his profession. Now he spent most of his time sitting, sadly staring into space. He went to a few office meetings mechanically, as a way to fill in time, he said, as he waited to die.

Diagnostic hypotheses In terms of our current DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) diagnostic framework, Mr G met criteria for major depression, non-psychotic, recurrent, and dysthymic disorder, as well as for narcissistic and schizoid traits. From other points of view, he could be classified as operating predominantly from a dismissing state of mind with regard to attachment (Main, Hesse, & Kaplan, 2005), and as showing major constrictions in engagement and purposeful two-way social–emotional interaction (developed during stages two and three in the DIR model). In the framework of transactional analytic structural theory, problems in early childhood had resulted in fixated Child ego states originating in the first year of life or so, and a constricted ability to nurture. In terms of script theory, his script had run out (Berne, 1972): he was now just waiting around to die. Long before, however, his life seemed to have had been relatively joyless and loveless (Steiner, 1974). Although Mr G denigrated the importance of relationships, he had strengths at higher Adult developmental levels, as was manifest in his career and former activity in politics. I hypothesized that he had been co-regulated emotionally by his wife and, to some degree, by colleagues at work, but had now lost both and that such co-regulation needed to be re-established. He seemed to need protection from pathogenic internal messages and conclusions, such as the idea that his life was over, as well as permissions to exist, to live with some zest, to be close without being overwhelmed, to find hope, and to make/find meaning both in his own life and in life in general and, ultimately, to give these protections and permissions to himself.

Towards a therapeutic contract and treatment plan When asked what he wanted from treatment, Mr G stated that he wanted not to be so depressed. By this, he meant not to feel so


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helpless, joyless, and empty, and also that he wanted to repeat the success he had had with Adler. Asked what had been most useful in that treatment, he replied without hesitation, “He sent me on a ski holiday.” Reportedly, he had returned two weeks later almost depression free. Mr G had always found that rhythmic physical activities helped him feel more organized. Music did as well. As a young man, he had even had a brief career as a concert pianist. One of the few things he and his wife had enjoyed together was dancing. Both these activities had been meaningful as well as enjoyable. From this, it seemed that proprioceptive, vestibular, and auditory processing were relative strengths for him, supported his sense of self, and could be sources of pleasure. Therefore, they might be useful for retrieving/creating experiences of pleasure, co-regulated social– emotional processing, and overcoming his current hypoarousal. At the relationship level, Mr G seemed to be asking me to be an idealized nurturing figure (Nurturant Parent) for his vulnerable Child ego states. We also had to take into account his health insurance company, now the third party in therapeutic contracts in the USA, and one that limits the number of possible therapy sessions.

The treatment I sent him on a one-week ski holiday! I knew the leaders of the group as caring people who would look out for him. Language is rich in metaphors about journeys, and I asked him to see what he might learn from this week, implying something that could be related to his goals. However, I still questioned my audacity. What if he fell and broke a leg? To my relief—and his—he returned much less depressed. He said he had learnt that winter, the last season of life, also had its good points. The group members had welcomed him. Most were younger and cast him in a grandfather role—and he found their interest rewarding. At night, around the fireplace in the lodge, they listened to his stories and some asked his advice. By going to his room, he was able to control his level of activity and the intensity of interpersonal contact. This metaphorical behavioural task did several things. It assured him that I had heard his request; it gave clear permission

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for him to have some pleasure in his life, and implied he could find more in it than he had. It activated the pleasure of rhythmic motor movement he had given up. It facilitated the spontaneous development of social interactions that allowed for engagement he could control, back-and-forth social–emotional signalling and interactions, the reactivation of an old behavioural organization of self with others, and some safe interpersonal success. It allowed him to tell a different story about himself and his past. Most importantly, since these interactions developed spontaneously, the accomplishment was his alone. He did it in his own unique way (Haley, 1973). The group decided to continue to meet, and he maintained some of these relationships. At that time, I was seeing patients in my home. In the living room I had a concert grand piano, inherited from my Viennese great-grandfather. I enticed him to try it out. He did so, tentatively, but in a few weeks we were singing together the only Viennese pop song of yesteryear I knew. The chorus runs “Wien, wien nur du allein” (“Vienna, Vienna, only you alone”), and he taught me others. This was the beginning of some warm “now moments” of somatic–emotional state-sharing (Stern, 1983), a chance for him to enjoy, to nurture, to tell new stories of his past, ones of success, and to retrieve a neglected source of pleasure that he could share with others. Ordinarily, I would have held closer to a more traditional therapeutic frame than this, but I chose to deviate from it, especially at the beginning of treatment, because Mr G had already had many hours of more traditional intellectual psychodynamic work and psychological archaeology, but was still seriously depressed. He also made it clear he was unwilling to have any more of this kind of treatment. I hypothesized that much of it had not adequately addressed his engagement and other presymbolic needs, had privileged a story of pathology, and engaged him in rituals of exclusion that he experienced as degradation, and that it would be useful first to reactivate and strengthen earlier foundations of his sense of a happier and more competent self and self with another in a pleasurable relationship context—at sensory, sensory–motor, and behavioiral levels (Dozier & Kobak, 1992). However, I was not unaware of at least some of the potential transferential and countertransferential problems such an approach could create.


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When I thought him more ready for more traditional psychodynamic work, I had him write out his autobiography. I was hoping to make use of some of Adler’s ideas. He thought the whole idea “absolutely ridiculous—just like those stupid people at that hospital. All that’s long ago and not important,” he spat out, and assured me that he completed the assignment only for my benefit. I realized I had misattuned, and was probably participating in an enactment of some earlier relationships. I comforted myself with the knowledge that a good enough mother frequently also misattunes, and apologized (Guistolise, 1996), in the hope that our transactions could be transformed into a reparative enactment (Stern, 1994). He was shocked and moved by my response, and noted that no one had done this before—and certainly not his narcissistic and pushy mother. However, this response did not mean that this enactment did not recur. In looking at his autobiography, a little later, he was able to see some turning points in it, and decided that he was willing to examine some. He revisited a decision of about age six, when he had decided not to be close to anyone. His early life had been one of intermittent neglect by his highly successful, self-sufficient parents, who were both driven and driving. In Gestalt two-chair work, he externalized his internalized mother (Parent ego state) and, as her, explained that she had been afraid to get close to him because she had lost an earlier child and was afraid he, too, might die. Then, when he was about two, she had another child. He began to see her in a new light, had compassion for both her and for the child that he had once been, and redecided his old decision never to be close (Goulding & Goulding, 1976, 1979; Goulding, Goulding, & McCormick, 1978). Examination of our interactions, the stickiness of his efforts to actualize early relationship patterns and strategies of self-sufficiency, and my tendency towards role responsiveness presumably resulted in the entry of warded-off experiences into his working memory. This allowed conscious exploration of our co-constructed relationship, shared implicit transactions, and reciprocal influences, in which I was both participant observer and observer participant (Cornell, 2003, 2005; Lyons-Ruth & Boston Change Process Study Group, 2001; Natterson & Friedman, 1995). It was a long process, sometimes involving explorations of my own somatic and

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emotional resonance. He slowly began to show some improvement in interpersonal interpretive functioning (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002) and to do things to take care of himself rather than just to please me. Having had some interpersonal successes and having redecided some old decisions about closeness, he now reached out to his daughter. She was cautious, but responsive. Then, he began to consider his future. He decided he wanted to leave something of himself to the community and arranged for his extensive library to go to a local university. He also decided to mentor some young people in his profession, thus integrating one of his signature strengths, the ability to teach, into a larger social good (Luks & Payne, 1992; Seligman, 2002).

Theoretical understanding of his treatment A developmental framework suggests that in addition to clarifying and interpreting internal and interpersonal experience, treatment needs to focus on co-constructing experiences which facilitate the basic capacities associated with each developmental level, for each level identifies a realm of experience that underlies the basic capacities which define mental health (Greenspan, 1997; Greenspan & Weider, 1998). This means that treatment needs to incorporate both symbolic (late Child and Adult ego states) and presymbolic levels of experience (early Child ego states). In Damasio’s neurological framework (1999), this can be seen as working at levels of proto-self (the physical organism), core consciousness (the feeling of what happens), the sense of self (the core self), and the extended consciousness of an autobiographical self. At the beginning of treatment, I worked to engage him and to activate his non-dominant (right) hemisphere. My goal was first to facilitate the development of multi-sensory affective concepts of a self and of a nurturing other, a sense of agency and of an internal nurturing presence. Later, we worked at more symbolic levels, through redecision work (Goulding & Goulding, 1979). This could be conceptualized as dealing with the introjection of his mother, who was unable to meet his engagement needs (Erskine, 2003). Then, we utilized later Adult ego states to analyse some of our lived, co-regulated, co-created transactions, our interacting intersubjective states, and our effects on each other as early Child ego states, including his protocol (Cornell, 2003), were embodied, enacted, or evoked.


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A developmental framework also suggests we need to deal with the patient’s unique way of processing experience, a foundation for both proto and core selves. Mr G seemed to have proprioceptive and auditory strengths, and I attempted to utilize them by encouraging his involvement in skiing and later in his returning to the piano, as well as increasing all sensory input. As Pribram (1971) and Paivio (1986) have noted, we cannot think of something of which we are not consciously aware and we cannot be aware of something not perceived sufficiently at the conscious level to come into consciousness. Siegel (2001, 2007) has pointed out that the experience of transitioning to a state more receptive to one’s own inner nature, as occurs in therapy, moves individuals towards “earned security of attachment”, and that in this process, the narrative of their early relationships becomes more coherent (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Certainly, during the course of treatment, Mr G became better able to organize his early relationships experiences into a more integrated, clear, and complete story. This served as a basis for exploration of what he wanted for the rest of his life and what he wanted as his legacy. A person’s planned future is part of the autobiographical self. In the course of a little over two years, Mr G modified early Child ego states and developed new nurturing abilities towards both himself and others. He redecided an old conscious decision that probably summarized many earlier experiences as well as giving direction to future behaviour. He gained some experience in the co-regulation of emotional states with me and others, and had begun to give himself permission to make changes, to live life with some zest, to be close without being overwhelmed, and to find/make meaning. His life plan, as expressed in his behaviours and relationships towards the end of treatment, showed stability and cohesion, but also some adaptability, flexibility, and emergence. He was no longer depressed. He slept well and gained weight. His life seemed happier, and more fulfilling. He wrote a professional paper. Now he could give a more integrated and clearer description of his early relationships, even those that had been bad, and was living in a way that showed a greater ability to understand others and their reactions. If we consider scripts as co-constructed, consisting of both unconscious relational and somatic patterns based on early and

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implicit learnings and on explicit conscious decisions made under stressors or deprivations and which seriously restrict spontaneity and well being, then I think we can describe this as a “script cure”. In more traditional psychiatric terms, he had a sustained remission and returned to better than premorbid functioning. Our therapeutic relationship functioned as an incubator of Mr G’s more or less undeveloped or lost capacities to feel, mentalize, and to love—and also for changes in me. We can hypothesize that, at the neurophysiological level, treatment allowed him to make new neural connections between different regions of the brain: higher and lower centres, right and left sides, and implicit and explicit memory systems. Depression, we now know, is not just a mood disorder, but is a multi-systemic biopsychosocial disorder with cognitive, neuroendocrine, neuroimmunological, and interpersonal aspects (Schloesser, Huang, Klein, & Manji, 2008). Throughout the treatment, I worked within both the transactional analytic model of ego states, transactions, and scripts and the DIR model of sensory arousal and regulation, functional–emotional developmental capacities, and relationships—or, in other terms, with the mutual reinforcement between neural circuits, mentalizing, and the processes of making sense of one’s life, and social systems (Allen, 2003, 2009; Allen, Tucker, & Pfefferbaum, 2006). As a child psychiatrist, I probably am more willing to utilize situations outside the therapy room as scaffolding to facilitate the development of new competencies than are therapists who work only with adults. In recent years, there has been a growing body of social psychology and neuroscience literature on subjective well being (as opposed to depression) (Eid & Larsen, 2008; Seligman, 2002). This includes evidence of the importance of aerobic exercise, helping others, gratitude, social support, mentalizing, and mindfulness—all activities in which Mr G was encouraged within the frameworks of permission and protection. From a non-linear systems perspective, Mr G gradually developed a more complex, stable, but flexible life plan with emergent qualities, including consideration of his legacy. Some of his most important changes occurred, I believe, in our shared non-verbal “now moments” of contact as we sang old Viennese songs, but this was supplemented by deliberate redecisions of explicitly remem-


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bered decisions and analysis of our implicit transactions. From the initial ski trip, we worked to change recursive interpersonal interactions and processes.

Follow-up and postscript After finishing treatment, Mr G contacted me occasionally, to “get a second opinion”, as he called it. Sometimes, when he had problems, he would imagine what I would tell him. A few years ago, his daughter telephoned to tell me of his death, a good one, she thought. In his last few years, she added, he had seemed happier, more content, and more at peace than she had ever known him—and antidepressant-free.

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Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect Regulation & the Repair of the Self (1st edn). New York: W. W. Norton. Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press. Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. New York: Guilford Press. Siegel, D. J. (2001). Toward an interpersonal neurobiology of the developing mind: attachment relationships, “mindsight,” and neural integration. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22(1–2): 67–94. Siegel, D. J. (2007). The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well Being. New York: Guilford Press. Soloman, M. F. (1985). Treatment of narcissistic and borderline disorders in marital therapy: suggestions towards an enhanced therapeutic approach. Clinical Social Work Journal, 13(2): 141–156. Steiner, C. (1974). Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. New York: Grove Press. Stern, D. (1983). The early development of schemata of self, others, and self-with-other. Reflections on self psychology. In: J. D. Lichtenberg & S. Kaplan (Eds.), Reflections on Self Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalyses and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books. Stern, S. (1994). Needed relationships and repeated relationships: an integrated relational perspective. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4(3): 317–345. Tatkin, S. (2005). Marital therapy and the psychology of turning toward and turning away, Part 2. The Therapist, 16: 64–68. Vaillant, G. E., & Mukamal, K. (2001). Successful aging. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(6): 839–847. von Foerster, H., & Varela, F. J. (1981). Observing Systems. Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications. von Glasersfeld, E. (1987). The concepts of adaptation and viability in a radical constructivist theory of knowledge. In: The Construction of Knowledge (pp.135–143). Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications. Vygotskii, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The individual in context: how do I fit in around here? Rosemary Napper

Setting the scene

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hat do you say after you say hello? In many professional, institutional, and social situations within English-speaking cultures the follow-up questions are something like: “What do you do?” or “Where do you come from?” These are questions to establish the context of the other in relationship to self. Eric Berne, the originator of transactional analysis (TA), philosophically considered such enquiry to be “trash” and constructed his last book on the basis of “the harder the script the easier it is to know what to say” (Berne, 1972, p. 440). In doing so, he perhaps overlooked some of his own insights about culture and context recorded in an earlier work (Berne, 1963). From my own experiences over the past fifteen years using TA as an educator, counsellor, psychotherapist, and organizational consultant, I find that context not only provides us with clues to socially connect and differentiate, but also functions significantly to locate self and other within our psychological frame of reference. It imbues the relationship with meaningfulness, both in and out of awareness, which may begin to trigger complex transferences to the person-in-context. 179

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Imagine, for a moment, the impact of meeting different people and discovering their context. You are at a party—do you reply openly to the “What do you do?” query if you are a psychotherapist, or do you answer at a tangent to shift the topic? At the party you meet a woman whom you discover is a brain surgeon—what are your internal responses? Someone else there talks about an island and it becomes apparent they own it—how are you affected? A man is introduced to you with the follow-on line “He’s a judge”—what is your reaction? Another is a celebrity whom you have never heard of, but others clearly have. What projections and transferences are you beginning to surface? What difference does context make if you imagine instead each of these people seeking you out in your own professional context as a psychotherapist? And, if their own setting emerges later, after you have made an alliance, how is this different? What might be triggered for you if they are wearing the clothes required by their professional context? Anita rang me to explore the possibilities of one-to-one work: she had been given my name by someone from another part of the country whom she had met professionally. She mentioned difficulties in relating to her boss and indicated she felt responsible about resolving this situation. I noticed her melodious deep voice, the way she seemed to carefully choose her words. There was something in the pace of the interaction that seemed inconsistent with content, and the ulterior communication I heard was “hurry up and fix this”. She arrived for our session to the minute, and I experienced surprise on seeing her: she was unusually tall, looked under forty, and her features and skin colour indicated ancestry from the Indian subcontinent. Her manner was tentative, almost shy. I wondered aloud whether it was unusual for her to talk about her feelings, and what she experienced in doing so. She said, “It feels odd.” Again, I was caught by my surprise as she talked of her relationship difficulties. It became apparent that she was in charge of a social services department and her boss was the chief officer of the local authority. At the time, and later in supervision, I reflected on my recurring sense of being almost physically taken aback as if by a shock. Was this due to my own unacknowledged racism? Might it be a reaction to seeming inconsistencies in Anita’s presentation? Or might it be her own sense of the unexpected, the “out of the blue”?

THE INDIVIDUAL IN CONTEXT: HOW DO I FIT IN AROUND HERE?

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The link between context and roles Recent TA thinkers such as Schmid (1992) have emphasized the relevance of context and role. Schmid proposes that personality is solely the accumulated experience of, and coherence between, all the roles we have ever inhabited, whether “private” (e.g., daughter, friend, spouse), “professional” with concomitant competence (e.g., consultant, plumber, archaeologist, psychodynamic counsellor, or colleague), as an “organizational” representative of a system rather than a professional expert within it (e.g., a representative of a trade union or political party, a team leader, a non-executive director on a company board, or a member of a TA association), or in a “community” (e.g., veggie box distributor, mother and baby group convenor, conference-goer, stop-the-war protestor). He says: A person is seen as a protagonist of roles . . . a person’s humanness is expressed in the way they structure their roles. The way they live their roles is an expression of their essence. Being human or the essence of a person is not to be found beyond the roles, in an innermost core or anywhere else. It is expressed as content and in the way roles are experienced and lived. Basically, this model is designed to prevent social roles and humanness being separated and then having to be put back together again. Human experience and behavior should be conceived from the very beginning as role experience and role behavior. The model implies that people in their humanness can only exist and be experienced through their roles. [Schmid, 1992, p. 32]

This highlights how central relationships are in the formation and development of the person. While Schmid understands his role concept to be primarily socially constructed, he suggests that a core issue for each person is how to be consistent across all their roles, rather than roles becoming fragmented, rigidly held, or leaking from one to another. This implies a psychological capacity for holding roles. He defines a role as a “coherent System of attitudes, feelings, behavior, perspective on reality and the accompanying relationships” (ibid., p. 34). He replaces the concept of ego states from TA with this model, and creates a richness in then discussing how any of the four role clusters (private, professional, organizational, and community) can be excluded, fixated, conflicted,

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confused, cathected, in the executive position, under-resourced or can lead to the development of habitual patterns which serve as defences (in TA described as protection rackets), as well as be transacting and taking part in psychological games. As a practitioner, I frequently find an individual allows one role cluster to contaminate or infect another (putting on the professional hat with the family, for example). I also find that an individual may inappropriately inhabit a role cluster co-dependently with a wide range of others. (An example of this is the woman who works in a caring profession and finally becomes dissatisfied with her long-term personal relationship, in which her caring and rescuing style is part of a codependency. Her suggestion of separating is met with threats of suicide.) The importance of Schmid’s work for this chapter is to emphasize how all contexts require roles, and so contexts shape the personality through the relational experiences gathered while inhabiting such roles. Anita appeared to have few current private roles: her parents were both dead and she was estranged from her slightly younger brother, while her more extended family lived in India and Africa. She worked hard in her professional roles as a social work manager and student (she was currently enrolled on a doctorate) as well as fulfilling her organizational role functions as a departmental director. These included meetings and dinners with politically elected representatives, both locally and nationally. She talked of having no time for friends or neighbours, let alone a life partner, or for any community roles. Roles are always co-created in a context. Schmid refers to this as a “stage”, recalling Shakespeare’s insightful description of the patterns of roles involved in different stages of human development. In this chapter, the terms context, setting, organization, workplace, scene, and stage are used interchangeably, and it is the systemic aspects of these which are emphasized here; that is, the infrastructures created in a setting which become inherent to it. For example, one person’s home might be an isolated rural cottage. Poor-quality roads, no human noise, few neighbours, private transport, and no community focal points might be some of the systemic features of this setting. What is important to us here is not the sociological implications, but the psychological impact and meaning of this context for this person, and how it might shape their roles and


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their coherence, that is, the sense of self. In turn, there is a psychological meaning in the literal impact on the setting that this individual might make, whether on its physical aspects (e.g., by cutting down some trees), or on its social aspects (e.g., by building another house to rent out). These changes to the context will, in turn, have an impact psychologically, not only on this particular person, but on subsequent individuals, although the psychological meaning they each might make of this particular system is not predictable and will relate to the meaning they have made of their previous role experiences. For example, is this rural setting idyllic or lonely? Does it symbolize wealth or poverty? Anita’s history involved growing up within an Indian extended family in an African country. When she was five, her father “suddenly” moved in order to find work, leaving his children and wife behind. The family was not well off, and although education was prized for the males in the family, it was not affordable for Anita. When she was eight, her mother one day said, “We are going on a journey,” and Anita was amazed to find herself at the airport, flying to England, and joining her father in a town in the southwest. She was enrolled in school, where she and her brother were almost the only children who were not white, and she was laughed at for her accent. I noticed her shallow and sharp breathing as she told this story of her early life at different times during our work together, and how it matched my own, now familiar, reaction of feeling taken aback by the presence and offerings of Anita.

Our complex relationships with contexts Asking such seemingly simple questions after we say “hello”, therefore, helps us locate an individual in a context. We find that a lot more is revealed about the other than indicated by the social level of the question and its response. And, perhaps, too, our own anxieties about the stranger before us are somewhat relieved as we place this person within a system which is not only culturally constructed (for example, discovering whether the stranger is a southerner or a northerner), but also psychologically meaningful. For example, when I meet someone who tells me they are a student, I view them as part of a system about which I host a range of

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attitudes. These emerge from my past experiences and fantasies that may not be in my immediate awareness, yet which I act upon. I was unable to “place” Anita into any familiar cultural frameworks, and so was unable to relieve such anxiety—rather, I experienced admiration for someone who had seemingly moved from difficult circumstances to the top of her profession, even though this seemed to mean a limit to her roles in life. She was impervious to the possibility that her story might trigger such dissonance in others, saying, “Anyone can get on if they really want to.” As psychological entities we not only have relationships with other people, we also have relationships with objects, organizations, and environments, which are at times intense. These relationships between individuals and contexts are powerful and complex, and yet our perceptions may beguile us into regarding them as transparently simple and seemingly unimportant. Indeed, we may not even consider them as relationships, although recalling how some people will animate the inanimate—for example giving their car a name— soon hints at how meaningful such relationships might be. We all live our lives in a number of settings, usually a workplace, a community, a current family of some sort, and if one or more of these contexts or “stages” is missing, then the psychological weight of social opprobrium can be immense. Many of us choose various additional settings to belong to with varying levels of attachment, such as a professional association, a leisure interest club, a social network (live or virtual). Anita was barely aware that others of her age and position might have families and social lives, maintaining, “That’s unimportant.” We choose most of these settings out of awareness as part of our life plan, or script in action, and our relationships to these contexts often reflect the degree to which such script or life plan is currently fixed or flexible (Cornell, 1988; Newton, 2006). These ideas are discussed elsewhere in this book. Berne (1961) suggested that individuals are born with psychobiological “hungers” for stimulus, recognition, and structure; a life plan fulfils a need for pattern or structure. Here, the notion of individual script is of a person’s current story which they are telling themselves, in and out of awareness, to answer the questions, “Who am I?”; “Who are you?”; and “What’s it all about?” This narrative is constantly evolving through reflection on, and meaning making from, the individual’s


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experiences, which they fashion into some sort of “string theory”. In other words, to the individual concerned, their story operates as a theory of everything, and actions, thoughts, and feelings are based on this. Embedded into this story may be notions which are held as fixed and unalterable, and it is likely that in some way it is the stuckness and stubbornness of such recurring elements that motivate a person into counselling or psychotherapy. Classically, within TA, the therapeutic task is to change, alter, or be rid of these fixed aspects. Some contemporary practitioners see the task as cocreating a relationship where the possibility of a reorganization of the sense of self might occur, and so the fixed aspects are borne differently, and become more flexibly reintegrated. Thus, an individual retells their story in ever-changing ways. Anita’s story in our early work together involved her decision to “get on” and her determination to be as different from her mother as possible. She had found that her strategies of adapting to group norms, yet staying aloof, and focusing her energy on learning and achievement, provided her with satisfaction, and had served her well enough, up until the triggering events when she came to see me. She was mortified at the reaction of her new white male boss, which she experienced as disdainful and derogatory. She refused to ponder upon a racist explanation, saying her experience was that, “Race is a card that gets overplayed and an excuse for everything.” She claimed that she had never had any problems in her working life with racist attitudes.

Organizations can provide contexts for individual scripts This chapter builds on Berne’s original ideas (Berne, 1963) about the nature of organizations, and the relationship between individuals and such systems, and proposes that many of our individual settings involve systems that are chosen out of awareness, because they provide us with a mirror and a paradox that go to the core of our personal script. An example is someone working in the financial district whose early personal life involved being part of a family that was perpetually broke. Resolving such paradoxes is central to fulfilling our healthy potential as individuals, and we often unconsciously choose an organization or other systemic

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contexts to do so. A framework for understanding the dynamics, structures, and culture of systems can therefore enhance the perspective of both client and practitioner, whether this is an individual and a psychotherapist, or an organization and a consultant. At the same time, the architecture and functioning of many organizational systems depends on there being enough individuals willing to live out their personal paradox so as to perpetuate the system. For example, serious journalism relies on war correspondents to investigate and report on the horrors of human cruelty. Reading interviews with, and autobiographies of, these men and women indicates that they possibly do not experience feeling real within themselves, yet are acutely sensitive to the reality of the scenes they observe. Berne (1963, p. 77) suggested the primary rule of all organizations (systems) is to survive. What he did not explore is how they recruit the individuals whose script fits their mission. Consider a setting in which you have a strong sense of belonging, and another where you feel differently. Each of these contexts encompasses a system for organizing itself that may be formalized and publicized, as in a large organization, or informally signalled and recognized, for example, in different bars in a neighbourhood catering for different lifestyles. There is likely to have been a founder who seeded each system, and subsequent lead figures who have perpetuated and changed the system in response to their intrapsychic proclivities, as well as organizational pressures, internal or external. Whether you find yourself drawn to or repelled by any of these systems will depend on what is matched by your life plan. For example, Richard Branson (2007) writes in his autobiography of how he is best able to feel and think when in a hot air balloon. He also writes of his capacities for persistence in getting an idea off the ground and for letting go of companies he has founded. It may be that, for him, the balloon mirrors and contains the essence of these capacities. Whether you would choose to work in one of his companies probably depends on the psychological pull or push you experience phenomenologically in relation to the organization. This will be intertwined with whatever projections and transferences you might experience about a man whose professional, organizational, community, and private role experiences are not only highly publicized, but also scrutinized by a media intent to reveal any inconsistencies in how he inhabits his various roles.


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Berne (1963) described many sociological features of different systems, possibly obscuring his own recognition that each individual within or outside the setting will also hold in mind (both in and out of awareness) a psychological perception of the interrelationships between such features (the overt purpose, roles, tasks, boundaries, authority, internal and external influences, physical setting and positioning, and so on). It is likely that, with the two settings you considered at the beginning of the previous paragraph, you can “objectively” describe the “public structure” or existence of these features, and that you also hold a “private structure”, which is your subjective experience of these interrelationships. This is likely to be broader than Berne’s original notion of the imago, which focused more narrowly on perceiving the individual occupying group membership roles (Berne, 1963, 1966) rather than on these other subtle aspects of intersubjectivity. Anita had joined her organization two years earlier, having fasttracked to a senior social services role elsewhere after doing a Masters at Cambridge. She described herself as always working in roles where she did not have direct colleagues of equal status. Through the constancy and permission of our relationship, she gradually acknowledged her continual experience of not belonging, and, as she did so, there was a slow-growing sense of trust and intimacy between us. I had a feeling that she began to relate to me as a fellow human rather than solely as a professional performer. At the same time, she slowly began to tell her story somewhat differently, highlighting, without any cynicism, how, as a black woman, she probably fulfilled her council’s need to manifest its commitment to equal opportunities, and her sadness at not being recognized as a real and full person. She raised the possibility that her new boss might perceive her as having acquired her role because of her ethnicity, rather than through her professional expertise and organizational competence. And she began to wonder whether she currently constructed her life to be as full and real as she might wish it to be.

Transferences to contexts The subjective experience that you bring to your relationship with a setting or system in the present is necessarily shaped by the

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meanings you made from past experiences and imbued with transferences, not only to role figures, but also to physical and cultural objects, including location, buildings, and vehicles. Little has been written about transferences to phenomena other than people, although we all probably experience these, perhaps through the constructs that TA traditionally maps as within the Child ego state. The Child includes our bodily sensing, our capacity for intuition, and our imaginative capacity for positive and negative fantasy, plus what Segal (1985) terms (unconscious) phantasy. Authors of psychotherapy articles rarely mention transferences to place and to institutions. Coren (1997) is an exception: Students may have transferences to the institution, and to the concept of learning, whilst institutions may develop certain counter-transferences to their students and the processes of teaching and learning. . . . Just as people develop “parents in mind”—as third party points of reference—students also have the potential to, in anticipation, construct a “university in mind”. Through splitting and projection these may become benignly helpful or malignly persecutory. Equally educational institutions may welcome students as potential partners in the pursuit of knowledge or view them as a source of disruptive irritation which must be managed and controlled. [Coren, 1997, p. 126]

I live and work primarily in Oxford, a town famous for its prestigious university, and I am struck by how my response to the “Where do you come from?” query affects individuals the world over: it is like watching uniquely coloured filters slide across a camera lens. I am curious as to how people choose to live and/or work in Oxford. Enquiry, both socially and of clients, reveals many apparent motivations that are embedded in the individual’s history and issues, plus an idealization of whatever “Oxford” means to them. Responses are often tinged with disappointment, too, as reality sooner or later interrupts such an idealizing transference, and some choose to leave when this disillusionment becomes unbearable. In everyday conversation, people allude to their projections about other aspects of systems: “I prefer to work for a small organization,” says one, while another says, “I prefer to lose myself in a large and busy workplace,” and a third adds, “I couldn’t work for


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anyone but myself.” While each comment shows something of the individual’s unique life plan, or script, it also contributes to the creation and maintenance of the different workplace systems referred to, and, thereby, the structures of our society. Anita had been determined to study in Oxbridge for as long as she could remember. She had taken her senior post with the hope that the university backdrop would not only enhance her status but provide intellectual stimulation. She was deeply disappointed, not only by the intellectual disinterest of her colleagues, but also by the aloofness of her academic contacts, and the isolation the university study system creates, with its emphasis on individual tutorials rather than seminar groups. She experienced not belonging again, and commented that she found most people she met “mediocre”. It took her a while to recognize that she might unconsciously communicate her disdain. This led her to wonder about how she experienced her boss, and whether he had fears at not knowing how to make contact with her, and so mirrored back to her the disdain that she could also show.

Culture as intersubjective interplay between individuals and their contexts There is often verbal debate as to whether a system is no more than the people who are its members, or whether it is a Gestalt greater than the sum of its parts. Berne (1963) defined an organization as an aggregate with leaders and followers which distinguishes between members and non-members, and also suggested that it was not necessary to draw a strict line between an organization and a group, and so permitted himself to apply his systemic thinking to a variety of contexts. His writings, however, indicate that he viewed an organization, a society, and a family as more than a collection of individuals and the apparatus that they put in place, in that they generate a culture. Building on his ideas of the observable features of an organization as outlined above, and the proclivities that each individual member brings, I suggest that the intersubjective interplay of these is what co-creates the peculiar culture of a particular system. Figure 8.1 illustrates this ongoing “chicken and egg” process of co-construction where there is mutuality through the

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Figure 8.1. The process of co-construction.

individual having an impact on the organizational structures, and these, in turn, shaping the individual’s dynamics. Both are also located in a wider context, such as a society, and have an impact upon and are affected by this larger setting. Anita’s organization had evolved from socialist acts of parliament almost three generations ago, intended to provide welfare for all. The organization had become increasingly bureaucratic and full of structural procedures for both staff and clients. This impeded the speed of work, and Anita both privately railed against such a limiting system when she occasionally met with departmental heads from other councils, and publicly upheld it to local press and politicians. One of her colleagues had been in the iniquitous position of having to defend the limitations of their organizational structures, which meant that an unnecessary death of a child occurred because the case notes had been referred on so many times they became lost. Anita was deeply shocked by this incident, declaring passionately that her whole reason for choosing a social work career had been to empower families, and especially children. Her identification and vulnerability at this juncture was a gear change in our work together.

Cultural components lodge a systemic script The visual metaphor of infinity or of DNA takes this notion of the intersubjectivity between and individual and context further,


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illustrating how the culture is passed between individual member and individual member, from generation to generation, often without any real change within at a fundamental level. Different cultural layers which affect an individual can provide script injunctions: for example, hierarchical social class embedded within a culture might carry subtle messages about belonging. Drego (1983, 1996) suggests a mechanism for this, in which culture is located within the social group and introjected by the individual (within TA, introjects are mapped as forming the structural Parent ego state) and, she later suggests, within the Child ego state’s capacity for fantasy and phantasy. Anecdotes suggest that an individual only easily joins and stays within a culture that is compatible with their Parent ego states. For example, consider people’s reactions to travel experiences of other cultures near and far. Anita’s history of cultures illustrates this: her childhood introject of a large extended family, where girls had less status and duty was paramount, was, to a large extent, reflected in the organization she worked for, where men held most of the senior positions, and the majority of front-line staff were women dutifully performing public service. Her fantasy was to make a difference to families, especially children, and, as her phantasy gradually came into her awareness, she wept, realizing that she really wished to repair her own childhood. Berne’s ideas about culture are profound, and go far beyond those of contemporary and subsequent analysts, as he combined a social anthropology framework with an understanding of an individual’s psychological depth. However, his writing appears unedited, and he did not always take his notions to a logical conclusion. Therefore, he missed expounding on the attraction and/or repulsion between an individual’s script and the “character” of the culture of a system which, in essence, includes the organization’s script (not a phrase ever used by Berne, who must surely have considered it). Considering the notion of an organizational script from a contemporary TA perspective, it includes not only fixated aspects that may hinder the organization’s potential, but also more flexible aspects which inform the organizational frame of reference in a healthier way. Figure 8.2 indicates some of the components of structures and of the individuals’ dynamics within a system, and how these co-construct the character of the culture and

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Figure 8.2. The components of structures and individuals’ dynamics within a system.

this encompasses what are, in other contexts, referred to as the “brand” values, and their shadow. Many organizational analysts of culture only focus on what Berne (1963) terms the “etiquette”. He suggests this provides clarification of “us” and “them” through cultural knowledge about the informal and formal guidelines of how to behave in a particular setting, and its traditions. Berne went further in emphasizing that this includes delineating what are the acceptable psychological games in a particular system. This is probably communicated to newcomers more through the ulterior messages embedded within transactions than through the formal induction procedures. The “etiquette” then effectively outlines the boundaries for the dynamics within a system. For example, many consultants to the public sector have discovered that the games “harried” and “uproar” are common across departments and organizations, and are forms of passive behaviour embedded in the culture that newcomers at first may critique, but in time put up with, and even join in with, if they choose to stay. The “technics” are essentially the impact of the tangible structures within a system on individuals and groups. Berne identified “technics” as physical environment, tasks, procedures and processes, resources, and opportunities, which together create a milieu. Nowadays, we might also add the written vision and mission of an organization to Berne’s idea of the “canon” (a term taken from religion to describe the constitution, laws, and authority handed down in a system, which encourage cultural cohesion). A few other organizational analysts (e.g., Schein, 2004) have arrived at a similar idea


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in emphasizing that cultures are often represented by symbols and artefacts. Consider, for example, the logo of an organization or its choice of furnishings: these are “read” by members and nonmembers and meaning is subjectively made in the context of the individual’s experience. What do you make of the “Virgin” name for Richard Branson’s companies? Berne suggested that the “technics” justify game pay-offs in a system. For example, the senior team within a charity guessed their board would find it unacceptable to spend money on external coaching to help them fund-raise, even though there was no fundraising expertise within the system. The culture engendered by few resources created an expectation that everyone employed was competent in all things. The team overstretched themselves to show their all-rounder competence; this etiquette was based on the assumption that scarce resources are inevitable and unchangeable. As a result, the team members became increasingly absent with stress-related illness, returning to work too quickly because they believed the organization could not afford for them to take time off. The rhyme “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost” shows an ancient understanding of the psychology of resourcing in bringing about the demise of systems. The notion of the “character” of an organization is unique to Berne, and, although it is an everyday way of describing a culture, he gave it particular meaning. He viewed the “character” component of a culture as the individual and group expression, including that which operates to rationalize the psychosocial aberrations resulting from the games which are sanctioned by the “etiquette” and justified by the “technics” of the system. As such, he suggested, it is the psychological mechanism for managing individual and group anxieties. He did not suggest this as a systemic parallel to his notions of the individual script, with the “technics” and “etiquette” reflecting the script in action and the character expressing the underlying script decisions. However, such use of the script metaphor seems valid and useful. Although he does not overtly state this in his article on organizational games, Summerton (1993) implies that the pay-off of organizational games is to perpetuate and reinforce the underlying organizational script. Thus, in many public-sector organizations, both the observable “etiquette” of trying hard and passivity, and

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the amount of time spent in bureaucratic decision-making rationalized by the “technics”, are pretences defending against thinking about reality, which might lead to recognizing the underlying hope and anxiety engendered by the realistically impossible task of servicing all members of the public. Menzies Lyth (1988) takes a Kleinian approach to understanding institutions and, in considering nurses and hospitals, similarly concludes that systems can develop defensively. For example, depersonalizing staff and patients can develop a culture of being strong to combat anxiety; however, the inevitable long-term effect is to increase stress as there is no place to discharge feelings. It was helpful in the mid-phase of the work with Anita to cognitively consider her organization together. She analysed the organizational culture as having an “etiquette” of trying hard to be dutiful, nice, and polite, living in harmony, and suggesting “We are all equal around here”, although, at any one time, somewhere in the system most staff were bystanders enjoying “let him and her fight”. The bureaucratic procedures, hierarchies with wide salary ranges, and the scarcity of resources supported this etiquette, as did the emphasis on the importance of equal opportunity policy. Anita expressed the underlying character of the organization in metaphor as a small, pretty Cotswold village. This meant to her a sense of ease and token community, while the shadow embraced an uncaring viciousness incorporating a sense of “We’re more OK than you” and the dis-ease of an insidious “blame” culture.

Changing systemic scripts Real cultural change within systems seems to come about in two ways. The first is through a leader with authority (internal or external) deliberately acting as a change agent over a period of time, and psychologically both holding and containing (Bion, 1961; Winnicott, 1965) the anxieties held at the cultural “character” level. This involves stroking the healthy aspects of the culture while also naming, and so reducing, the power of the embedded shadowy fixations, and inviting a mirroring of his or her life plan’s own health-seeking vitality and aspirations (referred to within TA as “physis”) into the system. At the same time, shifts in the systemic


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structures in ways which will perpetuate a healthier culture are collectively agreed and acted upon, and developments of flexible competences of value to the system take place. However, many organizational consultants are likely to tackle organizational change by focusing on what they assess as deficits, either by trying to change individuals through training and coaching for different behaviours manifested as “etiquette”, or by restructuring or re-engineering aspects of the “technics”. The limitations of such professional approaches can often be observed when there is conflict within a group setting. Voluntary or forced removal of one or more of the individuals involved may provide temporary relief, but soon another conflict pops up elsewhere, because the underlying organizational script issue has not yet been surfaced. Likewise, the reorganization or re-engineering of all or part of the system often makes little long-term difference. All these processes are ways of strengthening and increasing capacity for here-andnow realism, similar to the way in which some contemporary cognitively orientated transactional analysts work with individual clients. However, as within psychotherapy, such “decontamination” work with ego states may not be enough in itself, or behavioural change may be too simplistic a goal, as one set of unhealthy behaviours becomes replaced by another. The other way that systemic cultures do really change is through the weathering engendered by both internal and external events, pressures, and pollutants—similar to individuals who, in the course of life, experience shifts in their sense of well being and potential, either without recourse to therapy or through longer-term work which is relationally responsive rather than goal-orientated. It is a rare for organizational development consultants to have the opportunity to work in this way, and a “fix-it” contract is much more common. Whichever route is taken, the outcome of the intention to change a system’s culture cannot be foretold, just as the outcome of individual psychotherapy is unpredictable. There can be a contract for change itself, but perhaps not for a specific change.

Relevance of systemic perspectives for one-to-one practitioners These notions about organizational scripts are crucial for those working one-to-one as counsellors, psychotherapists, or coaches. It

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is all too easy to pathologize an individual who is caught up in what might seem like an individual game, albeit within a system, without perceiving the inevitable process and power of an organizational game that is part of the energetic “life” of systems with a fundamental purpose to perpetuate the culture, and, in particular, protect the character of the system, and so prevent its demise. Holding this in mind was crucial in working with Anita. Her own capacity to be self-critical was prevalent in most sessions, along with her strong sense of responsibility, both as an individual and in her “organizational” roles, including as a person of colour and as a woman. I met her unspoken relational-need to have someone else initiate when I took the decision to share with her some of the systemic notions expressed here, which supported her in finding new limits to her sense of responsibility, and a more realistic appraisal of how much difference she could make to the organization, even with her position of authority. Individuals’ scripting can be framed as arising out of the protocols (or patterns) and palimpsests (the overwriting of further patterns on to the protocol patterns) which emerged when early relational-needs were unmet (Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999). If this loss is not grieved (Kohlreiser, 2006), then the individual unawarely continues to seek to get these needs met in their current contexts, often from the system itself and their role within it. So, for example, many people who join the not-for-profit sector saying they wish to “make a difference” may be expressing their need to know that they have an impact on another. If this is an unfulfilled need from the past, then, over time, they may burn out and what they yearned for may still feel painfully unachievable, even though their work and their organization may have measurably improved the quality of life for others. Many charities depend on unconsciously recruiting such individuals, working them hard, and then replacing them. Recruits to the ranks of the Royal Air Force often talk about their dysfunctional families of origin and their hopes of belonging to “the family” that RAF advertising offers. They recognize this culture as offering something different from the “brutal” culture of the army and the “gentlemanly” culture of the navy (their descriptions of the character of the different services’ cultures). Segal (1985) writes compassionately of how phantasies about work can be compounded and exploited by the


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mechanisms of the organization, and so a new job with a healthier organization may bring out different dimensions of the person. Through our work together, Anita recognized that some of her early decisions about a sense of not belonging, and being left out earlier in her life, may have led to a strategy of achievement and responsibility and a sense of superiority in order to mask her own sadness. She recognized that she had chosen a profession and an organization that demanded and amplified these qualities. Others have regarded this fit between the individual and their context differently, through emphasizing different aspects of the process. Schmid (2004) views individual and collective responsibility as central, and passive behaviours the outcome of the organizational culture inviting a co-dependent relationship. He champions the consultant to beware of unconsciously picking up the discomfort within a culture and shifting into “rescuer” stance by taking too much responsibility for bringing about change. He also warns against the individual worker or consultant attempting to change a system when they do not have the power and authority to do so. Balling (2005) suggests that the origins of a particular systemic culture are not worth pursuing, but that its image is of either a machine, a family, or a playground. This implies that each attracts certain personality types, and indicates a particular ego state focus in the organization that ideally needs balancing through introducing other ego states. Krausz (1993) saw the combination of an individual’s script injunctions and attributions as shaping the professional role an individual takes, and particular tasks that they may, out of awareness, choose to do. Thus, individuals lock into an organizational ideology, which she suggests is the organizational script. Clarkson (1992) linked the process of acting out, which she analysed using TA’s racket system and life positions, in case examples of professional roles which are likely to lead to burn-out. Outside of TA, the London Tavistock clinic has encouraged thinking about the connection between individuals and organizations. In the Menzies Lyth study of nurses in hospital contexts, she conjectured that looking after the vulnerabilities of others defended against the fear of experiencing such vulnerability within the self. A shutting-off of emotion therefore ensued, and an apparent sternness became manifest in interactions. It increased in relation to distance from the patient, for example, further up the hierarchy. This could

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be considered here as the sort of paradox that is often manifest in the culture of a system. In the example of the hospital, the “etiquette” of caring masks the “character” of uncaring severity, which, within TA, we might describe as a decision not to feel the feelings engendered in the setting. It appeals to individuals with this pattern of being strong masking a decision not to feel emotions on behalf of self or others, and so fulfils an essential service in our society. One of the strengths of TA is the visual clarity of its diagrams in mapping the structure of personality and its formation. Here, Figure 8.3 shows how the ego states of the individual are both significantly shaped by, and in turn may have some impact upon, both individual others and family, religious, ethnic, organizational, and other cultures that they interact with. This diagram shows the

Figure 8.3. How ego states are shaped by others, including family, organizations, and cultures. (Developed from a diagram of Summers & Tudor, 2000.)


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introjects of significant others within the Parent ego state (referred to as objects and part objects in psychodynamic writings) and, diagrammed from the bottom up, the somatic, the intuitive, and the fantasy/phantasy aspects within the Child ego state, as well as the central here-and-now Adult ego state. It also depicts the individual in relationship to individual others, groups, and cultures, past and present, and shows the potential two-way impact. Thus, with Anita, the introjects from her mother and female relatives, and later female professional carers, compounded duty and responsibility and a phantasy that she might disappear if she did not “hold it all together”. She also introjected a sense of not belonging both from and in response to her ethnic culture, along with a fantasy that to be intimate would make her vulnerable. As well as introjecting individual positive teachers along the way, Anita took into herself the value of learning as a culture, with a fantasy fear that if she did not achieve she would be worthless. She could see that this combination of learning and achievement had impact. As a senior black woman official, she was a role model to others, and if she wished she could use her influence and authority to bring in consultants to empower her organization in evolving appropriate structures to support staff and clients to take part in and tell different stories about itself.

Mutual dependency between individual and systemic scripts What is being proposed here is to take this notion a step further. Individual proclivities, including protocols and script, may seem key in an individual feeling drawn to a particular type of work role. At the same time, the cultural “character” of a system may seek people to both fulfil its expressed operational mission and carry its unexpressed cultural heritage. Often, this is experienced as a paradox by outsiders, while, for those who opt to join the system, it usually provides a comfortable echo of their own internal paradox central to their script decisions. For example, the task of state schoolteachers is to help others learn, but many seem reluctant to engage in learning themselves, especially learning about themselves and their context. They will cite aspects of the “technics” to justify this, such as not enough time or money for training, which

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masks education’s cultural decision not to think. Another paradox is the couples counselling agency where the structures are such that the counsellors have no relationships with each other, but only with the co-ordinator. Or the retailer that profit-shares with all staff, yet has outsourced coaching and counselling services, overloaded with staff presenting issues focusing on confusion between the personal and professional role boundaries. The slogan of an organization sometimes expresses such paradox clearly. In Anita’s organization, this was “caring countywide”, while it was clear that genuine caring for its own staff was not a part of the organization’s commitment. An international aid organization had a strap-line of “working together to relieve poverty”. The visible “technics” indicated otherwise: in its open-plan offices, the piles on desks provided purposeful barriers to prevent informal working together, the stained carpets and lack of coffee facilities indicated poverty, and the organization prided itself on staff salaries being 10% lower than elsewhere. The character of the culture seemed to be about suffering. Recently, there has been a shift in the technics, through a restructuring which resulted in its first female leader, an overall younger staff, many of whom are on shorter-term contracts, marginally more staff from ethnic groups other than white, plus a purpose-built light and airy building. It is too soon to identify whether the cultural script has shifted significantly, but there has been a subtle change in the strap line from the externalized and infinite message indicated by the present continuous tense to the message that this organization “works with others to overcome poverty and suffering”. The development of psychology itself can be viewed systemically as a creation of the twentieth century within European based cultures, with Freud and his script in particular being central to its initial development. It is said that the “fifty-minute hour” emerged from Freud’s experiences of the one hour lecture slots at a Viennese university, which required ten minutes to get from one room to another: in this way, “technics” became embedded. Contemporary psychotherapy practice has been shaped within the culture of the USA, with its emphasis on the individual and the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. Here, funding from insurance is an aspect of the “technics” which has more recently encouraged shortterm, solution-focused approaches. The humanistic psychologies


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emerged, perhaps, as a reaction not only to the philosophic values and language of psychoanalysis, but also to the horrific yet distant impact of the Second World War on the overall culture of the USA. Within these, TA was unique in emphasizing the importance of groups and systems as the stage for expression of individuals, and an influence on individuals and their life plans. However, since Berne’s time in the 1950s and 1960s, this same Western cultural context of psychology has amplified the focus on the individual and decreased that on the group and system, and script is often now perceived purely as an individual responsibility. Such a focus can perpetuate an individual’s felt sense of shame and blame—yet it is perhaps the dominant culture that is currently constructed with shame and blame as fixated shadows within its character. It is timely, therefore, to re-emphasize here the interplay and shared “DNA” between individuals and the cultures of their contexts, and the value of TA in providing metaphors with a gentle power to help not only to deconstruct these processes but also to create healthier (Newton, 2007) individuals and systems. Anita embodied this healthier stance through our work together. In the last phase, she felt sufficiently attached and trusting to realize and release her innermost feelings and desires. Alongside this went an acceptance of her life journey and a recognition of the strengths of her script story when she is willing to re-tell it as a life plan to herself and sometimes to others, in different ways, and in relation to her present moment. And, during the course of our work, her presenting issue of difficulties with her boss melted away to be recreated with insight and humour within her newer narratives, which involved a wider social circle and incorporated a sense of hope.

References Balling, R. (2005). Diagnosis of organisational cultures. Transactional Analysis Journal, 35: 313–320. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1963). The Structure and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups. New York: First Evergreen. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press. Bion, W. (1961). Experiences in Groups. New York: Basic Books. Branson, R. (2007). Screw It, Lets Do It. London: Virgin Books. Clarkson, P. (1992). Burnout: typical racket systems of professional helpers. Transactional Analysis Journal, 22: 153–158. Coren, A. (1997). A Psychodynamic Approach to Education. London: Sheldon Press. Cornell, W. (1988). Life script theory: a critical review from a developmental perspective. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18: 270–282. Drego, P. (1983). The cultural parent. Transactional Analysis Journal, 13: 224–227. Drego, P. (1996). Cultural parent: oppression and regeneration. Transactional Analysis Journal, 26: 58–77. Erskine, R., Moursund, J., & Trautmann, R. (1999). Beyond Empathy. London: Brunner/Mazel. Kohlreiser, G. (2006). Hostage at the Table. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Krausz, R. (1993). Organisational scripts. Transactional Analysis Journal, 23: 77–86. Menzies Lyth, I. (1988). Containing Anxiety in Institutions. London: Free Association Books. Newton, T. (2006). Scripts, psychological life plans and the learning cycle. Transactional Analysis Journal, 36: 186–195. Newton, T. (2007). The health system: metaphor and meaning. Transactional Analysis Journal, 37: 195–204. Schein, E. (2004). Organisational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Schmid, B. (1992). Transactional analysis and social roles. In: G. Mohr & T. Steinert (Eds.), Growth and Change for Organisations. Berkeley, CA: ITAA, 2006. Schmid, B. (2004). Towards a culture of responsibility in organisations:concepts on symbiosis revisited for organisations. Unpublished manuscript. Segal, H. (1985). Phantasy in Everyday Life. London: Pelican Books. Summers, G., & Tudor, K. (2000). Co-creative transactional analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 30: 23–40. Summerton, O. (1993). Three dimensional transactional analysis: the drama triangle and the game pentagon. Transactional Analysis Journal, 23: 30–35. Winnicott, D. (1965). The Family and Individual Development. London: Tavistock.

CHAPTER NINE

Scripts: then and now Claude Steiner

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Introduction: early definitions

hen I met Eric Berne in San Francisco fifty years ago, he was writing Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961) and developing his concept of the script, which he defined at the time as an “extensive, unconscious life plan” (1961, p. 23). The script is based on an important, dramatic, possibly traumatic, childhood event or Oedipally tinged household drama—the protocol—which then becomes “the chief determinant of every engagement and of every choice of associates”, Berne wrote (1961, p. 125). “Each person decides, early in childhood, how he will live and how he will die, and that plan which he carries in his head wherever he goes is called his script” (1973, p. 31) Based on the protocol and later elaborations, the script rigidly directs the person’s actions and relationships, much as a script directs the actors on the theatrical stage. The person and his audience may believe that he is a free agent, but the script actually directs his actions thereby severely restricting his autonomy. The script is maintained by games that reinforce the existential position of the script and continue to generate dramatic, emotional situations. As 203

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an example, Angie, with a script of life-long depression ending in suicide, will need to play depressive games (“Why Don’t You; Yes But”; “Ain’t it Awful”; “Harried”), which repeatedly generate feelings of sadness. These feelings then perpetuate the script. To do this, Angie needs to find people to play those games with; she cannot play these depressive games by herself. Likewise, Arthur, with a script of violence, will seek violent people willing to play violent, angry games (“Uproar”; “Kick Me”; “Let’s You and Him Fight”) to reinforce his script’s existential position and lead him to the violent end the script calls for. Scripts, the games that perpetuate them, and the roles that people play within the games restrict the human potential of the person who is trapped in them. Berne’s initial postulation was rather extreme in its rigidly deterministic aspects. Over time, it went through a number of developments. Whereas, in the early years, the concept had a distinct psychoanalytic flavour, being described as a “transference phenomenon” (1961, p. 116) of unconscious nature, he later clearly changed his mind, stating at the 1968 International Congress of Group Psychotherapy in Vienna that it was not unconscious, but pre-conscious (1973, p. 64), thereby abandoning the psychoanalytic implications of the concept. He also conceded that while some scripts had a highly predictable nature, many were not so clear-cut.

Script analysis Berne described the psychotherapy required to undo the script— script analysis—as “life plan control” (1961, p. 91), asserting that its aim was to “close the show and put a better one on the road” (ibid., p. 118). Script analysis was Berne’s temporary tether to psychoanalysis as he drifted away from it and developed a radically contrary theory which emphasized the analysis of transactions in the place of psychoanalysis and claimed that transactional analysis in groups would be more effective in curing people’s problems than psychoanalysis. Still, nevertheless, he continued to practise on the couch under the guise of script analysis. Berne seldom mentioned script analysis at his weekly seminars in San Francisco, though he occasionally presented a clinical vignette regarding one of his patient’s one-to-one work on script analysis.

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He wrote a mere ten pages on the subject in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961, pp. 116–127), mostly presenting three case histories—Mrs Catters, Mrs Sayers, and Mr Kinz—illustrating script phenomena, but offering very little regarding the methods of script analysis. He presented the script concept and then shelved it, writing very little about scripts and script analysis and giving no clue as to how to proceed in psychotherapy. His interest in scripts was revived later in his life, possibly spurred by my contributions on the subject, and was a central theme of his last book, What Do You Say After You Say Hello, published posthumously in 1972. He put his faith in “Adult control” for bringing about change in people’s lives. By Adult control, he meant the deliberate application to problem solving of the Adult ego state, which is “oriented toward objective, autonomous (detached from the emotions: author’s note) data processing and probability estimating” (Steiner, 2002). Thanks to the huge success of Games People Play (1964), three years after the publication of Transactional Analysis and Psychotherapy (1961), transactional analysis and the concepts of transactions, ego states, and games became known worldwide. In Games People Play, Berne’s interest focused on game analysis. There is no mention of scripts in Games People Play; he does discuss the existential position and the existential advantage of pastimes and games, both concepts clearly referring to scripts. Life positions (I am OK or Not OK; You are OK or not OK), Berne writes, “. . . are taken and become fixed from the second and even the first year to the seventh year of life” (1961, p. 46) and then “determine (the person’s) destiny and often that of his descendants as well” (p. 45). The existential advantage of games is one of the reasons people play games— because, with every game played, the person’s existential position—his or her raison d’être—is justified. With this description of existential positions and his mention of existential advantages, he is clearly referring to scripts, though he never uses the term in the book.

The script matrix I returned to San Francisco in 1965, after five years obtaining a PhD in psychology in the US Midwest, far from San Francisco. I was

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eager to make a contribution to the understanding and treatment of alcoholism. I had been working with alcoholics at the Ann Arbor Veteran’s Administration hospital, and became interested in the transactional transmission of scripts, specifically alcoholism. Berne discussed alcoholism extensively as a game in Games People Play, and, in my work with alcoholics, I came to see alcoholism, additionally, as a script. In one of his frequent colloquialisms, Berne had said that people are born princes and princesses and their parents turn them into frogs. People, who were born OK, were compelled by their parents to adopt a script that diminished their autonomy. I experimented with diagramming the parental transactions that created that script-inducing pressure on their offspring. The outcome was the script matrix diagram. The diagram included the three principal players in the script drama: mother, father, and offspring. Each of the players is represented by three ego states, or what is called a structural diagram in transactional analysis. In the matrix, I tried to discern the transactions that might explain the transformation of the prince or princess into a frog. The Child is the instinctual, emotive, creative aspect of the personality. The Adult is like a computer that processes reality-based information and makes logical, rational decisions absent of strong emotions. The Parent is the part of personality that is the carrier of traditions and is prejudiced for or against people or their behaviours. The young child is seen as having a primitive Parent ego state—the Parent in the child—which plays an important role in designing and maintaining the person’s script. In Games Alcoholics Play; The Analysis of Scripts (1971), I used the script matrix to illustrate which of the parents’ ego states generated script messages and which of the offspring’s ego states receive them (Figure 9.1).

The alcoholic script I had observed that, typically, the alcoholic life script consists of extended harmful drinking, interrupted by periods of sobriety. Alcoholism workers often eyed this sober period with suspicion— the more so the more the alcoholic fervently claimed it was to be a


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Figure 9.1. Script matrix.

permanent change —because it usually did not last. With most of our clients, the period of sobriety, which I called the counterscript, was soon followed by another drinking episode (Steiner, 1966). I defined the counterscript as a period of time in which the person seems to have escaped from the script, only eventually to return to the script’s dictates. In an effort to discern parental scripting influences, and placing my faith in the analysis of transactions, I searched for the transactions that might be relevant to script formation. I was not willing to assume that a person became an alcoholic merely because of genetic tendencies, faulty character, lack of will power, or bad example, but that he or she became an alcoholic primarily because he was pressured to become one, on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Until then, the unexamined assumption of script theory was that parents (fathers and mothers) turned their offspring into frogs with messages from their Parent ego state. But, upon close examination, it became clear that messages from the parent’s Parent ego state were weak and ineffectual. In fact, rather than motivating the script, they were the source of the counterscript. For example, in the case of one alcoholic, Mr A, the Parent ego state of the father and mother admonished the alcoholic not to drink, not to frequent bars, to be a responsible person, and lead a

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healthy life. All of these positive behaviours appeared in full strength during the counterscript period, during which Mr A was clean and sober, exceedingly responsible, and optimistic. Unfortunately, within six weeks, this counterscript period was replaced by the familiar messy, irresponsible, self-destructive drinking patterns. If the scripting messages did not come from the Parent in father and mother, what was the origin and content of the transactions that actually motivated the alcoholic script? It seemed to me that they were addressed to the offspring’s Child from the Child of the mother and father in the form of two kinds of mandates: injunctions and attributions. Injunctions prohibit the young person from certain behaviours and attributions define the person’s identity in a specific manner. Both of these are internalized in the offspring’s Child ego state, ready to eventually be passed down to the next generation. The primitive and powerful ego state—the Parent in the Child— that carries the toxic script messages is most toxic and powerful the earlier it is delivered and internalized. It is recognized by most therapeutic methods and has gone by many names, such as “harsh superego”, “catastrophic expectations”, “the inner critic”, even, in AA, “stinking thinking”. These “voices in the head” (Berne, 1961), which I called the Critical Parent’s, are frightening, debilitating, and reinforcing companions to the script. “You are not OK.” “You are bad, stupid, crazy, ugly, sick, doomed.” “You will not be loved unless you do as I say,” and “You will be excluded from the human tribe,” are examples of these messages. Initially, we called the source of these toxic messages the witch mother, but quickly realized the sexist error involved and changed to the electrode, and then to the Pig Parent, and eventually, the Critical Parent. Whatever its name, the Parent in the Child is the source of the messages—injunctions and attributions—that drive the script. Injunctions and attributions are the way in which parents, acting out their own scripts, pass the script down the generations. In the case of Mr A, the injunctions, which he literally heard as voices in his head, were “Don’t think; drink”, “Don’t worry about tomorrow”, “No need to control yourself”. The attributions that influenced him were: “You are not OK.” “You’re an alcoholic; it’s in the family”, “You have no will power”, “You enjoy drinking, it’s fun”, and “You are not worth saving”.


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Endeavouring to adapt to these powerful messages, and incorporating information and example from his or her environment, the offspring synthesizes and develops a personal, idiosyncratic narrative that, from then on, powerfully influences his or her life. Alcoholism was clearly a tragic script in the tradition of Aristotelian tragedy, with its obligatory prologue, climax, and catastrophe. As such, it is similar to a number of other tragic scripts, such as other addiction, violence, and suicidal scripts. In addition, I noted, there were banal, everyday, garden-variety scripts, not as noticeable, but more widespread. One particular banal script—the script of lovelessness, the loveless life—captured my interest. This caused me to study the transactional components of affection and love: strokes, stroke hunger, and stroke exchanges. My observations were of great interest to Berne; so much so that he eventually declared, in What Do You Say After You Say Hello, that the script matrix was one of the most useful and cogent diagrams in the history of science, compressing as it does the whole plan of a human life and its ultimate destiny into a simple, easily understood, and easily checked design, which also indicates how to change it. [1973, p. 295]

What Do You Say After You Say Hello was published posthumously in 1972. My own updating of the theory, in Scripts People Live, followed in 1974.

A banal, loveless script Katrina, who is twenty-five and very attractive, finds herself in deep emotional distress, reporting anxiety attacks and sleeplessness. She is in love with Bruce, who is irresistibly attracted to her. She is very concerned that the relationship will falter because, although she is in love with Bruce, she is also sexually attracted to other men. She likes to flirt with these men and would be interested in occasionally having sex with another man. She isn’t sure that she can resist the temptation, which would surely end up in disaster, especially since her boyfriend, Bruce, is very jealous. She tells herself she is a whore, and, having read my book, is afraid she has a promiscuity script ending in her being alone and depressed.

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Throughout her life she has been sexually active; in fact, she was consensually sexually involved with her brother—older by two years—starting at age seven, and continued sexual behaviour, leading to orgasm, but not intercourse, from then on. She first had sexual intercourse with an older boy at age fourteen. Her family is Catholic, and she felt great guilt about her youthful sexual activities. She had periods of sexual abstinence during which she saw herself as a good girl, alternating with periods of sexual activity during which she felt guilty and ashamed. She remembers her father holding her on his warm lap, caressing her cheek, smiling in a certain “weird” way, and saying, “How’s my pussy cat?”, while her mother reacted with obvious displeasure to this behaviour but did not openly object to it. Upon discussion, it seemed that this often-remembered scene was interpreted by Katrina as an attribution—”You are so sexy”—from the Child her father, and an injunction, “Don’t contradict your father”, from the Parent in her mother’s Child—a classic Bernian protocol (Berne, 1961). In time, these messages coalesced into a script decision to obtain strokes by being sexually pleasing and sexually active with men, which—she eventually realized—would result in being enjoyed and then abandoned by one demanding man after another, then ending up alone and loveless. We agreed on a contract to enter into a loving, long-term, faithful relationship with her boyfriend, in order to give up her script of promiscuity and eventual abandonment and instead become a faithful, truthful lover. To achieve this goal, Katrina needed to sort out the difference between loving strokes and sexual strokes. She needed permission to make sexual decisions exercising Adult information and control; in her situation that meant (a) to be sexy with Bruce, and (b) not to be sexy with, and to contradict, other men who wanted sex with her. In addition, to facilitate Adult control over the above behaviours, because she realized that drinking disinhibited her sexual behaviour, she needed permission to stop staying up late and drinking with her girlfriends in bars. This required that she stop listening to her Critical Parent that constantly harassed her with voices that she could literally hear in her head, such as, “You’re a slut anyway; you can’t keep Bruce”,


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“You might as well go ahead and get drunk and have sex with that cool guy, that’s all you’re good for anyway”, “Men are all the same, all they want is sex, so make the best of it”, “That’s right, you whore, strut your stuff down the street and see all the men’s heads turn”. These statements, it must be made clear, were not necessarily statements that her parents made, but a compilation of statements from the Critical Parent of teachers, politicians, priests, age-mates, magazines, novels, films, and other sources, as well as some from her father, that she internalized in her own Critical Parent. These brutal, pitiless, internalized voices had been her constant companions since her early teens and she was quite used to them; in fact, she acted accordingly, with the result that she was quite provocatively attractive to prowling men, who were only too happy to enjoy her easy sexuality. I pointed out to her that, in spite of her sexiness, she was not a whore, did not have to listen to her Critical Parent, and could, in fact, get rid of those dreadful voices in her head. She was at first incredulous of my assertions but, over the period of a few weeks, succeeded in turning down the Critical Parent’s volume, contradicting as well as refusing to listen to it while replacing its messages with novel Nurturing Parent (also called the Natural Parent by Berne, 1973, p. 13) affirmative messages, which we designed and which she rehearsed daily in front of the mirror. She learnt to remind herself that she was a loving woman deserving of a good, loving man like Bruce, that she was too good to have drunken sex at bars, and that she did not have to act provocatively to be attractive and appreciated by men and women alike. It was important to enlist Bruce in this project and to be above board with him by eliminating lies of commission or omission in their relationship. We had several joint sessions dealing with the interlacing issues of his jealousy and her autonomy. I coached them in exchanging positive strokes and they agreed to continue to do so. They made agreements about their relationships with other people. They agreed to be monogamous and not to lie to each other. After about eight months of individual sessions, Katrina felt that she had accomplished her goal; she had resisted the advances of several men, was enjoying sex with Bruce, was completely truthful

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with him, and believed that she would be able to be monogamous and remain truthful in her relationship. This completed her contract and she terminated therapy. Two therapeutic transactions are central to the process: permission and protection.

Permission The therapist’s permission transaction is the keystone of script analysis. Essentially, it attempts to restore the original healthy nature and instincts of the client by contradicting the injunctions and attributions, enforced by the Critical Parent. With Katrina, the permission transactions were: “You can be a sexy woman”, “you can choose who you are sexy with”, and “you can contradict men who want something from you”.

Protection The actions that are suggested by the permission transaction can be frightening. Being fully conscious of her sexuality and directing it in an emotionally sound manner, while contradicting and withdrawing from demanding men, was an anxiety-laden task. This anxiety created pressure to revert to promiscuous script behaviour. Counteracting that pressure required support and protection from the therapist and the group. This support backed her up as she acquired new and unfamiliar ways of transacting with others, especially men.

Potency Scripts and script changes are best understood in terms of power and its ramifications. The use and abuse of power, how people are empowered or disempowered, how people become powerful or impotent, are essential aspects of people’s ability to change. Script changes require action and the application of power. The role of the therapist as permission and protection giver requires potency. Potency is the power to create and support change. When the therapist lacks potency, the patient’s Child, seeing that there is no


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substantial support for script changes, will not have the strength to engage in the struggle to regain autonomy. In short, the royal road to “closing up the show”—giving up the script and empowering a better, more autonomous one to be put “on the road”—depends on permission accompanied by protection (i.e., empathic support), both from a potent therapist.

Comments This example was chosen because it exemplified the elements of script analysis: treatment contracts, diagnosis of the protocol and features of the script, delineating and defusing the Critical Parent, agreements, strokes, permission, protection, and Adult control. Katrina was a strong, healthy woman with great vitality that only needed some crucial information and precise coaching to reverse the tragic path that she seemed to be on and achieve the goal that she pursued in therapy. Contracts are not always so easily arrived at, protocols not always as clear, and clients are not always as proactive in their pursuit of their goals, but this example can serve as a template of how an effective transactional analysis of a script proceeds.

Scripts: a modern view The concept of script has evolved along a number of dimensions. On the one hand, the behavioural psychology literature has appropriated the concept under a variety of labels, principally the concepts of narrative, and early maladaptive schemas without, it must be pointed out, giving any credit to Berne for his previous introduction of this powerful theory. “Narratives”, “early maladaptive schemas”, “personal myths”, “personal event memories”, “selfdefining memories”, “narrative coherence”, “core self-beliefs”, “self-concept”, highlighting life stories, myths, plots, episodes, and characters are some of the concepts currently being researched in the behavioural sciences. All these concepts share Berne’s idea that people carry within their minds a blueprint of expectations that guide their lives. But they lack larger transactional and power perspectives, which facilitate their understanding and treatment.

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A compelling example of the manner in which Berne has either contributed to, or anticipated, major trends in behavioural science can be seen in the evolution of the concept of scripts. A thorough review of the literature on the psychology of “life stories” by McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, and Bowman (2001) contains ca 200 references, the majority of which were written well after Berne’s introduction of the concept in 1995. Sadly, Berne is not recognized as a pioneer in these reviews. Most of the relatively few research articles in this trend have their focus on the scripts inherent in short-term events, such as friendships, sicknesses, transitional periods (from school to work, as an example), gender, sexual, and abuse scripting, picking sexual partners, and habitual ways of dealing with emotions, such as anger. The narrative literature includes the notion that people are bound to follow certain preconceived behavioural paths and that some of these are harmful to the person. The notion of an internalized life story or script ties together a number of important theoretical and empirical trends in developmental, cognitive, personality, and cultural psychology. Schema, according to Young (1999), are deep cognitive structures that enable an individual to interpret his or her experiences in a meaningful way. He assumes that, because schema are formed in response to life experiences over a lifetime, they can be restructured. Young expands on this theme with his concept of “maladaptive schemas”. The notion that such “life scripts” can be redecided plays an important part in Cognitive Schemas and Core Beliefs in Psychological Problems: A Scientist–Practitioner Guide (Riso, du Toit, Stein, & Young, 2007) in which “Schema Change Methods” are outlined as strategies designed to “restructure maladaptive core beliefs” responsible for depression. For myself, the focus of my interest in scripts has migrated from the structural, ego state-centred details of the script matrix to the power issues that it represents. Script formation is the consequence of an oppressive situation in which two fully grown people, with the support of many others—teachers, politicians, relatives, siblings, and peers—pressure the small child into conformity with their own scripted, narrative expectations. This pressure forces the child into life decisions that seriously diminish her power in the world by constricting her autonomy, her spontaneity, her aware-


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ness, and her capacity for intimacy. In short, scripts diminish and constrict her full human potential, while the Critical Parent keeps the toxic script narrative alive.

Conclusion Script analysis is an empowering process that seeks to release the healthy, OK, life force of the script’s victim. Script analysis has the goal of liberating the person’s full potential from harmful parental influences and from oppressive societal strictures. With the help of nature’s healing hand—the person’s basic, OK nature—the script decisions that are involved in adapting to these oppressive pressures can be revoked and redecided; that is the goal of transactional script analysis.

References Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1973). Transcription of Eric Berne in Vienna, 1968. Transactional Analysis Journal, 8(3): 64. McAdams, D. P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M. L., Patten, A., & Bowman, P. T. (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative, and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27: 472–483. Riso, L. P., du Toit, P. L., Stein, D. J., & Young, J. E. (Eds.) (2007). Cognitive Schemas and Core Beliefs in Psychological Problems: A Scientist– Practitioner Guide. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Steiner, C. (1966). Script and counterscript. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 18: 133–135. Steiner, C. (1971). Games Alcoholics Play. New York: Grove Press. Steiner, C. (1974). Scripts People Live. New York: Grove Press.

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Steiner, C. (2002). The adult: once again with feeling. Transactional Analysis Journal, 32(1): 62–65. Young, J. E. (1999). Cognitive Therapy for Personality Disorders: A Schemafocused Approach. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange.

CHAPTER TEN

It takes a lifetime to play out a script Fanita English

“Since no one is someone without a disguise, And the truths of the parlor in the bedroom are lies, And my everyday self is a shoddy disgrace, I have put on these masks to show you my face” (Maurice English, 1964)

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ny parent or kindergarten teacher will confirm that between the ages of three to six, children “ask the darn’dest questions”. Favourites from my personal collection include: “Where does the white go when the snow melts?” “Will grandma care for my dead hamster when she goes to heaven?”, or, from little Oedie, “Mama, will you marry me when I grow up?” Isn’t that the question Sigmund Freud overheard his little son ask Martha Freud? Oh dear! What a monstrous idea at such a young age! Due to his own discomfiture about this question, or others, such as, “Why does little sister not have a dangling thing like mine?” he assumed that all little boys might from now on fear the fate of Oedipus—to be punished for killing their father and sleeping with their mother, even in fantasy. 217

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In the original Greek myths known by Freud, fate plays many other tricks on humans as well: Oedipus is said to have first faced a threatening Sphinx who asked him a riddle: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs during the day and three legs at night?” Oedipus correctly answered: “A human being.” Here, I believe, there may well be a hidden reversal of roles, as is often the case with myths. Consider that it is not the Sphinx who asks the question, but young Oedipus who asks the age-old question to which children want answers from their powerful, Sphinx-like parents, specifically: “What is a human being?”, or, more personally, “Who am I, and what will be my fate?” In the Spanish popular song, “Que sera, sera” (“Whatever will be, will be”), a daughter (let’s call her Angie, short for Antigone) asks her mother a similar question. It is the question all four- to sixyear-olds wonder about, now that they are learning the many meanings of “later” (“You can have your candy later”) and of the future, when they will be “grown up”(“You’ll get to drive the car all by yourself when you are grown up!”). It is the mysterious Sphinx, representing fate, rather than Oedipus, who can actually answer the central question about the past, present, and future of human beings by pronouncing, “They start helplessly crawling on four limbs until they can walk on two legs. But then they weaken and need a cane as a third leg!” From its broad perspective about Past and Future, the Sphinx might have added, “For you, young Oedipus, life ahead will bring many tasks and challenges, both painful and exciting, some due to the efforts— and errors—of your ancestors, just as you will pass on the results and consequences of your activities to future generations, until you become old and ready to leave this earth.” To the ancient Greeks, fate determined Oedipus’s experiences; to Freud, anatomy is destiny. But neither assumption can satisfy little Oedie, for both imply that he will not be master of his own destiny. Nor is little Angie satisfied with her mother’s answer, “Whatever will be, will be!” Both Oedie and Angie want to craft their own future and not just leave it to fate.

Survival conclusions Earlier, between the ages of two and four, having developed the

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physical ability to walk and run with ease, Oedie and Angie felt adventurous and and driven to explore their environment, as do all children at that stage of development. However, unlike other animals, young children lack sufficient hard-wired instincts to avoid accidents (Siegel, 2001), for instance from getting burnt by getting too close to an open fire or to boiling water on a stove, or falling into a lake or swimming pool and drowning. So, care-takers must give them messages intended to keep them safe. These may be reinforced with positive strokes (“Darling, watch out!”) or negative ones (“don’t let me ever again catch you . . .”). Eventually, children integrate such messages as their own “survival conclusions”; then these operate throughout their lives with a power similar to conditioned reflexes or to the instinctive survival reactions of other animals. Regrettably, some grown-up persons also carry what are called “archaic survival conclusions”. These were useful in childhood when they were developed, but they can be harmful later in life (English, 1977). For instance Tom, a successful junior executive, felt a strong urge to hide under his desk whenever his supervisor came into his office. Tom had recently been promoted and moved from a cubicle to his own office. He realized that his excessive reaction occurred because the enthusiastic supervisor often allowed Tom’s office door to slam shut when he came in. With some help, Tom recognized that somehow an archaic “survival conclusion” was being activated like a conditioned reflex when the door slammed. He then recalled that, as a child, he used to hide under the bed whenever he heard the entrance door bang loudly; it meant his father was coming in drunk and might hit him. After he realized that his childhood conclusion was “Slamming doors means danger”, he found ways to manage his reaction, for instance by holding on tightly to his desk. He continued to have some minimal anxiety whenever he heard the door slam, but it decreased gradually after he allowed himself to tell the supervisor lightly that hearing the door slam disconcerted him. Accordingly the supervisor began to close the door more gently.

Time moves on At about age five, Oedie and Angie have integrated sufficient survival conclusions to stay safe most of the time, although they

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may also have developed a few archaic ones. They have also received plenty of additional messages and instructions from their care-takers to help them adapt to some family and cultural expectations (like “say please” when you ask).They follow these most of the time, especially when these are reinforced with shaming, to which young children are particularly vulnerable. Oedie and Angie have also discovered that they themselves can influence their care-takers’ behaviour—sometimes even with just a smile. At other times they fail; their care-takers just seem plain arbitrary (“You may not wear your new red shoes tomorrow!”). Now they can differentiate themselves from others as distinct persons, with thoughts and feelings, although feelings are often nebulous and cannot always be translated into words. They try to figure out: Just who am I? (“My, how you’ve grown, now you’re big!” say visiting relatives.) Are they “big” or “little”? They struggle to establish their identity instead of just being appendages to their mother or family (Erickson, l950). Anyway, they can now speak clearly and remember what they have been told: for instance, to put on boots before going outside. They can choose for themselves, as “I” or “me” (“I don’t want nuts, give me candy!”). Yet, often, they cannot choose between doing what their parents tell them to do or following some strange urges within them. They are still adventurous. Parents may say things such as, “What got into you, climbing up that tree, or running off and playing with that strange kid, when we specifically told you not to?”—well, Oedie and Angie cannot answer such questions any better than their parents answered many of theirs. They shrug and say, “I just felt like it!” As they move towards the indistinct future, they are still filled with curiosity. They wonder: who and what will I be? (“What will you be when you grow up?”) That future: where and when will it start, and how will it continue? Near the sea, on a mountain, in a city, on battlegrounds or idyllic fields? With whom? What friends? Will they marry? What does that mean? And children? Or no, none—maybe become a visionary, guru, saint . . . beach-bum? Corporate giant? Farmer? Nurse? Explorer? Healer? Dictator? Blacksmith? Army chief? Inventor? Pilot? Who will be around? Also: how much power will they have over others or others over them? Will they impress the world? What help can they expect? From whom and for what?


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Oedie and Angie look for their own story Whenever they asked “When?” or “What?”, answers from different people were often contradictory. So, they sought additional ideas from the many stories, cartoons, television, and films they were exposed to, or from whatever they overheard or saw when grownups did not know they were being observed. Many stories show how the hero or heroine prevails happily after many trials and tribulations, though many tales are scary and gory (Campbell, l956). Eventually they try to imagine their own story. They cannot yet quite formulate it in words, although they have a sense of it, so they combine a few stories in their idiosyncratic way, with many inherent contradictions, which they do not recognize as such. For instance, the hero may get himself killed, but he is resurrected and becomes a king; or the heroine is dragged off by the dragon, but later she becomes a queen with many children in a distant land. All along, they wonder: what are these strange urges and feelings that come over them as they consider their lives?

Berne and transactional analysis A modern-day Sphinx appears on the horizon to offer an answer. It is none other than Eric Berne. He tells them that these strange feelings are because they experience an inner necessity to form what he calls “scripts” for their future, and he explains: Each person has an unconscious life plan, formulated in his earliest years, which he takes every opportunity to further . . . The original drama, the protocol, is usually completed . . . often by the age of 5. . . . It becomes largely forgotten, (unconscious), and is replaced by . . . the script proper . . . of which the individual is not actively aware (preconscious) but which can be brought into consciousness by appropriate procedures. . . . The similarity to the development of theatrical and movie scripts is evident. . . . Some scripts may take years or even a whole lifetime to play out. [Berne, 1963, p. l67]

Berne was a psychoanalyst who developed transactional analysis as a refined, effective, limited cost-and-time treatment method. It was based on his discovery that our ego can be subdivided into

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three different ego states, to which he gave the colloquial names of Child, Parent, and Adult. Each ego state has its own coherent system of feelings, thoughts, and behaviours (Berne, l961, p. 17). He also showed that since strokes, defined as units of recognition (Berne, l972, p. 23), were essential to survival in infancy, all of us continue to seek them throughout life, literally and in symbolic forms. Therefore much of communication consists of transactions with others for exchanges of strokes. However, stroke exchanges are not always smooth. Some people do not realize that assumptions they make about others are due to images in their own minds rather than to accurate appraisals. They may seek to transact with another person when that other person happens to be a different ego state than the one addressed. For instance, George, feeling insecure and actually wanting sympathy for an issue that troubles him, asks Mary a question from his Child ego state, expecting an encouraging Parent response as a start for further transactions whereby he can ask her further questions. Instead, Mary, who is currently concentrating on a project, simply offers George brief information from her Adult ego state. Thereby, George is frustrated. She did not respond from the Parent ego state he expected. Many people fail to assess either their own ego state or that of the person from whom they seek responses at the particular time when they seek to transact with someone, often because they repeatedly seek to reproduce the kinds of transactions they experienced when they were growing up. Or they may “racketeer” over and over with erroneous assumptions in the ill-conceived hope of seducing or forcing others to respond the way they want them to. Thus, the very contacts they yearn for are broken when even potentially responsive partners get tired of repetitious pleas or demands (English, l976). Thus, some persons seem to be playing harmful “Games” (Berne, l972, p. 23), as though they want to end up frustrated or anger the other person. In a transactional analysis treatment group, clients are helped to identify whatever non-productive or harmful transactions they engage in so they can improve their relationships and their lives. In addition, they can uncover and modify archaic “survival conclusions” from early childhood, or change harmful “decisions” made in later childhood (Goulding & Goulding, l976). Eventually, clients


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can achieve what Berne called “social control” (Berne, l961, p. 90), the ability to function well in their society as autonomous adults.

A script! While developing transactional analysis, Berne recognized that we all carry scripts which unconsciously structure how our lives may develop. He defined a script as in the quote above. As a children’s therapist before becoming a transactional analyst, I, also, saw how, at about the age of five, children seem to feel internally driven, or motivated by their genetic endowment, to imagine or conceptualize patterns for their future. Berne’s proposition that life plans, or scripts, are started early on, corresponded to my experience. A script is first developed by a child as an imaginative organizing structure that supports his or her development and the evolution of his or her innate potential. It becomes a protective mental bulwark against becoming overwhelmed by a multiplicity of internal and external stimuli. Without a script, a child would experience existence in a vacuum of time and space, like a leaf in the wind, rootless, without content to connect the past with the future. I suspect that certain cases of severe emotional disorders represent lack of script formation, rather than the reverse. Berne’s idea that the child’s development of this early life plan can be compared to the development of a film script also corresponds to my observations. In such an analogy, a story written by an author gets re-written as a film script, is re-worked by many others, then acted and filmed. After editing, the final film may seem quite different from the initial story, but it could not have been conceptualized without it. Similarly, a script starts out as a dynamic vehicle for a young child dealing with innate “structure hunger” (Berne, l961, pp. 85, 88) and what I will later describe as unconscious inner Motivators. It begins as a convoluted, open-ended story with one or more central characters in situations that symbolize wishes, fears, hopes, questions, and attitudes to others or to themselves as felt or experienced so far. It helps a growing child conceptualize and imaginatively catapult the image of his/her emerging self on to the future

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in regard to location, boundaries, aspirations, relationships, activities, and much else, including feelings and values. Thus, it establishes the young person’s first picture of him or herself in the world. Even a script generated under the worst environmental circumstances contains within itself the child’s own genetic sense about how he/she might attain fulfilment in life if some malevolent spirits or fairies can be neutralized. At each stage of development, the script gets updated. In time, a few secondary stories are tacked on to the original sketch. Often, they seem opposite to the original story; they correspond to efforts to include new experiences. Then changes and magical reversals occur at adolescence and even much later, with some scenes that follow sequentially and some not, potentially leading either to positive or negative outcomes according to the manner in which the stories intermesh and evolve. Yet, all along, there are common denominators with the child’s original sketch that are clearly specific to a particular individual and his/her life style. Ultimately, the script represents the person’s own mythological life story, with some improvisations and variations reflecting successive events and new insights. Thus is the script’s original function maintained: to support the person as he/she seeks to use whatever inherent abilities he/she has for creative self expression and satisfactory relationships in the “now” and the future.

Scripts are not pathological phenomena By definition, therapists see more self-sabotaging, unhappy persons than well-balanced, productive ones. Although Berne did state early on that “a practical and constructive script . . . may lead to great happiness” (Berne, l961, p. 116), most of his examples were of scripts that played out tragically. I believe it is important to realize that script development is a normal process that occurs for all of us, at its own pace, not a pathological one. Yet, from the beginning, Berne discussed scripts primarily in the context of psychotherapy, stating, “Script analysis, whose aim might be called ‘life plan control’ is so complex, that this stage may never be reached in many therapy groups” (Berne, l961, p. 91).


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If we are to assume that someone’s script is to be analysed in the context of therapy, the implication is that it may need to be controlled like a wild aspect of the self, comparable to the psychoanalytic “id”. This assumption led many of Berne’s followers to emphasize erroneously that harmful parental messages are the principal cause for the formation of scripts, whereas he clearly indicated, as in the quote at the beginning of this paper, that script formation is a part of each individual’s developmental process. To my horror, I have heard some therapists proclaim that they want their patients to “get rid of their scripts”, confusing the fact that script formation is a personal creative endeavour with the fact that some individuals may integrate harmful messages from their parents or their culture and arrive at unhealthy decisions that affect their lives. Of course, treatment is advisable for individuals who suffer as a result of traumatic experiences or relationships of the past. Also, therapy may be necessary to identify and perhaps modify one or more archaic “survival conclusions” or counter-productive “decisions” that were internalized due to harmful messages or “injunctions” previously given by care-takers, whether intentionally or not (Goulding & Goulding, 1976). True, distorted perceptions or unproductive attitudes may, indeed, affect some aspects of someone’s script negatively, the way, for instance, blocked bronchial passages may impede the lungs’ optimal functions. However, the doctor would not cut out the lungs in such a case! When behaviours or attitudes that are harmful are modified through psychotherapy or otherwise, the script becomes decontaminated on its own without additional therapeutic interventions. I believe Berne tried too hard to turn script analysis into a science. Although he conceded that “script analysis cannot attain the precision and certainty of mouse psychology or bacteriology” (Berne, l972, p. 302), he devised far too technical a system for script analysis, with “framework”, “data”, and precise diagrams for assumed causative influences, whereas scripts are actually artistic productions with many hidden personal symbolic meanings for the persons who devise them. They cannot be dissected or objectified like mathematical theorems. Also, Berne defined too rigidly and mechanically the difference between “winners”, whom he referred to as “princes or princesses”, and “losers”, whom he called “frogs” (Berne, l972, p. 37). The idea

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was that script analysis could turn frogs “back” into princes or princesses, with the implication, again and again, that it is “parental programming” that causes “losers”. In such a formula, no distinction is made among the many aspects of our lives—for it is possible for a person to be a “winner” in worldly success, or reputation, or finances, or athletics, or art, or in many other areas, and yet be a “loser” about intimate relationships. Berne himself was a “winner” as a writer, doctor, and brilliant innovator of new theories that have improved the lives of millions. This did not necessarily make him a winner in other areas! I feel very sad as I write this, for, tragically, Berne died in 1970 at the age of sixty. His father died at about the same age. This has led some followers to claim that Berne died because of his script, disregarding the role of genes! Berne knew he had a congenital heart condition and occasionally expressed the fear that his own life would be similarly cut short. Thence, the urgency with which he wrote his last book, entitled What Do You Say After You Say Hello: The Psychology of Human Destiny. It was published posthumously in l972. Although he distributed some chapters during his lifetime, he himself did not get to revise the book, so it contains a number of inconsistencies. Between the date of his first book on transactional analysis, entitled Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry (l961), and his untimely death in l970, Berne only had nine years to develop his theories; compare to Freud’s thirty-nine years, which allowed for many revisions! So, it is not surprising that there are aspects of Berne’s theories that were not revised sufficiently in the light of experience. For instance, near the end of his last book, he cautions against what he calls the “danger of Procrustes”, explaining, “. . . the scientist has a theory, and then stretches, cuts down or weighs the data to match it” (Berne, l972, p. 407). Later, he admits that “there is no doubt” that he may have succumbed to similar errors, since script development is “a complex concept, in its early stage of development” (p. 408).

Episcripting Berne and some other therapists sometimes erroneously equated scripts with the determining power of particularly harmful, sub-


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liminal “injunctions” given by pathological care-takers during a person’s childhood. Thereby, the individual might feel inescapably bound to later implement certain damaging actions against the self or others. This process must be recognized as constituting the episcripting of a vulnerable individual for the specific purpose of destructive or tragic results. Such a pathological process of control is outside of script development, though often confused with it. (“Epi” is the Greek word for “outside of”.) However, it may undermine or interfere with healthy script development, just as a cancerous growth may interfere with the development or function of a physical organ. Episcripting is a process I discovered in l968 (English, l969). Berne did me the honour of immediately recognizing the validity of my contribution and summarized it in his last book (Berne, l972, p. 292), though he did not get around to working with its implications. These might have led him to revise some of his views about tragic scripts.

How “hot potato” transfers generate episcripts Episcripting occurs when an influential “donor”, who is himself or herself burdened with unresolved trauma, transfers a “hot potato” (a lifelong sense of obligation to fulfil a destructive task) to a “vulnerable recipient”, who feels powerless or dependent in relation to the donor, as is a child or a suggestible individual, or someone preconditioned by circumstances to make him/her particularly ready or eager to be influenced. This “hot potato” transfer is accomplished by the donor’s repeated suggestions, like hypnotic propositions given to someone under hypnosis, except that the vulnerable recipient who is unknowingly subjected to this process remains in the hypnotic “trance” right up to accomplishing the assigned obligation, even if it takes many years. When I originally identified this process, I believed it occurred only with children in pathological families, since it depends on a power relationship whereby the “donor” has particular psychological power over the “vulnerable recipient”. Such a donor might be a parent, a grandparent, or other care-taker. Later, I realized that the “donor” may be someone outside the family, such as a teacher,

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religious leader, or even a therapist, if the “vulnerable recipient” feels dependent and is suggestible, regardless of age. Neither donors of episcripts nor vulnerable recipients are likely to seek individual treatment. However, the process of “hot potato transmission” can sometimes be identified almost incidentally in the course of marital or family therapy, or in recreational work with youth groups. This is because, often, “vulnerable recipients” deliberately try to be “contagious” for one or more additional “vulnerable recipients”, such as younger siblings, or close friends, or a marital partner. They do this unconsciously, hoping to transfer their own “hot potato” harmful assignment to someone else. Sometimes, thereby, they experience some temporary relief; but usually, even when the “contagion” being passed on to someone else works, they themselves still continue to carry the original episcript. Anyway, it is important for therapists to know about episcripts and their potential contagious ramifications so that they can distinguish between episcripts, which are pathological, and scripts, which are normal.

Suicide bombers, episcripts, and contagion As a tragic illustration of the above phenomenon, consider the young men who were the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Theirs was not an impulsive act, but rather a carefully worked out project that took intelligence, skill, and preparation time. I believe a possible explanation about their behaviour is that they were episcripted by Osama bin Laden, whose goal is to harm America. For whatever reasons, including belief systems from childhood, these young men were psychologically vulnerable to the fanatic power of the charismatic bin Laden, so they took on the obligation to carry out an enormously destructive project. As happens with firmly developed episcripts, they may have believed that they were fulfilling their own goals in committing their murderous attack at the cost of their own lives. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the many economic, social, political, and religious reasons for the epidemic of suicide bombers that is going on in the world. However, the phenomena of “hot potato transmissions” and “contagions” that I referred to above as potentially occurring within families and youth


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groups may be worth thinking about by sociologists and political scientists. For our purposes, I summarize: an episcript is to a script what a cancer is to healthy organs. Also, it can spread on to other vulnerable recipients by “contagion”, like a virus.

Models from Greek mythology Like Freud, Berne was fascinated by Greek mythology. Also like Freud, who used the Oedipus myth for psychological theory, Berne focused on Greek tragedies as models for scripts. For instance, he referred extensively to Sophocles’s trilogy, Oedipus Rex, where the failings of ancestors predetermine the fate of their offspring, or to plays such as Medea, where you can anticipate the tragic ending from the very beginning. Yet, he did not refer to the well-known fact that the tragic endings of these plays are related to the heroes’ “hubris” or arrogance, which blinds them to the fact that humans do not have total control over life and fate. Just because a five-year-old child initially designs a script with unrealistic fantasies and has some “blind spots” due to the ignorance of youth, it does not mean that his/her script must end like a Greek tragedy any more than like a Harry Potter story! Also, scripts do get revised as a person grows up. Nevertheless the ancient Greeks can offer us inspiration. Like us, the Greeks believed that we humans carry responsibility for our lives and choices. However, what we ascribe to factors beyond our conscious control, like world affairs, genetics, or even unconscious feelings, they ascribed to fate and the influences of various Olympic gods and goddesses. If, then, we want a model for the evolution of a script, why not look at the proto-typical Greek hero, Ulysses (now called Odysseus) in Homer ‘s Iliad and Odyssey, where Odysseus is sustained by his script as he deals with successive unforeseen challenges? Here he is.

Odysseus (Ulysses) Important aspects of Odysseus’s original script may have been to be a “resourceful” ruler of Ithaca, have a dog, marry a faithful wife, and raise a fine son to succeed him.

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However, world events can break into people’s scripts. Because Paris carted off King Agamemnon’s wife, Helen, all the Greek kings were honour bound to go to attack Troy. Odysseus did not want to leave Ithaca and fight, so he pretended to be crazy to avoid doing so. However, as he ploughed his land, Palimedes suddenly threw Odysseus’s baby into the furrow. Rather than hurt his child, Odysseus stopped abruptly, thus inadvertently demonstrating he was competent. Therefore, he was obliged to sail off to war. (Social forces can sidetrack individual purposes.) After ten years, Troy was conquered and Odysseus prepared to sail home. However, Poseidon, god of the oceans, wanted to drown him to revenge for Troy’s defeat. (How unfair! Odysseus had not wanted this war!) The goddess Athene, who favoured Odysseus, appealed to Zeus on his behalf. Zeus wanted to please Athene, but also to placate Poseidon, so he decreed that Odysseus could escape drowning if he could overcome a series of deathly trials on the way home. (Unexpected challenges are part of life.) There followed a series of dangers, as “resourceful” Odysseus sailed forward. He overcame each threat in turn, thanks to his many talents. His craftiness saved him and his men from the Cyclops. With expert skill he sailed his ship between Scylla and Charybdis. Self-knowledge helped him anticipate that he might not resist the lure of the dangerous Sirens’ songs, so he had his sailors tie him to the mast as his ship sailed past their island. Nevertheless, eventually his ship was shattered and he was stranded on “shining” Kalypso’s magical island. She became enamoured of him, and offered him many inducements to stay there. He, however, maintained his script’s goals. Only after she let him build a new boat and outfit it did he enjoy lovemaking with her. He then convinced her to let him sail back to Ithaca. But Poseidon,”shaker of the earth”, got Odysseus shipwrecked again. (Call it unpredictable weather or angry Providence!) This time, after more efforts, Odysseus got himself tossed on to the beach at Ithaca. Finally, though in tattered clothes, Odysseus was back in Ithaca, in accordance with his script. He was recognized by those he loved—his dog, his old nurse, and his wife, and acknowledged by his son, he of the next generation whom Odysseus could now empower as future ruler of Ithaca as he himself regained possession of his home with his faithful wife, Penelope. Having fulfilled the


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goals of his life script, Odysseus could now proceed to meet his ancestors . . .. Odysseus’s story illustrates the vicissitudes of a person’s basic script as he/she travels through life. We can never fully anticipate our fate—we do not choose the family and community into which we are born, or world events like war or famine or genocides, which may decisively affect our choices. Yet, those of us who have a lucky star may get to fulfil the goals of our scripts to the extent that the vagaries of evolution, society, and our own aptitudes, tendencies, and needs will allow. Significantly, Odysseus’s script sustains him by offering him goals, yet he is also fully alive in the moment, able to take on unexpected challenges and experience excitement and pleasure. Similarly, as we move through life, we, also, can gain support from our scripts at difficult times and also enjoy the challenges and pleasures of life.

Unconscious motivators As mentioned previously, scripts are conceived due to genetic tendencies, which I refer to as “motivators”. (My concepts are indirectly derived from Freud, Jung, Perls, Berne, and others.) As I see it, we operate from birth to death under the influence of what I call three unconscious motivators, namely: Survival, Expressive, and Quiescence. They affect us in turn rather than operating simultaneously, for each motivator has different functions determined by the vagaries of evolution. To conceptualize these unconscious motivators, I imitate the Ancient Greeks by imagining them as three goddesses who may influence us or affect our lives, each in accordance with her own inclinations, just the way Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus affected Odysseus’s life in different ways at different times without totally determining his entire life. Since it is difficult to visualize how our three motivators interact without seeing images, I have used a videotape entitled The Forces Within Us (English, 1998) to present each motivator in the form of a goddess who may influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions at different times, for better or worse. Elsewhere, I have

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described our motivators in detail (English, 2003). For our purposes, here is a brief summary.

The three motivators 1.

2.

3.

The survival motivator is attuned to physical needs and functions to ensure the survival of the individual. It stimulates feelings and needs for action to ensure such survival. Therefore, it brings on emotions or reactions such as hunger, thirst, feeling temperature, also fear, anxiety, and need for protection. It promotes stroke transactions and survival conclusions. The expressive, or creative motivator functions to ensure the survival of the species. Sexual procreation would not have sufficed for the survival of the human species. We would have been annihilated long ago by more powerful animals. Our species survives thanks to attributes of this motivator, such as curiosity, imagination, creativity, risk-taking, and attraction to adventure, in addition to sexuality. These enabled our forebears to transmit the benefits of their inventions and discoveries. The quiescence motivator functions to relate the individual to the broader Cosmos. It gets us to reduce the frantic activity often stimulated by the two other motivators. For instance, it brings on spirituality, aspirations for transcendence, and also sleep. It fosters peacefulness, meditation, harmony, and detachment from overwhelming anxiety or curiosity.

Inner balance and imbalance Most of the time we are not aware of our motivators any more than of our heart or lungs; they all affect us fairly smoothly. However, because of the different functions of each motivator, there are times when the influence of one motivator may be at cross-purposes with that of another, generating an inner sense of conflict. Emotional balance can be restored if the third motivator is not inordinately suppressed, can displace one of the other two, and, thereby, rotation among the three motivators gets re-established.


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For instance, risk-taking, stimulated by Expressive, may cause Survival to bring on anxiety. Or excessive fear, stimulated by Survival, may prevent Expressive from stimulating someone to take a necessary chance. Quiescence may soothe an inner conflict between these two motivators, but may thus bring on more passivity than necessary. Some personality differences are due to the frequent precedence of one motivator over the two others. For instance, preference for Survival will generate a cautious, conscientious temperament, but its exaggerated influence leads to compulsive over-anxiety. Preference for Expressive will generate someone with much creativity, or who is very sexual or risk-prone. If exaggerated he/she may court too much danger. Someone who prefers Quiescence is particularly peace-loving, likely to be spiritual and calm, but may become too abstracted. If any one motivator takes on precedence too frequently, we are likely to feel unbalanced, or “out of sorts”. However, if this does not happen excessively, we can maintain emotional balance and function effectively. Our motivators play a part both in generating and supporting our scripts and in bringing on all kinds of reactions within us to promote our use of our genetic aptitudes and aspirations. I believe we are born with genetic preferences for a particular motivator. Early script stories often point to the motivator which most corresponds to the person’s genetic tendencies. Some script stories may illustrate inner conflicts among motivators, or the repression of one by the two others.

Script recognition workshops After recognizing how episcripts can be sometimes erroneously thought of as tragic scripts, I wanted to learn more about healthy scripts and how to benefit from recognizing one’s script without assumptions of pathology. Admittedly, I hoped to convince Berne to re-examine some of his views on scripts. Therefore, early in l970, I conducted some workshops with reasonably happy, healthy volunteers who wondered whether they had predesigned some aspects of their lives. I designed what I

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called “The Four Story Exercise”, whereby participants wrote out brief snippets of stories that had impressed them at various developmental stages. These were compared with one another to see whether aspects of their childhood scripts were maintained unconsciously into adulthood. This process illustrated that there were clear common denominators between early stories and recent ones. Often, presenters also compared symbolic meanings with episodes of their lives. Their reports indicated that they found the process very meaningful. Berne died before the summer conference where I had planned to present these and other findings, so I almost dropped the project. However, coincidentally, I was invited to conduct some workshops in Europe with participants who did not want or need psychotherapy, so I conducted a few such workshops with them. I did not anticipate doing more than a few of these workshops. However, the feedback about insights gained through this process was so encouraging that by now, more than thirty-two years later, I have conducted more than a hundred “script recognition workshops” in more than seven countries and six languages, with perhaps two thousand participants. I have also trained a sizeable number of professionals to do them responsibly. I described my updated views on scripts and my “Four Story Exercise” in a chapter of a book edited by Graham Barnes, entitled Transactional Analysis after Eric Berne (English, l977), and in a book published in Germany. Of course, over the years, there have been changes in the format, taking into account the age of each presenter. However, we still ask participants to write out, in chronological order, in less than ten lines for each, snippets of stories or shows that impressed them at particular stages of life. These workshops were always clearly described in advance as specifically not for purposes of therapy. While some participants came after completing contractual psychotherapy, the majority came simply because they wanted a perspective about how their lives had progressed. Some were facing important life choices, and wanted more clarity about their goals. In rare instances, if issues came up that warranted therapy, they were identified, with referrals to other therapists. Even after all these years, I am still amazed at how clearly dynamic elements and patterns from the first childhood story can


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be recognized in recent stories, thus showing that aspects of the childhood script are maintained unconsciously throughout life. The adolescent story is often quite scary. Sometimes, it represents a revolt against the early script, sometimes to a re-evaluation of inhibiting or potentially harmful aspects of the script. Most clients are very thoughtful after presenting their stories and hearing the structured contributions from group members about common denominators, stark contrasts, etc. (The workshop leader offers guidance to ensure that comments do not burden the presenter with inappropriate projections.) Since most such workshops take place over 3–4 days, presenters are encouraged to limit their initial verbal reactions and to continue later, usually the next day. Thus, they can soberly consider any new insights. From letters and from participants who returned for a second workshop, a beneficial effect of such a workshop may last long afterwards.

Illustration of a story sequence Annette (pseudonym), a forty-year-old divorced journalist who attended a workshop in France last year, was willing to give me copies of her story snippets with permission to translate and use them anonymously. Here they are. 1. (before age 5) La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty). A protected young princess eludes her care-takers and runs out of the castle to a hut she saw in the distance. Inside is an old woman, spinning. Belle tries the spindle, pricks her finger, and immediately falls into a hundred-year sleep before being awakened by a prince from far away. 2. (about age 5–6) Les malheurs de Sophie, by the Contesse de Segur (Sophie’s misfortunes). This is a series about Sophie, a well-behaved girl, but with wild ideas. For instance, in one story, she sees a bucket with white liquid being used by workmen. She dips her naked foot in it and gets

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badly burnt. Her rigid mother is always shocked by Sophie’s antics and punishes her each time by sending her to bed without supper. 3. (About age 5–7) How the Elephant Got His Trunk (From Rudyard Kipling). Little elephant had “insurmountable curiosity”. When he went too close to the crocodile to ask questions, the crocodile grabbed his nose to pull him down. Little elephant pulled away; finally the crocodile let go, but the little elephant’s nose got sooooooo long and stayed that way for all future elephants. 4. (Adolescence) “The Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson poem learned in language class) She may only see the world through a mirror because of a curse. One day she sees Sir Lancelot in the mirror: “she left the web, she left the loom, / she made three paces through the room” to look out the window. Immediately the mirror cracks, “the curse is come upon me” she cries and runs out to a barge, on which she dies. The barge floats down the river. Sir Lancelot sees the dead lady and marvels at her beauty. 6. (Last year) Scenes from French film: “The goofy old lady” (based on a short story by Brecht) (a) After the funeral of her husband an elderly woman takes her cup of coffee to the terrace and looks at the view. She realizes she has not taken the time to do so in years. (b) Later: She offers hospitality to a homeless young woman who is wrongly accused of being promiscuous and is being chased away from the village. (c) Later: The two women enjoy choosing a second hand car to travel with. (d) Much later: After the old woman’s funeral the young woman leafs through a thick album with many joyous photos of the old lady in numerous settings and different landscapes.

After her stories were discussed, Annette indicated that she recognized that the Expressive motivator was dominant for her,


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perhaps genetically. She felt proud that already, at age five, she had wanted to “run out of the castle” even though she was punished, like Sophie, the little elephant, and the Lady of Shalott. She was amazed at how well these stories corresponded to her life. Her parents had always tried to hold her back, she felt. At adolescence she had realized she was overly “constricted”, but had imagined freeing herself regardless of consequences. Fortunately, she had evolved, as illustrated by the fourth story. It still showed how she had felt limited, but then able to enjoy life to the end. She saw the hospitality offered by the older woman to the young woman who was being hounded for alleged sexual misconduct as representing her acceptance of her former self. In the past, she had accepted punishment for normal self-expression, but she no longer needed to do so. She had needed a “Prince” to “awaken” her, she said, but “Belle” hadn’t chosen him herself. No wonder her marriage had been unsatisfactory! Well, now she was fully out of 100 years’ sleep, in a new relationship. She now felt confident that she could continue making choices that were right for her, even if her nose might become too long due to curiosity. That was why she was successful in her work as a journalist, she added; she was daring and enjoyed her work.

Comments and conclusions I remain impressed by how children are motivated to translate their longings into colourful scripts and how human beings can find such imaginative ways to use these, consciously and unconsciously, to support the development of their lives. In my workshops, I was privileged to see that participants could gain new insights, personal power, and renewed creativity from the relatively simple examination of their script stories in the company of others—even though these others were not necessarily brilliant or particularly loving. At the end of each workshop, it always turned out that participants not only felt they benefited from the workshop, but, more importantly, they fully valued each other, said so, and meant it! This leaves me, also, appreciative of the opportunity to have written this

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article and to thus recapture the awe and optimism that I feel whenever I consider the amazing human phenomenon of script formation.

References Berne, E. (l961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (l963). The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (l972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny. New York: Grove Press. Campbell, J. (l956). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Cleveland, OH: Meridian. English, F. (l969). Episcript and the hot potato game. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 8(32): 77–82. English, F. (l976). Rackets and racketeering as the root of games. In: R. N. Blakeney (Ed.), Current Issues in Transactional Analysis (pp. 3–28). New York: Brunner/Mazel. English, F. (l977). What shall I do tomorrow? Reconceptualizing transactional analysis. In: G. Barnes (Ed.), Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne: Teachings and Practices of Three Schools (pp. 287–350). Harper College Press. English, F. (l998). The Forces Within Us, Videotape & DVD. Pleasanton, CA: International Transactional Association. English, F. (2003). How are you? And how am I? Scripts, ego states and inner motivators. In: C. Sills & H. Hargarden (Eds.), Ego States (Vol. 1 of Key Concepts in Transactional Analysis; Contemporary Views) (pp. 55–72). London: Worth Publishing. English, M. (1964). Midnight in the Century: Poems. Chicago, IL: Swallow Press. Erickson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York: W. W. Norton. Goulding, R. L., & Goulding, M. M. (l976). Injunctions, decisions, and redecisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1): 41–48. Homer (1950). The Iliad, A. Hurd Chase & W. G. Perry, Jr (Trans.). New York: Little, Brown. Homer (1965). The Odyssey of Homer, R. Lattimore (Trans.). New York: Harper Perennial. Siegel, D. J. (2001). The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. New York: Guilford Press.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Life scripts: an existential perspective Birgitta Heiller and Charlotte Sills

I

Introduction

n What Do You Say after You Say Hello?, Eric Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, states that “The script is what the person planned to do in early childhood, and the life course is what actually happens. The life course is determined by genes, by parental background, and by external circumstances” (1972, p. 53). A few pages later, Berne speaks of Daemon and Phusis: The forces of destiny are foursome and fearsome: demonic parental programming, abetted by the inner voice the ancients called the Daemon; constructive parental programming, aided by the thrust of life called Phusis long ago; external forces, still called Fate, and independent aspirations, for which the ancients have no human name, since for them such were the privileges mainly of gods and kings. [ibid., p.56]

Thus, script is seen as the interplay of universal and personal circumstances. Since Berne’s writings, transactional analysis has often put an emphasis on the “script apparatus”, which contains the first two 239

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elements and, in fact, mostly the first: in other words, early environmental pressure, be it made with ill or good will, has been considered to be the most powerful shaper of a person’s life course. The self-limiting accommodations made by the child in those early years become the “script” for the story of his life. With some notable exceptions (e.g., Cornell, 1988; English, 1988, 2003; Summers & Tudor, 2000), script—by definition restricting—has been seen as pathology. But, most importantly for the purpose of our argument, the existential context into which Berne placed the concept of script has been all but lost. We propose to consider “script” from a different angle: as an attempt to come to terms with existential realities. People make choices in response to external events, genetic givens, bad or good “luck”. The parental programming of script can help children manage the unmanageable, thereby containing both the daemonic and the constructive, as Berne implied in the above quote. Crucially, we pose that the children of each generation are asked to struggle with the existential questions that their parents could not accept or tolerate. In taking this approach, we do not discount the impact on script of early physiological survival reactions, attachment patterns, implicit experiential conclusions, cumulative neglect, and trauma. It would be specious to do so. We wish, however, to view even these important elements of script as resting on a subtle but inexorable foundation of existential realties; we discuss the effect on the therapists’ thinking and relating, of taking this view of human experience. With our shared interest in relational, or “two-person”, psychology (Stark, 1999), we will also take a relational lens on the existential perspective. Much has been written and spoken about a relational trend, in modern science, in neurobiology, in philosophy, and in organizational theory as well as in psychotherapy. We do not intend to rehearse the arguments here. We intend simply to take as our starting point that all the existential circumstances of the human being are in the vital context of relationship, and, indeed, many are themselves an inevitable consequence and manifestation of that fundamental of all givens, that we are always in the world with other people. We will not be attempting a detailed exploration of the parallels between transactional analysis theory and existential thought. For

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an excellent overview of the essentials of existential phenomenology and its relationship to transactional analysis, see Nuttall (2006). Our aim here is to focus particularly on elaborating an existential relational view of script.

A brief summary of some key influences in existentialism and phenomenology Søren Kierkegaard is often credited with being the first existentialist philosopher. In a radical departure from Hegel’s (1805) preoccupation with the spiritual purpose of phenomenological experience, he emphasized the uniqueness of an individual’s encounter with life’s givens, as well as any potential relationship with a higher being, which he saw as unique to the person. The title of his works, notably Fear and Trembling (1843), and The Sickness unto Death (1849) reveal his preoccupation with suffering. Edmund Husserl (e.g., 1913), who formalized phenomenology as a philosophical method, introduced the element of intentionality. Suspension of preconceived notions about the world and any concomitant assumptions were seen as necessary prerequisites in order to be able to “examine the essential content of experience and its intentional structure, and so describe the mind’s intuition of the essences of the objects of experience” (Law, 2007, p. 319). Martin Heidegger (e.g., 1927) introduced philosophically the notion of several states of being: Dasein (being there), Mitsein (being with/being with others), in der Welt sein (being-in-the-world), and Sein zum Tode (being-towards-death); with the first and last states denoting existential aloneness, the other two emphasizing the human being’s necessary and essential relationship with others. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (e.g., 1945) emphasized the psychology of perception in people’s relationship with the world. Ludwig Binswanger, a Swiss psychiatrist, is credited with combining psychotherapy with existentialism (1958), and Medard Boss (e.g., 1957), who invited Heidegger to lecture in Zurich for several years (Zollikoner Seminare, e.g., Heidegger 1987), developed a psychotherapeutic approach called Daseinsanalyse (the analysis of being-there).

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Transactional analysis, script, and existentialism Eric Berne was steeped not only in Greek philosophy and mythology, but also in European existentialist philosophy, which, among others, emphasizes a person’s unique experience of life as different from every other person’s. In 1961, Berne described transactional analysis as a “systematic phenomenology” (Berne, 1961, p. 270), and his early emphasis on intuition (1977) reflects a preoccupation similar to Husserl. Apart from his obvious classical Freudian roots, Berne was informed by the British object relations school and the growth of behavioural science in the USA when developing his theoretical concepts. However, his philosophical stance was closer to that of Rollo May (e.g., 1969) and R. D. Laing (e.g., 1990) with their humanistic slant on the existential perspective. This is manifest in a core transactional analysis concept: ego state diagnosis. In an exciting development of the usual clinical observations of a patient’s pathology, he introduced two factors necessary for ego state diagnosis in addition to observed behaviour and a detailed history. These were: the patient’s own phenomenological experience, and that of the observer (“social diagnosis”). The first was the phenomenological enquiry described by the existential phenomenologists, and the second, along with the “two-person” concept of games (repetitions of relational enactments), introduces the relational into the heart of transactional analysis theory and methods. In our view, it is clear that Berne intended to incorporate existential philosophy into transactional analysis. On the very first page of his book on scripts, Berne mentions the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who pose the universal existential questions of war or peace, famine or plenty, pestilence or health, death or life (Berne, 1972, p. 3) And yet, somehow, the existential gradually disappeared or was subverted into the familial and the social. This is exemplified in the concept of the “existential life position”. Originally called “life positions” (Berne, 1966), they became commonly called “existential” (Steiner, 1974, p. 46), and the word was used to imply that the person took the position in response to the circumstances of his existence. However, this understanding of “existential” is nearer to what Heidegger called “ontic”, meaning, in other words, a person’s


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subjective view of what “is” as opposed to an “ontological” view, which is the universal sense of what “is” (Cohn, 1997). This redefinition of the word and concept “existential” hi-jacked, seemingly irretrievably, the notion of script development and secured it firmly into what became the traditional definition. Script, a personal life plan that grows out of the “household drama” or “protocol” of the individual’s early life (Berne, 1961, p. 118) became a deterministic concept that was the product of injunctions (introjected destructive messages), modelling, and other aspects of the “script apparatus”. This loses the subtlety of the interplay of, on the one hand, our organismic needs and, on the other, the response to those needs that was offered by our parents and others who were significant in our young and impressionable lives. It also fails to question the parents’ response, which is, of course, itself shaped by the extent to which they can manage different aspects of human experience. But what happened to the other forces of destiny that Berne described? Indeed, what if parental and environmental shaping is secondary, or, at least, what if the shaping is each generation’s best attempt at managing the real existential givens of life? From the relational and existential standpoint, we have become interested in the work of Margaret Keyes (1983), who suggested that “a game or set of games is the manifestation of an inner flirtation with a core life question” (p. 87). The implication of Keyes’ thought is that a person’s script contains at its heart a life question that has been either not addressed or not accepted by his or her own parents/family. The individual is doomed to repeat it to try to find an answer. Thus, the very interplay of parent and child that forms the development of the self is itself an accommodation of a larger truth, the existential realities of life. These existential givens, therefore, form part of the internalized other, where “other” means not only the original object(s), but also the familial, social, and cultural containers, including, ultimately, life itself. If psychotherapists take this lens, it means understanding that people’s difficulties arise from their attempts to defend against unpalatable truths of existence, such as the fact that we are all going to die but we do not know when, or that we are always in a world with other people and face the challenge to negotiate our safety and the fulfilment of our desires. Script and games involve processes of relational patterning, selective attention, and idiosyncratic

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interpretations of events. At bottom, they are a way of making tolerable—through this inevitable filtering and reframing—that which is intolerable. Rather like an ontological version of Malan’s (1979) triangle of conflict, an existential understanding of this might be as shown in Figure 11.1. In our view, this deepens the consideration of script’s meaning and offers a different way of loosening the bonds.

What do we mean by existential givens? What is the experience of Dasein, or Being? Brooker (2008), in the Guardian, quotes a Peanuts cartoon that features Linus sitting on the living room floor, anxiously clutching his mouth. Linus is saying “I’m aware of my tongue. It’s an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue in my mouth . . . I can’t help it . . . I can’t put it out of my mind . . . I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it, and then I can feel it pressing against my teeth.” Brooker describes his own version of that experience, occurring late at night when sleep evades him. He says, I become aware of my entire body, my entire world, and the whole of reality itself. It’s like waking from a dream, or a light going on, or a giant “YOU ARE HERE!” sign appearing in the sky. The mere fact that I’m actually real and actually breathing suddenly hits me in the head with a thwack. It leaves me giddy . . .

But it is not these moments of awe and fear that worry Brooker. It is the implication that “the rest of the time I must be essentially . . .

Figure 11.1. An existential understanding of script and games.


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cruising around on autopilot, scarcely even aware that I’m alive. Here but not here. Like I’m watching a TV show” (2008, p. 9). A reductionist view of script could relegate it to a pattern of cruising through life, repeating tried and tested patterns of being and relating, allowing our lives to unfold like a television show, the sort of script which has sometimes been referred to as “banal” or “non-winners” script (Steiner, 1974). Most contemporary transactional analysts would view script (e.g., Cornell, 1988, 2010, in this volume; Erskine, 2010, in this volume; Summers & Tudor, 2000) as something more. And yet, for us, the descriptions do not go far enough: We suggest that Brooker is describing the most basic of existential reality—that of Being; to be of service to our clients we need to examine more closely the elements and implications of that reality. Of course, like any theory, our view of these elements is always going to be partial. Many philosophers and psychologists have tried to articulate the human condition and we draw on several, starting with Heidegger’s (1927) description of the existential givens, through the eyes of Cohn (1997) and with a relational lens. First, and a backdrop to all the others, human Being involves Being-in-the-World, “with all that is” (Cohn, 1997). We do not enter from outside; we are always part of it. What is more, Being-in-theWorld inevitably means Being-in-the-World-with-Others: we are never actually alone, from the moment of our conception to the moment of our death. Heidegger described Stimmung, meaning a sort of mood or attunement to the world, thus implying that we both reveal and reflect the world by our feelings and actions, not just respond to it. In addition, Cohn (1997) adds sexuality to the list of existential givens, saying that every human has a sexuality and that this colours all relationships. Relatedness—even intersubjectivity—is a primary state of being. This immediately gives rise to a number of “focal issues” (Sills, 2003; van Deurzen, 2005; Whittaker & Lieberman, 1964), such as safety, power, and belonging. As people struggle with these tensions, their relationships polarize around the issues: safety vs. harm, power vs. submission, belonging vs. exclusion; war vs. peace, and so on. It seems that one of the most challenging of these issues is the tension between connectedness and separateness. Humans yearn to experience the wholeness and safety of togetherness, yet we are also

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separate enough to be wary of others and to desire our individuality. Those for whom this issue is the unanswered life question of their script (and their parents’ script), are sometimes bestowed with depressing diagnoses: borderline personality, dependent personality, avoidant . . . and so on. All these forms of what we call pathology may be different ways of answering the question of what to do in our relations to others. In saying this, it may appear that we are airily minimizing the impact of factors such as trauma, neglect, or abuse. This is not our intention. The work of the psychotherapist will ever be the painstaking uncovering of, and, it is to be hoped, healing, the enduring emotional scars that are the result of these experiences. What we are proposing is that the behaviour of parents is itself a manifestation of their attempt to accommodate or resist existential reality. It is, perhaps, a different way of giving meaning to the traumatic effects of human relationships, especially parent– child relationships, through the generations—a meaning that becomes part of the universal truth of existence. This behaviour can find its expression in anything from misatttunement or subtle negligence to active abuse or gross neglect. The effect is well documented (e.g., Beebe & Lachmann, 2000; Erskine, Moursund, & Trautmann, 1999; Perry, 2000; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisath, 1996) but rarely is the question addressed as to where the misattuned, neglectful or abusive behaviour in its various form originates from, other than noting that patterns of behaviour are passed on through the generations. We suggest that an existential perspective can shed a different and additional light on this dynamic. The example of “Mary” (see clinical examples, below) illustrates this particularly well.

Existentialism and two-person psychology This complexity of Being-in-the-World-with-Others makes a focus on the individual alone, inherently faulty, and points to the need for the two-person psychology. Heidegger describes other existential givens (Cohn, 1997; Heidegger, 1927), each of which is a description of the experience of the individual organism, but we believe that it is important to consider them in the context of inevitable and unending relationship with others.

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Thrownness (Geworfenheit). We are pitched up into our lives like a piece of flotsam on the shore. We do not choose the time we are born, or the place, or the family. Heidegger referred to this as Faktiziät or “facticity” (MacQuarrie, 1972, cited in Cohn, 1997). Our lives are, from the first moment, fundamentally out of our control: inequality of circumstances, such as privilege, good fortune, safety, is inevitable. We see this existential issue to be at the heart of many scripts, the resistance to this chaos, unfairness, and disorder—either by denial, resentment, or guilt—is ubiquitous; as also is the theme of control over one’s life. Despite the maxims of the humanistic psychotherapy movement, we have remarkably little control over what happens to us. The inevitability of choice is daunting: Sartre said that man is condemned to be free (Sartre, 1948), Kierkegaard (1844) talked of the “giddiness of freedom”. There is recognition that the freedom to choose is the root of creativity, but also the root of anxiety, because there is no guarantee that our choice will be the “right” one. Many of us do much to avoid feeling free. We load ourselves with obligations and commitments so that we never have to question the meaning of our lives. We avoid decisions and try to get others to make them for us. Embodiment, space, and time. For many, these givens are an unproblematic and accepted part of what is. But for some, even these are constricting. It is speculative, but it may be that some types of mental health difficulty may reflect an unconscious inability to settle for the inexorable “here and now-ness” of Being. The most influential of life’s realities is our mortality. Awareness of death’s inevitability is a prerogative of human beings. The shadow of death falls on us from the moment of our birth. We have an intense feeling of ourselves in the world; indeed, it is hard to imagine a world without ourselves in it. And yet, we know that one day we will die. This death sentence is largely ignored, but often it lies behind our feelings about other more trivial losses and endings, even our separations and our completions.

Therapeutic approaches that espouse humanistic philosophies, and transactional analysis is no exception, can have a tendency to

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encourage such positivity about self responsibility, social empowerment, and the healing power of therapeutic conditions, so that they have the unconscious effect of denying death and robbing therapists and clients of the opportunity to face this awe-inspiring fact. From an existentialist viewpoint, the emphasis should be on bearing the anxiety of the unpredictability and inexorability of death, rather than perpetuating a personal myth of everlasting life (or, at least, that of a benign ending “when the time is right”).

Case examples Ann Ann, a teacher, responded unconsciously to the chaos of life by living in a completely disorganized way. Her study was a mess, she was never prepared for her lessons, she was late for everything because she didn’t anticipate the traffic; she let life happen to her and actually that worked quite well for her. She had no confidence in her ability to hold the reins of her own life, and felt much more comfortable just reacting to what was thrown at her. Her husband, Suresh, a banker, was just the opposite. He planned his life carefully, including researching all his choices and taking meticulous care of details. He planned to become a partner in the firm at the age of twenty-six and achieved it. His study was immaculate and balanced. Everything had its place and all his possessions were ordered and arranged according to some method. Ann and Suresh were initially enchanted by each other’s difference and fell in love. They sought therapy after three years because of the endless rows between them over what he saw as messiness, thoughtlessness, and unreliability, and she as rigidity, pompousness, and lack of spontaneity. The therapist invited each of them to name a particular piece of behaviour that they wanted the other to change. One by one they were encouraged to explore the meaning of this piece of behaviour, acknowledge the deep feelings and fears associated with it, then ask their partner for change as an act of love rather than moral rightness. What created the most powerful change in their relationship was the realization that they were both frightened of the same thing: life’s intrinsic unpredictability. Ann had responded from the helpless, passive position,


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Suresh from a determination to control at least his own little corner of the world, and their discord, however painful, made life predictable in its small enactment of chaos.

Elsa Elsa was incapable of making decisions and had a variety of methods to make others take care of her. She was entirely dependent on her partner, Joy, to organize her, and relied on her opinion even to choose things from a menu or decide on an outfit to wear. In the past, she thought of herself as “just easy-going”, but as she became less and less able to choose, she went to therapy. When she began to acknowledge the depth of her reluctance to risk failure, to face the loss of alternatives involved in choosing, to invent her own meaning, she began to suffer serious nausea and dread.

Stan Stan was a compulsive non-finisher. He got into trouble constantly at work and at home for leaving things incomplete. When asked what would happen if he finished a particular, life-long project (of building a house), it was a shock to him to catch the little inner voice who whispered, “Well then, I’d be able to die”. Rather like the child who cries, “But I haven’t finished” to his mother who calls him in for bed, Stan believed that having things to do staved off the end.

Mary Mary came to psychotherapy after having had a “crisis of faith”, but not the conventional kind. She was raised as a Christian, but got confused by her mother’s superstition, which was in strong contradiction to the teachings of the church and required elaborate rituals. In rebellion to what appeared to her as nonsensical behaviour, Mary excelled in sciences at school, finding solace in the apparent certitude of experimental discipline, and embarked on a career in academic research. When she entered into a relationship with a man whom she appreciated as her intellectual equal, but who followed a spiritual path that she deemed dubious, she was thrown into a

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dilemma. She was drawn to the person, but scared by his devotion to daily meditative practice. She was on the verge of breaking off the relationship when she entered therapy. During a painful process of discovery she realized that her mother’s superstitions were born out of a deep-seated fear of the existential randomness of life, a fear which could not be assuaged by her Christian belief, but had to be kept at bay by the rituals of superstitious practice. Mary had an equal, though unacknowledged, terror of the uncontrollability of life events, which had been unconsciously transmitted through the generations. Her way of dealing with it was by seeking the apparent certainty of a logical–positivist approach to science. Her new partner’s spiritual pursuits severely challenged this. She implicitly assumed a rigidity of beliefs that she abhorred. To her surprise, however, he was open to a multiplicity of explanatory models and not wedded to any particular one. His meditative practice was simply a method of self-enquiry and a way of living his life mindfully. All the clients mentioned came to realize that their assumptions about life, that seemed to them to be “existential truths”, were simply defences against the real truth or adaptations to it. An existential approach to psychotherapy, therefore, does not set out automatically to achieve change. Its aim is simply to be aware of the options available and the fact that we choose our current path.

Existential dilemmas in the consulting room We have suggested that script is the response to unacceptable existential facts. The examples above all illustrate how present relationships are recruited to maintain the patterns. If we take a relational approach to this topic, one that acknowledges the bidirectional nature of the two subjectivities, we also need to acknowledge and investigate the interplay between the client’s and the therapist’s scripts. We must recognize that the existential issues that are difficult for a therapist to accept will influence how he is able to respond to a client’s existential dilemmas. The existential truths we have not yet resolved ourselves as practitioners will be part of the co-created search for meaning and will influence how able we are to assist the


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client in their pursuit of finding alternatives to the way they have lived their lives thus far. In the traditional “Script Questionnaire” (e.g., Berne, 1972), one of the questions asked is how a client might feel on their deathbed, or, indeed, what they think should be written on their tombstone. Rarely is the question asked how this might apply to the therapist (Widdowson, 2007). A therapist who has avoided facing his own mortality or that of his loved ones may have difficulty working with a client who is trying to come to terms with the terminal illness of their spouse. The client’s grief, anger, and desire to “get it over with” may be very confronting for the therapist, who finds himself unprepared for the onslaught of the client’s volatile cocktail of feelings. He is forced to face his own feelings; only if he is prepared to be changed by what the client is going through (e.g., Benjamin, 2002; Sills, 2003; Yalom, 2008) can this life issue be fully accepted. This way of working necessitates not only an emphasis on transference and countertransference, but also on the mutual wrestling with fundamental issues that neither therapist nor client have as yet successfully resolved. In the above examples, the clients might have very different therapeutic journeys with different therapists, depending on the existential life issue resolved or unresolved in the respective practitioners. For example, in the case of Ann (example 1), a therapist who has similar issues of discounting unpredictability through chaos might never confront Ann on her lateness, assuming, as her client does, that it is impossible to mitigate for traffic. Equally, the therapist who has a tendency to fill his life with more activities than he can reasonably manage in order to sidestep any potential existential void, does not confront the lateness because he himself is grateful for the habitual ten minutes extra between sessions. On the other hand, the therapist who manages the chaos anxiety by being overly controlled might interpret Ann’s lateness immediately as an act of resistance or hostility to himself. In all these cases, the underlying issue goes unaddressed. In the case of Elsa (example 2), the therapist was also someone who had difficulty making decisions and facing the inexorable freedoms of life. Elsa’s shift to recognizing her fear came after many months of cognitive and affective work in which her core beliefs about self were challenged. They only came to face the fundamental

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issue after the therapist, in her supervision, had identified her resonance with the issue. Stan’s (example 3) therapist at first diagnosed traits of passive– aggressive personality adaptation covering narcissistic injury. He saw the inability to complete tasks as an unconscious hostility against perceived demand. This was supported by an exploration of Stan’s early relationships with a somewhat fragile and adoring mother, against whom he could not assert himself, and a distant and critical father. The therapist himself recognized his own difficulty with making a stand on his own behalf, and empathized with Stan’s situation. After two years of therapy, the therapeutic dyad became bound in an enactment, the theme of which was separation and autonomy. Stan had found the courage to bring up the topic of termination of the therapy, which he found deeply painful. Stan said that it felt like a death and owned that he feared it and worried about it. The therapist empathized calmly and professionally. The enactment continued until the day that the therapist’s discomfort found a voice. He shared that he, too, feared death and tried to avoid it. It was only then that Stan allowed himself to “hear” his own inner voice that told him “I haven’t finished, so I can’t die”. Mary’s (example 4) therapist, generally agnostic, held no particular religious or spiritual beliefs. The way in which Mary described her mother’s compulsive rituals “for good luck” matched the fervour with which she spoke about her devotion to science. The therapist was moved to investigate her own residual religious beliefs and potential superstitions, which also had at one point made way for a great interest in experimental science. In her own personal development, she had later come to accept a multiplicity of explanatory models and was thus well placed to facilitate a similar acceptance in Mary. The journey with a therapist from a particular religious or spiritual conviction might have taken a very different path. All the existential issues will be a constant backdrop against which therapy occurs, both for the therapist and for the client. Heidegger (1927) said that the fact that we are “fallen with others” automatically leads to inauthenticity, and that this is a fundamental mode of human existence (van Deurzen, 2005). However much we endeavour to be as authentic (or congruent) as possible as therapists, we certainly cannot achieve it fully, and neither can our clients.


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“Existential life positions” As we mentioned earlier, one of the key concepts of transactional analysis is the “existential life position”, which, in three out of the four, is seen as a client’s pathological adaptation to adverse conditions. However, bringing the truly existential back into the life positions (Sills, 1996), one could also see the four quadrants of the “OK Corral” (Ernst, 1971) as a dynamic system, representing the challenges we are facing at various stages of our lives. Yalom (1980) lists four major existential issues and dilemmas all of us have to tackle at some point: ● ● ● ●

death; freedom vs. responsibility; isolation; meaninglessness.

Yalom describes these as the challenges to the individual. However, none of them can be seen totally independently of the existence of other people. True isolation will never exist, since we are always “in-the-world-with-others”. Taking a relational approach, isolation can be seen as a person’s subjective experience of facing the world alone or his response to the challenge of “other”. Equally, meaninglessness can be seen as co-created, taking into account the existence of, and hence made in relation to, and with the input from, others. Death is most easily seen as an event that every human being has to go through by himself alone, but even then there are aspects of this process which pertain to others: near death experiences (e.g., Moody, 2001) involve reports of being welcomed by others in another realm, and frequently there is a painful awareness in the last moments of dying of those who are being left behind. Hence, even death, at least for humans, can be seen as a relational process. Freedom vs. responsibility most obviously involves other people, summed up in the old adage that “one person’s freedom ends where the other one’s starts”. Berne, loosely basing the formulation of his life positions on Klein (1932, 1935), described the “I’m OK—You’re OK” position and, significantly, put the whole concept into a relational framework. This catchy and deceptively trivializing phrase caught the

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imagination of the US 1960s’ folk and quickly spread around the world. Its simplicity contains a wealth of meaning. It encapsulates the existential given: I am and you are (separately existing yet connected), and introduces a sort of relational positioning that captures the dance of power and intimacy. OK-ness has been variously understood as worthwhile, valuable, worthy of respect. Hargaden and Sills (2002) offer a developmental lens which implies a difference in meaning, where OK applied to self means loveable and valuable, but applied to other means dependable, loving, safe. The incorporation of Yalom’s (1980) four existential givens can bring depth to them, either as script-bound defences or as realistic relational stances. I’m not OK, You’re OK could refer to a need to manipulate or please in order to be safe, or, at the extreme, I am dying or dead and you are not—the final sense of abandonment. I’m OK, You’re not OK : a fixed script-bound general position of avoidance of other, or a temporary and necessary place of isolation, including the choice to withdraw from a potentially damaging relationship with an “other”, before a new constellation of relationship can be formed. I’m not OK and You’re not OK is often related to a sense of madness, and a potentially hazardous place in terms of risk to self and others. It can also be seen as a position of meaninglessness, such as in the case of severe trauma, where suddenly nothing remains the same; there are no safe frameworks. A new sense of positioning of oneself in the greater scheme of things needs to be acquired and, most importantly, it must be in relationship (see van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisath, 1996) Last, from an existential view, the I’m OK, You’re OK position is not simply a comfortable endpoint, the successful outcome of the “working through”. It can, instead, be seen as the difficult, everyday struggle between freedom and responsibility, a continuous negotiation of boundaries, contact points, and connections between oneself and others.

Script decision and redecision One of the most curious aspects of script theory, as described by Berne (1972) and Steiner (1974), is the idea of the script decision.


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This term seems to suggest that a child, at about six years of age, somehow computes the sum total of the experiences she or he has had until then and makes a decision, based on what limited information is available at the time, to place him or herself in the greater scheme of things, resulting, among other things, in a firm assignment in one of the four categories of the OK-corral (Ernst, 1971) of how to relate to others. The fact that this process occurs out of awareness is a particularly curious aspect, since the terminology suggests a conscious cognitive act, while the theory states that it is an unconscious process. This notion—especially of the relational development of script—is well described in other chapters of this book. This concept of the script “decision” has captured the imagination of transactional analysis therapists since its inception, seeing that it holds the promise of a redecision, a therapeutic technique of transactional analysis which has been hugely influential (e.g., Goulding & Goulding, 1979). It combines cognitive restructuring with a powerful affective element, utilizing the Gestalt technique of twochair work. The aim of therapeutic technique in redecision therapy, as it was originally formulated, targeted chiefly the cognitive. Later developments (e.g., Erskine & Moursund, 1988) focused more strongly on the somatic experience and the integration of physiology and cognition, but the main tenet remained that of being able to eventually rid oneself of the whole perceived burden of script. Often, a verbalized new decision is encouraged, with the therapist as witness, stating, for example: “I will not please my father any more, I will please myself”. Such a redecision can be a temporary relief of the pressures of an impasse arising from conflicting urges between various ego or self-states, but it will not necessarily solve the existential issues a person has been presented with, in their particular and unique form, by the care-givers or parents. Recently, the notion of the “script protocol” has been given renewed attention (e.g., Cornell & Landaiche, 2006). Berne spoke of the Protocol as “the original set of experiences which forms the pattern for the plan” (Berne, 1963, p. 160). Working on this level emphasizes the importance of the “subsymbolic” (Bucci, 1997) and non-verbal representations of the care-givers’ subtle or not-so-subtle interactions with the infant, corresponding to the

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representional schemas (RIGS) formed in early childhood as described by Stern (1985). In summary, redecision therapy deals with conflicts arising from “impasses” (e.g., Mellor, 1980) between different aspects of the psyche. The traditional approach chiefly targets the cognitive overlay, and represents a cognitive–behavioural strategy. It can be very effective in resolving some aspects that can easily be put into words. Integrative approaches have taken this further, and endeavour to resolve the same dilemmas in a more embodied form, focusing on affective and somatic experience in the presence of another person, who fulfils self-object or relational-needs (Erskine & Trautmann, 1996; Kohut, 1971). We see a potential problem in these undoubtedly effective therapeutic methods in that they approach the complex concept of script in a way that aims at ridding the client of “injunctions” (e.g., Goulding & Goulding, 1976) and other parental commands. This can easily disregard the fact that they probably carry important messages that need to be elicited, so that they can eventually convey their meaning, be that on the somatic, affective, cognitive, or behavioural level (if, indeed, those can be separated). These might include the most basic psychological survival reactions, which are existential in the extreme: the drive to survive and the instinctual knowledge that food and relationship are essential to this. It is our opinion that the existential life questions that grip a person do not disappear. When a new situation emerges, more often than not, a redecision in the narrow sense of the term does not hold firm; the existential issues have not gone away and continue to demand to be addressed. The parents’ legacy still needs to be tackled by the next generation, and the child, and subsequent adult, is left with implicit experiential conclusions, formed in response to, or an introjection of, the care-givers’ dilemmas.

Transgenerational trauma and its role in script formation from an existential perspective Some transgenerational script issues can be quite overt in parts, but have unconscious elements that are not necessarily readily understood, as the following case example might serve to illustrate.


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Case example Chloe started seeing the counsellor at her prestigious acting school, just prior to her final exams, because she was not as successful as she had been expected to be. She was the daughter of parents who were highly accomplished in their own careers, one as a lawyer and one as an engineer. Both parents had fostered their only child in every way possible and had felt that, although her professional choice was very different from the “sensible” career decision that they had made, their offspring had every right to choose her own path. The fact that there was enough financial support meant that their daughter did not need to be in a position to earn good money immediately after graduation. The therapist focused first on the client’s performance anxiety, which led to a successful audition for a play. When she got the part, however, her confidence seemed to dwindle and she seemed close to withdrawing from the production. “Fear of success” as well as “fear of failure” were investigated, but Chloe, despite the therapist’s best efforts, descended into a downward spiral regarding her fears about both finishing her degree and performing in the film in which she had been offered a part. Two-chair work yielded no more than the predictable resentments of a daughter who had had everything in terms of financial support, yet not enough emotional support, but the client stopped short of getting to a point where she was able to identify an impasse which could have clarified her dilemma about being able to succeed in a career which was so different from her parents’. A “parent interview” (Erskine & Trautmann, 2003, McNeel, 1976) with the client’s father was a first pointer towards an underlying generational issue. His great-grandfather had run a local theatre group that had earned a certain amount of artistic prestige, but had left the family in financial ruin. Subsequent generations had been admonished to engage in a profession that would secure the family financially. There had been teachers, accountants, and doctors. The client’s mother’s family appeared to be following the reverse trend: in generations of small shop-holders and traders, musical and artistic talent was discouraged until one of the greataunts broke free and established herself as an accomplished pianist. In the family, she was referred to as the odd spinster.

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Chloe was left with a legacy that defined artistic endeavours as either odd or dangerous, and, hence, was torn between making acting her career or abandoning it for a safer option, which she had in fact been encouraged to do by her high-school teachers. The existential perspective of this example may not be immediately apparent. However, when enquiring into Chloe’s history further, her extended family on one side had been threatened by genocide, and the other had been under continual pressure for economical survival under a totalitarian regime. Persecution, or economic ruin, or, at the very least, ridicule were the challenges that the generations before her faced who had been drawn to an artistic career. She, on the other hand, was free to make the career choice unencumbered by such constraints. As the first child of parents who were secure, both economically and culturally, Chloe was faced with the decision of whether an artistic career could provide meaning to her life in a way that her parents were unable to confront themselves, either individually or as a set of parents. While they supported her ostensibly, she was on a quest to answer these questions of purpose for them as well as for their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. A different therapist, who came from a similar background to one of Chloe’s ethnic origins, was able to facilitate her in becoming successful in the career of her choice today.

Script as guidance The individual script has a comforting quality to it. As we said earlier, the inevitability of choice is daunting. “Script” provides a set of rules by which to live, and even the rebellion against those rules gives meaning. While script has often been seen chiefly as a pathological limitation, some have suggested that it is a necessary guidance for how to live life. “When we get up each morning, how do we know what we are supposed to do each day? We cannot make it all up from scratch when we first look into the bathroom mirror.” The microcosm of script can give us the soothing and comforting sense of knowing roughly where to go in our lives. Negotiating existential life issues on a moment-to-moment basis is virtually impossible.


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Being aware of the existential givens at each point in time would render us overwhelmed. Accordingly, script has not always been seen as necessarily negative and limiting. Fanita English states, “A script is valuable as an organizing support structure originating in childhood” (1988, p. 302; see also English in this volume, pp. 217–238). Berne (1961) himself spoke of script as a potentially positive guideline for life, which “may lead to great happiness, if the others in the cast are well chosen and play their part satisfactorily” (p. 116) While useful, this notion represents to us an avoidance of the larger challenges that the transgenerational existential issues posed by script—a sort of existential “episcript” (English, 1969). We acknowledge that the concept of script is multi-layered. Some aspects, like the “protocol” (Berne, 1963; Cornell & Landaiche, 2006; Cornell, 2010, in this volume), contain the somatic elements of an infant’s response to his or her environment and correspond to the “internal working models of the m/other” described by attachment theorists (e.g., Holmes, 2001). This includes bodily responses, for example, a tendency to startle easily, or an aversion to seeking eye contact. It is difficult to see those in the context of existential life questions, yet they have a role to play in affect regulation, in the interaction between people and how someone is able, or unable, to make contact with others. Some parts of the brain that are formed in response to our earliest experiences, for example, the brain stem, are anatomically shaped and cannot easily be changed in later life. Hence, some of the script “protocol” is indeed fixed: for example, a person’s tendency to be hyper-reactive (for an overview, see, e.g., Perry, 2000)

Going further So far, the discussion implies that the existential givens are part of a sort of universal container that is somehow filtered via parents and society into the relationship with the growing child, becoming an intrinsic part of the “ego relational unit” (Little, 2006). Here, we take the idea a little further. Let us assume a particular form of epistemology, a knowing that is grounded in our embodied being. That “knowing” is about

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ourselves and our deepest nature, including, because of our bond to the earth that gave us life (Roszak, Gomes, & Kanner, 1995), everything about life. Perhaps this is the force that Berne referred to as phusis/Physis (Berne, 1972; Clarkson, 1992). In other words, we know about existence: the existential givens of life are not simply the unpalatable limitations of our lives, around which we play our games, the container and boundary of our every moment. They are also in the fabric of the sense of our earliest self. We are born already patterned, no doubt, by our bodily and affective experiences in the womb, but also “knowing” the nature of life. It is a different sort of an “unthought known” (Bollas, 1987) than we usually conceive of. Every breath we take is imbued with it. Presumably, at that stage, this unthought known feels, as it is, completely natural. If we are nothing but our experience, then the fleeting nature of our being must be irrelevant. However, in the process of life, our experiences become more and more solidified: our brains develop, what once was plastic and malleable becomes static, our identity is formed and practised, and, crucially, we start to attach to a personal identity, and become unwilling to deal with the existential realities that are the normal part of existence. Thus, our script and games are habits and relational patterns; indeed, they are also habits that are strivings to manage and make tolerable that which has become intolerable. Perhaps they are also vain attempts to return to the accepting wisdom of our earliest Being.

Returning to Berne The inherent paradox that “the patient” can control his “Self” is so far no more resolvable in transactional terms than in philosophical or existential ones. What transactional analysis offers is a method of exploiting this paradox to increase autonomy and authenticity. The “Self” and “free energy” are left open-ended as an experience and as a construct, respectively, whose ultimate reduction and definition belong outside the province of psychiatry. This is an invitation to philosophers, theologians, poets, and creative and interpretive artists of all kinds to participate with psychotherapists in giving meaning to ultimate values. [Berne, 1966, p. 307]


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The development of existential psychotherapy as a systematic school of thought came too late for Berne. In Hans Cohn, we had a psychoanalyst and poet who became an existential psychotherapist. His poems are “existential parables written with extraordinary precision” (Hamburger, 1999). One of his poems, “Before Going to Sleep”, is an excellent example (Cohn, 1994). Because much can get lost in translation, we are offering both the original German version as well as the English one (translated by his brother, Frederick G. Cohn). Vor dem Schlafengehen Kinder natürlich schieben zwischen sich und den Schlaf noch ein Glas Milch noch eine Geschichte Wird es wohl donnern? Der Mond ist zu hell. Aber Erwachsene: Sind die dem Schlafengehen besser gewachsen? Before going to sleep Of course children Fit in between themselves and sleep Another glass of milk Another story Will there be thunder? The moon is too bright. But the grown-ups: are they grown up enough to go to sleep?

Maybe script is not only to do with what we say after we say hello, but also with how we go to sleep.

Conclusion So what does this way of thinking mean for the psychotherapist? We believe that it changes nothing and it also changes everything.

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In some ways, the clinician continues “business as usual”, to do her work of facilitating the journey of the client to meet himself, give his inchoate experiences a voice, reflect on himself, make choices about his life. And yet, taking this existential lens entails a fundamental shift in attitude. First, and most simply, there is a different angle at the level of technique. Instead of challenging a self-harming core belief, or revealing a stale relational pattern, we may say, “And what would happen if you did not do such and such, or if you dared to do this or that”; “So what would it mean if this was true?”; or, “Yes, this is indeed the case. Your fear is the truth.” “What do you feel?” We attempt to help a client get to the purity of her own truth. There is a second shift that is more profound. It concerns a challenge to our view of what it is to be “psychotherapist” and “patient”. Which of us would encourage a therapist to take on a patient from her own family, friendship network, or even organization? The opportunities for conflicts of interest, biases, and clouded vision are legion and it would be impossible to be neutral. As Carl Whittaker says (cited in Efran, Lukens, & Lukens, 1990), in order to be an effective therapist, one should be a maverick at the border of a client’s community; just near enough to be accepted and able to comprehend the rules and norms, yet outside enough to take a new perspective. There is a way in which, as fellow human beings, therapists and their clients are inevitably struggling with the same issues, facing the same intolerable truths, joining the communal activity of burying our heads in the sand. As described above and elsewhere (Sills, 2003), this makes us vulnerable to preventing our clients from exploring some issue that they need to explore. Taking on a client—any client—is breaking the “neutrality” rule; one might argue that it is like taking on a member of your family or organization. However, there is another way in which that same universality, the sharing of the human condition, lies at the heart of relational psychotherapy. If we work from the standpoint of believing that the clients’ experience rests ultimately on a truth, we give new meaning to their problems. Instead of identifying restrictive or outmoded patterns and disturbed and damaged self states, instead of challenging pathological behaviour or thinking, we are treating the clients’ difficulties as ways of managing a problem we both have-indeed, we all have. This is simply their own particular


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“creative adjustment” (or the impact of that of their parents). Those shared facts of life become part of the relational “third” (Aron, 2006), the both conscious and unconscious intersubjective space in which meanings are discovered and new meanings created. The therapist shares the role of patient as someone grappling with an unmanageable truth, thus releasing the client from the role of “sick”. They share the madness, if madness it is. This causes a shift in the relational dynamic that we believe to be hugely important. As we engage with and explore our client’s truth, allowing the layers of meaning and feeling to take form between us, we will be also allowing the existential truths to emerge into the space, and we must be willing to engage with them and also be changed ourselves by the encounter. We believe that a mutual owning of the painful truths of life’s journey can lie at the heart of the truly therapeutic relationship.

References Aron, L. (2006). Analytic impasse and the third. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87: 349–368. Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. (2000). Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-constructing Interactions. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Benjamin, J. (2002). Relational analysts at work—sense and sensibility. Speech given at the inaugural Conference of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, WaldorfAstoria Hotel, NYC, January 2002. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press [reprinted London: Souvenir Press, 1986]. Berne, E. (1963). The Structure and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. Menlo Park, CA: Shea Books. Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1977). Intuition and Ego States (An Anthology of Papers). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Binswanger, L. (1958). The existential analysis school of thought. In: R. May, E. Angel, & H. F. Ellenberger (Eds.), Existence: A New

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Transgenerational scripts: the unknown knowledge Gloria Noriega

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ears ago, I began developing my ideas about script transmission while attending a course on psychoanalysis and genealogy based on the theory of Jacques Lacan. The professor explained how our ancestors’ life stories may be transmitted through several generations because the unconscious is encoded in the language (Braunstein, personal communication, 11 November, 1991). He presented several case studies of patients who had repeated the story of their grandparents and great-grandparents. As a transactional analyst, I began to think that perhaps script transmission could be explained through the concept of ulterior transactions. In fact, Eric Berne (1972) wrote that “the most intricate part of script analysis in clinical practice is tracing back the influence of the grandparents” (p. 288). This mysterious theme intrigued and fascinated me because I could see in my clinical practice how some of my clients were repeating their grandparents’ life stories, even when they had never known them personally (e.g., the grandparents had died before the client was born). This understanding allowed me to facilitate the resolution of impasses with clients who were stuck in therapy by helping them become aware that they were repeating situations, 269

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symptoms, and emotions from their grandparents’ life stories. It also awakened my curiosity by revealing and clarifying an important part of my own life script. My doctoral research project involved looking at script transmission from the perspectives of transactional analysis and psychoanalysis. Object relations theory provided a theoretical frame of reference that showed how scripts are unconsciously transmitted through generations. The example I used demonstrated the prevalence of co-dependency and associated risk factors resulting in gender- and culture-based scripts that are transmitted through several generations (Noriega, 2002, 2004; Noriega & Ramos, 2002; Noriega, Ramos, Medina-Mora, & Villa, 2008). I was motivated by the work of Eric Berne, who considered Melanie Klein (1994) and Fairbairn (1954) to be the “best heuristic bridges between transactional analysis and psychoanalysis” (1972, p. 154). As my interest in Berne’s writings grew, I began looking for ways to integrate his theory of script transmission (Berne, 1972) with his studies on intuition (Berne, 1977), his statements about transference phenomena (Berne, 1961, 1966, 1972), and Fanita English’s (1969) concept of episcript. Later, I was inspired by transactional analysis colleagues who wrote about the integration of transactional analysis with psychoanalytic ideas, including transference (Moiso, 1985), object relations theory, and self psychology (Blackstone, 1993). Richard Erskine’s (1997a) work on shame also influenced my thinking, because shame plays a crucial role in family secrets that are unconsciously transmitted from one generation to the next. At the same time, I began doing weekend therapy groups focused on transgenerational script transmission. I was also developing a theoretical framework for analysing the legacy of our ancestors and experimenting with several therapeutic interventions designed to facilitate a participant’s discovery of his or her grandparents’ scripts. While I was writing my doctoral dissertation, someone loaned me Bert Hellinger’s (2001) book on family constellations as a technique for working with multi-generational family problems. He was trained in transactional analysis, and used Berne’s theoretical concepts of script transmission. I decided to use his technique in groups. I modified his psychodrama techniques and remained

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silent about the theory or my observations so as to avoid being too directive or intrusive with clients. I did not want them merely to repeat my suggested statements. This was a fascinating and impressive experience for the client, group members who acted as representatives of the client’s family members, other observing group members, and me. The family representatives in the constellation felt motivated to move or act in ways that revealed dynamics of the client’s family script that were not conscious for the client. In fact, we discovered that they acted out the family drama intuitively, often expressing their feelings without even knowing much about the client’s family story! Berne (1961) wrote that communication occurs through three types of transactions—complementary, crossed, and ulterior—that are an interchange of stimulus and response between the ego states of two or more people. Ulterior transactions include a double message, one social and the other psychological. The psychological message is usually non-verbal and carries a hidden message that is almost always unconscious, or, at best, confusing, for the receiver. In my clinical investigations, I have discovered that a number of script messages are transmitted unconsciously from parents to their children through ulterior transactions. Sometimes, the ulterior transaction is an expression of their own Child ego states, and at other times, these messages come from their Parent ego states. (I write “ego states” when referring to several Parent or Child ego states from different developmental stages; I write “ego state” when referring to the whole system of a Parent or Child ego state.)

Understanding ego states Berne (1961) described the archaeopsychic, or Child, ego state as “a set of feelings, attitudes, and behavior patterns which are relics of the individual’s own childhood” (p. 77). He found that “childhood ego states exist as relics in the grown-up, and that under certain circumstances they can be revived” (ibid., pp. 30–31). The Child ego states are the entire personality of a person as he was in a previous developmental period of time. This includes needs, desires, urges and sensations, the

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defense mechanisms and the thought process, perceptions, feelings, and behaviors of the developmental phase where fixation occurred. [Erskine, 2003, p. 88]

The exteropsychic, or Parent, ego states were defined by Berne (1961) as “a set of feelings, attitudes, and behavior patterns which resemble those of a parental figure” (p. 75). “Parent ego states are an actual historical internalization of the personality of one’s own parents or other significant parental figures, as perceived by the child at the time of introjection” (Erskine, 2003, p. 89). The neopsychic, or Adult, ego state is characterized by “an autonomous set of feelings, attitudes and behavior patterns which are adapted to the current reality” (Berne, 1961, p. 76). The word “autonomous” means that this ego state is not influenced by the introjections of the individual’s Parent ego states or the fixations of his or her Child ego states. This Adult ego state consists of current, age-related motor behavior; emotional, cognitive, and moral development; the ability to be creative; and the capacity for full contactful engagement in meaningful relationships. This neopsychic state of the ego functions without intrapsychic control by an introjected or archaic ego. [Erskine, 1997b, p. 133]

The transmission of script messages Scripts messages are transmitted by unconscious communication between the Child and Parent ego states of family members across generations. This process occurs like a family script parade from the archaic Child ego state of mother or father to his or her offspring. In this way, the transmission of script messages may run nonverbally through several generations, going back to grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents and forward to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and beyond. Life scripts are based on original transactions that a person had in childhood with a primary care-giver; the tone and dynamics of this original relationship remain introjected in the individual’s Child and Parent ego states, ready to become reactivated through


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close relationships in adult life by means of transference transactions. Drawing on his understanding of the neurobiology of emotional development, Schore (1994) wrote, The internalization of the affective and cognitive characteristics of relationships, whereby interactive experiences become mentally represented, operationally defines the construction of internal working models. These models of the infant’s interactions with the attachment figure are formed in imprinting experiences. The resultant stored mental representations contain affective as well as cognitive components (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985) and are accessed and utilized in the generation of copying strategies of affect regulation (Kobak & Sceery, 1988). [p. 179]

Schützemberger (1998) developed transgenerational psychotherapy from a systemic frame of reference. She referred to Berne’s theory of ego states, transactions, games, and scripts (p. 29) and English’s concept of episcript, writing that “one passes a hot potato from one generation to another to be rid of it, like in a closed system” (p. 144). Schützemberger also wrote that a question remains unanswered concerning the way in which family secrets are transcribed and transmitted in daily life when things are left unsaid. How is a secret passed on? Nothing we know about psychology, physiology or neurology allows us to understand how something can hound several generations of a same family. [ibid., p. 48]

From the perspective of Darwinian evolutionary psychology and natural selection, Schore (1994) suggested that environmental adaptation implies a pre-existing world that poses a problem to which an adaptation is the solution. “This principle also applies to the processing of social information. . . . Natural selection favors characteristics that maximize an individual’s contributions to the gene pool of succeeding generations” (pp. 254–255). Schore proposed that the primary care-giver functions as an agent of natural selection who influences the stabilization or elimination of permanent orbitofrontal–limbic connections. I think unconscious communication plays a crucial role in the way scripts are transmitted across generations. The process occurs

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primarily by means of non-verbal communication, which can be observed in the client–therapist relationship, the client’s description of his or her family history as it is projected on to current relationships, and while working with family constellations in a group. Through my research and clinical practice, I have found four mechanisms of script transmission that can be used to diagnose and treat transgenerational scripts: (1) ulterior transactions, (2) psychological games, (3) transference psychodynamics, and (4) projective identification (Noriega, 2004).

Ulterior transactions Transactions involve communication by means of an exchange of stimuli and responses between the ego states of two or more people. Ulterior transactions involve two messages simultaneously: one at a social level (with words) and the other at a psychological level (non-verbally). In ulterior transactions, the psychological message is the more important because it contains a covert message that influences the other person’s response. Through ulterior transactions, script messages can be passed unconsciously from parents to children, the latter of whom end up acting out the hidden psychological message. Family secrets are commonly transmitted non-verbally by means of ulterior transactions (tone of voice, gestures, attitudes, and facial expressions), although sometimes they are transmitted with words or silences intended to indicate approval or disapproval of specific behaviours. Family secrets refer to “unknown knowledge”, something people know without awareness because they are sensitive to the unresolved emotions encoded in their ego states and transmitted through ulterior transactions. This “knowledge” is expressed by acting out the family script in emotional expression and overt behaviour. (Note: I was unaware at the time I did my work in this area that Bollas [1984] has written about a similar idea, although he did not address issues related to transgenerational scripts.)

Psychological games Berne (1966) defined a game as “a series of ulterior transactions . . . leading to a well-defined payoff” (p. 364). The payoff is the most


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important part of a game because it usually includes a “surprising outcome” that results from the underlying psychological messages and reinforces the feelings and beliefs included in the script. Psychological games are unconscious, repetitive, played by two or more people, and the way to advance the script of past generations in current relationships. Such games also contain an unconscious wish to give meaning to an unresolved issue from the past, even when the intention of the social transaction appears to be something different.

Transference psychodynamics Berne (1961) affirmed that “scripts belong in the realm of transference phenomena” (p. 116). Moiso (1985) defined a transference relationship as one “in which the patient, in order to reexperience parent–child or primitive object relationships projects onto the therapist his own Parental Ego States” (p. 194). Transference can also involve a projection of the Child ego state on to the therapist or another person as well as a reaction from the person’s Parent ego state. “Transferential transactions are externalized expressions of internal ego conflicts between exteropsychic and archaeopsychic ego states” (Erskine, 1997b, p. 133). By this means an internal psychological conflict can be projected on to the client–therapist relationship. That is, an original transaction the client introjected from his or her relationship with a parent can be re-enacted with the therapist or in other current relationships in which the emotional bonds are strong, such as in couples.

Projective identification This defence mechanism was first described by Melanie Klein (1994). Laplanche and Pontalis (1987) defined it as a mechanism translated by fantasies in which the person introduces his or her self, totally or in part, into the other person for the purposes of hurting, possessing, or controlling (p. 189). Through this process, a person projects on to someone else his or her unpleasant and unacceptable feelings, thus provoking in the other an experience of those same feelings. As a result, the former can blame or devalue the latter.

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According to Ogden (1992), projective identification is a clinicallevel conceptualization with three phenomenological references, all of which lie entirely within the realm of observable psychological and interpersonal experience: (1) the projector’s unconscious fantasies (observable through their derivates, such as associations, dreams, parapraxes, and so forth); (2) forms of interpersonal pressure that are often subtle but verifiable; (3) countertransference experience (a real, yet under-utilized source of analysis data) (p. 9). Schore (1994) used Klein’s work to underscore the importance of understanding projective identification in psychotherapy with individuals presenting developmental disorders. He described it as “an interactive process in the mother–child relationship where mother’s unconscious information is projected onto her children” (p. 465). My own clinical experience and research into the transgenerational transmission of life scripts also suggests that projective identification may be the main way that scripts are transmitted from parents to children. It may also be active in the other psychological mechanisms just described: ulterior transactions, games, and transference psychodynamics. Projective identification is similar to what English (1969) described as an episcript, although projective identification serves as a way of transmitting repressed feelings and script beliefs from one person to the other, whereas episcript refers to the transmission of the payoff in a hamartic (tragic) script. In some cases, both situations exist simultaneously. Erskine (1997a) defined shame as a complex internal process consisting of five affective and phenomenological experiences: (1) sadness at not being accepted as one is; (2) fear of abandonment because of who one is; (3) a disavowal of anger; (4) a diminished self-concept in compliance with humiliation; (5) the script belief that “something is wrong with me”. He wrote that shame involves “a self-protective process used to avoid the affects that result from humiliation and vulnerability to loss of contact-in-relationship with another person” (p. 51). I have found that many script themes transmitted over several generations are related to family secrets about infidelity, sexual abuse, violence, alcoholism, and the birth of a child outside of marriage. In the case described in the next section, each of the five components of shame were, through projective identification, unconsciously transmitted over three generations, from grandparent, to


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parent, and finally to the client. The client bore the dynamics of shame that originated in, and were transmitted from, previous generations. The case reflects the client’s urge to have a “legitimate” relationship with her family, that is, her unconscious need for a legal identity and a sense of belonging to her family.

The legacy of a grandmother’s phantom Susan was a successful businesswoman in her late forties. She came to therapy confused and severely depressed after finding that her boyfriend had been lying to her by hiding important issues about his own life. Susan had experienced similar situations in other relationships, and she did not understand why she became involved with men who lied about themselves, pretending to be “more” than who they really were. When Susan was a teenager, she was obsessed with getting married because she did not want to be a “single old woman”. She remembered that her mother used to criticize her sisters and women friends who remained single until an “old” age. Mother accused them of expecting too much from a man and that they would not have children of their own. Susan got married at eighteen, had two children, and divorced when she was twenty-five. Susan’s father died when she was three years old. She had only a younger sister. In a childhood nuclear family composed of only three people, Susan developed a strong and close relationship with her mother, who often told her that they were the “best friends in the world”. Susan’s mother made a “truth commitment” with her that involved always telling the truth to each other, and Susan felt guilty when she did not tell her mother “everything”. Susan came to therapy two different times, seven years apart. During her first period of therapy, she ended a long-term relationship with a man who refused to marry her. She later discovered that he had not told her that he had a wife in another country. At that time, we worked on her anger about, and mourning of, that relationship. She became aware of her early decision to avoid emotional closeness due to the loss of her father and made a redecision (Goulding & Goulding, 1979) to accept intimacy in relationships. After five months she felt better, started dating another man, and decided

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not to continue therapy because her new job required considerable travel. During this break in her psychotherapy, Susan had an important conversation with her mother, who told Susan her own story and revealed some family secrets. When Susan returned for her second period of therapy, she summarized this conversation and the family secrets about which she had learned. We then contracted to explore the possibility that she might be living with a transgenerational script and to analyse the effects that those family stories and lies had had in shaping her life and current relationships. Among the family secrets that Susan’s mother revealed was that both of her grandmothers had never married, even though they had pretended to be married to maintain a good societal image. Susan’s parents knew little about each other’s family stories; they kept secrets from each other. After Susan’s father died, her mother confirmed that her mother-in-law had been pretending to be married, just as her own mother had. On her mother’s side, Susan’s grandfather lived with his own mother while having seven children with Susan’s grandmother. On her father’s side, Susan’s grandfather was married to a woman in another country, whom he never divorced, even though he had children with Susan’s grandmother. Thus, to avoid social shame, both families pretended to have “respectable”, legal marriages. Susan’s maternal grandmother died very young after developing vascular disease when Susan’s mother was four. The youngest child in the family, Susan’s mother had been conceived during a sexual affair her mother had with another man. Her partner punished her betrayal by abandoning the family until Susan’s mother died. This was another family secret that Susan’s mother kept hidden as a result of her strong feelings of shame and guilt. She finally revealed the story to Susan when her own mother became severely depressed after she learned that her brothers and sisters were not including her in the family inheritance because they did not believe she was a legitimate child. How did Susan repeat her grandmother’s script? First, she married very young and immediately had two children; both her grandmothers became mothers in early adolescence. Second, after her divorce, Susan was strongly attracted to married men and had a couple of affairs; she ended up feeling disappointed and


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depressed when they would not divorce their wives and marry her. She was attracted to narcissistic men who pretended to be more capable, intelligent, wealthy, or educated than they really were (just as her mother had been) and did not pay attention to clues that revealed the truth about these men. For her, having a “trustworthy relationship” became an obsession. In fact, she was usually too open with other people and revealed too much about herself. She expected others to be as truthful and revealing as she was and often felt betrayed when they were not. Susan repeated the transgenerational script in her relationships with men in other ways as well. Her husband had pretended to be much more intelligent, capable, and wealthy than he really was. Over several years of marriage, she discovered that he depended on his parents and was unable to be economically responsible for his own family. In her second relationship, her partner did not tell her that he was married and overly attached to his mother. When she returned to therapy the second time, she had just learned that her current partner, whom she had planned to marry, had been lying to her. Instead of being an independent, divorced man, he lived with his mother, was economically dependent on his family, and was still married. Susan recognized that commitment was an issue in her family. Most of the women and some men had difficulty finding and/or keeping a spouse. The script was advancing from the older generations to the younger ones.

Diagnosis of the transmission of script mechanisms Let us now consider how the script in Susan’s family was unconsciously communicated from generation to generation through the four mechanisms described earlier.

Ulterior transactions Susan’s mother wanted to help Susan avoid the same problem that women experienced in her family. Through ulterior transactions, her mother pushed Susan to marry by criticizing her own sisters and women friends for not having children. Susan’s mother

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bragged that she was the only daughter in the family to marry young and frequently talked about how women needed husbands to “be respected”. The unconscious message was “Don’t lose any time. You have to get married while you are still young in order to have children and be a respected woman.”

Psychological games Through the ulterior transactions just described, Susan’s mother played the psychological game of “I’m Only Trying to Help You” with her daughter. At the same time, Susan learned to play a corresponding game of “Poor Me” (Berne, 1964) because she felt unworthy when she compared herself to the grandiose perception she had of her mother. The psychological payoff at the end of her game was a reinforcement of the feelings “I’m not good enough” and “Something is wrong with me”. Susan had unconsciously identified with her mother’s feelings of being undervalued. The reinforcement of these two script beliefs was motivated by Susan’s unconscious wish to make sense of the transgenerational, lifelong, emotionally laden experiences that were not talked about in her family. As a payoff, Susan always ended up feeling surprised and betrayed when she discovered the truth about her partners. Like her grandmothers and her mother, she was ashamed of what people might think of her.

Transference psychodynamics As described earlier, Susan had a close relationship with her mother that included a contract to always be open and truthful with each other. From the time she was little, Susan would tell her mother everything, and she thought her mother did the same. In fact, she wanted to be just like her mother. However, her mother had always hidden her identity from her children and from Susan’s father. He pretended not to know his wife’s “secret”, even while he himself had a secret to hide. Susan would thus begin her couple relationships by talking about the importance of being open and trusting, reminiscent of the contract she had made with her mother. She would tell her partner everything about herself, while feeling afraid and guilty when she


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avoided something. And then, at some point, she always discovered that her partner was hiding an important part of his life and betraying their truth contract, just as had happened with her mother.

Projective identification Susan’s mother was a narcissistic woman who pretended to come from a high-class family. She presented herself as a sexy woman, attractive to men, and capable of resolving many kinds of problems. From the time she was a child, Susan felt inferior compared to her mother. Susan always needed someone else to reflect her worth. She was afraid people would discover that her true self was “unworthy”. As a teenager, she had felt ugly and unattractive to men, but in our work we discovered that these feelings of shame were her mother’s repressed feelings passed to Susan through projective identification.

Susan’s treatment It was a strong revelation for Susan to discover her mother’s and grandparents’ history. In the midst of her mother’s severe depression, Susan learned of her mother’s shame and fear of rejection, but she still felt confused about what this said about her own script behaviour. As a result of my consistent empathy and the quality of the contact in our therapeutic relationship, Susan began to reveal more of herself. In some sessions, I experienced her as a little orphaned girl in need of my protection, love, and approval. In others, she presented herself as a self-fulfilled and successful woman. Eventually, I began to have the strange and unusual feeling of being impoverished in the relationship with Susan. I sensed that something was missing in the psychotherapy until I became aware that she was projecting on to me her internal conflict by showing two personalities: one as a powerful woman in the world and the other as a small child filled with shame and fear for being exposed in front of others. She was worried that she was a fraud. During the course of therapy, my countertransference became a source of information that helped me understand Susan’s use of

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projective identification and the ways that mechanism was also involved in all the others. The main problem for Susan was that she had internalized the original relationship (transactions) with her mother, wherein her grandmother’s and mother’s feelings of shame were always present. Her defence against her mother’s conflict was a projective identification with her mother’s feelings and script beliefs. Both the shame and protective mechanisms were periodically present in her transference transactions with me, and frequently in her relationships with her male partners. Susan was not aware that she was reproducing a transgenerational script. The following sections describe the way in which working through the four mechanisms of script transmission played a central role in Susan’s treatment. Projective identification. Ogden (1992) proposed that the infant who is projecting induces a feeling state in the maternal other that corresponds to a state that the infant is unable to experience for himself or herself. The recipient allows the induced state to reside within, and by reinternalizing this externally metabolized experience, the infant experiences a change in the quality of his or her experience. With regard to Susan, I understood that she was projecting on to me a Child ego state developed in the relationship with her mother. I decided it would not be appropriate to share my countertransference feelings with her and instead contained the feelings while she talked about her family history. In relation to groups, Ogden (1992) explained how group interactions can be understood in terms of projective identification: It has become a cliché to say that a given member of a group may voice or enact the feelings of the entire group, without being aware that he is doing so . . . I feel that when people talk in these terms, they are talking about projective identification in a group setting. [p. 129]

In Susan’s case, about two months into her second round of therapy, I invited her to attend a weekend marathon I was conducting on transgenerational life scripts. During the marathon, she wanted to do a family constellation to help her understand the dynamics of her family script and how they had affected the kind of partners she had been choosing. To begin, Susan explained her


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goal and shared briefly about her family history. I encouraged her to ask group members who would be willing to represent the people in her family and to set them up as she wanted around the room. She chose representatives of herself and her mother, father, sister, paternal grandparents, maternal grandmother, maternal adopted grandfather, and maternal real grandfather. When everyone was settled, I instructed them not to talk, but to express their feelings while freely moving among each other in the room. I invited Susan to sit on a chair and observe what was happening and what she was feeling. Even though the representatives knew only a few things about Susan’s family, they moved in response to their feelings. Both grandmothers constantly looked to their partners for recognition. The person role-playing Susan’s sister remained close to their paternal grandparents the entire time. Her maternal grandmother remained isolated, which represented how she had been rejected by her “husband” (Susan’s adopted maternal grandfather). After some time, the person role-playing her real grandfather withdrew and remained isolated in the back of the room. The person role-playing her grandmother showed profound sadness and did not look at her daughter any more. As the psychodrama continued, the grandmother got sick and died, leaving Susan’s mother alone. In this family constellation, Susan’s mother was able to say good-bye to her mother. Then the remaining family members, including her adopted father (who came back to the family after his “wife” had died), felt moved to recognize Susan’s mother and stayed close to her. At the end, the family members joined together in a circle and invited Susan and Susan’s sister to stand in the middle while they all looked at each other. Then all the family members formed a family tree and invited Susan and her sister to take their place in the family order. This was an intense emotional experience for Susan. After the twenty-minute family constellation experience ended, Susan thanked each representative, and they shared their own emotional experience of enacting their role. The grandmother representatives both said that at first they felt strong shame as well as rejection from partners. The sister felt the need to remain close to her paternal grandparents in order to feel safe. The grandfather representatives felt the need to escape from any commitment to the

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family. The adopted grandfather representative felt angry and betrayed by his “wife” (Susan’s maternal grandmother). The man role-playing her real grandfather felt relieved from his commitment when he left the family. Her mother representative felt divided between belonging and not belonging to her family. The father representative remained in the back, feeling very sad. The representatives also shared how, at the end, they all felt moved to reestablish order in the family by creating a family tree and inviting Susan to join the group. At that point, they felt emotional relief and a sense of belonging to the family. In her next individual session, Susan shared her awareness of how she had been a “respectable woman” externally while internally feeling illegitimate and rejected. She realized that both her mother and grandmother experienced the same kind of split that she did between their external and internal experience. She also realized that she, like her mother and grandmothers, was keeping her real life situation secret. She now understood that she had always felt an urge to emulate both her mother and her maternal grandmother, and that, by marrying young, she had accomplished what both her mother and grandmother never had: being legitimately married and accepted by both family and society. In subsequent individual sessions, Susan realized that her fear of being exposed and her constant sense of shame were similar to the way her mother and grandmothers felt, even though they pretended to be “highly respectable women”. In these sessions, my job was to contain Susan’s feelings while she continued talking about her “two selves”. I did this by forming and containing an emotional understanding of her projection of a three-part internal conflict: fantasizing that I did not respect her, fantasizing that I was a grandiose woman like her mother, and imagining that she was “unworthy”, as she had often imagined in relationship to her mother. I asked Susan what she remembered about her relationship with her parents before her father died. At first she felt happy, sharing tender and joyful memories of vacations and time at home with her parents. Then, suddenly, her laugh turned into tears as she described how everything changed after her father died. She understood that she had also lost her mother at that point, because her mother became depressed and stayed alone in her room or was


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busy nursing her sister. She introjected her mother’s personality (a Parent ego state) as a defence against feeling abandoned by her mother. This introjection included her mother’s and her maternal grandmother’s feelings and script beliefs. In another session, I asked about her memories of anger as a child. She remembered that at one time she cut her mother’s clothes with a pair of scissors and was punished by her mother for being “a bad girl”. In reaction, Susan decided to be “a good and helpful girl”; she disavowed her anger and profound sense of shame and denied her needs for self-definition, validation, and acceptance. The only time Susan remembered being close to her mother was when they talked “like friends”. This involved Susan’s mother talking about her friends and dates with men, and Susan listening while feeling unattractive and dumb. By this point in our work together, Susan understood about projective identification. She described how she tried to be like her mother because she was so unhappy the way she was. These efforts also made her feel close to her mother while helping her to avoid fears of being abandoned, just as her mother probably had done when she was a child in relation to her own mother. And although Susan expected me to reject her when she was angry with me, just as her mother had when Susan cut up her clothes, she recognized that I had never abandoned her. After two more months, Susan began group therapy while continuing weekly individual sessions. In the group, I worked with her Parent ego states, using the Parent interview technique (McNeel, 1976) in order to facilitate Susan’s differentiation from her mother. I modified the technique by interviewing both grandmothers so as to facilitate a redecision in which Susan decided to live her own life and let go of her intention to rescue her grandmothers’ phantoms (Dashiell, 1978). Susan also did self-reparenting (James, 1981) in order to become a good mother to herself by separating her real self from her mother’s feelings and beliefs. My treatment plan included doing an in-depth therapy of the Parent ego states, which Erskine (2003) described as follows: Following, or in some cases concurrent with, a deconfusion of the Child ego states, there may be an additional psychotherapeutic phase which decommissions a Parent ego state for the purpose of

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eliminating its toxic influencing effect on Child ego states, and eventually integrating it into the Adult ego as a memory and historical resource. [p. 95]

Transference psychodynamics. Before doing the family constellation exercise, Susan had brought to therapy a dream in which she was dressed in rags and hiding from people. This was a repetitive dream for her. It reflected how, in meetings with “important” people, Susan would suddenly feel worthless and like a fraud, as if she were cheating them. This was disturbing, because she always wanted to be open and trustworthy with people. Susan’s association was that this was a common feeling of her mother and both grandmothers. The revelation of her transference in relation to me, and my informative countertransference in relation to her, helped me to understand Susan’s behaviour in relationships. I had two distinct reactions to her: when she was feeling empowered and secure, she devalued me; when she felt ashamed and unworthy, I felt recognized and legitimized in my role as therapist. This reflected her projective identification on to me in the context of the transference relationship, something that she also did with others in her work or in close relationships. Ulterior transactions. Michelle Novellino (2003) recognized the existence of ulterior Adult-to-Adult transactions that communicate indirectly to the psychotherapist a message about either the therapeutic relationship or other significant relationships. He proposed a fourth rule of communication: The outcome of an unconscious communication depends on the psychotherapist’s capacity to intuit the symbolic psychological level of a transaction (Novellino, 1996). If the psychotherapist understands the patient’s coded message, this will lead to a correct interpretation and therefore to progress in the psychotherapy. [Novellino, 2003, p. 166]

In the first sessions with Susan, my intuition was that she was conflicted in her perception of her grandparents. Unconsciously, she was communicating this conflict to me through ulterior transactions. For example, sometimes she would talk about her grandparents and other family members with an exaggerated sense of


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pride; at other times, she talked about them in a devaluing way. However, I was unable to check out my intuition because Susan interrupted the treatment. Psychological games. After Susan recognized that she had introjected her family dynamics, she began to understand how the repetition of the “I’m Only Trying to Help You” and “Poor Me” family games had been used to hide a need to feel recognized by the family as a worthy and legitimate member. By marrying so early, Susan was trying to rescue her maternal grandmother and legitimize her mother. This was an episcript (English, 1969) that had been carried on by four generations. The payoff of this game was a feeling of depression and a reinforcement of the script belief “Something’s wrong with me”, the core of shame. Today, Susan no longer thinks that marriage is necessary to legitimate a relationship and/or her own value. She has continued learning about herself in relationships and has met a man with whom she is developing a stable and fun-filled relationship. She no longer feels an urgent need to be recognized by everyone as legitimate and can rely on her own self-definition of who she is as a woman in her society.

Conclusion The way scripts are transmitted through generations when our ancestors’ unfinished business remains unresolved is a fascinating theme for continued research. By understanding transgenerational scripts, we can make important changes in clients’ lives and help them create a healthier environment for their children. The transmission of family scripts occurs through unconscious communication by means of ulterior transactions, psychological games, transference psychodynamics, and projective identification. I believe that ego states are representations of unique systems of synapses between neurons in the brain. These systems represent emotionally-laden ways of thinking that emerge over and over again through several generations by means of unconscious communication. These ego state systems remain unless new and varied experiences create new ones. When secrets and shame dominate a family’s unfinished business, the story and emotions are passed on to and repeated by

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subsequent generations. By decoding ulterior transactions, games, transference, and projective identification, we can help clients finally to tell, and be released from, their multi-generational stories.

References Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Grove Press. Berne E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny. New York: Grove Press (Spanish translation by Editorial Grijalbo, Barcelona, 1974). Berne, E. (1977). Intuition and Ego States: The Origins of Transactional Analysis, P. McCormick (Ed.). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Blackstone, P. (1993). The dynamic child: integration of second-order structure, object relations, and self psychology. Transactional Analysis Journal, 23: 216–234. Bollas, C. (1984). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Press. Dashiell, S. (1978). The parent resolution process. Transactional Analysis Journal, 8: 289–294. English, F. (1969). Episcript and the “hot potato” game. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 8(32): 77–82. Erskine, R. (1997a). Shame and self-righteousness: transactional analysis perspectives and clinical interventions. In: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 46–67). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Erskine, R. (1997b). Transference and transactions: critique from an intrapsychic and integrative perspective. In: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 129–146). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Erskine, R. (2003). Introjections, psychic presence and parent ego states: considerations for psychotherapy. In: C. Sills & H. Hargaden (Eds.), Ego states (Key Concepts in Transactional Analysis: Contemporary Views) (pp. 83–108). London: Worth Publishing. Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1954). The Object-Relations Theory of Personality. New York: Basic Books.


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Goulding, M. M., & Goulding, R. L. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy. Brunner/Mazel: New York. Hellinger, B. (2001)[2000]. Órdenes del amor [Orders of love], S. GómezPedra (Trans.). Barcelona: Herder. James, M. (1981). Breaking Free: Self-reparenting For a New Life. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley. Klein, M. (1994). Envidia y gratitud [Envy and gratitude], V.S. de Campo, S. Dubeovsky, V. Fischman, H. Friedenthal, A. Koremblit, D. Liberman, R. Malfé, N. Rosenblatt, N. Watson & S. Zysman (Trans.). Barcelona: Paidos. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (1987)[1968]. Diccionario de psicoanálisis [Dictionary of psychoanalysis], F. Cervantes Gimeno (Trans.). Barcelona: Labor. McNeel, J. (1976). The parent interview. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6: 61–68. Moiso, C. (1985). Ego states and transference. Transactional Analysis Journal, 15: 194–201. Noriega, G. (2002). Detección de codependencia y factores asociados: una perspectiva desde el análisis transaccional [Detection of codependency and associated factors: a transactional analysis perspective]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Medicina, Mexico City, Mexico. Noriega, G. (2004). Codependence: a transgenerational script. Transactional Analysis Journal, 34: 312–322. Noriega, G., & Ramos, L. (2002). Construcción y validación del instrumento de codependencia (ICOD) para las mujeres mexicanas [Construction and validation of the codependency instrument (ICOD) for Mexican women]. Salud Mental, 25(2): 38–48. Noriega, G., Ramos, L., Medina-Mora, M. E., & Villa, A. R. (2008). Prevalence of codependence in young women seeking primary health care and associated risk factors. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78(2): 199–210. Novellino, M. (2003). On closer analysis: a psychodynamic revision of the rules of communication within the framework of transactional psychoanalysis. In: C. Sills & H. Hargaden (Eds.), Ego States (Key Concepts in Transactional Analysis: Contemporary Views) (pp. 149– 168). London: Worth Publishing. Ogden, T. H. (1992). Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. London: Karnac.

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Schore, A. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum. Schützemberger, A. A. (1998). The Ancestor Syndrome, A. Trager (Trans.). London: Routledge.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The script system: an unconscious organization of experience Marye O’Reilly-Knapp and Richard G. Erskine

I

n early writings about life scripts, Berne (1961, 1976) describes the script as a complex set of transactions that determines the identity and destiny of the individual. He goes on to explain the script as similar to Freud’s repetition compulsion and more like his destiny compulsion (Berne, 1966, p. 302). Most of the transactional analysis literature regarding scripts has focused on the historical perspective. The literature has addressed how scripts have been transmitted through parental messages and injunctions and a child’s reactions, such as unconscious conclusions and explicit decisions. Additionally, some contemporary transactional analysts have examined several processes such as early child–parent attachment, shared language acquisition, and the expression of narrative as central in the formation of scripts. Each of these historical perspectives has provided the clinician with theories and concepts that have guided a variety of clinical interventions.

The script system The script system was designed to provide a way to analyse how the script is active in life today. Rather than taking a historical 291

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perspective, the script system identifies how the decisions, conclusions, reactions, and/or introjections are unconsciously operationalized in current life as core beliefs, overt behaviours, fantasies and obsessions, internal physical sensations, and reinforcing memories. The intrapsychic dynamics of the script system serve to keep the original needs and feelings that were present at the time of script formation out of awareness, while also maintaining a semblance of attachment with others. The script system categorizes human experience into four primary components: script beliefs; behavioural, fantasy, and physiological manifestations; reinforcing experiences; and the intrapsychic process of repressed needs and feelings (Erskine, 1997a; Erskine & Moursund, 1988; Erskine & Zalcman, 1997; Moursund & Erskine, 2004).

Script beliefs Script beliefs are the compilation of survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, explicit decisions, self-protective processes, self-regulating fantasies, relational coping strategies, and reinforcements that have occurred in the process of relating to others over the course of one’s lifetime. Script beliefs are often a condensed expression of an unexpressed life story. They represent, in one phrase, an elaborate, often unexpressed, narrative. Script beliefs, which are usually not conscious, are the person’s unique understandings and interpretations of the value of self, significant relationships, and life’s events. Script beliefs, in and of themselves, are not pathological; rather, they represent a desperate, creative process of meaning making. They function to provide a sense of self-regulation, compensation, orientation, self-protection, and an insuring prediction of future relational interactions. They also selfdefine one’s integrity. In essence, script beliefs provide an unconscious organization of experience. These beliefs may be described in three categories: beliefs about self, beliefs about others, and beliefs about the quality of life. Once formulated and adopted, script beliefs influence what stimuli (internal and external) are attended to, how they are interpreted, and whether or not they are acted on. They become the selffulfilling prophecy through which the person’s expectations are inevitably proved to be true because they create a sequence of “repetitious relational experiences” (Fosshage, 1992, p. 34).

THE SCRIPT SYSTEM: AN UNCONSCIOUS ORGANIZATION OF EXPERIENCE

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The script system (Figure 13.1) is unconsciously maintained in order (a) to avoid re-experiencing unmet needs and the corresponding feelings suppressed at the time of script formation, (b) to generalize the unconscious experience of self in relationship with others, (c) to create a homeostatic self-regulation, and (d) to provide a predictive model of life and interpersonal relationships (Erskine & Moursund, 1988; Moursund & Erskine, 2004). Suppression, generalization, self-regulation, and prediction are important psychological processes particularly relied upon when there is uncertainty, a crisis, or trauma. Although a previously created life script is often personally and relationally destructive, it does provide psychological balance and homeostasis; it maintains continuity with the past while it also provides the illusion of predictability (Bary & Hufford, 1990; Berne, 1964; Perls, 1944). Any disruption in selfregulation, interruptions in continuity, or change in the predictive model of the script system produces anxiety. To avoid such discomfort, people organize current perceptions and experiences so as to maintain a life script and to justify their behaviour (Erskine, 1981; Erskine & Trautmann, 1997). In the case example that follows, John´s life story illustrates how his script system was a repetition of his past and also how his script determined both his identity and his relationships with people. In addition, his story illuminates how the quality of interpersonal contact in the therapeutic relationship facilitated the client

Figure 13.1. The script system.

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becoming conscious of his script beliefs and in making significant changes in his life. As John´s narrative unfolds, look for the various ways his five core script beliefs are portrayed in his behaviours, fantasies, body tension, transference, and reinforcing memories. Each of these expressions of a life script are often evident in the therapeutic relationship, either by observation or through transference, long before the actual words of the script beliefs are put into social language. Script beliefs are frequently expressed through the client’s unaware prefixes, parenthetical phrases, or concluding statements to either a current or an old story. Unconscious script beliefs are often observable through various expressions, such as body posture and movement, forgotten appointments, misplaced objects, repeated physical injuries, or errors in reasonable judgement. It is an essential task of the psychotherapist to decode the behavioural, imaginative, transferential, and physiological expressions of a life script. The decoding is accomplished through phenomenological and historical inquiry, therapeutic inference within a developmental perspective and a relational dialogue (Erskine, Moursund & Trautmann, 1999). As the client´s life narrative is revealed in the therapeutic relationship, the script beliefs are expressed, often without awareness, as a way to tell the condensed version of a significant emotionally-filled story of personal relationships.

John’s loneliness When John first came to therapy, he had no knowledge of how pervasive his script system was in determining the course of his life. He was not particularly aware of his core beliefs, cognizant of his behaviour and physiological reactions, or conscious of his feelings and needs. He had only a general knowledge of his experiences as a child. He remembered the house he lived in and the woods where he spent a lot of time playing with his dog. His father had been a caretaker on a large estate, and his only time with other children was when he went to school. He remembered spending hours walking in the woods. The one feeling he could identify was that he was lonely a lot of the time. He said this as a factual statement with no apparent affect present. John could not remember sensitive


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family interactions such as gestures of caring, words of encouragement, or conversations about his feelings. John had consulted with his primary care physician, who referred him to psychotherapy. John’s eyes focused either on the floor or the wall as he described the two major losses in the previous year: a divorce from his wife and the death of his father. He reported that he kept busy at work “in order not to have my imaginations—bad thoughts and feelings”. “This is what I have always done my whole life, just to keep going,” he told me. When I asked him about his reason for coming to see me, he said it was because his doctor thought it might help him if he talked with someone about his losses. I asked John how he understood psychotherapy to work and John replied, “I have to build some strength to help myself.” He went on to describe his father’s motto as “Keep a stiff upper lip and just do it”. Over several sessions it became evident that John, in the process of growing up, came to the decision that to do whatever it was he needed to get done, he had to be strong and follow his father’s advice. In the intake interview, I asked a number of questions about John’s history and family relationships. His answers were simple and direct about his teenage years and either vague or non-existent when I asked about his school and pre-school years. Although his answers in the initial interview did not seem disorganized or contradictory, there appeared to be a significant lack in his ability to form a consistent narrative about his early life experiences and relationships. I wondered about the quality of his interpersonal relationships with each of his parents. I ended our initial session thinking about what internal images John may have of significant others, including extended family members and teachers and what internal influence those significant others may still have in his life. In our second session, I asked John to describe how he envisioned a therapeutic relationship with me. He talked about his mistrust of therapists in general and he was not sure that any professional person could help him. I enquired about how he experienced talking to me. He said that he thought that he “might be able to trust” me but that I probably could “not be helpful” for some things that had already happened. His body appeared very tense, and he would look at me periodically and then quickly look away. I told him that I understood his reluctance to trust me and I assured him

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that, if he let me, I could most probably help him resolve the emotional losses of his wife and father. I explained to John that, as he told me more about himself, the significance of his losses would become clear to both of us. In my own mind, I raised several questions about what prior childhood losses may have occurred and may not yet be available to consciousness, either because they were so early or that they may never have been talked about with an interested and involved other. Later, as our psychotherapy progressed, I thoroughly enquired about his early childhood and the quality of his significant relationships. In our first few sessions I realized the depth of John’s loneliness that was portrayed in his descriptions of his childhood, his struggle to be with me, and by the fragmentary information he gave me about his family life during his school and pre-school years. His lack of narrative about his family life left me feeling an emptiness and wondering about the emotional neglect that may have existed within his family. My countertransference was already forming and informing. Over the next several sessions, we established our psychotherapy relationship. I focused on the qualities I could bring to our therapeutic work: my unconditional regard for John, my commitment to sustaining a relationship of quality between him and me, my sense of presence in helping him to regulate his affect, and my interest in the development of John’s narrative of his life. In subsequent sessions, he went on to talk about how difficult it was for him to understand that anyone could be interested in listening to him. He did not have a frame of reference that included someone being there for him and certainly not someone being interested and involved in his well-being. As I encouraged him to put words to his experiences with people he said, “People are only interested in themselves.” Often, as I sat and listened attentively, he would say that he could not comprehend how I could listen to his “rhetoric”. My responses were to tell him that I wanted to listen to him, to everything he said, to his emotions, and even to his silences. I wanted to hear about his experiences. I wanted to be there with him and for him. In the following session, I encouraged John to tell me more about his term “rhetoric”. My phenomenological and historical enquiry guided him into a memory of being at the dinner table with his parents. John remembered that he had started to tell his parents about making a speech in his third-grade class that day.


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His father responded with, “That’s just a bunch of rhetoric”, and his mother remained silent. He was devastated by his father’s remarks as well as his mother’s non-involvement. John, like his mother, went silent; he had never spoken to anyone about this memory. When I responded compassionately, John spontaneously remembered another time; when driving to his grandparents’ house, he had started to tell his parents about a new friend he made that day in school. His father’s immediate response was “Friends don’t stay around, so don’t get too excited.” In both of these instances, John’s experiences of excitement and joy were dismissed. As he finished these two stories, I inquired about what he was feeling. He gave what I later discovered to be his typical answer, an “OK”. He said that his father’s remarks didn’t bother him. I told him that I was feeling sad for a little boy who compensated by saying it was “OK” when it was not. I reiterated that he had been excited about his third-grade speech and about finding a new friend. I expressed that I was excited for him as that little boy. After a few minutes of silence, John responded with the wish that his mother could have said those words to him. He said, “No one is ever there for me.” I again said that I was glad for him as a little boy who was excited about his speech and finding a new friend. I also told him that I was quite sad to hear that no one had been excited for him. In doing so, I identified the sadness about which John could not speak. Together, we acknowledged his sense that in these two instances no one was emotionally present for him and that he was deeply sad. In the last half of the session, I had him imagine giving his thirdgrade speech in front of the classroom. He described showing a picture of a bear to his class. He was again excited as he fantasized telling his fellow students about the way bears hibernate in the winter. This eight-year-old boy had interesting information about the habits of bears and he wanted to share it with the class. I also imagined being in his classroom, listening with interest to his presentation, much as a proud parent or good teacher might do. When he was finished, I voiced my excitement about his enthusiastic presentation. Although I could not satisfy his archaic needs to define himself, to make an impact on others, and to be acknowledged for his accomplishments, I did validate these as important relational-needs of the eight-year-old boy as well as the current needs of a mature man. He looked at me and smiled. His body

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posture relaxed as he sighed. Phenomenological enquiry, developmental attunement, and my emotional involvement were deepening our connection and providing an opportunity for him to talk about his memories, feelings, and physical sensations. I was forming an understanding of the meanings John made of these memories and how he unconsciously organized his life experiences. During the next few sessions, it became clear that John’s childhood experiences were organized around his beliefs about self: “No one is ever there for me”, “I have to do everything myself”, and “My feelings don’t matter”. His motto, which he manifested in his day-to-day activities, was “Work hard and don’t complain”. I realized that this motto was a derivation of his father’s “Keep a stiff upper lip and just do it”. Together, we continued to identify how active these three core beliefs were in determining his behaviours, both when he was alone and when he was with other people. In every situation he was convinced that he had to do things all by himself because no one would be there to help him; “People are only interested in themselves”. His orientation of self-in-relationship-with-others, which originated in his relationships with his parents, was being repeated with everyone in his adult life. I continually enquired about his life. Unemotionally, John talked about how his father never showed any interest in playing or talking with him. John had no siblings, and the only children he spent time with were those at school. He spent a lot of time on his swings or with his dog. He reported spending hours alone in the woods on the estate. When asked about each of these experiences, he could not identify any feelings. His affect was, at best, flat and often nonexistent. As he continued in therapy, John began to talk more frequently about his memories. He was able, through my phenomenological enquiry, to discover his feelings of sadness and loneliness. Several times he was surprised at the extent of his feelings and that he was telling me about how he managed his loneliness. As a child, he had never thought to go to his parents; he was certain that they would be neither emotionally present nor interested in him. He never got angry or complained. He repeatedly experienced that protest or complaints “only made matters worse”. He had no memories of his mother ever complaining about his father’s constant criticism of everyone or his lack of interest in either her or John. “She appeared sad a lot of the time”, but neither she nor his


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father talked about what she was feeling. On many occasions he saw his father “shut down when any feelings started to surface”, “Feelings were never talked about”. He learned early on that any sadness he expressed was identified as tiredness by his mother. Anger was not to be voiced. Loneliness was his secret! John recalled how, even with his former wife, he never talked about his loneliness. Several times I inquired about his experience in the marriage. He described how his wife was “only interested in herself” and repeated his belief, “my feelings don’t matter”. He later connected both of these script beliefs to his mother having told him that he was “a burden” when he was a young child. She never explained how he was a burden; that was left to his imagination. He fantasized that he had been too active and too emotional for her. He realized he had always expected that his wife would also say that he was too emotional for her, so he told her nothing of his feelings. As John’s therapy continued, I strove to establish an attuned and involved relationship that provided security for him to remember many never talked about childhood memories, to sense his physical tensions and related experiences, to identify relationalneeds, and express a whole range of feelings. I became the “one there” to counter his belief, “no one is ever there for me”. In order to facilitate John’s becoming conscious of his childhood experiences, he and I were engaged in a dialogue that gave validation of his feelings, reactions, and the coping skills he used as a child. As a preschool and school-age child he had neither the concepts, necessary language skills, nor parental encouragement to talk about his feelings. His mother and father did not engage him in dialogues wherein he could express himself. Because there was no relational language in the family, his emotional experiences were never acknowledged; they remained unconscious. Prior to psychotherapy, John’s explicit memories were few. His feelings, fantasies, bodily sensations, and significant experiences were not part of any conversation. In our psychotherapy sessions, I continually enquired about John’s bodily sensations and the extent of his beliefs about himself, others, and the quality of his life. I listened to the nuances of his sadness and comforted him with compassion and validation. I encouraged him to take deep breaths and to let out the sounds and tears of his sadness. He repeatedly

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cried about how “Life is lonely”. When he was angry, I maintained a space for him to talk about his anger and to seriously attend to how he both experienced it in his body and also attempted to “shut down” like his father. As John struggled to articulate the narrative of his life he had my constant attention; he was validated and accepted by me. We often focused on how John used his script beliefs as an organizing schema, both to create meaning and to reaffirm his childhood identity. We identified his repetitive behaviours, explored his fantasies, and clarified the function of his various script reinforcing experiences. As a result, John was increasingly able to own his feelings, identify his relational-needs, and express his own uniqueness. While spending many hours as a child without companionship, John fantasized himself doing things all alone but reaping appreciation from others for what he accomplished. In his play with toy soldiers, he imagined himself returning from war as a hero, greatly admired and cheered by all the people. As an adult, whenever he did something, he waited for the “cheers” that never came. A frequently recurring dream involved scenes of John walking with his father on one side of him and his mother on the other. They are all holding hands and listening to John as they walk together in the woods. The dream would abruptly end and he would be flooded with sadness. Each of these failed fantasies and interrupted dreams reinforced his script beliefs and childhood sense of being all alone. As we discussed his loneliness and his mother’s lack of emotional contact with him, John remembered a man who worked with his father. Ted had kind eyes and was interested in what John was doing. Ted would stop working and talk with John. Sometimes, Ted would share his lunch with John and entertain him with stories about being in the army during the war. Then, one day, John found out that Ted had been seriously injured on the job and that he would not be coming back to work. He never saw Ted again. In response to John’s missing Ted, his father gruffly told him that Ted was lazy and deserved to get hurt. John wept as he described how Ted would listen to him. He continued to weep while talking about the wooden gun that Ted had carved for him. In the next session, we explored how his earlier script conclusion made in reaction to his parents’ behaviour and lack of emotions had become reinforced when his friend Ted disappeared. That


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early childhood conclusion, “No one is EVER there for me”, was cemented into a formidable life script with this reinforcing experience. I challenged the “No one will EVER be there for me” with the question “Ever?” I then had him close his eyes, look at the image of Ted, and to talk to Ted about how he had been so significant in his life. After this emotion-filled experience, John was able to retain a memory of his connection with Ted. He later referred to his relationship with Ted, “At least someone was once there for me.” John’s life script was changing. One day he came into session and said that he had a new dream. He was in the woods near my office and this time he was with someone. They were talking and laughing together. He did not know who was in the dream, yet he knew he liked the person. I asked him what the dream meant to him, and he said, “Maybe this is what is in the future for me.” He smiled slightly and then gave a big, relaxing sigh. I asked, “What do you experience with that sigh?” “I went through a lot,” John answered. “Now I do not feel so crazy and so alone any more. My body is not as tense as it used to be.” He then went on to talk about his father and his wish that his father were still alive so that he could “now have a real relationship”. As John’s therapy continued, he developed a new sense of self. After two years, he was able to articulate the narrative of his life script. His script beliefs were no longer active; he changed many of his behaviours and he was expressive of his feelings. He understood and appreciated the coping, self-protective functions that his script beliefs once served him. John took the quality of our interpersonal therapeutic relationship as a model in forming meaningful work and social relationships. He began meeting regularly with his mother, and their new relationship became increasingly satisfying. He no longer felt driven to keep busy all the time to avoid his feelings. After a vacation, he reported that he thoroughly enjoyed relaxing and doing nothing. He said, “I no longer feel lonely.”

The theory into practice When under stress, or when current relational-needs are either not responded to or satisfied in adult life, explicit and/or implicit memory, physiological reactions, or explicit decisions may be

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stimulated. A person is then likely to engage in compensating behaviours and/or fantasies that, in turn, distract from the internal emotionally-laden experience by verifying script beliefs. These compensating behaviours and fantasies are referred to as the script displays. These script displays include any observable behaviours, such as choice of words, sentence patterns, tone of voice, displays of emotion, and/or gestures and body movements, that are the direct displays of the script beliefs and the repressed needs and feelings (an intrapsychic process). People usually act in a way defined by their script beliefs, such as John never asking friends for help, even in situations where it was needed, believing “I have to do everything myself”. As a result, his friends neither knew what he needed nor offered to help. The absence once again of his friends offering or providing help reinforced the script beliefs “I have to do everything myself”, and “People are only interested in themselves”. Script beliefs may also be displayed through the absence of situationally appropriate behaviour, such as the lack of eye contact or the socially typical expression of emotions in intimate interpersonal communications. John’s lack of eye contact in his earlier sessions and the absence of natural emotional expressions are two examples of how an internal script belief will be externally displayed. Both of these types of behaviours emanated from the script beliefs “No one is ever there for me”, and “My feelings don’t matter”. Each of these behaviours also serves to reinforce the script beliefs because they interrupted important interpersonal contact. Figure 13.2 is a diagram of the intrapsychic and behavioural dynamics of John’s script system. As part of the manifestation of the script, individuals may have physiological reactions in addition to, or in place of, the overt behaviours. Often, these internal experiences are not readily observable; nevertheless, the person can give a self-report on bodily sensations, such as fluttering in the stomach, muscle tension, headaches, colitis, or any of a myriad of somatic responses to the script beliefs. In John’s situation, his body tension was easily observable and reflected all three of his script beliefs. Careful attention to John’s body sensations, such as his erratic breathing and muscle tension, was essential in helping him experience the existence and depth of his affect.


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Figure 13.2. John’s script system.

The manifestation of the script also includes fantasies in which the individual imagines behaviours, either his/her own, or someone else’s. These fantasized interpersonal interactions and the quality of the outcome lends support to script beliefs. Fantasized behaviours function as effectively as overt behaviours (in some instances, even more effectively) in reinforcing the script beliefs and keeping the original needs and feelings out of awareness. At the beginning of his psychotherapy, John reported that he kept busy at work in order to avoid his “imaginations, bad thoughts and

304

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feelings”. With consistent phenomenological enquiry about the full nature of his imaginations and “bad thoughts”, it later became apparent that the content of his fantasy about his former wife and father actually functioned to confirm his beliefs “No one is ever there for me”, and “My feelings don’t matter”, and “People are only interested in themselves”. His fantasies were an elaboration of what he already believed. Fantasies act within the script system exactly as though they were events that had actually occurred. An understanding of how fantasy reinforces script beliefs is particularly useful to psychotherapists in organizing the psychotherapy for clients who engage in obsession, habitual worry, and fantasies of abandonment, persecution, or grandeur (Erskine, 2002). As we explored John’s childhood fantasies of being a hero and his current fantasies of being admired, the content of these fantasies did not directly reinforce his script beliefs. But, when he compared his wonderful fantasies with his actual reality, in which no one cheered or listened to him, the contrast provided evidence that “No one is ever there for me”. Any script manifestation can result in a reinforcing experience, a subsequent event that “proves” that the script belief is valid and, thus, justifies the behaviour. Reinforcing experiences are a collection of affectively-laden memories, either implicit or explicit, either real or imagined, of other people’s or one’s own behaviour, a recall of internal bodily experiences, or the retained remnants of fantasies or dreams. John clung to the memory of his mother’s silence and his father’s criticism of his school story as “a bunch of rhetoric”. He often recalled that event, both at work and during his therapy, when he was about to say something important. Retaining that selected memory and repeating it many times served to reinforce his script belief, “My feelings don’t matter”. John’s frequent memories of the loss of Ted and his father’s pessimistic comment “Friends don’t stay around” were often in John’s mind. These repeated memories served to continually reinforce his script belief “No one is there for me”. Because of the homeostatic self-stabilizing function of life scripts, reinforcing experiences serve as a feedback mechanism to further strengthen script beliefs and to prevent cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1958). Only those memories that support the script beliefs are readily accepted and retained. Memories that


305

negate the script beliefs tend to be rejected or forgotten because they would challenge the beliefs and the whole self-regulating, homeostatic process. The intrapsychic process of repressed needs and feelings is an unconscious accumulation of intense affects experienced over time when crucial physiological and relational-needs were repeatedly not satisfied. These feelings and needs are usually not conscious, because the memory is either implicit, traumatically dissociated, or reflects a repressed explicit experience. Also, the biological imperative of both physiological and relational-needs is not conscious, particularly in infants and young children. Often, clients in psychotherapy gain awareness of these needs and feelings in the secure, reliable, and respectful therapeutic relationship, where there is sufficient affective and rhythmic attunement accompanied by a non-judgemental phenomenological enquiry (Erskine, 1997b). John could speak of his loneliness early in therapy, but it was a long while before he could express the depth of his sadness or even talk about being angry at his parents’ refusal to talk about emotions as well as the absence of intimacy. He was eventually able to identify and articulate his needs in relationship with people. Five unrequited relational-needs were evident in John’s narrative: to be validated and acknowledged; to rely on someone; to have companionship; to define one’s self; to make an impact on others. Awareness of these crucial needs and feelings was no longer repressed by his script beliefs or distracted by his behaviours or fantasies. Script beliefs are a creative attempt to make sense of the experiential conclusions (usually non-conscious), explicit decisions, and coping reactions. Script beliefs serve to cognitively mediate against the awareness of the intense feelings that the person lived during script formation. This cognitive mediation distracts from an awareness of both current relational-needs and the developmentally crucial physiological and relational-needs. The intense affects and needs may remain as fixated, implicit memories until life-altering experiences or an effective therapeutic relationship facilitate integration. Prior to psychotherapy, John was perpetually immersed in his loneliness. The dream wherein he was walking with a friend near his therapist’s office demonstrates the life-altering effectiveness of an involved therapeutic relationship. John’s life script of loneliness was coming to an end.

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Each person’s set of script beliefs provides a subjective selfregulating mental framework for viewing self, others, and the quality of life. In order to engage in a manifestation of the script, individuals must discount other options; they frequently will maintain that their behaviour is the “natural” or “only” way they can respond. When used socially, script manifestations are likely to produce interpersonal experiences that, in turn, are governed by, and contribute to, the reinforcement of script beliefs. This cybernetic closed system provides a homeostasis, thus, each person’s script system is self-regulating and self-reinforcing through the operation of its four interrelated and interdependent subsystems: script beliefs; behavioural, fantasy, and physiological manifestations; reinforcing experiences; and repressed needs and feelings. The unconscious script system serves as a distraction against awareness of past experiences, relational-needs, and related emotions, while simultaneously being a repetition of the past. The script system represents the client’s unconscious organization of experience and provides a useful blueprint to help the psychotherapist and client understand how the script is lived out in current life. A cybernetic system such as the script system is made up of “a set of components or parts that interact to form an organized whole” (Piers, 2005, p. 230). Therefore, a change in one of the parts or subsystems will effect a dynamic change in the whole system. By therapeutically attending to physiological sensations and bodily experiences, behaviours, and the functions of behaviours, fantasies, and dreams, conscious and unconscious (implicit) memories, affects and relational-needs, and the client’s core beliefs about self, others, and the quality of life, the psychotherapist facilitates changes in the various subsystems that comprise the life script. Hence, the more areas attended to in the process of psychotherapy, the more likely we will facilitate a “script cure” (Erskine, 1997c).

References Bary, B., & Hufford, F. (1990). The six advantages to games and their use in treatment planning. Transactional Analysis Journal, 20: 214–220. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. New York: Grove Press.


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Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. New York: Grove Press. Berne, E. (1976). Transactional analysis: a new and effective method of group therapy. In: E. Berne (Ed.), Beyond Games and Scripts. New York: Grove Press. Erskine, R. G. (1981). Six reasons why people stay in script. Lecture, Professional Training Program, Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy, New York, April. Erskine, R. G. (1997a). Transactional analysis and family therapy. In: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 174–207). San Francisco: TA Press (originally published in: A. M. Horne & M. M. Ohlsen [Eds.], Family Counseling and Therapy [pp. 245–275]. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock, 1982). Erskine, R. G. (1997b). Inquiry, attunement and involvement in the psychotherapy of dissociation. R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 37–45). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Erskine, R. G. (1997c). Script cure: behavioral, intrapsychic, and physiological. In: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 151–155). San Francisco, CA: TA Press. Erskine, R. G. (2002). Bonding in relationship: a solution to violence. Transactional Analysis Journal, 32: 256–260. Erskine, R. G., & Moursund, J. P. (1988). Integrative Psychotherapy in Action. Newbury Park, CA: Sage [reprinted 1998, Gestalt Journal Press, Highland, NY]. Erskine, R. G., & Trautmann, R. L. (1997). The process of integrative psychotherapy. In: R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 79–95). San Francisco, CA: TA Press (originally published in B. B. Loria [Ed.], The Boardwalk Papers: Selections from the 1993 Eastern Regional Transactional Analysis Conference [pp. 1–26]. Madison, WI: Omnipress, 1993). Erskine, R. G., & Zalcman, M. J. (1997). The racket system: a model for racket analysis. In R. G. Erskine (Ed.), Theories and Methods of an Integrative Transactional Analysis: A Volume of Selected Articles (pp. 156–165). San Francisco, CA: TA Press.

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Erskine, R. G., Moursund, J. P., & Trautmann, R. L. (1999). Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-relationship. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel. Festinger, L. (1958). The motivating effect of cognitive dissonance. In: G. Lindzey (Ed.), Assessment of Human Motives. New York: Rinehart. Fosshage, J. L. (1992). Self-psychology: the self and its vicissitudes within a relational matrix. In: N. Skolnik & S. Warshaw (Eds.), Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis (pp. 21–42). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Moursund, J. P., & Erskine, R. G. (2004). Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole— Thomson Learning. Perls, F. S. (1944). Ego, Hunger and Aggression: A Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method. Durban, South Africa: Knox. Piers, C. (2005). The mind’s multiplicity and continuity. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15(2): 239–254.

INDEX

abuse, 39, 92, 214, 246, 276 substance, 130, 136, 144 Adler, A., 2, 151, 159–160, 167, 169, 173 Adolphs, R., 163, 173 Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), 41, 79–81 aggression, 46–47, 102–103, 120, 149, 156–157, 252 Ainsworth, M., 79, 96 Aitken, K., 78, 100 alcoholic(s), xv, xix, 130, 136, 206–209, 276 Allen, B. A., 6, 24, 33, 50, 73–74, 95–96, 155, 160–161, 163, 173–174 Allen, J. R., xviii, 6, 24, 33, 50, 73–74, 87–88, 95–96, 155, 160–161, 163–164, 172–174 Alon, N., 42, 50 Ambady, N., 158, 163, 177 American Psychiatric Association, 166, 174 Andrews, J., 3, 24 anger, 7–8, 15, 17–18, 20, 47, 143, 165, 204, 214, 222, 230, 251, 276–277, 284–285, 298–299, 300, 305 Ansbacher, H. L., 2, 24, 159–160, 173 Ansbacher, R. R., 2, 24, 159–160, 173 anxiety, 8, 11, 48, 60, 64, 88, 101, 104–105, 121, 183–184, 193–194, 209, 212, 219, 232–233, 244, 247–248, 251, 293 Aristotle, 30, 130, 209 Arlow, J., 3, 24 Aron, L., 73, 82, 91, 96, 116, 123, 263 attachment, 5, 11, 30, 35, 37, 41, 46, 48, 74, 78, 81, 84–85, 89–90, 158, 160, 165–166, 184, 201, 260, 273, 279, 291–292 insecure, 79–80 patterns, 79, 89, 123, 159, 240 secure, 74, 79–80, 90, 171 theory, 34, 76, 122, 259 attunement, xvii, xxi, 8, 19, 20, 22, 56, 63, 75, 79–83, 95, 122, 158, 232, 245, 298–299 see also: misattunement affective, xxi, 11, 16, 20, 305 rhythmic, 11, 16, 305 Atwood, G., 3, 28, 95, 99

autonomy, 30, 44, 73, 77, 79, 82, 95, 128, 133, 203, 205–206, 211, 213–214, 223, 252, 260, 272 Ayres, J., 153, 174 Balling, R., 197, 201 Barber, J. P., 41, 54 Barnes, G., 161, 174 Bary, B., 293, 306 Basch, M., 3, 24 Bateman, A. W., 56, 70, 87, 97 Bates, J. E., 161, 177 Baumgardner, P., 2, 27 Beach, S. R. H., 163, 175 Bechara, A., 163, 174 Beebe, B., 8, 13, 24, 246, 263 Beitman, B. D., 3, 24 Benjamin, J., 91, 96, 251, 261 Bennett, S., 160, 174 Berne, E., xiii–xv, xxi, 2, 5, 9, 15–16, 24, 29–35, 39–40, 42, 45, 50–51, 55, 57–58, 70–71, 73–74, 76–77, 82–83, 85–86, 89–91, 96–97, 107–110, 113, 116, 119, 123–124, 127–134, 136, 138–139, 149–150, 155, 157, 159, 166, 174, 179, 184–187, 189, 191–193, 201–206, 208–211, 213–215, 221–227, 229, 231, 233–234, 238–240, 242–243, 251, 253–255, 259–261, 263, 269–275, 280, 288, 291, 293, 306–307 Best, M., 159, 176 Binswanger, L., 241, 263 Bion, W., 194, 202 Blackstone, P., 270, 288 Blehar, M., 79, 96 Block, J., 22, 25 Bloom, S. L., 13, 25 Bollas, C., 107–108, 110–111, 118, 121–122, 124, 260, 264, 274, 288 Boss, M., 241, 264 Boston Change Process Study Group, 169, 177 Bowlby, J., 3, 25, 76, 96, 155, 174

309

310

INDEX

Bowman, P. T., 214–215 Boyd, H., 127–128, 131–133, 137–142, 149 Brandshaft, B., 95, 99 Branson, R., 186, 193, 202 Brazelton, T. B., 153, 174 Brenner, C., 16, 25 Briere, J., 84, 96 Bromberg, P., 73, 76, 85, 90, 96 Brooker, C., 244, 245, 264 Bruner, J., 31, 33, 37, 51 Bruschweiler-Stern, N., 63, 71, 73, 76, 84–85, 88–89, 94, 96, 99 Bucci, W., 4, 25, 109–114, 124, 155, 174, 255, 264

202, 240, 245, 255, 259, 264 countertransference, xvii, 40–41, 48, 64, 66, 68, 75, 88, 108, 110, 114, 116–117, 168, 188, 251, 276, 281–282, 286, 296 Cowles-Boyd, L., 127–128, 132, 137–142, 148–149 Cozolino, L., 12–13, 25, 73, 75–76, 78, 81, 97 Craig, I., 75, 96 Cramer, B. G., 153, 174 Critical Parent, 208, 210–213, 215 criticism, 9–10, 14–15, 17–20, 46, 165, 196, 208, 252, 277, 279, 298, 304 Crits-Christoph, P., 32, 39, 41, 52 Cunningham, V., 116, 125

Campbell, J., 221, 238 Capers, H., xiv care-giver(s), 37, 39, 77–79, 83–84, 87, 95, 153–157, 255–256, 272–273 care-taker(s), xvi, xx, 8, 219–220, 225, 227, 235 case histories/studies Alan, 142–149 Alex, 92–94 Anita, 180, 182–185, 187, 189–191, 194, 196–197, 199–201 Ann, 248–249, 251 Annette, 235–237 Chloe, 257–258 Duncan, 56–70 Elizabeth, 16–22 Elsa, 249, 251 Emily, 101–106, 109, 118–123 Gabriele, 45–49 John, 293–305 Katrina, 209–213 Lee, 91–92 Mary, 246, 249–250, 252 Mr A, 207–208 Mr G, 151, 164–173 Stan, 249, 252 Susan, 277–287 Caspi, A., 75, 96 Cassidy, J., 155, 177, 273 Chess, S., 107, 124 Clarkson, P., 197, 202, 260, 264 Cohn, F. G., 261 Cohn, H., 243, 245–247, 261, 264 Cole, M., 161, 178 Connell, D., 13, 27 constructivism, xiii, xv, 31–33, 50, 127–128, 224, 239–240 containment, 57–59, 64, 103, 117, 121, 159, 186, 194, 240, 243, 259–260, 282, 284 core conflictual relational theme (CCRT), 32, 39–40, 47 Coren, A., 188, 202 Cornell, W. F., xvii–xviii, 31, 34, 37, 51, 73–74, 76, 90, 97, 101, 106–108, 114–116, 118, 124, 155, 169, 170, 174–175, 184,

Damasio, A., 12, 25, 81, 87–88, 97, 159, 163, 170, 173–175 Damasio, H., 163, 173–174 Dashiell, S., 285, 288 depression, xviii, 8, 14, 16–19, 44–46, 66, 151, 164–168, 171–172, 204, 209, 214, 246, 277–279, 281, 284, 287 Descartes, R., 77, 86–88, 95 developmental research, xiii, xvii, 73, 77–78, 106–107, 115 Diego, M., 8, 13, 26 distress, 8, 11, 19, 67, 78, 83, 86, 88, 117, 209 Doan, R., 31–32, 51 Dodge, K. A., 161, 177 Dozier, M., 168, 175 Drego, P., 191, 202 Drye, R., 134–135, 137, 149–150 du Toit, P. L., 214–215 Dylan, B., 66, 71 Efran, J. S., 262, 264 Egeland, B., 80, 99 ego, xiv, 82, 86, 118, 128, 221, 259, 272, 275 state(s), xiv, xix–xx, 40, 74, 76–77, 84–86, 90, 92, 94, 128–129, 163–164, 172, 181, 195, 197–198, 205–206, 208, 214, 222, 242, 255, 271–275, 287 Adult, 65, 77–78, 81–84, 90–91, 95, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138–139, 142, 145–148, 170, 199, 205, 222, 272, 286 Child, 74, 76–77, 79, 82–83, 86, 93, 95, 101, 106, 128–131, 136, 139, 145, 148, 160, 166–167, 170–171, 188, 191, 199, 206, 208, 222, 271–272, 275, 282, 285–286 Parent, 74, 76–77, 79, 82–83, 86, 92, 94–95, 104, 128, 169, 191, 199, 206–208, 222, 271–272, 275, 285 Eid, M., 172, 175 Eigen, M., 63, 71 Elmendorf, D. M., 121, 125 English, F., xix, 5, 25, 31, 34, 51, 73, 97, 219, 222, 227, 231–232, 234, 238, 240, 259, 264, 270, 273, 276, 287–288

INDEX English, M., 217–218 episcript, xx, 226–229, 233, 259, 270, 273, 276, 287 see also: script Erickson, E. H., 220, 238 Ernst, F. H., 253, 255, 264 Erskine, R. G., 1–9, 10–11, 14–16, 21, 24–28, 33, 37, 39–40, 51, 67–68, 71, 73–74, 77, 86, 94, 97, 170, 175, 196, 202, 245–246, 255–257, 264–265, 270, 272, 275–276, 285, 288, 292–294, 304–308 Escalona, S. K., 153, 175 escape hatches, xviii, 127–134, 136–142, 144–146, 148–149 see also: homicide, psychosis, suicide etiquette, 192–195, 198 everyday life, xv–xvi, 1, 4, 15–16, 21, 110, 133 Fairbairn, W. R. D., 270, 288 fantasy, xx, 2–3, 6, 8, 11, 15, 21–22, 68, 89, 92–93, 105, 120, 122, 128, 134, 157, 161, 184, 188, 191, 199, 217, 229, 275–276, 284, 292, 294, 297, 299–300, 302–306 Federn, P., 128, 150 Fenton, B., 78, 98 Ferro, M., 32, 51 Festinger, L., 304, 308 Field, T., 8, 13, 26 Fincham, F. D., 163, 175 Fogel, A., 115, 119, 125 Fonagy, P., 74, 78–80, 82–84, 87, 89, 97–99, 159–160, 170, 175 Fosshage, J. L., 1, 4, 26, 292, 308 Freud, A., 152, 175 Freud, S., xv, xvii, xxi, 2, 15, 27, 60–62, 66–68, 71, 111, 151, 200, 217–218, 226, 229, 231, 242, 291 Friedman, M., 31, 51 Friedman, R. J., 169, 177 Gergely, G., 78, 80, 82–84, 97–98, 159–160, 170, 175 Gestalt, xiii–xv, 2, 169, 189, 255 Gianino, Jr, A. F., 13, 28 Gleick, J., 76–77, 98, 163, 175 Glover, E., 30, 51 Goldberg, S. T., 34, 51 Goldstein, W. N., 34, 51 Gomes, M., 260, 266 Goodman, P., xiv, xxi, 2, 11–12, 14, 28 Gottman, J., 163, 175 Goulding, M. M., 6, 27, 74, 98, 110, 113–114, 125, 134–139, 141–142, 145, 148–150, 169–170, 175–176, 222, 225, 238, 255–256, 265, 277, 289 Goulding, R. L., 6, 27, 74, 98, 110, 113–114, 125, 132–139, 141–142, 145, 148–150, 169–170, 175–176, 222, 225, 238, 255–256, 265, 277, 289 Green, A., 122, 125 Greenspan, S. I., xviii, 152, 155, 170, 176

311

Gregg, G. S., 43, 52 Grice, H. P., 41, 52, 79 grief, 17, 20, 22, 196, 251 Grunebaum, H. U., 13, 27 guilt, 5, 40, 46–47, 92–93, 210, 247, 277–278, 280 Guistolise, P. G., 21, 27, 169, 176 Haiberg, G., 129–130, 132, 138, 150 Haley, J., 168, 176 Hamburger, M., 261, 265 Hargaden, H., xvii, 33, 52, 59, 71, 74, 78, 97–98, 116, 125, 140, 150, 254, 265 Harrison, A., 63, 71, 73, 76, 94, 99 Hartman Halbertal, T., 43, 52 Hebb, D. O., 164, 176 Hefferline, R. F., xiv, xxi, 2, 11–12, 14, 28 Hegel, G., 241, 265 Heidegger, M., 241–242, 245–247, 252, 265 Hellinger, B., 270, 289 Hernandez-Reif, M., 8, 13, 26 Hesse, E., 41, 52, 79, 98, 166, 171, 177 Hibner, B. L., 161, 174 Higgitt, A., 80, 98 Hirsch, I., 116, 125 Hoffman, I., 57, 71 Holloway, W., 132–134, 136, 138, 150 Holmes, J., 85, 98, 159–160, 176, 259, 265 Homer, 229–231, 238 homicide, xviii, 127, 130, 133, 135–137, 144 Huang, J., 172, 177 Hufford, F., 293, 306 humiliation, 8, 60, 276 Husserl, E., 241–242, 265 Infant Strange Situation (ISS), 79 injunction(s), xix, 5–6, 74, 87–88, 90, 106, 131, 133, 141–142, 145, 191, 197, 208, 210, 212, 225, 227, 243, 256, 291 parental, 5–7, 110, 113, 133 intervention, 13, 38, 40, 64, 106, 108, 119–120, 123, 153–154, 225, 270, 291 introjection, xvi, 1, 4–6, 11, 14–16, 19, 66, 86, 110, 113, 170, 191, 199, 243, 256, 272, 275, 285, 287, 292 James, M., 285, 289 James, W., 95, 98 Johnson, S. M., 159, 176 Joines, V., 144, 150 Jones, W., 75, 98 Jurist, E. L., 78, 80, 82–84, 97, 159–160, 170, 175 Kandel, E. R., 31, 35, 52, 164, 176 Kanner, A., 260, 266 Kaplan, N., 155, 166, 171, 177, 273 Kearns, L., 160, 174 Kelly, G. A., 3, 27 Kernberg, O., 159, 176

312

INDEX

Keyes, M. F., 243, 265 Khan, M. N., 9, 27 Kierkegaard, S., 241, 247, 265 Kihlstrom, J. F., 4, 27 Klein, M., 194, 253, 265, 270, 275, 276, 289 Klein, P. S., 172, 177 Klin, A., 75, 98 Kobak, R. R., 168, 175 Kohlreiser, G., 196, 202 Kohut, H., 256, 266 Koren, I., 43, 52 Krausz, R. R., 161, 174, 197, 202 Kuhn, C., 8, 13, 26 Lachmann, F., 246, 263 Laing, R. D., 242, 266 Landaiche III, N. M., 37, 51, 76, 97, 101, 114, 116, 118, 124, 255, 259, 264 Langs, R., 16, 27 Laplanche, J., 122, 125, 275, 289 Larsen, R. J., 172, 175 Law, S., 241, 266 Leader, D., 65–66, 68, 71 LeDoux, J. E., 12, 27, 78, 81, 98, 176 Leone Guglielmotti, R., 37, 52 Lewin, K., 3, 27 Lewis, M. L., 214–215 Lieberman, M., 245, 267 life plan(s), 2–3, 30, 159–160, 162–163, 171–172, 184, 186, 189, 194, 201, 204, 223–224, 243 see also: script(s) unconscious, 2, 55, 74, 203, 221 Liotti, G., 36–38, 52 Little, R., 259, 266 Logan, R. L., 43, 52 Loria, B., 31, 52, 74, 98 Lourie, J., 9–10, 27 Luborsky, L., 32, 39, 41, 52 Lukens, M. D., 262, 264 Lukens, R. J., 262, 264 Luks, A., 170, 177 Lyons-Ruth, K., 13, 27, 63, 71, 73, 76, 84–85, 88–89, 94, 96, 98–99, 114, 125, 169, 177 MacQuarrie, J., 247, 266 Main, M., 155, 166, 171, 177, 273 Malan, D., 244, 266 Mandal, M. K., 158, 163, 177 Mandler, J., 31, 52 Manji, H. K., 172, 177 Mann, D., 116, 125 Matze, M., 90, 98 May, R., 242, 266 McAdams, D. P., 43, 52, 214–215 McCormick, P., 169, 176 McDougall, J., 85, 99 McFadyen-Ketchum, S. A., 161, 177 McFarlane, A. C., 246, 254, 267 McLaughlin, J. M., 107, 116, 122, 125 McLean, K. C., 37, 52

McLeod, J., 31–32, 53 McNeel, J., 257, 266, 285, 289 Medina-Mora, M. E., 270, 289 Meier, C. A., 57, 71 melancholia, xvii, 60–61, 66, 68–69 Mellor, K., 137, 145, 150, 256, 266 memory, 4–6, 11, 19, 22, 35–36, 38–39, 55, 65, 68–69, 93, 114–115, 123, 163, 165–166, 169, 286, 296–297, 301, 304–305 autobiographical, 33, 35–38, 81, 86 explicit, 4–5, 8, 15, 19, 33, 35–36, 38, 88, 115, 163, 172, 301 implicit, 4–5, 7, 11, 19, 33, 35–36, 38, 76, 114–115, 123, 158, 163, 172, 301 Menzies Lyth, I., 194, 197, 202 Merleau-Ponty, M., 241, 266 misattunement, 2, 8–13, 16, 21–23, 69, 169, 246 see also: attunement cumulative, 5, 7, 10, 16 Mitchell, S., 55, 62, 71, 76, 99, 107 Moffitt, T., 75, 96 Moiso, C., 161, 174, 270, 275, 289 Moody, R. A., 253, 266 Moran, G., 80, 98 Morgan, A., 63, 71, 73, 76, 84–85, 88–89, 94, 96, 99 motivator(s), xx, 30, 223, 231–233, 236 mourning, 61, 66, 68, 71, 277 Moursund, J. P., 3, 6, 9, 11, 15, 24, 26–27, 67, 71, 74, 94, 97, 196, 202, 246, 255, 264–265, 292–294, 307–308 Mukamal, K., 160, 178 mythology, xiii, 30, 55, 218, 229, 242 Nahum, J., 63, 71, 73, 76, 84–85, 88–89, 94, 96, 99 narcissism, 66, 79, 119, 159, 166, 169, 252, 279, 281 narrative see also: self approach, 32–33 coherent, 75, 79–80, 87, 90 incoherent, 79, 81, 84–86, 90 internal, 74–75, 79, 89, 95 process(es), 31, 74, 79, 82, 84, 90, 94 tragic, 42, 48 Natterson, J. M., 169, 177 neglect, xvi, xx, 2, 5, 8–13, 17–23, 84–85, 168–169, 240, 246, 296 neuroscience, xiii, xv, xvii–xviii, 68, 73, 78, 81, 87, 114, 172 Newton, T., 31, 53, 90, 99, 184, 201–202 Nix, R. L., 161, 177 Noriega, G., xx, 270, 274, 289 Novellino, M., 93, 99, 286, 289 Nuttall, J., 32, 53, 241, 266 object, 60–61, 66, 102, 155, 188, 199, 225, 241, 243, 294 relations, xv, 40, 68, 184, 242, 270, 275

INDEX objective/objectivity, 82, 95, 187, 205 Oedipus/oedipal ideas, 203, 217–218, 229 Ogden, T. H., 59, 71, 276, 282, 289 Omer, H., 42, 50 Padron, E., 80, 99 Paivio, A., 171, 177 Parry, A., 31, 53 Pasupathi, M., 37, 45, 53 Patten, A., 214–215 pattern(s) behaviour, 12, 79, 128, 271–272 emotional, 74, 160 habitual, xiii, 162, 182 relational, xvi, 1–3, 5, 10, 14–15, 22–23, 74–75, 85–86, 89, 243, 260, 262 script, 1, 5, 8–9, 74, 80, 87, 95, 144 Payne, P., 170, 177 Perelman, S., 108 Perls, F. S., xiii–xiv, xxi, 2, 11–12, 14, 27–28, 231, 293, 308 Perls, L., 14, 28 Perry, B. D., 246, 259, 266 personality disorder(s), 45, 56, 143–144 Petriglieri, G., 105, 125 Pettit, G. S., 161, 177 Pfefferbaum, B., 172, 174 phantasy, 188, 191, 199 Piaget, J., 22, 28, 165, 177 Pierini, A., 37, 53 Piers, C., 306, 308 Pinderhughes, E. E., 161, 177 Pontalis, J. B., 275, 289 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 86, 164 Pribram, K. H., 171, 177 projection, 86, 93, 105, 180, 186, 188, 235, 274–276, 281–282, 284 projective identification, xvii, xx, 56, 59, 69–70, 92, 274–276, 281–282, 285–288 protocol(s), xvi, xviii, 5, 16, 29–30, 34, 37, 76, 101, 118–123, 137, 155, 164, 170, 196, 199, 203, 210, 213, 221, 243, 255, 259 see also: script psychosis, xviii, 128, 130, 133, 136, 143–144 Raggatt, P. T. F., 43, 53 Ramos, L., 270, 289 regulation affect, 81, 84, 259, 273 co-, 153, 158, 166–167, 170–171 emotional/mood, xviii, 81, 156 self, xvi, 1–2, 5–6, 13, 16, 22, 86, 159, 292–293, 305–306 repression, 4, 13, 233, 276, 281, 292, 302, 305–306 Reynolds, J., 214–215 Riso, L. P., 214–215 Roisman, G. I., 80, 99 Roszak, T., 260, 266

313

Rubino, I. A., 34, 53 Rustin, S., 65, 71 Sander, L., 63, 71, 73, 76, 94, 99 Sartre, J.-P., 247, 266 Schafer, R., 31, 53 Schanberg, S., 8, 13, 26 Schein, E., 192, 202 Schloesser, R. J., 172, 177 Schmid, B., 181–182, 197, 202 Schore, A. N., 68, 71, 81, 83–84, 99, 152, 158–159, 177–178, 273, 276, 290 Schützemberger, A. A., 273, 290 Scilligo, P., 44, 53 script see also: episcript analysis, xvii, 29, 31, 55, 68, 70, 106, 144–146, 204–205, 212–213, 215, 224–226, 269 belief(s), xxi, 5, 7, 9–10, 12, 14, 19, 21–23, 88–89, 95, 120, 144, 276, 280, 282, 285, 287, 292, 294, 299–306 cure, 3–4, 6, 13–15, 17, 21, 23, 172, 306 decisions, 6–7, 40, 87–88, 109, 119, 135, 193, 199, 215 dynamics, xvii, 5–6, 12, 56 hamartic, 130–132, 137–139 matrix, xix, 205–207, 209, 214 negative, xviii, 128–129, 134, 141–142 protocol(s), xvi, 58, 108–109, 113, 115, 118–119, 123, 255 rigid, 84–85, 95 system, xx–xxi, 3, 6–7, 291–294, 302–304, 306 theory, xiii, xv, xvii, xix, 7, 31–33, 90, 95, 106–109, 166, 207, 254 tragic, xx, 59, 130–131, 136–138, 142, 209, 227, 233, 276 Sefness, W., 129–130, 132, 138, 150 Segal, H., 188, 196, 202 self see also: regulation concept, 213, 276 confirmation, 2–3 core, 170, 213 harm, 140, 143–144, 147–148, 262 narrative, xvii, 74–75, 77–92, 94–96 protection, xvi, 3, 7, 14, 22, 136, 276, 292, 301 reflection, 48, 159–160 subjective, 77, 79, 95 Seligman, M. E. P., 170, 172, 178 sexuality, 121–122, 211–212, 232, 245 shame, xx, 5, 8, 20, 67, 70, 84, 93, 101, 121, 201, 210, 270, 276–278, 280–287 Shanker, S. G., 152, 155, 176 Shmukler, D., 31, 51 Siegel, D. J., 31, 34–36, 38, 41, 48, 53, 73, 76–77, 79–84, 86, 93, 95, 99, 152, 159, 163–164, 171, 178, 219, 238 Sills, C., xx, 33, 52, 59, 71, 116, 125, 245, 251, 253–254, 262, 265–266

314

INDEX

Simon, R., 152, 170, 176 Siracusano, A., 34, 36, 53 Slap, J., 3, 28 Smith, L., 3, 28 Soloman, M. F., 159, 178 Spence, D. P., 31, 38, 53 Sroufe, L. A., 80, 99 Stanley, S. M., 163, 175 Stark, M., 82, 89, 99, 240, 266 Steele, H., 74, 79–80, 89, 97–99 Steele, M., 74, 79–80, 89, 97–99 Stein, D. J., 214–215 Stein, R., 122, 125 Steiner, C. M., xix, 5–6, 28, 73, 90, 99, 110, 125, 130–131, 133, 137, 150, 160, 166, 178, 205, 207, 215–216, 242, 245, 254, 266 Stern, D. B., 84, 99, 105, 116, 125 Stern, D. N., 31, 53, 63, 68, 71, 73, 76, 78, 94, 99, 115, 122, 155, 168, 178, 256, 266 Stern, S., 169, 178 Stewart, I., xviii, 140–142, 144, 146–147, 150 Stolorow, R., 3, 28, 95, 99 Stuntz, E. C., 5, 28 Stuthridge, J., xvii, 86, 99 Sugden, K., 75, 96 suicide, xv, xviii, 45, 57–58, 91–93, 113, 127, 130–138, 143–144, 165, 182, 204, 209, 228 Summers, G., 74, 90, 99, 198, 202, 240, 245, 267 Summerton, O., 193, 202 Swanson, C., 163, 175 Swanson, K., 163, 175 Target, M., 78, 80, 82–84, 97, 159–160, 170, 175 Tatkin, S., 159, 178 Tavistock Clinic, 197 Taylor, A., 75, 96 Thelen, E., 3, 28 Thomas, A., 107, 124 Thorne, A., 37, 52 Tosi, M. T., xvi–xvii, 29, 32, 37, 40, 54 Tranel, D., 163, 173 transactional analysis (TA), xiv, xvi, xviii, 2, 32–34, 37, 40, 56, 59, 73, 75–76, 83–84, 86, 89, 106–108, 111, 114, 123, 127–129, 131–132, 138–140, 145, 151, 160, 179, 181–182, 185, 188, 191, 194, 197–198, 201, 204–206, 213, 221–223, 226, 239–242, 247, 253, 255, 260, 270, 291 transference, xiv–xvii, xix–xx, 1, 15–16, 18, 21, 29–30, 32, 34, 40, 47–48, 57, 59–60, 74, 85, 89–90, 101, 108, 110, 114, 116, 127, 168, 179–180, 186–188, 204, 227–228, 251, 270, 273, 275, 282, 286, 288, 294 drama, xiv, xvii–xviii, 75, 127 psychodynamics, 274–276, 280, 286–287

reactions, 15, 18 relatedness, xvii, 56 relationship, 69, 94 transactions, 86, 89, 93, 273, 275, 282, 286 trauma, xv–xvii, xx, 4, 9–11, 13, 16, 38–39, 57–58, 67–69, 84–86, 203, 225, 227, 240, 246, 254, 256, 293, 305 acute, 2, 5, 9, 12 cumulative, 9–10, 19 Trautmann, R. L., 9–11, 15, 24, 28, 26, 33, 51, 67, 71, 94, 97, 196, 202, 246, 256–257, 265, 293–294, 307–308 Trevarthen, C., 78, 100 Tronick, E. Z., 8, 13, 28, 63, 71, 73, 76, 94, 99 Tucker, P., 172, 174 Tudor, K., 74, 90, 99, 198, 202, 240, 245, 267 Tulving, E., 37–38, 54 Tyrer, P., 56, 70 ulterior transaction(s), xx, 269, 271, 274, 276, 279–280, 286–288 Vaillant, G. E., 160, 178 Van der Kolk, B. A., 12, 28, 85, 100, 246, 254, 267 Van Deurzen, E., 245, 252, 267 van IJzendoorn, M., 74, 79–80, 100 Varela, F. J., 163, 178 Vickers, S., 84, 100 Villa, A. R., 270, 289 von Foerster, H., 163, 178 von Glasersfeld, E., 163, 178 Vygotskii, L. S., 161, 178 Wall, S., 79, 96 Waters, E., 79, 96 Watson, J., 78, 98 Weinberg, M. K., 8, 13, 28 Weisath, L., 246, 254, 267 Welch, C., 161, 174 Welch, S., 161, 174 White, M., 31, 54 Whittaker, C., 262 Whittaker, D., 245, 267 Widdowson, M., 251, 267 Wieder, S., 152, 170, 176 Williams, P., 58, 71 Winnicott, D., 85, 100, 107–108, 194, 202 Winterson, J., 81, 84, 100 Wiseman, H., 41, 54 Wood, J. D., 105, 125 Woolams, S. J., 5, 28 Woolf, V., 82, 100 Yalom, I. D., 251, 253–254, 267 Yando, R., 8, 13, 26 Young, J. E., 214–216 Zalcman, M., 3, 6, 26, 40, 51, 292, 307 Zoll, D., 13, 27

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