Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (9-->18) - Chapter Two

Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (9-->18) - Chapter Two

I will now discuss pages 9-18 which deals with the structure of the personality.

The Structure

In the first example, Dr. Berne discusses a brief interaction between a psychiatrist and a patient, Mrs Primus. Dr. Berne has a knack for translating what seems to be chaotic behavior into understandable terms. She would look at the doctor then look away and begin to laugh, look back at the doctor then look away and laugh again. She did this multiple times until "rather suddenly she stopped tittering, sat up straight in her chair, pulled down her skirt, and turned her head to the right" (9).

The psychiatrist then asked if she was hearing voices and Mrs. Primus nodded. To me it seems as if the psychiatrist allowed the patient to "be herself" for a time. At just the right moment, after he recognized that the Adult (or neopsyche) had gained control, the doctor could then begin to find out some truthful information. After asking a series of pertinent questions to her Adult ego state, he was able to formulate the diagnosis of acute schizophrenia.

With no more questions to ask for the time being, she then lapsed back into her former state. Dr. Berne characterizes her former state as a "cycle of flirtatious tittering, stealthy appraisal, and prim attention to her hallucinations" (9). The doctor then interrupted her to ask about the voices.

He found out that the voices were coming from a man who was calling her bad names. Mrs. Primus descried her father as a loving, caring, well-liked man in the community, but then she remembered that he drank heavily and when he was drunk he used bad language. Some of the words he used, she was hearing in her hallucinations.

In this example alone we can discern three separate types of ego states, two of which belong to the Child category (or the archaeopsyche) and one of which belongs to the Adult category (or the neopsyche).

The natural child was the one tittering.
The adapted child was the one making 'stealthy appraisals.'
The Adult was the one answering questions.

                                                                         ~-~-~-~-~

What strikes me to be the most interesting about this is its correlation with the Internal Family Systems Model. IFS, for short, describes three types of personality parts: Managers, Exiles, and Firefighters.

Are these compatible with Adult, Child and Parent (respectively)?

The main difference between these two schemata is that in IFS there are hundreds, possibly thousands of different personality parts, while in Transactional Analysis there seems to be essentially three. Of course Dr. Berne talks about ego states and he even mentions in Games People Play that Adult could refer to a group of ego states.

Furthermore, there are subdivisions within each classification of Adult, Child, and Parent. We see here the division of the Child into adapted and natural.

Berne later subdivides the Child into The Electrode, The Professor, and The Demon. (The "adapted child and natural child" division is along the vertical axis in the diagram while the latter divisions are along the horizontal axes.)

Since I respect both schemata, IFS and Transactional Analysis, what I'm wondering is: how are they compatible?

The IFS model breaks down Exiles into parts such as the Shamed Child, Lonely Child, Playful Child, Terrified Child and so forth...

Would there be the adapted Shamed Child as well as the natural Shamed Child or would the Shamed Child be strictly natural or adapted?

My hypothesis, as of now, is that the IFS model fits into the Transactional Analysis model simply because there are less divisions within Transactional Analysis.

For all I know, each ego state represents a part of the personality and is related to every other ego state in a highly complex variety of ways.

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Dr. Berne uses the example of Mr. Segundo to highlight the presence of a 3rd category, the Parent. Mr Segundo, a practicing lawyer, often referred to himself as "a little boy" and was confused about why he could successfully handle cases within his law practice but then on the weekends he would go off into the woods with guns, porn, whiskey and so on and enact all his childhood fantasies.

This dichotomy between successful lawyer and little boy highlights the difference between his Adult and Child parts, but there were still parts of him that were unaccounted for.

Why did he fantasize about giving all his money away?
Why did he actually "donate large sums to charity with the same sentimental benevolence as his father"? (15)
Why did he have vindictive feelings toward his beneficiaries after he donated money to them?

The only explanation seems to be that his father was philanthropic and this "rubbed off" on Mr. Segundo.

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A question I have is: Can feelings of benevolence come from the natural child as well? Must all behavior be "programmed" from other people or are there certain behaviors and emotions that spring naturally from the person? Do these behaviors always come from the natural Child?

People are endowed with the capacity of imagination. Therefore, they should sometimes be able to creatively come up with their own behaviors.

I think the key point to understand is that some behaviors and feelings come directly from the imitation of actual parents. How these behaviors are translated into a Parent ego state, I'm still not quite sure. Why aren't they simply adopted into the adapted child ego state?

I will use an example to highlight what I'm trying to say. A typical Firefighter in the IFS model is the "People Pleaser." When a person feels threatened in relationship to another person, they may have a stereotypical response which involves being "polite" and "friendly" where the correct response would be gentle but firm self-assertion.

To me the "People Pleaser" part seems more like the adapted Child part, but in reality, this part is trying to protect the Child from experiencing fear, shame, guilt and other emotions. It is a Parent part because of the fact that "people pleasing" is a learned behavior.

It is important to differentiate when a person is under their Parental influence or they are actually behaving as their Parent ego state.

What is the difference between adapted Child behavior and Parent behavior?

To me they seem similar but the next example may highlight the difference.

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Mr. Troy is a "compensated schizophrenic." He is the embodiment of the Parent ego state. He rarely lets his Adult or Child "out."

At anyone's display of "naivete, charm, boisterousness or trifling" (all child-like qualities), he would be likely to have "an outburst of scorn, rebuke, or chastisement" (16). He showed the same censure toward his Child aspects as well.

As with many of the examples that Berne gives, the insight he gets seems to come from the exceptions.

Due to the specific nature of what Mr. Troy approved of (and disapproved of), it could be surmised that these beliefs came from some place specific. As opposed to being logical beliefs based on reason and reality, they were the beliefs "carried down" from his father. In the words of Dr. Berne, "This fixated Parent [ego state] allowed no leeway for either Adult or Child activities except in the spheres where his father had been skillful or self-indulgent" (16).

                                                                        ~-~-~-~-~

The beliefs were "borrowed" from his father through a process of imitation. This brings up the question: Why do people believe what they do?

That question probably has many answers. Believing in something only because one's parents believed in it may not appear, at first glance, to be a good reason to keep that belief. However, a child is vulnerable and does not have the capacity to think as an adult does; therefore, believing in what one's parents believed in may be a healthy adaptive device necessary to "make it" through childhood.

After a time though, it seems necessary that the Adult ego state(s) take control of the predominant belief system so that the functioning of the person is neither sabotaged by false hopes (from the Child) nor corrupted by extreme dogmatism (from the Parent).

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The most interesting thing about the structure of the personality is the stereotypes associated with Parent, Adult, and Child.

"Some professionals earn a living by the public exhibition of a constant ego state: clergymen, the Parent; diagnosticians, the Adult; and clowns, the Child" (17).

This analogy seems to be applicable to many different activities. I am working on a blog right now.

As an Adult I am: collecting data, analyzing it, comparing it to data I have already collected, determining what is useful, discarding information that may distract me from my central purpose.

As a Child I am: marveling at the brilliance and connectedness of all this wide variety of information, feeling hopeless (and hopeful) that I'll ever come close to achieving my overarching goal of Transactional Analysis mastery, feeling happy that I'm getting to express myself in a way that is coherent and allows for some creativeness and grace.

As a Parent I am: watching for opportunities to criticize seemingly bogus sounding ideas, hoping that my Child fails so I can prove that "Nobody (not even myself) does what I want them to" (Thesis of "I'm Only Trying to Help You" from Games People Play)


As a result of analyzing these examples, it is hard to deny that the personality is made up of "parts:"

Parent (exteropsychic)
Adult (neopsychic)
Child (archaeopsychic)

These parts relate to each other sort of as people would. It is like a society within the mind. Each part has a specialized function. Every part can communicate with every other part except when there is a blockage or confusion of some sort.

In Psychoanalysis, these "blockages" and confusions were called neuroses, psychoses, character disorders, repressions etc... Dr. Berne still mentions these names, but when he does, he usually puts quotes around them. These quotes symbolize (to me) that the terms being used do not quite capture the truth of what is happening. I don't know much about psychoanalysis, but perhaps it is because there is a difference between Berne's conception of "neurosis," for example, and Freud's. (These will be discussed further in the section on pathology)