Download - Structural Analysis - Transactional Analysis

The ego state model

The process of analysing

personality in terms of ego

states is called structural

analysis.

Definition

Think back over the past 24 hours of your life.

• Were there moments during that time when you

acted, thought and felt just as you did when you

were a child?

• Were there other times when you found yourself

behaving, thinking and feeling in ways you copied

long ago from you parents or from other people

who were parent figures for you?

• And were there still other occasions when your

behavior, thoughts and feelings wee simply a

direct here and now response to what was

happening around you at that moment?

• Take time to write down one example of each of

these three situations.

Activity

Eric Berne defined an ego

state as a consistent pattern

of feeling and experience

directly related to a

corresponding consistent

pattern of behaviour.

Ego states

Berne was exact in his choice of words. It is worth while taking some time now

to clear what he was conveying in this definition.

• Berne is saying that each ego state is defined by a combination of

feeling and experience which consistently occur together.

• Berne is suggesting that the behaviour typical of each ego state is

consistently shown together.

• Berne is saying that when I am in touch with the feeling and

experience defining a particular ego state, I will also be showing the

behaviours which define that same ego state.

The whole point of the ego state model is that it allows us to make reliable

connections of this kind between behaviour, experience and feelings.

Definition in detail

• Ego states are each defined in terms of

observable behavioural clues. By contrast,

super ego, ego and Id are purely theoretical

concepts.

• The ego states related to persons with

special identities while Freud's three

psychic agencies are generalized.

• Freud’s model and the ego state model are

not one and the same thing. Neither do

they contradict each other. They are simply

different ways of portraying personality.

Difference between Ego states and super ego, ego and ID

• Ego state is not a thing.

• It is a name, which we use to

describe a set of related feelings,

thoughts and behaviour.

• In the same way, parent, adult and

child are not things, They are names.

• People talk about ego states as if

they were things we have.

Ego states are names, not things

• Oversimplified model states that when I am thinking, I am in

adult. When I am feeling, I am in child. When I am making value

judgements, I am in parent.

• The oversimplified model completely omits to mention that I can

think and feel and make value judgements from any of my ego

states.

• An even more serious fault of the over simplified model is that it

says nothing about the time dimension of ego states. Berne

emphasised that parent and child are echoes of past. Only when I

am in my adult am I responding to situations with all my present

resources as a grown up.

The over simplified model

Structure – What – Content

Function – How – Process

• Think back through the past 24 hours.

• Make a note of an instance when you were in

controlling parent.


nurturing parent.


adult.


adapted child.


free child.

Activity

ego gram is an intuitive way of showing the functional ego state parts in our personality.

• Draw you ego gram.

• Is there anything you want to change

about your ego gram.

• If there is , decide which bar you need

to raise to achieve this change.

• List at least five new behaviour which

you can practice to increase this ego

state.

• Draw you ideal ego gram.

Activity

• Parent in parent (P3) – Parent in parent is a store house of

messages which may be passed down through generations.

• Adult in the parent (A3) – Adult in parent is the collection of

statements about reality which a person has heard from the

figures in her parent and has copied from them. Many of these

statements will be true in objective fact.

• Child in the parent (C3) – When I introject the child ego state

of my parents into my own parent, I include my perception of

their child as a part of the introject.

Second order structure - Parent

• Parent in child (P1) – It is in a magical form that younger children store away their own version of messages from their parents. P1 is given many scary nicknames by TA writers like witch parent, the Ogre and the pig parent. The parent in the child is also associated with the fairly god mother, the good fairy and Santa Claus. For this reason, we prefer the term Magical parent for P1. Berne called P1 the electrode.

• Adult in child /Little professor (A1) –As a young child, I was certainly interested in checking out the world around me. But instead of being logical, I relied more on intuition, instant impression.

• Child in the child (C1) – Very young children experience the world mainly in terms of body sensations. Those will form the bulk of memories stored in the child in the child. It is like the Russian doll which has many dolls inside.

Second order structure- Child

• The functional model classifies observed behaviours, while the

structural model classifies stored memories and strategies.

• In analysing ego states, structural refers to the component

parts of the personality while functional refers to the way in

which the personality is functioning at a given point of time.

• Interpersonal aspects of TA work require the functional model

and intrapsychic matters need to be studied in terms of the

structural model.

• When you look at me and listen to me, you can observe

function. But you can only infer structure.

Distinguishing structure from function

• Behavioural diagnosis - In behavioural diagnosis, you judge which ego

state a person is in by observing his behaviour. As you do so, you can see

or hear : words, tones, gestures, postures, facial expressions.

• Social diagnosis - The idea behind social diagnosis is that other people

will often relate to me from an ego state that complements the one I am

using.

• Historical diagnosis - In historical diagnosis, we ask questions about how

the person was as a child, we ask about the person’s parents and parent

figures.

• Phenomenological diagnosis - Phenomenological validation only occurs,

If the individual can re-experience the whole ego state in full intensity

with little weathering

Recognizing ego states

• When an ego state is dictating a person’s behaviour, that ego state is said

to have executive power. When a person experiences himself to be in a

particular ego state, we say he is experiencing that ego state as his real

self.

• A person’s most obvious behavioural signals will indicate the ego states

that have executive power. But at the same time, he will exhibit other

and more subtle signals which do not match those of the executive ego

state. In technical language, we say then that his behaviour shows

incongruity.

• Recognizing incongruity is one of the most important skills you can

develop as a user of TA.

Other concepts

• Eric Berne developed a theoretical explanation of what happens when

we shift executive power and our sense of real self between one ego

state and another.

• He suggested that energy exists in three forms : Bound, unbound and

free. Cathexis is psychic energy.

• When the monkey is sitting on a high branch, it posses potential energy

which is analogous to bound cathexis.

• If the monkey then does fall off the branch, the potential energy is

released as kinetic energy which Illustrates the unbound cathexis.

• Rather than falling off the branch, the monkey can exercise the choice to

jump to the ground. Berne suggests that this voluntary uses of energy is

analogous to free cathexis.

Berne’s energy theory

Structural pathology

I am in parent contamination when I

mistake parental slogans for adult reality.

These are taught beliefs that are taken as

facts. Berne call this prejudice. When a

person is speaking about herself and say

you instead of I, it is likely that the

content of what follows will be parent

contaminated.

• The world is a bad place.

• People cant be trusted.

• If at first you don’t succeed, try,

try, try again.

Parent Contamination

• Take two minutes to write down all the

slogans and beliefs you remember hearing

from your parents and parental figures.

• Look through you list of parental slogans

and beliefs. Check whether each one is a

statement of reality or a parent

contamination.

• If you decide there are any you want to

update to fit with grown up reality, strike

them out and substitute your new version.

Activity

When I am child contaminated, I cloud my

grown up thinking with beliefs from my

childhood. These are fantasies, evoked by

feelings, that are taken as facts. Berne used the

word delusion to describe the kind of belief

that typically arise from child contamination.

When the content of a child contamination

comes from earlier childhood, the delusion is

likely to be more bizarre.

• People just don’t like me.

• There is something wrong with me.

• I cant stop smoking.

• I was born fat.

Child Contamination

• Take a piece of paper and head it : “ I am the

sort of person who….”

• Take two minutes to write down all the ways

you think of to finish the sentence.

• At the end of two minutes, relax, breathe and

look around the room for a while.

• For each of the ways you finished the

sentence, check whether it is a statement

about reality or a child contamination.

• If you decide any of the statement about

yourself do come from child contamination,

think what the reality of the matter is. Strike

out the child contamination words and put in

the adult updates.

Activity

It occurs when the person replays a

parental slogan, agrees to it with a child

belief, and mistakes both of these for

reality.

• People cant be trusted paired

with

• I can never trust anyone.

• Children should be seen and

not heart paired with

• To get by in the world, I have to

keep quit.

Double Contamination

Exclusion

• Sometimes, Berne suggested, a person will shut out one or more of her

ego states. He called this exclusion.

• Excluded parent – People who have excluded parents will operate with

no ready made rules about the world. Instead, they made their own rules

afresh in every situation.( Politicians, mafia bosses)

• Excluded adult – If I exclude adult, I switch of my grown up power of

reality testing. Instead, I hear only an internal parent child dialogue.

(Diagnosed psychotic)

• Excluded child – Someone who excludes child will shut out the stored

memories of his own childhood. When we express feelings as grownups,

we are often in our child ego state. Therefore the person with excluded

child will often be regarded as cold fish or all head.

Exclusion

Constant

P

A

C

P

A

C

P

A

C

• If two out of the three ego states are excluded, the one operational ego

state is labelled constant or excluding.

• Constant parent – A person with constant parent will deal with the world

solely by accessing set of parental rules.

• Constant Adult – He is unable to join in the fun. Instead the functions

almost solely as a planner, information collector and data processor.

• Constant child – He will at all time behave, think and feel as though they

were still in childhood. Meeting a problem, this person’s strategy will be

to escalate feelings.

• Exclusion is never total. Instead, it is specific to particular situation.

Constant

Thank You Prepared by

Manu Melwin JoyResearch Scholar

SMS, CUSAT, KeralaPhone – 9744551114

Mail – [email protected]