Stroke-Centered Transactional Analysis
Claude Steiner PhD TM
By the
time he finished Games People
Play, Eric Berne’s transactional analysis theory had almost ten years to
differentiate itself from psychoanalytic thinking and to mature in its own
right. In the Introduction to that book, Berne laid out his stroke theory and
made it clear that he considered strokes to be the fundamental motive for human
behavior and the reason why people play games. He wrote:
The individual for the rest of his life (after infancy) is confronted with a dilemma upon whose horns his destiny and survival are continually tossed. One horn is the social, psychological and biological forces which stand in the way of continued physical intimacy in the infant style and the other is his perpetual striving for its attainment. (p. 14)
The
following stroke-centered theory of transactional analysis is substantially
based on Berne’s theory of strokes.
Purpose
and Function of Transactional Analysis
The principal activity of a transactional analyst is the analysis of transactions for the purpose of contractually improving people’s lives.
The
analysis of the information contained in transactions makes it possible to
understand human behavior and experience. In addition, modification of human
interaction can beneficially modify human behavior and experience.
Strokes
People need strokes to survive physically and psychologically. Stroke hunger is a form of information hunger, which is a fundamental, constant, and pervasive drive in all living beings.
Strokes are transactional units of recognition. Wide ranging,
recent research has shown that strokes are required for actual survival in young
children and psychological survival and health in grown-ups.
Strokes
can be generally divided into positive and negative based on the subjective
experience of the recipient; positive strokes are pleasurable; negative strokes
are painful.
The Stroke Economy
Positive
strokes are in pervasive scarcity due
to a set of inhibiting social and internalized rules--the stroke economy-- that
prevent people from exchanging them freely.
The stroke economy is a set of rules that seeks to interfere with the
exchange of positive strokes; the asking, giving, and accepting strokes that are
wanted and rejecting those that are not wanted. People prefer positive strokes
but will seek and accept negative strokes when they are stroke hungry and
positive strokes are not available. The scarcity of strokes creates heightened
stroke hunger that stimulates stroke-seeking behavior.
Transactions
and Ego States
A
transaction is an exchange of information. Every stroke is a transaction.
However, a transaction can contain more information than a simple stroke does.
Transactions can be seen to emanate from separate, distinct, internally coherent
mental systems, each with its own specialized function. Berne detected three
such systems he called ego states and named them the Parent, the Adult, and the
Child. The three egos states are three separate manifestations of the ego as
defined by Freud. Each ego state is associated with separate, observable modes
of perception, emotion, and behavior. The ego sates are distinct enough that it
makes sense that they may have a biological basis in distinct neural networks in
the brain.
The
three ego states are the visible manifestations of neural expert networks
developed by evolution, each with a different function: The Adult is expert in
predicting events, the Child is expert in maintaining emotional motivation, and
the Parent is expert in developing value
judgments.
The
Adult is the rational, problem-solving ego state. It is devoid of powerful
emotions, which tend to disrupt understanding and logic. Of the three ego
states, it is the most likely to have a specific brain correlate: the neocortex,
which is the seat of imitation, language, and abstract thinking. Research that
the neocortex has and can develop connections with other brain systems and can
affect and modify them as well as be affected and modified by them.
The
Child is the emotional ego state. All the primary emotions and their
combinations—such emotions as anger, sadness, fear, and shame, on the one
hand, and love, joy, and hope, on the other—have their origins in the Child.
Research shows that the
emotional portions of the brain have the capacity to flood and disable the
neocortex with stimulation in what can be interpreted as an asymmetrical
relationship of dominance of Child over Adult or “contamination” of the
Adult by the Child.
The
Parent is the judging, tradition-based, prejudiced, regulatory ego state. The
separation of the Critical Parent from the Nurturing Parent is essential to the
effective application of transactional analysis. Of the three ego states, the
Parent is the most metaphorical in nature. It can be visualized as a microchip
implant with recorded external messages and has been referred to as a
“witch” or “ogre,” an “electrode,” and so on.
The
Nurturing Parent is as prejudiced as the Critical Parent except that instead of
judging the person not OK, it argues that the person is OK: smart, good, sane,
beautiful, healthy, and deserving and capable of succeeding and getting as many
strokes as he or she needs. The Nurturing Parent, although essentially
beneficial, can nevertheless overtake the personality and, by excluding the
Adult, damage the person’s capacity to deal rationally with reality.
Each
ego state represents an evolutionary achievement, and survival depends on the
independent function of the three ego states in coordination with each other.
The ego states seldom appear in their potentially pure form and are usually
contaminated or influenced by each other. The influence of the Child or the
Parent on the Adult is especially significant because effective Adult
functioning—detached from emotional, “irrational” influences and
prejudices—is essential to the contractual goals of transactional analysis.
Contaminations of the Adult are the metaphorical representations of neural
connections between the neocortex and more primitive areas of the brain caused
by repeated or dramatic events in the person’s life.
The
Critical Parent
Authoritarian
systems in place for millennia are highly dependent on the dominance of the
Critical Parent. Starting at the end of the second millennium AD, there has been
a global struggle to replace coercive, authoritarian methods with democracy,
equality, universal human rights, cooperation, and nonviolence in support of
every person’s goals. The premise of this movement, in transactional analysis
terms, is that every child is OK, that the Child’s
needs are legitimate, and that the most desirable and beneficial form of
interaction is a cooperative, nonviolent, nurturing relationship. This stands in
contradiction to the function and assumptions of the Critical Parent, whose
premise is that the Child is not OK (stupid, bad, crazy, ugly, sick, or doomed)
and that children require physically and emotionally violent power plays to be
educated, including, especially, the curtailment of strokes (hence the stroke
economy).
A
cultural sea change in this area requires that the functions regulating the
Child, heretofore exercised by the Critical Parent, should be performed by the
Adult and Nurturing Parent instead.
It also becomes clear that in the absence of a strong, functioning Adult, the
Critical Parent can convincingly argue that the unregulated Child could
potentially endanger the person. Therefore, the paradigm shift from control to
cooperation and non-violence depends on a culture wide increase of healthy and
strong Child, Adult and Nurturing Parent egos states, as Critical Parent
influences decrease.
It
is, therefore desirable, in an egalitarian, democratic, cooperative society, to
sharply limit the Critical Parent’s control of human affairs. On the other
hand, given the goals of transactional analysis—to improve people’s lives by
teaching them more effective ways of interacting—it is essential to strengthen
the Adult ego state. It is just as important, since the Adult’s interactions
are not the most powerful source of strokes, to strengthen the Nurturing Parent.
Power
Plays, Games, Roles and Scripts
Interaction
can be divided into competitive and cooperative.
Competitive, adversarial interaction is based on the assumption that it is acceptable to coerce others into giving up their rights and to undermine their power. Power plays are interactions to coerce others; competition is transacted through power plays while cooperation is free of power plays. Cooperative interaction is based on the assumption that everyone is OK and has equal rights and that it is not considered acceptable to coerce others at any level.
Games
are power plays for strokes; they are habitual, dysfunctional patterns of stroke
procurement that are usually learned in the family early in life and undermine
health and human potential.
Every
person who plays games has a favored set of games and resulting emotions to
which he or she is habituated. Every instance of games played, in addition to
procuring strokes, reinforces the life script. Scripts are overall life plans
that are acquired and sometimes consciously decided in early life. These
lifelong patterns are built on habitual games, and can be arrested and
eventually, redecided.
People
play games by taking on roles in the game. Three roles—the Persecutor, the
Rescuer, and the Victim—appear in all games. Anyone who plays one of the roles
will eventually play the other two. Since the particular manner in which any one
person performs these three roles are the daily building blocks of the script,
giving up these roles will also facilitate the abandonment of the script.
The
Practice of Transactional Analysis
Transactional
analysis was designed for, and is ideally practiced, in groups. The role of the
transactional analysis practitioner is defined by a contract arrived at
consensually between the client and the therapist, teacher, or consultant.
The
basic existential position of “I’m OK, You’re OK” reflects the belief
that people are born with an inherent tendency for health and healing.
Nature’s helping hand, “Vis Medicatrix Nature” (the tendency to
heal), is the transactional analyst’s principal ally. To facilitate nature’s
helping hand by encouraging beneficial behavior and discouraging toxic behavior
are the transactional analyst’s principal tasks.
The
three operations of the process of transactional analysis are permission,
protection, and potency: permission to change unwanted behaviors, protection
from the Critical Parent and other influences that will resist or counteract the
desired changes, and the transactional analyst’s potency in the form of
information, skills, and personal support and investment in the process.
Avoiding the three basic game roles (Rescuer, Persecutor, and Victim) by learning how to obtain strokes directly is the fundamental lesson taught by the transactional analyst. A potent transactional analyst will also bring all additional available science and proven, practice-based information to the completion of the contractual relationship with the patient or client.
What
it means to be a transactional analyst.
In
his last book, What do you say
After you say Hello (1972) upon which he made his last corrections on his
death bed, Eric Berne states:
Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality and a clinical method f psychotherapy based on the analysis of all the possible transactions between two or more people on the basis of specifically defined ego states…Any system or approach which is not based on the rigorous analysis of single transactions into their component specific ego states is not transactional analysis. (pg 20)
To this I would add that since transactional analysis is a contractual process in which a promise is made and performance is expected, it requires difficult, hard, and at times exhausting action. It is difficult to run groups. It is difficult to establish and assiduously pursue contracts. It is difficult to offer creative suggestions or to make contract-driven demands. It is difficult to stay current on the research literature and to acquire regular supervision.
Regarding
psychotherapy in general, it is my view that successful therapy requires more than
individual, one-on-one work and that an effective therapist cannot remain
passive or rely on attunement, kindness, and intuitive analysis alone. He or she
must remain actively engaged with the client in pursuing a clear contractual
goal and using the group environment
to further that process.
Clearly,
it is incumbent on any health professional, regardless of training background,
to practice empathy, attunement, and kindness while avoiding codependency or
Rescuing. A competent mental health or education professional should stay in
touch with well-researched and validated areas of knowledge, such as substance
use and abuse, diet, exercise, sexual and emotional trauma, spirituality,
cognitive-behavioral techniques, attachment theories and research, and death and
dying, to name a few. Finally, she or he should seek supervision and/or therapy
when needed, and pursue a healthy life style.
In
addition to these basic requirements for any modern professional, it behooves
the transactional analyst to make contracts, analyze transactions and stroking
patterns, practice group psychotherapy, tender permissions and deliver
protection for those permissions, and maintain focused attention on a
satisfactory completion of the contract or “cure.” This is the art,
knowledge and pragmatic skill that
transactional analysis brings to the behavioral sciences.
REFERENCES
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. New York Grove Press.