#transactional analysis

Shortly I'll quote Berne at some length, for clarity's sake. But to start with I'll wildly oversimplify an entire therapeutic genre by saying that transactional analysis broadly rests on two concepts.

The first is that most human minds include or contain, in their daily process,  three sets of roles or paradigms, or as TA people call them, "ego states": Parent, Child and Adult. (The personal sense of "I" slides among these states as events require. This usually-transparent-or-invisible movement between states is what psych people refer to as "cathexis", and is the reason why some people’s behavior can change so profoundly from day to day or even minute to minute... as one’s ego states are not always on the same page, to put it mildly.)

The second concept is that most human beings have incorporated experiences from their early childhood into what transactional analysts refer to as "life scripts", and they spend much of their lives living these scripts or attempting to escape from them...with wildly varying amounts of success. (They do always have spell-breakers built in... but you have to find them, and then, as in all those damn jokes, be willing to change.) These life scripts often contain significant numbers of tropes from fairy tales—so a working knowledge of such semi-archetypal material is really useful for the therapist.

...So. Let's move to what Berne has to say about the three-kinds-of-therapy situation. He’s talking here about what makes a client choose a specific kind of therapist/therapy.

To the patient’s Child [Berne here means their Child ego state] the therapist is a magician of sorts. He is likely to choose the same kind of magical figure he knew in childhood. In some families the revered figure is a medical man; in others, a clergyman. Some doctors and clergymen are serious figures out of tragedy, like [the ancient Greek prophet] Teiresias, who will tell them the bad news and perhaps give them a cantrap, amulet, or draught for salvation. Others are jolly green giants who protect children from harm by comforting them and reassuring them, and flexing their giant muscles. When Jeder [Berne’s typical term for “Everyman”, i.e. the patient] grows up, he will usually look for help from a similar person. If his experience was unhappy, however, he may rebel and find some other kind of magic.

...Roughly speaking, the patient can choose between three kinds of magic in selecting a therapist, and he can choose each one for success or for failure. He can also play one against the other if his script requires that. These types are known as “science”, “chicken soup”, and “religion.” [In later writings Berne tends to swap the broader term “magic” into position three, and that’s how I use it.] Any professional can offer all three, but typically a certain type of psychologist offers “modern science”, a certain type of psychiatric social worker offers “chicken soup”, and a certain type of pastoral counselor offers “religion”. A well-trained therapist in each of these professions is prepared to offer any of them if occasion demands, and some offer two in combination.

...The practical difference between “science”, “magic” and “chicken soup” on one hand, and a scientific, a religious/mystical, and a supportive approach to therapy is in knowing when to stop. The therapists who use [only] the first three do not know when to stop, because each one’s brand of magic is part of his own script; while those using the second three do know when to stop, because they [have enough separation between their own scripting and their work in therapeutic intervention to] know what they’re doing.”

...Deep breath here, as Berne takes some getting used to if his style is new to you.

Now, psychological/psychiatric practice has during this century moved into spaces that Berne couldn’t have predicted. But I think it’d be safe to say that the “[modern] science” approach to therapy now includes all the hottest new drugs, and a certain routine dissing of what are in some areas these days scornfully referred to as “the talking therapies”: or else quite hard-edged stuff (neo- or not-very-neo-Freudian, and again fairly rule-driven, authoritarian and paternalistic). The “chicken soup” approach (besides including whole lines of books with those very words in their titles...) tends to involve broadly supportive and generally non-threatening interventional strategies that may be of great use or none, depending on what the client needs. The “Magic” tent tends to contain overtly  magical-looking/seeming and/or emotion-discharging strategies like rebirthing, hypnotic (and/or past-life) “regression”, mindfulness, some kinds of Gestalt, communal crying, directed ASMR, etc etc.

Probably we could do a sort of parlor game where we sit around naming therapeutic styles or strategies and sorting them into one (or sometimes more than one) of the three categories. ...I mean, we could if we didn’t have, you know, lives. :) But if you assume the Science schools of therapy are hard-edged, rules-bound, and relatively rigid: the Magic ones are voyage-through-shadow-into-light-adjacent, often with a Hero’s Journey feel to them, and rather countercultural: and the Chicken Soup ones are huggy, cuddly, and generally non-scary: then you can’t go far wrong in the classification game.

The point here is to determine which of these approaches works best, resonates best -- for you or for someone else -- and go on from there. (My preferred blend, as if anyone couldn’t guess, is Magic with a double shot of Science, as it mentions over here. But I veer into Chicken Soup as required.)

Had to struggle to hold it together, and let the Adult take reins on the discussion. But the desire to react to it as a Child is strong, and the dissonance has been wreaking havoc, making me think constantly about flesh destroying injuries and whatnot. 

I mean, on the one hand the Child is yearning to go explain itself, yearning to go cry and make a scene, just like, anything and everything. On the other hand, the adult is looking at the whole thing and being like but this is such a bad situation, I/ we feel so bad about it, so is it really surprising that I/ we’re so unable to function? 

Thankfully, the weeks of the therapist telling me to be kinder to myself have helped in this regard. Where the Parent usually takes control in these difficult situations, and showers me in self-loathing, the Adult can now get a foothold. And remind me, as above, that this is a bad situation and it’s okay. It’s normal.