Post on 05-Dec-2014
description
Recognizing ego states
Prepared By Manu Melwin JoyResearch Scholar
School of Management StudiesCUSAT, Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114
Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com
Kindly restrict the use of slides for personal purpose. Please seek permission to reproduce the same in public
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Introduction• Eric Berne listed four ways
of recognizing ego states. He called them
– Behavioral diagnosis.
– Social diagnosis.
– Historical diagnosis.
– Phenomenological diagnosis.
Introduction• Eric Berne suggested that it
was best to use more than one of these ways at a time.
• For a complete diagnosis, all four should be used, in the order.
• Behavioral diagnosis is the most important of the four.
• The other three act as checks upon it.
Behavioral diagnosis
Behavioral diagnosis• In behavioral diagnosis, you
judge which ego state a person is in by observing his behavior.
• As you do so, you can see or hear:– Words.– Tones.– Gestures.– Postures.– Facial Expressions.
Standard clues• Its traditional for books
about TA to give tables of standard clues for behavioral diagnosis.
• For instance, wagging finger is said to fit with controlling parent.
• But this is not what ego state model says.
Standard clues• When I say I am “ in my child”,
I mean I am behaving, thinking and feeling as the child I once was – not just like any child.
• It follows that for a reliable behavioral diagnosis of my Adapted Child ego state, you would need to know how I looked and sounded back in my childhood when I was obeying my parents.
Standard clues• The set of behavioral clues
that define my Adapted Child or Free Child will be different from yours, because we were different children.
• Because we had different parents, we will each have our own unique set of behaviors to mark Controlling or Nurturing parent.
Standard clues• Does this mean that tables of standard clues are
useless?• No. There are some kinds of behavior that are
typical to children in general and same with Parent and Adult.
• Instead of using standard clues, it is better to draw up your own.
Activity• Take a sheet of paper and
draw six vertical columns on it.
• Head the left hand column “Clues from “. Head the other five columns with the five functional ego state labels you used in ego gram – CP, NP,A,FC and AC.
Activity• Go back to the column headed
“Clues from –”. Evenly spaced down it, write five headings – words, tones, Gestures, Postures and facial expressions.
• Draw in horizontal lines so that you finish up with give empty boxes, down each column.
• The idea is that you fill in the behavioral clues for yourself in each column.
Standard clues
• Sometimes when you are
observing my behavioral
clues, you may need to
ask more questions to
help you judge which of
my ego states a particular
behavior fits in.
Standard clues
• Suppose you see me sitting in a
drooping pose. I am leaning
forward, head in hands. The
corner of my mouth are turned
down. I am sighing deeply, and
my eyes filled with tears.
• From all these clues, you gather
that I am expressing sadness.
But what ego state am I in?
Standard clues• Perhaps I have just heard that a close
relative has died? My sadness then would
be an appropriate response to the here
and now, hence Adult.
• Or I go back in contact with some memory
of a loss I experienced when I was a child,
and which I have never let myself be sad
about until now. In that case, my feeling
expression is from free Child.
• Still another possibility is that I am
replaying a negative Adapted Child pattern
in which I droop and get sad as a way of
manipulating the people around me.
Standard clues
• To back up your assessment of my
behavioral clues, you may want to
ask questions about how other
people relate to me.
• You may ask about my personal
history and what my parents were
like.
• And you may explore what I can re
– experience from my own
childhood.
Social diagnosis
Social Diagnosis
• The idea behind social diagnosis
is that other people will often
relate to me from an ego state
that compliments that one I am
using.
• Therefore, by noting the ego-
state they respond from, I can
get a check on the ego state I
have come from.
Social Diagnosis
• For instance, if I address you from
my Parent ego state, chances are
you will respond to me from your
Child.
• If I open communication with you
from my Adult, you will likely to
come back also in Adult.
• And if I approach you from my
Adapted Child, you may well
respond from your Parent.
Social Diagnosis• Thus if I realize the people often seem
to be giving me Child responses, I
have reasons to think that I may often
be addressing them from Parent.
• Maybe I am a supervisor and find my
supervisees either crawl to me or find
ways to sabotaging my orders behind
my back.
• Both of these look like Adapted Child
responses.
Social Diagnosis• Possibly, then I am being more of a
Controlling Parent with them than I had
realized.
• If I want to change the situation, I can list
the Controlling parent behaviors I have
been suing in the work situations.
• Then I can experiment Adult behavior
instead.
• My supervises’ ego state responses to me
will give me a social diagnosis of how far I
managed to change from my parental
approach.
Activity• Think of a recent occasion when
someone seemed to be responding
to you from their child
• What behavioral clues did the
other person show which you
interpreted as indicating they were
in child?
• Did you invite this response by
coming from your controlling
Parent or Nurturing Parent?
Activity• If so, look at your list of behavioral
clues and pick out how the other
person saw and heard you in Parent.
• How might you have altered your
own behavior to invite them to
respond from a different ego state?
• Do the same exercise for recent
occasion when someone seemed to
be responding to your from their
adult or their parent.
Historical diagnosis
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.
• This lets us double check on our
impressions of the person’s
functional ego states.
• It also lets us know about ego
state structure.
Historical Diagnosis
Historical analysis deals with
both process and content.
Historical Diagnosis• I might see you in a group,
hunching forward with a
frown on your face.
• Your hand is up covering
your eyes.
• I hear you say “ I am
confused. I cant think.”
• Behaviorally, I judge you to
be in Adapted Child.
Historical Diagnosis• For historical diagnosis, I might ask
you “ How did you feel as a child
when somebody asked you to think”.
• Or perhaps might say “ To me, you
look like a six year old now. Do you
connect with anything in your
childhood?”.
• You might recall “ Yes, Dad used to
badger me to read books, then laugh
because I couldn’t get all words right.
So I used to play stupid just to spite
him.”
Historical Diagnosis• At another moment, you may be
leaning back in your chair.
• Tilting your head back, you look
down your nose at your neighbor.
• You tell her “What you have just
said isn’t right. Here’s how things
really are..”
• Perhaps, she cower down, hunches
her shoulders and raises her
eyebrows in Adapted Child style.
Historical Diagnosis• Now I have both behavioral and
social clues that you are in
Controlling Parent.
• For a historical Check, I might ask “
Will you freeze your position for a
second? Did either of your parents
sit like that when they were telling
you how things were?”.
• Maybe you burst out laughing and
reply “ Yeah, Its dad again.”
Historical Diagnosis• Your report thus give me a double
check on my behavioral diagnosis.
• Seeing you showing the set of
behaviors which I think fit with your
Adapted Child ego state, I have
confirmed that your internal experience
is a replay of the way you responded to
parental pressures in your childhood.
• As you show parental clues
behaviorally, your report to me that you
are copying the behaviors of one of
your own parents.
Activity• Look back at the list of behavioral
clues you have drawn out for
yourself.
• Use historical diagnosis to check
the clues for each ego states.
• As you go through the CP and NP
clues, find if you recall what
parent or parent figure you are
copying with each behavior. What
are the copied thoughts and
feelings which accompany the
behaviors?
Activity• For Adapted Child and
Free Child clues, recall
situations in your
childhood when you
behaved in that same way.
• How old were you? What
were you thinking and
feeling at these times?
Activity• For Adult, check that behavior you
have listed are not a replay of your
childhood nor a parental behavior
you have swallowed whole.
• You may find that you want now to
shift some of your behavioral clues
to a different column.
• For instance, some of the clues
you first listed for Adult may turn
out to fit better in Adapted Child.
Phenomenological diagnosis
Phenomenological Diagnosis
Sometimes, I may re – experience the
past instead of just remembering it.
Phenomenological Diagnosis
“ …. Phenomenological validation only
occurs…If the individual can re –
experience the whole ego state in full
intensity with little weathering.”
- Eric Berne
Phenomenological Diagnosis• Suppose you had just recalled
the time when Dad badgered
you to read and then laughed
at you for getting the words
wrong.
• If you and I were working in
therapy, I might invite you to
get back into that childhood
scene.
Phenomenological Diagnosis
• Perhaps you put Dad in
front of you in
imagination and tell him
what you couldn’t tell
him when you were six.
• You might find yourself
first whining to Dad.
Phenomenological Diagnosis• Then you might re – contact
furious anger and start yelling
“This is not fair”, while beating
on a cushion in the way you
would have liked to beat on
Dad.
• You and I have a
phenomenological diagnosis of
part of the content of your
Child ego states.
Phenomenological Diagnosis• Berne used the word
“Phenomenological” here in a
sense which is different from
its usual dictionary definition.
• He never explained why he
had chosen to do this.
• Simply register Berne’s
technical meaning as
described above.
Ego state diagnosis in practice
Ego state diagnosis in practice
• Ideally, we would use
all four ways of
diagnosis.
• But in practice, this is
often impossible.
• When it is, we simply
diagnose as best we
can.
Ego state diagnosis in practiceWhen we use TA in work
with organizations,
education or
communication training, or
simply to help our own
everyday relations with
others, we need to rely
mainly on behavioral
diagnosis.
Ego state diagnosis in practice
• Social diagnosis gives
us some backup.
• Even in TA therapy,
behavioral diagnosis is
the first and most
important way of
recognizing ego states.
Activity• To develop your effectiveness
in using TA, practice
continually refining your
behavioral diagnosis,
• Keep referring back to the
table of ego state clues you
have made out for yourself,
revising it as you become
more and more aware of your
own ego state shifts.
Activity• If you have the equipment,
make audio tapes or video
tapes of yourself.
• Analyze your ego states clues
second by second.
• Relate your changes in words,
voice tone and body signals if
you have video, to what you
were experiencing internally.
Activity• Get into the habit of doing
behavioral analysis when you are communicating with others.
• Do it when you are in meetings or classes.
• Do it when you are talking with your spouse, your boss, your employee.
• Keep track of other person’s ego state shifts and your own.
• This may feel awkward at first.• Persist until it becomes
second nature.
Activity• Take every available
chance to check your behavioral diagnosis against historical and phenomenological evidence.
• But only do this with others if you have their explicit agreement in advance.
• The more often you check in this way, the more accurate will your behavioral diagnosis become.
Executive and real self
Introduction• For simplicity, we usually
assume that a person can be in only one ego state at a time.
• In reality, it is possible for someone to behave in a way that fits one ego state, while he experiences himself as being in a different ego state.
Example• Imagine that I am at work,
discussing a planned assignment with a colleague.
• For the first few minutes of the discussion, I have my attention fully on the task in hand.
• If you were watching my behavioral signals, you would make a secure judgment that I am in Adult.
• My own internal experience also is that I am in Adult – responding to the here and now, exchanging and assessing information.
Example• But as the talk goes longer and
longer, I begin to feel bored. • I say to myself in my head “ I
wish I were out of here. It is such a nice day outside – I did rather be taking a walk in the fresh air. But I don’t suppose I can…”.
• Now I am experiencing my child.
• I am replaying times from my school days when I had sat indoors in class, feeling bored with the lesson and wishing I could go out and play.
Example• Bored though I feel, I keep on
with the job in hand.• As you observe my behavior,
you see me continuing to exchange information.
• Thus outwardly, I am still behaving in Adult. But my behavior no longer fits with the ego state I am experiencing.
• To describe this situation, Berne suggested a distinction between the executive and real self.
Real and executive
• When an ego state is dictating a person’s behavior, 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.
Real and executive• Most often, the ego state with
executive power will also be experienced as the real self.
• In the example, initially I had executive power in Adult and simultaneously experienced Adult as my real self.
• But then, as I began to feel bored, I shifted my experience of real self into my Child ego state.
• Nevertheless, I continued to act in a way that was consistent with Adult.
• Thus I kept executive power in the latter ego state.
Real and executive• Suppose my work colleague
had kept up the discussion for even longer, I might the have yawned and lost track of what he said.
• As he waited for me to reply to one of his points, I might have blushed and said “Oh, Sorry, I am afraid, I wasn’t with you”.
• Now I would have executive power in Child while also experiencing Child as real self.
Activity• Make up at least three
more examples which illustrate someone having executive power in one ego state while experiencing a different ego state as her real self.
• Do you recall any examples of this from your own experience in the past week?
Incongruity
Incongruity• The division between
executive and real self obviously poses extra problem for ego state diagnosis.
• Since the ego state with executive power is the one which determines behavior, you would expect that the person’s behavioral clues would indicate that ego state.
Incongruity• So long as that ego state is
being experienced also as real self, your behavioral diagnosis will give you an accurate view of the person’s internal experiences.
• But what if the person then switches into a different ego state as real self, while still keeping executive power in the original ego states?
• How can you detect this using behavioral diagnosis?
Incongruity
• The fact is that
sometimes you can’t
detect it.
• This is most likely at
moments when the
person’s overall behavior
is relatively inactive.
Incongruity
• For example, you may see me
sitting listening to a lecture.
• I am sitting upright, not moving
much and not saying anything.
• At first guess, you might judge me
behaviorally as Adult.
• But internally, I might be in a Child
day dream.
• Without further enquiry, you have
no means of knowing this.
Incongruity
• More often, the person does
show behavioral clues to
indicate what is going on.
• When someone has executive
power in a different ego state
from that experienced in real
self, there is a split between
his behavior and his internal
experience.
Incongruity
• Externally he usually shows this in the
following way: his most obvious
behavioral signals will indicate the ego
state that has 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.
• Instead they fit the ego state he is
experiencing as real self.
• In TA language, we say then that his
behavior shows incongruity.
Incongruity
• When I was having the discussion
with my colleagues at work, my
most obvious behaviors matched
the ego states I had in executive
throughout, Adult.
• But if you had watched and listened
to me with close attention, you
would have noticed some changes
at the moment I become bored and
shifted into Child as my real self.
Incongruity
• Up to that point, the pitch of my
voice had varied noticeably
through my sentences. Now, it
become monotonous.
• My gaze, which until then had
been switching regularly
between the work document
and my colleagues face, now lost
regularly focus and stared at one
point on the table.
Incongruity
• These incongruities would
help you judge that I had
shifted my experience of real
self out of Adult and into
Child.
• Recognizing incongruity is
one of the most important
skills you can develop as a
user of TA.
Berne’s energy theory
Berne’s Energy Theory
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.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne followed Freud in
hypothesizing the concept of
psychic energy or cathexis.
• He suggested that this energy
exist in three forms.
– Bound.
– Unbound.
– Free.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne followed Freud in
hypothesizing the concept of
psychic energy or cathexis.
• He suggested that this energy exist
in three forms.
– Bound.
– Unbound.
• The additional term “Active
Cathexis” is applied to the sum of
unbound plus free cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory• To illustrate the difference between
these three forms of cathexis, Berne
used the metaphor of a monkey in a
tree.
• When the monkey is sitting on a high
branch, it possess potential energy –
the energy that would be released if
the monkey fell to the ground.
• This potential energy is analogous to
bound cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• If the monkey then does
fall off the branch, the
potential energy is
released as kinetic
energy.
• This illustrates the nature
of unbound cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• However, a monkey is a
living organism. Rather than
just falling off the branch, it
can exercise the choice of
jump to the ground.
• Berne suggests that this
voluntary use of energy is
analogous to free cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• Each ego state is
envisaged as having a
boundary.
• Free cathexis can move
readily between one ego
state and another across
these boundaries.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• In addition, each ego state contains
a certain measure of energy which
is resident within its boundary.
• If that energy is not being used at
any given moment, it corresponds
to bound cathexis.
• When the resident energy is
bought into use, the bound
cathexis is converted to unbound
cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne hypothesized that an ego
state will take over executive
power when it is the one in which
the sum of unbound plus free
cathexis (Active cathexis) is
greatest at a given moment.
• The ego state experienced as real
self will be the one which at a
particular moment has the
greatest amount of free cathexis.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• At the beginning of my
discussion at work, I had
executive power in Adult and
also experienced Adult as my
real self.
• We can infer therefore, that I
had the highest active cathexis
and highest free cathexis in
Adult during this time.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• When I started paying
attention to feeling bored, I
move some free cathexis into
child.
• I continued doing so until that
ego state came to contain
higher free cathexis than
either my Adult or my parent.
Berne’s Energy Theory• At that point, I begin experiencing Child
as my real self.
• But I kept executive power in Adult,
showing that I still had the highest total
active cathexis in my Adult ego state.
• If the discussion had gone more longer,
I might have unbound more and more
of the bound cathexis resident in child
until finally that ego state had more
active cathexis than Adult and so took
over executive power.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• It is possible at times for a
person to have some active
cathexis is all the three ego
states at once.
• For instance, I might
continue to keep executive
power in Adult, exchanging
technical information with
my colleagues.
Berne’s Energy Theory
• While doing so, I might also
unbind some cathexis in Parent
and start criticizing myself
internally for not understanding
the task well enough.
• At the same time, I might
unbind some child cathexis and
begin feeling ashamed that I
was not complying with those
parental demands.
Thank You
Other TA topics available on slideshare1. Strokes - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/strokes-24081607.
2. Games People Play - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/psychological-games-people-play.
3. Structural Analysis - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/the-ego-state-model.4. What is TA? - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/what-ta-is5. Cycles of Development -
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