Recognizing ego states (Transactional analysis / TA is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy).

Recognizing ego states

Prepared By Manu Melwin JoyResearch Scholar

School of Management StudiesCUSAT, Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114

Mail – [email protected]

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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

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