Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [6]
The position is, then, that at any given moment each individual in a social aggregation will exhibit a Parental, Adult or Child ego state, and that individuals can shift with varying degrees of readiness from one ego state to another. These observations give rise to certain diagnostic statements. ‘That is your Parent’ means: ‘You are now in the same state of mind as one of your parents (or a parental substitute) used to be, and you are responding as he would, with the same posture, gestures, vocabulary, feelings, etc’ ‘That is your Adult’ means: ‘You have just made an autonomous, objective appraisal of the situation and are stating these thought-processes, or the problems you perceive, or the conclusions you have come to, in a non-prejudicial manner.’ ‘That is your Child’ means: ‘The manner and intent of your reaction is the same as it would have been when you were a very little boy or girl.’
The implications are:
1. That every individual has had parents (or substitute parents) and that he carries within him a set of ego states that reproduce the ego states of those parents (as he perceived them), and that these parental ego states can be activated under certain circumstances (exteropsychic functioning). Colloquially: ‘Everyone carries his parents around inside of him.’
2. That every individual (including children, the mentally retarded and schizophrenics) is capable of objective data processing if the appropriate ego state can be activated (neopsychic functioning) Colloquially: ‘Everyone has an Adult.’
3. That every individual was once younger than he is now, and that he carries within him fixated relics from earlier years which will be activated under certain circumstances (archaeopsychic functioning). Colloquially: ‘Everyone carries a little boy or girl around inside of him.’
At this point it is appropriate to draw Figure 1A, which is called a structural diagram. This represents, from the present viewpoint, a diagram of the complete personality of any individual. It includes his Parental, Adult, and Child ego states. They are carefully segregated from each other, because they are so different and because they are so often quite inconsistent with each other. The distinctions may not be clear at first to an inexperienced observer, but soon become impressive and interesting to anyone who takes the trouble to learn structural diagnosis. It will be convenient henceforth to call actual people parents, adults or children, with no capital letters; Parent, Adult and Child, capitalized, will be used when ego states are referred to. Figure 1B represents a convenient, simplified form of the structural diagram.
Before we leave the subject of structural analysis, certain complications should be mentioned.
1. The word ‘childish’ is never used in structural analysis, since it has come to have strong connotations of undesirability, and of something to be stopped forthwith or got rid of. The term ‘childlike’ is used in describing the Child (an archaic ego state), since it is more biological and not prejudicial. Actually the Child is in many ways the most valuable part of the personality, and can contribute to the individual’s life exactly what an actual child can contribute to family life: charm, pleasure and creativity. If the Child in the individual is confused and unhealthy, then the consequences may be unfortunate, but something can and should be done about it.
2. The same applies to the words ‘mature’ and ‘immature’. In this system there is no such thing as an ‘immature person’. There are only people in whom the Child takes over inappropriately or unproductively, but all such people have a complete, well-structured Adult which only needs to be uncovered or activated. Conversely, so-called