Transactional Analysis: Parent State

• Berne observed during his development of Transactional Analysis that people change before your eyes, with changes in facial expression, vocabulary, gestures, posture, and body functions.

Parent, Adult, and Child States

• Berne identified three states of being: Parent, Adult, and Child, not as roles but as psychological realities.
• These states are apparent in manner, appearance, words, and gestures.

The Parent

• The Parent is a collection of recordings in the brain of unquestioned or imposed external events perceived during the first five years of life.
• It includes recordings of what the child saw and heard their parents do and say.
• These recordings are taken in 'straight' without editing.

Influence of Parent Data

• Parent data includes admonitions, rules, and laws learned from parents, ranging from nonverbal cues to elaborate verbal rules.
• These rules, whether good or bad, are recorded as truth from the source of security.
• Replays of these recordings are powerful influences throughout life.

Fidelity of Parent Recordings

• The Parent state includes recordings of inconsistencies, where parents say one thing but do another.
• If the Parent contains discordant material, it may be repressed or blocked out altogether.
• Discordant Parent data weakens the overall positive influence in a person's life.

Sources of Parent Data

• Besides physical parents, TV programs also contribute to Parent data.
• External situations where a child feels dependent and cannot question also contribute to the Parent state.

The Child

• Simultaneously with the recording of external events in the Parent, there is a recording of internal events.
• The Child state is defined as seeing, hearing, feeling, and understanding.
• Since the little person has no vocabulary during the most critical of his early experiences, most of his reactions are feelings.

Aspects of the Child State

• Constant demands and helplessness lead to negative feelings and a self-estimate of 'I'm not OK'.
• The Child state also holds creativity, curiosity, desires to explore, and recordings of first discoveries.

Impact of childhood

• The situation of childhood, not just the intention of parents, produces the issues which arise.
• The Child is a state a person may be transferred into at any time, recreating childhood feelings.
• When a person is in the grip of feelings, their Child state has taken over.

Positive aspect of the Child

• The Child also stores positive data like creativity, curiosity, and the desire to explore.
• These include recordings of first discoveries and good external events.

Recordings of Parent and Child

• The recordings do not stop completely but the intensity decreases as a child ages as the parent and child contain only experiences in the first five years of life.
• Later parental communications reinforce what is already recorded

The Adult

• At about ten months, the Adult state begins to develop, marked by the ability to choose responses and manipulate surroundings.
• Adult data accumulates from finding out what is different about life from the 'taught concept' in the Parent and the 'felt concept' in the Child.
• The Adult develops a 'thought concept' of life based on data gathering and processing.

Function of the Adult

• The Adult transforms stimuli into information, processing and filing it based on previous experience.
• It is different from the Parent, which is judgemental and imitative, and the Child, which is reactive and prelogical.
• Through the Adult, a person can differentiate between life as taught, felt, and figured out.

The Adult and Data Processing

• The Adult is a data-processing computer, making decisions based on information from the Parent, Child, and gathered data.
• Important with this process is examining Parent data to see if it is still true and applicable and examining Child data to see if the feelings are appropriate.

Testing Truth

• Adult testing of Parent data begins early, with a secure child finding most of the Parent data reliable.
• Verifying Parent data does not erase NOT OK recordings in the Child.
• One can choose to turn off these recordings despite not being able to erase them.

Updates of Parent and Child

• The Adult updates Parent data to determine validity and Child data to determine if feelings are safe to express.
• Probability estimating is another Adult function, but it develops slowly.

Stress and the Adult

• Under stress, the Adult can be impaired, with emotions inappropriately taking over.
• Unrealistic, non-Adult responses indicate traumatic neurosis.

Treatment and the Adult

• Emphasis on parental care in treatment delays restoring the Adult's executive function.
• An ideal hospital promotes Adult autonomy.
• In treatment groups, individuals learn to identify states and discuss original transactions.