TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS IN THE INFORMATION AGE.
Claude Steiner, PhD
Abstract: Transactional Analysis as developed by Eric Berne was a visionary theory which, in addition to providing a highly effective approach to psychotherapy also anticipated the theoretical, psychological and psychotherapeutic issues that would be of importance in the Information Age.
It has been
shown (Fowler) that human beings have an innate hunger for stimulation and
information, which is at the root of, and drives our behavior. Practitioners
are beginning to recognize that psychotherapy is more a matter of efficiently
imparting information than of rearranging energies in mental structures as was
previously believed. As practitioners we have the obligation of tending to that
hunger by contributing substantiated, useful and nourishing information while
contradicting toxic lies and misinformation. As transactional analysts we have
been studying the details and power dynamics of information exchange--truthful
and deceptive, nourishing and toxic--and are experts, therefore, in an area of
information driven (rather than belief driven) knowledge which will be
central in the psychologies of the future.
Part I.
Pressures Upon the Brain.
Psychotherapy, it might seem, would necessarily have
information and communication at its operating core. When, at the dawn of our
century, Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis he was, by implication,
asserting that certain maladies that had been thought to be medical in nature
would respond to a "talking cure." However, the notion that talking
would have a therapeutic effect was unheard of. Disorders such as phobias,
obsessions and hysterical conversions -- synaesthesias and paralyses --
believed by most authorities to be caused by anomalies of the brain and nervous
system, and the notion of a talking cure was quite radical at the time.
The talking cure was the successor of "moral" treatment which in turn succeeded "heroic" medical treatment and both approaches tended to follow a the notion that mental disturbances were the consequence of anomalous pressures in the brain. Heroic treatment in psychiatry consisted of such tactics as forced inactivity through restraints, shocks and pain to jerk patients out of their state, and purges and bloodletting and even trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull) to relieve pressure in the brain.(Caplan)
The moral cure eschewed heroic methods but still held
to the belief that mental disturbances were the consequence of diseases that to
be treated required relief from pressures upon the brain. The pressures were
now understood as having a social rather than physical origin but the concept
of pressure remained. Relief now was best accomplished by offering the patient
a soothing environment which included a pastoral setting away from urban
bustle, the pursuit of the arts and very importantly, pleasant conversation at
meal times with the hospital director, his family and staff.
When talking,
however, no attempt was made to discuss the problems of the patient. Rather,
following the customs of English drawing room and after-dinner conversation,
interesting subjects in the letters or politics were artfully pursued. In fact,
discussion of patient's problems such as suicide, addiction or mental illness
was avoided, for it threatened to create anxiety and thereby worsen rather than
improve, the dread intracranial pressure.
The purpose of Freud’s “talking cure” was not to
transmit information but, in keeping with historical precedent, to relieve
pressures, this time the pressure of repressed psychic or psycho-sexual
energies. The "talking" that Freud's pursued with his patients did
not, as did the moral cure, avoid the unpleasant subjects of the patient’s
condition, nor on the other hand, did it advocate their discussion. The patient
was encouraged to free associate; speak freely and utter whatever came to mind.
Yet, the psychoanalytic interchange fell short of what would today
be considered communication.
Still, narrow
as this approach was (from the communication point of view) it was the
beginning of an information, and therefore, feedback-based (as opposed to drug
or surgery based) healing science. This new approach to human suffering,
not coincidentally, emerged at the same time that other information-driven
developments began in telephone and radio communications. Talking, not just to
one's family confessor or doctor but to a strange physician, endlessly, about
one’s most intimate thoughts was a shocking novelty. This loosening, as it
were, of the tongue went along with all the other ways in which, as the
Information Age gained momentum, talk loosened and information increasingly
circulated in the culture by way of film, radio, telephone and newspapers, a
process that has continued so that today people are willing, even eager, to
reveal their innermost thoughts to scores of millions on television talk shows.
Part II. Enter
Information.
Starting with the invention of the one-sided Freudian
talking cure, talking in psychotherapy became a matter of increasing equality
and two way communication and feedback. Harry Stack Sullivan set the stage with
his emphasis on two-way communication in the psychiatric interview. Carl
Rogers, in his non-directive, client centered method kept with the stringent
restrictions upon the introduction of information into the therapeutic
situation by taking pains to only reflect, without elaboration, what the client
said. He did, however, loosen the communication reins by introducing and
insisting on the communication of emotional information. He endeavored to
communicate a statement of "unconditional positive regard"
throughout the psychotherapy process by way of an empathic response of
emotional attunement. While this was a big step it still fell short of a free,
two-way flow of information.
Not until Albert Ellis developed rational-emotive
therapy did a therapist introduce the notion of a problem-solving process that
required an exchange of information and feedback and carried with it increasing
equality in and democratization of the relationship.
At the same time
that information-based problem-solving became a recognized therapeutic mode,
useful information in scores of areas affecting physical as well as emotional
health became more elaborate, available and reliable. The effects of nutrition
and physical fitness, the effects and side effects of legal and illegal drugs,
neuroscience, the consequences of power inequalities and power abuse; emotional
physical and sexual abuse of children in particular, the natural history of
emotions, the importance of gender, sexual identity and preference, culture and
age and the significance of death and dying are some of the areas of
knowledge that inform competent psychotherapy today. And yet many
psychotherapists still disdain the use of this type of information, continuing
to believe that people will benefit more from insight and catharsis than from
the knowledge and application of such facts.
The 1960's, a freeing decade which spawned liberation
movements for women, gays, blacks, mental patients, the physically challenged
and so on, liberated psychotherapy as well. Psychotherapists, like Fritz Perls,
Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis, radically broke through the barriers erected
against equality and two-way communication in psychotherapy and Eric Berne was
one of the leading radicals in that process. Both in his theory of
transactional analysis and in his private and hospital practice, Berne insisted
that the principal activity be two-way communication. He developed a psychology
and psychotherapy dedicated to the contractual "curing" of his
clients, that is to say, dedicated to causing previously communicated and
agreed upon changes.
The establishment of a good therapeutic contract is completely
dependent on a sophisticated exchange of information aided by feedback.
Psychoanalysts also speak of a therapeutic contract, (Menninger) but this
contract is one-sided and refers only to what the patients agrees to do; be on
time, free associate, pay her bills and so on.
Following Berne’s lead in my work with alcoholics and suicidal clients I began to insist on finding out details about the extent of their drinking or what precise suicide plans they might have and eventually developed the "no drinking" and "no suicide" contracts, (Steiner, 1968, pg. 59) both of which were challenges to the continuing reticence to discuss disturbing subjects, because, it was believed, such discussion might stir up rather than help cure self-destructive behavior. Instead of fearing the exchange of information regarding drug abuse or suicide between the client and me I assumed that, on the contrary, the more accurate information that passed between us, the better the client would be served.
Berne abandoned psychoanalytic theory in favor of a theory
centered on communication. He focused on the information that is exchanged
between people and conceptualized and categorized it in terms of transactions.
By isolating transactional stimuli and responses he provided us with a method
with which to study how people influence each other, and made possible the
fine-grained analysis of person-to-person communication. In addition, by laying
down the premises of script analysis he anticipated the examination of the
information passed down from parents to their children which determined
people's life-shaping childhood decisions.
Oddly, given the importance of the concept, Berne never defined
the keystone of his theory, the transaction, except to say that it was made up
of a stimulus and a response. The transaction is, in fact, simply an exchange of
information. Information can be taken in, processed and put out, according to
Berne, between three "ego states" - - The Child, the Adult or
the Parent -- which can be seen as three different information processing
entities that operate with different rules (emotional, rational and
pre-judged.)
Berne did not clearly detail a hypothesis of what, about
Transactional Analysis, facilitated the all-important cure. Clearly, talking
was the method. But what kind of talking? He favored "straight” rather
than "crooked" transactions; "Martian" talk, that is,
honesty. He used the blackboard and gave his patients information about
ego states transactions, games and scripts. Unlike any psychiatrist until then,
he actually taught his patients his theory during the therapy session. That
caused him to want to keep it clear, in contrast with, in his opinion,
psychoanalysis and other therapies, which were mystified and confusing. The
approach was based on using the Adult to figure out what was wrong and using it
to fix it, in contrast with other methods which relied in emotional catharsis or expression. “Feelings,
schmeelings” was a favorite expression indicating that what was needed is
thinking, instead. And when he was accused of oversimplifying he quipped,
"I'd rather oversimplify than overcomplicate." He chided
professionals who spoke in the pompous psychiatric lingo claiming that "if
your patient can't understand what you are saying, its not worth saying."
What was it about his talking cure that caused people to change?
Berne never postulated a concise mechanism but it is clear from his statements
and writings that the strengthening and decontamination of the Adult was
considered to be a healing factor. As a state of mind "focused on data
processing and probability estimating" (Berne, 1972, p443) and reality
testing, the Adult will, if it is cathected, allow the person to understand his
games and their illicit gratifications and thereby help him stop playing
them when "he becomes convinced that there are better (transactional
patterns) available." (Berne, 1966, p303)
How “he becomes convinced” is not clear. Was it through insight or through feedback? In other words, was is through the rearrangement of ideas in the mind or through a process of taking in of information which affects behavior which then produces changes and new information which gets fed back to the client as new information which, in turn, produces new changes and so on. Obviously both processes are occurring but Berne's emphasis was on information and feedback as his "splinter in the toe" metaphor clearly indicates. (1971)
Second to learning how to think with the Adult and using it, was
the “deconfusion” and liberation of the Child and the development of the Parent
also achieved through the exchange of therapeutic transactions. These latter
processes were less information and feedback driven. They relied on release,
and sudden rearrangement as in the case of "permission" (releasing
childhood inhibitions) or "reparenting" (replacing one's Parent ego
state with a better one from the therapist.)
It seems that Berne's theory was driven by three principles: 1.
the transmission of information, 2. the liberation of individuals and 3. the
democratization of their relationships. My own interpretation of these
principles drove me to focus on the relationship between power and information.
Information is kept away from people, used and distorted in order to deny them
of their rights; power plays using information are extremely effective.
As a therapist in training with Berne I was influenced by my background as an automobile mechanic.
I regarded the effective psychotherapy cure similarly to an expert-assisted
(based on information) self-repair (based on personal power) of an automobile.
To me, the process was one of:
Finding out
what the client wants to fix (contract)
Figuring out what
needs to be done to fix it (diagnosis)
Assisting the
client to do what needs to be done to bring about the desired repair.
In other word "just look under the hood figure out what’s wrong
and fix it."
I had seen the many ways in which an incompetent and/or
unscrupulous mechanic can abuse his power with a hapless automobile owner and
it became very clear that all sorts of people with power over others, parents,
teachers, politicians and yes, therapists, engaged in similar mystifying
maneuvers. By contrast, empowering the client with useful, valid information
was the basis of good transactional analysis treatment. This approach may
seem a bit simplistic but it is in fact what Berne had in mind when he invented
transactional analysis which he practiced in groups which were much more
suited to efficiency, democratic communication and feedback.
Part III.
Information as Prime Mover.
Stimulus Hunger.
Any complete
theory of behavior requires an explanation of the motivation, the moving force,
the energy that causes behavior. When accounting, as any scientific
psychologist must, for why people engaged in transactions at all, Berne framed
his explanation in terms of the need for stimulation. It was here that he
prefigured the issues that, in my opinion, will become central in
A basic tenet of Berne's early theory is that
"the ability of the human psyche to maintain coherent ego states seems to
depend upon a changing flow of sensory stimulation." (Berne 1951, pg. 83).
Based on this observation he coined the concept of "stimulus hunger"
(pg. 85) and its "first order sublimation...recognition hunger." (pg.
84) Stimulus hunger gets further elaborated into "structure hunger,"
(pg. 85) the craving for social situations in which recognition and
thereby varying stimulation can be obtained.
Both stimulus and structure hunger find an even further elaboration in
existential hunger, the craving for meaning. Thus every transactional sequence
and game has three levels of payoff--motivation- -for its performance; the
biological (stimulation) the social (structure) and the existential
(meaning.)
In info-psychology terms, Berne is saying that the
fundamental motivation for transactional behavior is the acquisition of "a
changing flow of sensory stimulation." Changing, because human tissue
adapts and eventually atrophies when subjected to stimulation that does not
change. Stimulation needs to change in order to maintain psychological life but
even random change has the same deadening effect than steady stimulation. What
organisms seek and are motivated by is stimulation imbued with meaning, that is
information.
These statements are well supported by research: In
the 1950's, psychologists discovered that rats, monkeys and people find simple
stimulation rewarding. Prior to that discovery only food and water were used by
animal researchers as rewards in their experiments. Hungry and thirsty animals
would eagerly learn complicated tasks to get food and water. In this manner
psychologists investigated how animals learn. Thousands of such learning
experiments were done with hungry and thirsty rats, cats, dogs and monkeys
using food and drink as the motivating reward.
Somewhere
along the line, however, psychologists noticed that animals that were neither
hungry nor thirsty were motivated to solve the very same puzzles, seemingly for
the simple privilege of receiving interesting stimulation such a simple show of
flashing lights. This discovery lead to a novel hypothesis and extensive
subsequent research, which Berne was well aware of: that in addition to the
drives that animals have toward food and drink there was also a drive for
stimulation and exploration, a drive which is aroused by lack of stimulation,
or boredom. (Fowler)
Clearly, people had similar needs. Research
psychologists Bexton et al paid their subjects an above average hourly wage and
fed them to stay in a small room and do nothing, and see, hear and touch next
to nothing, 24 hours a day, as long as they were willing to stay. Within eight
hours most subjects become increasingly unhappy and developed what appeared to
be a strong need for stimulation. The subjects, who were college level
students, would as an example, request to repeatedly hear an anti-alcohol talk
for grade school children or a recording of an old stock market report if that
was all which was available to relieve their boredom. They reported that after
some hours of sensory deprivation they could not follow a train of thought and
that it took them a whole day to regain the motivation to study after the
experiment was over.
Anecdotal evidence regarding people stranded on desert
islands and other such isolated places is plentiful and will attest to the fact
that the need for stimulation can become extraordinarily compelling. Later
researchers took the matter further and developed isolation chambers in which
people were floated in a dark, sound proofed, body temperature, water tank and
discovered that sensory deprivation had dramatic, sometimes disturbing effects
on the human psyche resulting in a "trip," sometimes a "bad
trip," similar to those that can be the consequence of LSD usage. In other
words, the mind craves stimulation and when radically deprived of it the mind
manufactures it's own, often dredging its darker recesses in the process.
(Heron)
Finally, in the process of investigating the
relationship of stimulation to information, psychologists D. E. Berlyne and A.
Jones found, in a series of experiments, again with college students, that it
was not stimulation alone but information--that is stimulation imbued with
meaning-- that their subjects sought. Its a subtle distinction but an important
one. We seek stimulation but if the stimulation has no information content, it
quickly loses its capacity to satisfy the need that drives us toward it and
leaves us hungry. It becomes therefore appropriate, from this point of view, to
speak of "information hunger" as well as stimulation hunger when
describing the constant search for stimulation exhibited by people.
It is this search for stimulation as information that will, I predict, become more and more problematic in the coming years. A twenty first century psychotherapy will have to deal with two parallel processes. People will want to move away and find relief from from the cynicism, poverty, crowding, disease, pollution which are increasing in their environment while, on the other hand, seeking solace, entertainment and contact through electronic media (television, internet, cyber-sex, virtual reality, computers games) in the safety of their apartments and houses. The resulting increase of highly attractive synthetic, machine generated contact and information, and the simultaneous loss of direct “flesh-based” human connections will surely have major deranging effects on people. One such effect will be the loss of interpersonal communication skills; people will need guidance to restore human, humane contact in their lives.
Stroke Hunger
According to Berne, stimulus hunger motivates and directs human
activity just as surely as hunger, thirst and the need for oxygen (there
is no name for oxygen hunger, yet) It is the need for stimulation that
generates "social pathology" -- covert transactions, games and
scripts, all in an effort to obtain stimulation that we cannot easily get in
its original, wholesome form, as intimacy.
From this line of thinking emerged the concept of
strokes. In Games People Play, (1964) Berne named the human activity of
exchanging recognition, "stroking"( pg. 15) and the unit of exchange,
a "stroke," and he summarized this assumption, as he did other
important tenets of his theory, with an aphorism: "People need strokes, if
they don't get them, their spinal cords will shrivel up." (pg. 14)
Strokes are a
particularly powerful, information rich, source of stimulation; human
stimulation. Strokes are procured through intimacy, work, pastimes or games. A
stroke, positive or negative, is the unit of human stimulation (arguably,
strokes can be exchanged between humans and higher animals) contrasted with the
myriad of non-human ways in which we are stimulated. Strokes and stroking
define, in one simple brilliant concept, the most basic human events, love and
hate.
To these ideas I added the concept of the “stroke
economy” which holds that due to a set of rules that limit people’s exchanges
of positive strokes, people are chronically starved for them. The rules are:
Don’t give strokes you want to give.
Don’t ask for strokes you want.
Don’t accept strokes you want.
Don’t reject strokes you don’t want, and
Don’t give yourself
strokes.
These rules are enforced by the Critical Parent on a
society-wide basis. The procurement of positive strokes is and will continue to
be the central human pursuit; as transactional analysts it is our primary task
to aid our clients in their quest. We have the information and training to
perform that task. In Achieving Emotional Literacy (1997) I outline a
program of training which includes Opening the Heart dealing with the stroke
economy and the influence of the Critical Parent.
Information Hunger
A decade ago in pursuit of an understanding of power plays I
became interested in propaganda. At first it seemed that propaganda is simply a
conspiracy by some to brainwash an innocent population. But it soon became
clear that people weren't passive victims of propaganda but actually sought out
propaganda and welcomed it, and if it wasn’t available manufactured it
themselves. Just as in the case of food, where people prefer junk food to the
nutritious choice and in the case of strokes, where harmful games are played
instead of obtaining positive strokes, people will accept and seek
misinformation and disinformation-- info-junk in other words--and come to
prefer it to the truthful, valid alternative. In each one of these cases
there is an abiding hunger, which will cause people to accept and eventually
seek the toxic substitution for the real thing.
I am
postulating that if the stimulation hunger urge is the precursor of recognition
hunger and stroke hunger then the precursor of all three is information hunger.
Information is the fundamental need that drives not only people but also all
living organisms. Thus I am broadening Berne's notion of stimulus hunger to
include the notion of "information hunger."
Most people
think of information as 411 on the telephone dial but to clearly understand
what information is we have to go to the field of cybernetics, where
information has been defined by mathematicians (Shannon and Weaver, pg 12-13)
as a means of reduction of uncertainty or in even more technical terms as a
reduction of entropy; entropy being a measure of the level of disorganization
in any part of the universe. In this sense, information or meaning serves to
reverse the normal decay and disorganization, which is an inevitable process in
nature. Information acts at all levels of life to counteract decay; at the
human level, information is a gathering together, a process of concentration of
the powers of the person; information works against the dissolution of mental
capacities which occurs in its absence. The production and consumption of
information is a fundamental function of human life, just like the production
and consumption of oxygen is a fundamental function of plant life. Information
fuels mental life; without it, psychological brain death is certain. Info-junk,
(mis and disinformation) is the toxic version of information and (as in the case
of negative strokes) while it quells the hunger and prevents brain death, it
disrupts and disorganizes mental and emotional life.
Strokes and Information
In developing the theory of the Stroke Economy I proposed that
most people are in a perpetual state of stroke hunger as a result of a
restrictive economy of strokes. I noted that positive strokes, that is, loving
transactions or in general love, are scarce due to an economy of strokes which
prevents people from freely giving others or oneself, asking for and accepting
strokes we want or even rejecting strokes we don’t want. We prefer positive
strokes but will accept negative strokes, which are plentiful, in their place.
On the other hand, strokes have become a commodity that can be bought, sold, traded,
bartered, accumulated and monopolized. Interestingly, what can be said for
strokes can also be said for information: we hunger for information, will
accept and even seek toxic information in the absence of useful or constructive
information and there is an Information Economy in which information has become
a commodity. The result is that some people are info-rich and others are
info-poor but most are chronically hungry for information while consuming large
quantities of info-junk.
Strokes do not only fulfill the biological need for
love but they also feed the need for information. They are in fact tightly
packaged, powerful bundles of information about ourselves. Stimulation hunger,
stroke hunger, structure hunger and the hunger for existential meaning are, in
my opinion, all successively more complex forms of information. Thus,
when we seek strokes, or structure or meaning we are seeking information in
increasingly human, symbolic form.
Script messages as information
Clearly, information comes to us in a variety of ways; life is
full of lessons. The flow of information is steady and we select and prioritize
from among all the information presented to us, that which will serve as
feedback and that which will be ignored. What messages are taken to heart and
which are passed by, depends on a variety of factors.
Early in life, children's predicaments frequently force them to
make important decisions. These decisions, based on available information made
in a context of powerlessness, can be the source of great trouble later in life
when power relations change and the childhood decisions are no longer necessary
for survival. That is the essence of scripts.
In developing the script matrix (Steiner, 1971) I attempted to
illustrate in a diagram the messages that we take to heart in our childhood.
Berne’s ego states gave me a number of informational levels to consider, just
as in the case of transactions. A person's script is based on messages in the
form of injunctions and attributions which are underscored by a variety of
factors; the importance of the source, (father, mother, significant others) the
emphasis that is added to the message, punishment, rewards, repetition,
powerlessness and susceptibility (ripe for imprinting, scared, tired, upset,
drugged or in hypnagogic state) all have an effect on the attention that
the child pays to the message.
The information impinging on the young person will come in to all
three of the levels of meaning, Child, Adult, Parent. The child is going to
learn and modify his behavior and sometimes the behavior will be discontinuous,
a dramatic leap in behavior change. When there is an awareness of such a leap
we speak of a "decision," but much scripting occurs gradually without
such a dramatic decision point which is why called “banal” scripting. Changing
script decisions, whether dramatic or banal, is a complex process requiring
accurate information, and effective action and feedback.
Lies and Information.
Script messages as opposed to valid, Adult information are in essence
lies--disinformation and misinformation--designed to control and invalidate the
child's autonomy and to in some way undermine the child's power. Politics has
to do with power whether at the government level or the level of relations
between people; men and women, parents and their children. Lies are power plays
and the most significantly destructive political act in the Information Age is
lying. Information has always been used as an avenue to power. Denial of
information and deception are age-old forms of power abuse.
Lying is always engaged in
order to stay in control and is part and parcel of the constant power behavior
and abuse that our culture encourages and demands. In spite of the fact that every
major religion proscribes lies, lying is an aspect of everyday life almost from
the first day of our existence, even in the most devoutly moral and religious
households. Certainly, by the time a child is able to speak, parents are lying
to it routinely and, eventually, the child is expected, as an aspect of proper
socialization, to learn to lie as well. We tell our children not to lie, yet we
lie to them constantly. We tell them to be truthful as we continually do
otherwise and we never tell them what a lie is, how it is different from the
truth, and what we mean when we tell them that lying is wrong. To be sure we
have all manner of rationalizations for lying to children and each other; we
assume that children could not take the truth or don't want to know it or would
be harmed by it, we believe that little white lies are harmless and that we
are, in fact, obligated to protect others from the truth. But the real reasons
for lying are far more practical; the fact is that we lie to stay in control
and that to be truthful means, at times, to give up power and comfort, to have
to be responsible for our actions and feelings and to face truth and reality.
The capacity to perceive, to understand and effectively deal with
the world is severely curtailed by the presence of constant lies in our lives.
The process of sorting out what is true and what is false, when to lie and when
to tell the truth, what to believe and what not to believe is an ongoing drain
on our energies. Given all of these uncertainties, the mind is prevented from
working at its optimal level. It is said that we use only a small
fraction of our mental capacity. If this is so, it surely is because most of
our mental capacity is squandered by confusing information; misinformation,
disinformation, falsehoods and lies.
We are in a magical moment in history in which evolution has
brought us to the point where we have developed the mental capacity and the
technical knowledge to efficiently and powerfully satisfy the hunger for
information that has fueled human evolution since the dawn of history. Given
people's info-hunger, information has become a hugely profitable commodity and
our economy is totally dependent on it.
We are, for the first time in a position, world wide, to satisfy
the most basic of human hungers, information hunger. We have the information
terminals and processors, we have the networks and we have the information
economy. Unfortunately, however, we have a great problem with information
itself, which is badly polluted with a variety of lies. Lies without the
amplifying power of technology are harmful but manageable, but the high-tech
lies of today are overwhelming and we have to develop means to defend ourselves
against them, for our bodies have no inborn protection against them.
The quality of information that we are exposed to and expose
ourselves to has an extraordinarily important effect on our everyday lives.
Unfortunately, in a manner similar to our environment's degradation, in
which the food, air and water that surrounds us is becoming increasingly toxic,
the information which we are encouraging, permitting, asking for and consuming
is, in large measure, equally toxic disinformation, misinformation and
info-junk.
There are several levels in which corrective measures need to be taken.
One of these measures, for people to practice at the personal level, is
"radical truth telling." Clearly this is an extremist proposal,
which, if taken seriously, has to be approached with care. Any person who
insisted in being completely truthful would be so out of phase with the rest of
the world that he might soon be jailed or hospitalized. If one considers that
being radically truthful involves never lying about anything as well as saying
everything of significance that one wants, feels or believes it can be seen
that the project has its dangers. In fact, it only makes sense, initially, in
the most intimate and close relationships and only by mutual agreement.
If we are to begin taking the information age
seriously, we must learn everything we can about information, we must become
info-literate, that is to say we must learn what information is and what noise
is, what is a lie, what is truthful and what is true (and the difference
between them) and we must begin this process close to home in the personal
realm before we can expect advertisers, teachers and politicians to follow
suit. Above all, in the information age, we must know when we lie and why and
when we are being lied to and why.
Part IV.
Transactional Analysis as an Information Psychology and Psychiatry
Seen in this light, the practice of psychotherapy is no longer a
process in which we rearrange energies and release pressures (though we may do
both at times) but a process in which valid, useful and constructive
information, free of lies is exchanged, subjected to modification by feedback
with a specific, integrating, counter-entropic purpose.
What can Transactional
Analysis contributed to this process? The fact is that Transactional
Analysis trained persons are optimally equipped:
* We are
trained to observe the transactional process and analyze it as a medium of
information exchange.
* We are
trained to distinguish three different sources of information and the various
combinations of information exchange that can occur; the ego states and the
three different levels of meaning transacted between them. We are aware of the
peculiar characteristics of Parent to Child transactions compared to
Adult-to-Adult transactions, the covert and overt components of transactions and
the effects of crossed and angular transactions.
* We understand the pathology of transactions. We know
how attempts to communicate can turn into games and we know how to help people
stop these harmful patterns of information and stroke exchange.
* We know the characteristics of healthy transactions
and how to give people permission and protection to engage in them. We know how
to respond to lies and how to help people stop lying and accepting other
people’s lies.
* Finally we know the importance of the therapeutic
contract and we are skilled at establishing such contracts. The contract
advances the practice of Information Age soul-healing in two important ways:
1. It establishes that the activity of psychotherapy shall be
based on a feedback loop that modifies behavior according to results. It forces
both therapist and client into a result centered, productive, information based
transactional pattern of interaction. It establishes the expectation that the
psychotherapist be fully informed of the latest relevant facts about child
development, aging, death and dying, facts about the harmful effects of power
inequities, power abuse whether emotional, physical or sexual, facts about
diet, exercise, health maintenance, exercise, drugs, addiction, the results of
the latest psychological, psychiatric and neuroscience research, and facts
about the latest techniques for bringing about desired change.
2. Given the kind of prediction and control that is necessary to
achieve the completion of a contract, it encourages the use of valid
information rather than opinion, prejudice, ad-hominem, or
mis-information. Thus, it becomes clear that the change that is desired
by the client is not going to happen magically through the extensive discussion
of childhood memories, dream analysis or some other form of wishful thinking
but because valid, effective, order-generating information (that may include
childhood experiences and dreams) is applied to the process.
Conclusion:
It seems that many in Transactional Analysis are impatient with
the state of transactional analysis as a dynamic, developing theory. For
myself, I have thought at times that Transactional Analysis has had its day.
Many of its ideas have been silently incorporated into the psychiatric culture,
but on the whole its point has been missed and it has not been given a place
among the great psychiatric theories of the century and I was ready to put it
to rest. Accordingly I followed my interest in power and its abuses away from
Transactional Analysis into propaganda, journalism and Central American
politics. From the distant perspective of an investigator into media and
information, in a dawning Information Age I came to see Transactional Analysis in
a brand new light; as a visionary theory of Information Age psychology and
psychiatry. As the world peers into the twenty first century with every one
wondering how they will be affected by the looming millennial changes, we, in
Transactional Analysis, are in possession of a legacy which is only now
becoming clear: we have the tools and the insights of an Information Age,
communication-based psychology and psychiatry.
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