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 [i]
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.[ii]
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.
The
psychoanalytic interchange fell short of what would today be considered
communication. There was not to be a free exchange between physician and
patient; in fact the psychoanalytic ideal was that the therapist would impart no
worldly information but limit himself to analyzing the unconscious meanings of
people's dreams and free associations. This (psycho) analysis had the aim
of rearranging the energies trapped in certain mental structures, like the id
and the superego, as a result of childhood traumatic experiences. A very narrow
segment of the person’s mental life and thoughts, and an even narrower aspect
of the person’s current experiences, was to be discussed. The psychoanalyst's
response was to be even more constricted; any broadening of the information by
the analyst was suspect and attributed to countertransference, an undue and
harmful overinvolvement by the analyst. The patients would be helped, Freud
believed, by the release of energies resulting from catharsis and by the
rearrangement of awareness facilitated by the analyst’s interpretations.
Communication, the transfer of information and feedback (the use of information
to modify information) were not deemed a major part of the process.
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 [iii].
Carl Rogers, in his non-directive, client centered method [iv]
kept with the 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 process by way of an empathic response. This still fell short of
a free, two-way flow of information.
Not
until Albert Ellis developed rational-emotive therapy [v] did
a therapist introduce the notion of a problem solving process that required
communication involving 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, the consequences of power inequalities and power abuse;
emotional physical and sexual abuse of children in particular, 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, 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.) [vi]
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, [vii]
(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.
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. 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 is definitely considered
to be a healing factor. As a state of mind "focused on data processing and
probability estimating" [viii]
(
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." [ix]
(pg.
303)
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. [x]
Important
as well, but, to Berne, secondary to learning how to think with the Adult, was
the 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: the transmission of
information, the liberation of individuals and the democratization of their
relationships. My own interpretation of these principles drove me to focus on
the relationship between power and information. Having once been an automobile
mechanic I regarded the effective 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 wanted to fix (contract)
Figuring out what needed to be done to fix it (diagnosis)
Assisting the client to do what needs to be done to bring about the desired
repair (empowered problem solving;) "just look under the hood and fix
it."
This
approach may seem a bit radically 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. [xi]
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 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. [xii]
Clearly,
people had similar needs. Research psychologists Bexton et al [xiii]
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. [xiv]
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. [xv]
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
from the cynicism, violence, crime, 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 Edge City
cocoons. The resulting synthetic, machine generated contact and information will
surely have major deranging effects on people who will need guidance in finding
the path back to human, humane contact.
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,
[xvi]
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 I outline a program of training which includes Opening
the Heart dealing with the stroke economy and the influence of the Critical
Parent.[xvii]
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 mis and disinformation-- info-junk--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 [xviii] (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, brain death is certain. Info-junk, (mis and disinformation) is the
toxic version of information and (as in the case of cold pricklies,) while it
quells the hunger and prevents brain death it disrupt 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 us. 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 [xix]
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 are going to have an
effect on the attention that the child pays to the message.
The
message 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 leap in behavior change. When there is an
awareness of such a leap we speak of a "decision," but much banal
scripting occurs gradually without such a dramatic decision point. Changing
script decisions, whether dramatic or banal, is a complex process requiring
accurate information, and effective action and feedback.
Lies
and Information.
Script
messages are in essence lies--disinformation and misinformation- -designed
to 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, namely
that it is badly polluted with a variety of toxins, variants all, of lying. 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.
A
most important aspect of our environment at this time is the quality of the
information environment especially the quality of information in our personal
relationships.
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:
*
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, addiction and facts about the latest techniques for
bringing about desired change.
* 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 plays away from Transactional
Analysis into propaganda, journalism, 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 psychology and psychiatry.
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