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WORKING
GROUPS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Welcome
to the Working Groups Questions and Answers section of the Clarity-NOW
World Center. In this section, you will find answers to many of
the questions
posed by members of our Working Groups that we at Clarity-NOW think are
interesting enough to be brought to the attention of all of our
members. Such questions may arise during the course of a member's
dialog with our staff at Clarity-NOW, or they may arise during the
course of a member's normal interaction between other members of his, or
her, Working Group. (Such questions include not only "frequently-asked" questions, but
also include less frequently
asked questions whose subjects and answers we think will still interest a
broad cross-section of members.)
Sometimes, members of our staff may intervene in Working Group discussions
in order to provide participants with an added perspective or
clarification that seems to be missing. On these occasions, if
the subject being discussed is one that a staff member thinks is
interesting enough to be brought to the attention of all of our members,
and if the discussion can be re-worked or re-phrased in the form of a
question and an answer, our staff member will post both the question and
answer to this section of our website.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
Q: (From Marjorie in Dallas, TX)
I've been reading your Interactive Stories
about Amy and Mel, and Lisa and Erik. I notice that when Mel
responded from his Parent to Amy's Adult question about when Mel thought
he'd be home for supper, saying, "How should I know? Don't ask
silly questions!" you pointed out that the response Mel was hoping to
receive from Amy's Adapted Child was, "I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to
ask such a silly question." But when Erik responded from HIS
Parent to Lisa's Adult statement about how she didn't understand what
Erik was saying, asking, "Why don't you listen more closely?" you didn't
show what response Erik was hoping to receive to his question.
Doesn't Erik have a hoped-for-response, also?
And if so, what would it be? My own husband does this a lot, and I
can't figure out what response he's looking for.
A: Yes,
Erik has a hoped-for-response. Since most of our Interactive
Stories are really "shortened" versions of what are usually much longer
conversations, we don't always include all the elements of the dialog in
every story we write. In Erik's case, he was most likely looking for a
response that went something like, "I was distracted, dear. Next
time I'll be sure to listen more closely."
The bigger question is why Erik would use his
Parent to respond so automatically to an Adult statement like, "I don't
understand what you are saying." The answer is that quite likely
when Erik was young, he, as well as other, older members in his family, may
have associated this kind of question with the questions asked of the
older people by the kids in the family. Thus, even though the
question may have been coming from the Adult in the head of a
five-year-old, or an eight-year-old, or a ten-year-old, everyone may
have associated the question with the fact that it was coming from a
child, as opposed to a grown-up. So that when grown-ups heard it,
they may have responded to the younger person as an older person often does to
a child (from their Parent ego state), rather than speaking from their Adult to the youngster's Adult.
Later, when Erik grew up, he may have never learned to recognize the
difference between this early scenario, and the somewhat different
scenario that exists when a grown-up person uses his, or her, Adult, to
say the same thing - namely, "I don't understand what you are saying." (This is an example of how our Parent can
"interpret" statements inaccurately, just as our Adapted Child
can
"interpret" statements inaccurately, as illustrated in the Interactive Story entitled
Al and Rob Play "Kick Me" At Work.)
That's why it's so important for you to learn
to use an Adult Follow-Through, as the Interactive Stories explain.
If your husband doesn't recognize that some opening statement you make
from your Adult is actually coming from your Adult, the first rule of
thumb is to keep speaking to him from your Adult, until some sentence
finally registers with him and he recognizes that you are
actually using your Adult to speak to him. Usually, It won't help to switch
to your Parent, which more often than not will undermine all of your
efforts to get him to hear you.
Q: (From Patricia in Nutley, NJ) I
notice that your four-ego-state model diverges from the original
three-ego-state model set forth by Eric Berne in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. How and when did this divergence arise?
A: The "divergence" you speak of was
really more of an evolution than it was a divergence. The
four-ego-state model, along with the "pairing" of the Parent and the
Adapted Child, and the "pairing" of the Adult and the Natural Child, was
first described by Jut Meininger in his second book, How To Run Your
Own Life, published in 1976. (A new, revised edition,
complete with new diagrams, will be available in a few months.)
Prior to that time, both the Natural Child and the
Adapted Child were depicted as separate parts of Berne's "Child" ego
state. Yet both Tom Harris, in I'm OK - You're OK,
Jut Meininger in Success Through Transactional Analysis, and
other authors as well, described the development of the Adapted
Child as occurring simultaneously with, and paralleling, the development
of the Parent - and as something that occurred separate from the
development of the Natural Child. (The Parent and the Adapted
Child are essentially
"tape recordings" of messages and feelings that we record,
simultaneously, largely when we are young.) Since, in real life, the Parent and
Adapted Child often loop back and forth between each other, in the long
run it seemed
only natural to separate the Adapted Child from the Natural
Child and to associate it, graphically, with the Parent. (You can
learn more about how this evolution occurred - and about the way our ego
states often pair off and loop between each other, in Jut Meininger's book CLARITY.)
Q: (From Sam in Topeka, KS) Do our Parent
and Adapted Child ego states "make decisions" like our Natural Child
does?
A: Often, both our Parent
and Adapted Child ego states seem to "make decisions" - at
least in the sense that when we are in
our Parent and our Adapted Child we often appear to do things "decisively."
(For example, our Parent almost always thinks it is "right," and it can be very "decisive" about
presenting its "correct" position. And our Adapted Child can seem
very "decisive" when it immobilizes us out of deep-rooted fear.)
Yet whenever our Parent and our Adapted Child
act in this manner, they don't use the computer capability available
from our Adult to sort
through information about what they are contemplating doing, and, of
course, they don't do things based on what our Natural Child wants
to do. Usually, our Parent tries to "decide" what "we should" do
by comparing some behavior that we're contemplating doing with previous behaviors that it has been told (and now believes) are "right"
or "wrong" - which is rather like going to a Chinese
restaurant and trying to determine whether or not the behavior belongs
in column A or in column B. So that, if our Parent has been
programmed to "believe" that certain behavior is
"obviously wrong" (like, maybe, killing people, or having sex outside of
marriage), and if the behavior we contemplate doing fits one of these
definitions, our Parent can slot the behavior into the
"wrong" category and be very confident
that it is "right" in doing so.
But if our Parent hasn't been given the appropriate column (or
"sub-column") in which to slot
some behavior we contemplate doing (like, killing people in times of war, or
having sex outside
of marriage when our spouse has been in bed in a coma for five or six years),
it goes on "tilt" and stands helplessly by.
The same holds for our Adapted Child, which
often works hand in hand with our Parent. That is, if our Adapted Child
responds to some external stimulus by feeling fearful, depressed,
rebellious, guilty, or perhaps emotionally paralyzed, it usually does so
by fitting some external stimulus it has just experienced into a slot
which tells it how to respond on a feeling level whenever it runs across, or
is confronted by, that particular stimulus. Thus, it might say to
itself, "When so-and-so says or does such-and-such, then I'll feel
fearful, depressed, rebellious, or emotionally paralyzed." It
also does this internally, without the need for some external stimulus.
For example, when we contemplate doing something that our Parent says we
"shouldn't do," our Adapted Child often recognizes that the "feeling
slot" associated with doing things we "shouldn't do" is "guilt," and it will
thus feel guilty if
we go ahead and do whatever it is that our Parent says we shouldn't do. Both the Parent judgment and Adapted Child
feeling go hand in hand. Yet neither involves a "decision" in the
sense that we weigh various alternatives before selecting the
alternative that we
prefer.
Q: (Also from Sam in Topeka, KA)
Does our Adult make decisions on its own initiative, or does it merely provide alternatives
for our Natural Child to chose from?
A: Our Adult seems to do both, although
most self-actualizing, emotional secure people use their Adult to
provide alternatives that their Natural Child can accept or reject.
For example, their Adult may say that plan A may have a higher
probability of success than plan B, but that executing plan B may be
more fun than executing Plan A, and their Natural Child will weigh its
desire to achieve success against its desire to both achieve success and
to have fun executing the Plan that it chooses. Other people, who
are "in" their Natural Child less frequently, may have been Parented (by
themselves, or other people) to follow whatever course their Adult says
is most appropriate, or whatever course has the highest probability of
success, regardless of what their Natural Child wants. They may be
"programmed" to not even ask their Natural Child what it wants.
Or, frequently, they may not even know what their Natural Child wants.
In any event, an "Adult decision" is a
decision that takes into account all the relevant facts in a given
situation, considers all the possible alternatives, examines all the possible consequences," and
is "appropriate to the circumstances."
Q: (From Charles in Los Angeles, CA) One day, my boss told
me "I should keep my desk clean." The next day he told me that,
"If I want to do my job efficiently, I might want to consider starting
out with a clean desk." Are these statements Parent statements, or
are they Adult statements?
A:
The first statement is a Parent statement - issued in the form of a
command and using the words "you should." The second statement is
an Adult statement - issued not as a command but rather as a conditional
statement that implies that one of the choices available to you, if you
wanted to do the job more efficiently, would be to start out with a
clean desk. However, if starting out with a clean desk is a new
concept for you, you might need to start out both ways and use your
Adult to compare the two processes. For example, there may be some
instances in which starting out with a clean desk doesn't provide any
efficiencies, and others in which it does. Also, you may find that
efficiency is less important to you than achieving a high level of
creativity. Efficiency may be more important to your boss.
Q: (From Ellen in Canberra, Australia)
Last night, my husband and I got into an argument about the merits of
regular mainstream medicine, versus natural medicine. He said that
the reason mainstream medicine was better than natural medicine was that
it was based on scientific principles. I told him that he was just
in his Parent and that I had nothing to gain by continuing to discuss
the subject with him. Then he really got mad and said that
whenever someone based his research on scientific principles he was
automatically in his Adult. I still say that my husband was in his
Parent, but I couldn't counter his argument. So I'm wondering, was
my husband in his Parent? And can you base something on scientific
principles and be in your Parent, or are you automatically using your
Adult?
A: From what you say, Ellen, it sounds like your husband was in his
Parent, not only because he became angry, but because the original
notion he presented to you is a fairly common Parent notion.
Many people in Western society
believe that mainstream medicine is "based on" "scientific principles"
- by which they mean, usually, principles of chemistry and physics, and
that this fact makes it "better" than other medical therapies.
And, of course, there is some accurate Adult information at the core of
this Parent belief. For example, many drug therapies are, in fact,
based on chemistry (that is, the drugs are chemicals), even though our
Adult ego state would never say that this makes such drug therapies
"better" than others.
In addition, many people, like your husband,
extend their understanding of "scientific principles" to include what
are sometimes called "scientific methods" - methods of inquiry that are
not necessarily scientific, or restricted to science, but that are used
by medical researchers when they employ their Adult to systematically make and record
their observations during the course of their research or experimentation.
Yet such people rarely take in consideration what happens to a
researcher's observations after he makes and records them, and, more
specifically, whether or not he, or someone else, then turns around and
use the results of his Adult-focused research to advance a political agenda set forth
by his Parent or Adapted Child. (Which medical researchers and
organizations have been known to do.)
Beyond this, even though we in
Western society are Parented to think that our "scientific" approach to
medicine is better than other approaches, other societies are Parented to
view medical issues quite differently from the way we view them.
For example, people in China are Parented to cure various kinds of human
illness by using natural herbs and other approaches, like acupuncture, based on
information that has been handed down from one generation to the next
for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years - information that in TA terms was at
one time most likely based on very accurate Adult observation, but that in Western
medical terms, was never based on "scientific" research. Yet both
Chinese medicine and Western mainstream medicine seem to produce "cures"
that work, as evidenced by the fact that, in China, most Chinese medical schools
teach traditional Chinese medicine side-by-side with Western medicine.
One final thought: If your husband had been
in his Adult when he engaged in this conversation with you, he would
most likely have spoken about the value of mainstream medicine, the
value of Chinese medicine, the value of various forms of natural
medicines and other medicines used throughout the world, and he would
have noted the circumstances under which each was effective. He would
hardly have engaged in the process of defining one as "better" than
another, and then defending this position.
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