When you look in the mirror, whom do you see? Maybe it's the unique, unconditionally loveable, able and skilful prince or princess, who operates from a healthy position of "I'm OK with me and You're OK with me."(1) That would be a wonderful reflection and one that we all may catch sight of occasionally. What is more likely, is a that you will see an image of yourself that reflects a certain amount of your "conditions of worth"(2), as Carl Rogers described those limiting messages that we in TA would identify as injunctions and counter-injunctions. Unless we have broken out of our script entirely, we are likely to discount certain qualities, feelings, memories and aspects of ourselves that do not fit with our script beliefs. So, instead of a princess I may see a slimy green frog in the mirror (no offence to frogs intended!).
Berne defined mental health as the capacity for intimacy, spontaneity and awareness."' These capacities can be considerably limited when we act out of the constraints of negative life scripts. When we made early script decisions about others, the quality of life and ourselves, we clearly did so in order to survive and get our needs met as best we could. However, when those decisions meant we had to discount our needs and feelings there was a considerable cost, which usually involved "losing" a part of ourselves.
These parts or aspects of our personalities don't disappear into thin air, but hang around in the dark depths of our unconscious, reminding me a bit of the lost boys in Peter Pan. Having missed the parenting they needed, they inhabit a fantasy land, still waiting to grow up. We may sometimes glimpse our own "lost children" in dreams, fantasies, artwork or "Freudian slips" and we may bring them to light in the course of therapy, if we have the support, safety and courage that we need.
I believe that until we become aware of these lost parts of ourselves we are not truly whole and thus often experience conflict and inner turmoil in our lives and relationships, as the various parts of our personality or ego states engage in the struggles that represent a replay of our early experiences with caretakers as we perceived them from an infant's view of the world. These are also described as Impasses' or 'stuck places'.
Unless we realise that we no longer need to hide or deny these once "unacceptable" aspects and change our script accordingly, we tend to use certain defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from the dangerous consequences that we imagine would follow their exposure.
Three common types of defence mechanisms are:
Another common defence mechanism that is used is Projection of the unacceptable, "bad" parts onto other people. Thus we can defend ourselves against the persecution or rejection that we expect if we were to show these unacceptable parts. As we attribute those unacceptable aspects of ourselves onto another we can then blame or criticise them instead (the main defence of the Paranoid personality adaptation).
There is often a lot of psychic energy bound up in our various defences, which reinforces ego state pathology (Contaminations and exclusions). As we become aware of our excluded or contaminated ego states we have an opportunity to clarify ego state boundaries. and strengthen Adult ego state functioning.
In order to achieve autonomy and become "whole" we need to become aware of these previously rejected parts of ourselves, re-own them and make use of their power to help us live full and rewarding lives. This is one way that I describe the Child ego state deconfusion process. Berne considered the final stage of therapy to involve an integrated Adult ego state, which incorporates useful aspects of the Child and Parent ego states.
Carl Jung saw our psyche as a powerhouse of buried treasure, observing that, "one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."(6)
How do we help people to own all of themselves, regain their true autonomy and live as the princes and princesses that nature intended? As therapists we may have "unacceptable" aspects of our clients' internal world projected onto and even into (projective identification) us. This process belongs in the realms of Transference and Counter-transference. In order to work effectively with the inevitable transference/ counter-transference reactions in therapy we will need to be willing to know and accept ourselves.
How clear we are about our own self image, the "split off" or denied parts of ourselves and how much we are willing to explore an engage with our "shadow" sides will be crucial in our level of involvement with our clients in their entirety.
At my workshop at 2000 ITA Conference, I sought to give participants the chance to explore themselves as deeply as they feel safe to in order to facilitate integration. Also, I intended to have fun and hope that we might perceive the undiscovered parts of ourselves as Alice did when she contemplated entering a different world, "how nice it would be if we could only get through into 'Looking-glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! Such things beautiful things in it!"(7)
Author
Francesca Hannah, PTSTA, works as a psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor and is based at the
Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy. E-mail: francesca@horizons.idps.co.uk