Trace a script decision back to childhood

Find the early conclusion about yourself that a repeating pattern keeps obeying, and see that it was a decision.

Pourquoi ça marche

Berne described the life script as an unconscious life plan formed in childhood, shaped by messages from parents and then lived out as if it were destiny. Robert and Mary Goulding added that children receive injunctions (such as "don't be close", "don't feel", "don't be important", "don't grow up") and make decisions in response to them. Because a decision was made, it can in principle be remade: what the Gouldings called a redecision, made from the Child but with Adult understanding, usually in therapy.

Comment faire

1. Pick one pattern that keeps repeating in your adult life (always leaving before you are left, never asking for the promotion).
2. Ask: what would a child have had to conclude about themselves, or about other people, for this to make sense? Write it as a short sentence beginning "I decided…".
3. Notice which messages, spoken or unspoken, made that decision sensible back then.
4. From the Adult, write what is different now, and one small action that does not obey the old decision. Deeper redecision work belongs with a trained therapist.

Données probantes

Script theory is set out in Berne's What Do You Say After You Say Hello? and in Steiner's Scripts People Live; injunctions, decisions and redecisions come from the Gouldings' 1976 paper. Redecision is done within TA therapy, whose outcome research is summarised in a 2022 meta-analysis of 41 trials reporting moderate to large effects, and in a naturalistic UK primary-care study in which TA and integrative counselling both reduced the severity of clients' problems over twelve sessions. An earlier listing by Ohlsson (2010) found 88 studies on TA psychotherapy and described its own review as too loose to count as scientific research. (observational)

The research tests whole courses of TA therapy, not self-guided script exploration, and only 13 of the 41 trials in the meta-analysis were randomized. Childhood material can surface feelings that are hard to hold alone: if you feel flooded, lose track of where you are, or images keep returning and will not settle, stop and continue with a trained therapist.

Sources

• Berne, E. (1972). What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny. Grove Press.
• Steiner, C. (1974). Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. Grove Press.
• Goulding, R., & Goulding, M. (1976). Injunctions, decisions, and redecisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1), 41-48.
• Vos, J., & van Rijn, B. (2022). The effectiveness of transactional analysis treatments and their predictors: A systematic literature review and explorative meta-analysis. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 66(3), 637-673 (published online 2022).
• van Rijn, B., Wild, C., & Moran, P. (2011). Evaluating the outcomes of transactional analysis and integrative counselling psychology within UK primary care settings. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research, 2(2), 34-43.
• Ohlsson, T. (2010). Scientific evidence base for transactional analysis in the year 2010. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research, 1(1), 4-11.

Erreur fréquente

Turning the script into blame ("my parents made me this way"). The Gouldings' point is that the child made a decision, which is exactly why the adult can make a new one.