Conclusion :
THE GOAL IS INTEGRATION
In the 100-plus pages that you have read, skimmed, or skipped over, the same basic point has been made repeatedly: the best and most optimal way for living is with an integrated personality.
Psychologists have preached the benefits of an integrated personality at least since Sigmund Freud’s earliest lecture tours. Freud, who developed the most famous and recognizable form of psychological analysis, described integration the way you or I might describe an embarrassing party guest. In his story, a conference attendee is belligerent, makes an ass of themselves, and is subsequently thrown out of the conference hall. The belligerent attendee eventually sobers, is forgiven, and is allowed to rejoin the conference.
In order to avoid a repeat disaster, Freud explains, the belligerent guest must be reintroduced to the audience, and the audience reintroduced to the now penitent and deferential guest. “Listen,” the speaker might say, “I am delivering a paper, and all of these kind and curious people are trying to follow along. They cannot do so while you are heckling me!” And so on.
Then the heckling attendee gets to share their perspective, which will help the speaker and other attendees better understand why the heckling seemed so urgent. In the end, there is one complete and undivided conference hall, and everybody grows in their understanding. The guests feel unified in mutual support.
We will continue Freud’s example, but will instead use the simplified ego states that have been introduced throughout this book. Freud had his own names for the ego states, which, when translated into English, became a hodge-podge of German and Latin and Greek, which nobody understands. For Freud, for example, the belligerent guest is called “the Id,” which includes all of the perfectly natural but sometimes embarrassing impulses that humans have.
When the belligerent conference attendee is shouting “You’re doing it wrong!” we can understand that this represents the Critical Parent ego state. In order to reintroduce the Critical Parent to everybody else in hall, such as the Free Child and the Adult, an Adult to Adult conversation will be necessary. This will begin with a crossed transaction.
The belligerent guest gets the dialogue started with a Parent to Child opening move.
CP-C: “You’re doing it wrong!”
This opening move invites the speaker to either capitulate (“I’m sorry”) or have an argument (“How dare you.”). But the speaker is not interested in giving up the lectern just yet, and the argument will end in a shouting match or sullen standoff. In order to be civil, the speaker must cross the CP-C stimulus with an Adult to Adult response. Here is the dialogue that might follow.
A-A: “You seem very certain that I have it wrong.”
CP-C: “Everybody knows that personality is wired in the brain.”
A-A: “I can understand if you feel like the riddle of personality has already been solved. I can understand this, even though I disagree with you. If you look around the hall, then you will see that many others are interested in considering alternatives to the brain-based theory of personality.”
And so on. When the conversation is over, everybody knows where everybody else is sitting with respect to the argument. There may even be an appreciation in the humanness of struggling to understand a riddle about existence.
Now we turn to your own dinner party or conference hall, by which I mean your collection of ego states.
Who is it that gets thrown out of your party? Who is responsible when you feel the need to say things like “I don’t know what came over me” or “that’s totally out of my character.” Was it the Critical Parent? Adapted Child? Nurturing Parent?
If you have done any of the exercises following the chapters in this book, then you probably already have some idea of the ego states you are proud of and the ego states you are embarrassed by.
I am proud whenever my Adult is in charge, particularly when this happens during an emotionally charged experience. I am usually embarrassed when my Critical Parent is in charge.
A few weeks ago my wife and I were hiking the beautiful trails at Georgia’s Amicalola Falls State Park. We had with us our two full-size dogs—Adelaide and Ranger. They are the sorts of breeds that make hikers feel nervous.
I can count on one hand the number of people that Adelaide and Ranger have met in the many years that they have lived with us. That is to say, our dogs have little experience meeting new people. Therefore it came as no surprise when, meeting an oncoming hiker a half-mile onto the trail, our dogs went into a manic state. Adelaide cowered behind me in fear while Ranger was acting as though he had eight seconds to throw a cowboy off of his back.
Out came my Critical Parent. My face reddened with frustration, and I scolded Ranger. I said some horrible things to him. The gist was that my love for him was conditional on his behaving as a calm, respectful, and responsible boy.
Erica, the wise and loving and compassionate and patient woman I married, encouraged me to take a break for a bit. She would take both dogs, even though their combined weight exceeded her own.
Reluctantly, and then bashfully, I followed behind her.
In my head I was rehearsing the monologue “You are a bad dog-owner. You should be able to control your dogs. You don’t deserve to hike these beautiful trails. You are Not Okay.”
In the Drama Triangle (Chapter 8), I was being Persecutor and Victim. I didn’t realize that, of course. In my mind it was Ranger who was the Persecutor. It was his fault that I became so angry and then embarrassed.
Trailing behind the three of them for the next mile, my jaw eventually became unclenched. My Adult emerged and assessed the situation. I realized that I had never trained our dogs to behave while out hiking. This was probably because I was too lazy to do so. A bucking-bronco version of Ranger was the result.
When I had spazzed earlier, it was because I was being defensive: I didn’t want to admit that I was a bad dog-owner, so I was blaming my problem on Ranger. I didn’t accept that his misbehavior was my fault—for not socializing him or training him or being more patient with him. The bad-dog-owner part of myself—which is probably Free Child, because I never wanted to take the time to socialize the dogs—was locked in the basement.
But, with some help from Erica, I was able to unlock the basement door and my Free Child was allowed to rejoin the party. I integrated it back into my personality. If he hadn’t died 80 years ago, then Freud might say that I reintroduced my FC to my CP.
I said, “Hey Patrick, don’t you remember that you were too lazy to take Ranger to the dog park so that he could learn how to socialize with the other dogs and humans?”
To which I then replied, “Yes, yes. I remember. I want to be a perfect dog owner, even though I am not.”
I was eventually able to take Ranger’s leash again. I did so as a more integrated person.
In sum, I finished the hike as a less perfect person than I was when I started it. Becoming less perfect might seem undesirable, but that’s only because the perfect version of myself existed only in my imagination. It was not real.
After I resumed holding Ranger’s leash, I was able to step off the trail and take responsibility for his impromptu gymnastics when a pair of Great Danes hobbled by.
Continuing Your Journey
As the instruction I am giving comes to an end, you might feel as though your self-analysis is only just beginning. If this describes you, then here are my suggestions of where you might go next.
The two books that I recommended in the Prologue are the two that come with my highest endorsement. They require no defense or justification. They are:
· Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis, written by Eric Berne; and
· I’m Okay You’re Okay, written by Thomas Harris.
Both come in many editions and at minimal cost.
If you wish to be kept occupied for months with reading and analytic exercises, then I recommend TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis, written by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines. Though less fun than the books mentioned above, Stewart and Joines present the state of the formal practice of transactional analysis as it exists today.
Finally, if you wish to take your analytic skill to the next level and receive training, then you may be interested in looking into one of the many national or international transactional analysis certification programs. For a fee, you will receive group training, consultation, supervision, advice, and probably a variety of useful resources.
Or perhaps you will decide instead to take a page from the original TA playbook and begin your own local TA group without any regional or global certificates. This would mean following the trend set by the renegade group from San Francisco all those many years ago.
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