I'm OK. You're OK. By, Thomas A. Harris M.D.
41:11
2. Parent, Adult, and
Child
The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the
weight of undisputed authority.
- Paul Tillich
Early in his work in the development of Transactional Analysis,
Berne observed that as you watch and listen to people you can see them change
before your eyes. It is a total kind of change. There are simultaneous changes
in facial expression, vocabulary, gestures, posture, and body functions, which
may cause the face to flush, the heart to pound, or the breathing to become
rapid.
We can observe these abrupt changes in everyone: the little boy
who bursts into tears when he can't make a toy work, the teenage girl whose
woeful face floods with excitement when the phone finally rings, the man who
grows pale and trembles when he gets the news of a business failure, the father
whose face 'turns to stone' when his son disagrees with him. The individual who
changes in these ways is still the same person in terms of bone structure, skin,
and clothes. So what changes inside him? He changes from what to what?
This was the question which fascinated Berne in the early
development of Transactional Analysis. A thirty-five-year-old lawyer, whom he
was treating, said, 'I'm not really a lawyer. I'm just a little boy.' Away from
the psychiatrist's office he was, in fact, a successful lawyer, but in treatment
he felt and acted like a little boy. Sometimes during the hour he would ask,
'Are you talking to the lawyer or to the little boy?' Both Berne and his patient
became intrigued at the existence and appearance of these two real people, or
states of being, and began talking about them as 'the adult' and 'the child'.
Treatment centered around separating the two. Later another state began to
become apparent as a state distinct from 'adult' and 'child'. This was 'the
parent' and was identified by behaviour which was a reproduction of what the
patient saw and heard his parents do when he was a little boy.
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Changes from one state to another are apparent in manner,
appearance, words, and gestures. A thirty-four-year-old woman came to me for
help with a problem of sleeplessness, constant worry over 'what I am doing to my
children', and increasing nervousness. In the course of the first hour she
suddenly began to weep and said, 'You make me feel like I'm three years old.'
Her voice and manner were that of a small child. I asked her, 'What happened to
make you feel like a child?' 'I don't know,' she responded, and then added, 'I
suddenly felt like a failure.' I said, 'Well, let's talk about children, about
the family. Maybe we can discover something inside of you that produces these
feelings of failure and despair.' At another point in the hour her voice and
manner again changed suddenly. She became critical and dogmatic: 'After all,
parents have rights, too. Children need to be shown their place.' During one
hour this mother changed to three different and distinct personalities: one of a
small child dominated by feelings, one of a self-righteous parent, and one of a
reasoning, logical, grown-up woman and mother of three children.
Continual observation has supported the assumption that these
three states exist in all people. It is as if in each person there is the same
little person he was when he was three years old. There are also within him his
own parents. These are recordings in the brain of actual experiences of internal
and external events, the most significant of which happened during the first
five years of life. There is a third state, different from these two. The first
two are called Parent and Child, and the third, Adult. (See Figure 1.)
These states of being are not roles but psychological realities.
Berne says that 'Parent, Adult, and Child are not concepts like Superego, Ego,
and Id ... but phenomenological realities.' {1} The state is produced by the
playback of recorded data of events in the past, involving real people, real
times, real places, real decisions, and real feelings.
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Figure 1. The Personality
The Parent
The Parent is a huge collection of recordings in the brain of
unquestioned or imposed external events perceived by a person in his early
years, a period which we have designated roughly as the first five years of
life. This is the period before the social birth of the individual, before he
leaves home in response to the demands of society and enters school. (See Figure
2.) The name Parent is most descriptive of this data inasmuch as the most
significant 'tapes' are those provided by the example and pronouncements of his
own real parents or parent substitutes. Everything the child saw his parents do
and everything he heard them say is recorded in the Parent. Everyone has a
Parent in that everyone experienced external stimuli in the first five years of
life. Parent is specific for every person, being the recording of that set of
early experiences unique to him.
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Figure 2. The Parent
The data in the Parent was taken in and recorded 'straight'
without editing. The situation of the little child, his dependency, and his
inability to construct meanings with words made it impossible for him to modify,
correct, or explain. Therefore, if the parents were hostile and constantly
battling each other, a fight was recorded with the terror produced by seeing the
two persons on whom the child depended for survival about to destroy each other.
There was no way of including in this recording the fact that the father was
inebriated because his business had just gone down the drain or that the mother
was at her wits' end because she had just found she was pregnant again.
In the Parent are recorded all the admonitions and rules and
laws that the child heard from his parents and saw in their living. They range
all the way from the earliest parental communications, interpreted nonverbally
through tone of voice, facial expression, cuddling, or noncuddling, to the more
elaborate verbal rules and regulations espoused by the parents as the little
person became able to understand words. In this set of recordings are the
thousands of 'no's' directed at the toddler, the repeated 'don'ts' that
bombarded him, the looks of pain and horror in mother's face when his clumsiness
brought shame on the family in the form of Aunt Ethel's broken antique vase.
Likewise are recorded the coos of pleasure of a happy mother and
the looks of delight of a proud father. When we consider that the recorder is on
all the time we begin to comprehend the immense amount of data in the Parent.
Later come the more complicated pronouncements: Remember, Son, wherever you go
in the world you will always find the best people are Methodists; never tell a
lie; pay your bills; you are judged by the company you keep; you are a good boy
if you clean your plate; waste is the original sin; you can never trust a man;
you can never trust a woman; you're damned if you do and damned if you don't;
you can never trust a cop; busy hands are happy hands; don't walk under ladders;
do unto others as you would have them do unto you; do others in that they don't
do you in.
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The significant point is that whether these rules are good or
bad in the light of a reasonable ethic, they are recorded as truth from the
source of all security, the people who are 'six feet tall' at a time when it is
important to the two-foot-tall child that he please and obey them. It is a
permanent recording. A person cannot erase it. It is available for replay
throughout life.
This replay is a powerful influence throughout life. These
examples - coercing, forcing, sometimes permissive but more often restrictive -
are rigidly internalized as a voluminous set of data essential to the
individual's survival in the setting of a group, beginning with the family and
extending throughout life in a succession of groups necessary to life. Without a
physical parent the child would die. The internal Parent also is life-saving,
guarding against many dangers which, perceived experientially, could cause
death. In the Parent is the recording, 'Don't touch that knife!' It is a
thunderous directive. The threat to the little person, as he sees it, is that
his mother will spank him or otherwise show disapproval. The greater threat is
that he can cut himself and bleed to death. He cannot perceive this. He does not
have adequate data. The recording of parental dictates, then, is an
indispensable aid to survival, in both the physical and the social sense.
Another characteristic of the Parent is the fidelity of the
recordings of inconsistency. Parents say one thing and do another. Parents say,
'Don't lie,' but tell lies. They tell children that smoking is bad for their
health but smoke themselves. They proclaim adherence to a religious ethic but do
not live by it. It is not safe for the little child to question this
inconsistency, and so he is confused. Because this data causes confusion and
fear, he defends himself by turning off the recording.
We think of the Parent predominantly as the recordings of the
transactions between the child's two parents. It may be helpful to consider the
recordings of Parent data as somewhat like the recording of stereophonic sound.
There are two sound tracks that, if harmonious, produce a beautiful effect when
played together. If they are not harmonious, the effect is unpleasant and the
recording is put aside and played very little, if at all. This is what happens
when the Parent contains discordant material. The Parent is repressed or, in the
extreme, blocked out altogether. Mother may have been a 'good' mother and father
may have been 'bad', or vice versa. There is much useful data which is stored as
a result of the transmission of good material from one parent; but since the
Parent does contain material from the other parent that is contradictory and
productive of anxiety, the Parent as a whole is weakened or fragmented. Parent
data that is discordant is not allowed to be a strong positive influence in the
person's life.
Another way to describe this phenomenon is to compare it with
the algebraic equation: a plus times a minus equals a minus. It does not matter
how big the plus was, or how little the minus was. The result is always a minus
- a weakened, disintegrated Parent. The effect in later life may be ambivalence,
discord, and despair - for the person, that is, who is not free to examine the
Parent.
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Much Parent data appears in current living in the 'how-to'
category: how to hit a nail, how to make a bed, how to eat soup, how to blow
your nose, how to thank the hostess, how to shake hands, how to pretend no one's
at home, how to fold the bath towels, or how to dress the Christmas tree. The
how to comprises a vast body of data acquired by watching the parents. It is
largely useful data which makes it possible for the little person to learn to
get along by himself. Later (as his Adult becomes more skilful and free to
examine Parent data) these early ways of doing things may be updated and
replaced by better ways that are more suited to a changed reality. A person
whose early instructions were accompanied by stern intensity may find it more
difficult to examine the old ways and may hang on to them long after they are
useful, having developed a compulsion to do it 'this way and no other'.
The mother of a teenager related the following parental edict,
which had long governed her housekeeping procedures. Her mother had told her,
'You never put a hat on a table or a coat on a bed.' So she went through life
never putting a hat on a table or a coat on a bed. Should she occasionally
forget, or should one of her youngsters break this old rule, there was an
over-reaction that seemed inappropriate to the mere violation of the rules of
simple neatness. Finally, after several decades of living with this unexamined
law, mother asked grandmother (by then in her eighties), 'Mother, why do you
never put a hat on a table or a coat on a bed?'
Grandmother replied that when she was little there had been some
neighbor children who were 'infested', and her mother had warned her that it was
important that they never put the neighbour children's hats on the table or
their coats on the bed. Reasonable enough. The urgency of the early admonition
was understandable. In terms of Penfield's findings it was also understandable
why the recording came on with the original urgency. Many of the rules we live
by are like this.
Some influences are more subtle. One modern housewife with every
up-to-date convenience in her home found she simply did not have any interest in
buying a garbagedisposal unit. Her husband encouraged her to get one, pointing
out all the reasons this would simplify her kitchen procedures. She recognized
this but found one excuse after another to postpone going to the appliance store
to select one. Her husband finally confronted her with his belief that she was
deliberately not getting a garbage disposal. He insisted she tell him why.
A bit of reflection caused her to recognize an early impression
she had about garbage. Her childhood years were the Depression years of the
1930's. In her home, garbage was carefully saved and fed to the pig, which was
butchered at Christmas and provided an important source of food. The dishes were
even washed without soap so that the dishwater, with its meager offering of
nutrients, could be included in the slops. As a little girl she perceived that
garbage was important, and as a grown woman she found it difficult to rush
headlong into purchasing a new-fangled gadget to dispose of it. (She bought the
disposal unit and lived happily ever after.)
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When we realize that thousands of these simple rules of living
are recorded in the brain of every person, we begin to appreciate what a
comprehensive vast store of data the Parent includes. Many of these edicts are
fortified with such additional imperatives as 'never' and 'always' and 'never
forget that' and, we may assume, pre-empt certain primary neurone pathways that
supply ready data for today's transactions. These rules are the origins of
compulsions and quirks and eccentricities that appear in later behavior.
Whether Parent data is a burden or a boon depends on how appropriate it is to
the present, on whether or not it has been updated by the Adult, the function of
which we shall discuss in this chapter.
There are sources of Parent data other than the physical
parents. A three-year-old who sits before a television set many hours a day is
recording what he sees. The programmers he watches are a 'taught' concept of
life. If he watches
programmes of violence, I believe he records violence in his
Parent. That's how it is. That is life! This conclusion is certain if his
parents do not express opposition by switching the channel. If they enjoy
violent programmers the youngster gets a double sanction - the set and the folks
- and he assumes permission to be violent provided he collects the required
amount of injustices. The little person collects his own reasons to shoot up the
place, just as the sheriff does; three nights of cattle rustlers, a stage
hold-up, and a stranger fool in' with Miss Kitty can be easily matched in the
life of the little person. Much of what is experienced at the hands of older
siblings or other authority figures also is recorded in the Parent. Any external
situation in which the little person feels himself to be dependent to the extent
that he is not free to question or to explore produces data which is stored in
the Parent. (There is another type of external experience of the very small
child which is not recorded in the Parent, and which we shall examine when we
describe the Adult.)
While external events are being recorded as that body of data we
call the Parent, there is another recording being made simultaneously. This is
the recording of internal events, the responses of the little person to what he
sees and hears. (Figure 3.) In this connexion it is important to recall
Penfield's observation that the subject feels again the emotion which the
situation originally produced in him, and he is aware of the same
interpretations, true or false, which he himself gave to the experience in the
first place. Thus, evoked recollection is not the exact photographic or
phonographic reproduction of past scenes or events. It is reproduction of what
the patient saw and heard and felt and understood. {2} [Italics added]
It is this 'seeing and hearing and feeling and understanding'
body of data which we define as the Child. Since the little person has no
vocabulary during the most critical of his early experiences, most of his
reactions are feelings. We must keep in mind his situation in these early years.
He is small, he is dependent, he is inept, he is clumsy, he has no words with
which to construct meanings. Emerson said we 'must know how to estimate a sour
look'. The child does not know how to do this. A sour look turned in his
direction can only produce feelings that add to his reservoir of negative data
about himself. It's my fault. Again. Always is. Ever will be. World without end.
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Figure 3. The Child
During this time of helplessness there are an infinite number of
total and uncompromising demands on the child. On the one hand, he has the urges
(genetic recordings) to empty his bowels ad lib., to explore, to know, to crush
and to bang, to express feelings, and to experience all of the pleasant
sensations associated with movement and discovery. On the other hand, there is
the constant demand from the environment, essentially the parents, that he give
up these basic satisfactions for the reward of parental approval. This approval,
which can disappear as fast as it appears, is an unfathomable mystery to the
child, who has not yet made any certain connexion between cause and effect.
The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing
process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person
early concludes, I'm not OK.' We call this comprehensive self-estimate the not
ok, or the not ok Child. This conclusion and the continual experiencing of the
unhappy feelings which led to it and confirm it are recorded permanently in the
brain and cannot be erased. This permanent recording is the residue of having
been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents.
It is the situation of child-hood and not the intention of the parents which
produces the problem.
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(This will be discussed at length in the next chapter, about
life positions.) An example of the dilemma of childhood was a statement made by
my seven-year-old daughter, Heidi, who one morning at breakfast said, 'Daddy,
when I have an ok Daddy and an ok Mama, how come I'm not ok?'
When the children of the 'good' parents carry the not ok burden,
one can begin to appreciate the load carried by children whose parents are
guilty of gross neglect, abuse, and cruelty.
As in the case of the Parent, the Child is a state into which a
person may be transferred at almost any time in his current transactions. There
are many things that can happen to us today which recreate the situation of
childhood and bring on the same feelings we felt then. Frequently we may find
ourselves in situations where we are faced with impossible alternatives, where
we find ourselves in a corner, either actually, or in the way we see it. These
'hook the Child', as we say, and cause a replay of the original feelings of
frustration, rejection, or abandonment, and we relive a latter-day version of
the small child's primary depression. Therefore, when a person is in the grip of
feelings, we say his Child has taken over. When his anger dominates his reason,
we say his Child is in command.
There is a bright side, too! In the Child is also a vast store
of positive data. In the Child reside creativity, curiosity, the desire to
explore and know, the urges to touch and feel and experience, and the recordings
of the glorious, pristine feelings of first discoveries. In the Child are
recorded the countless, grand a-ha experiences, the firsts in the life of the
small person, the first drinking from the garden hose, the first stroking of the
soft kitten, the first sure hold on mother's nipple, the first time the lights
go on in response to his flicking the switch, the first submarine chase of the
bar of soap, the repetitious going back to do these glorious things again and
again. The feelings of these delights are recorded, too. With all the not ok
recordings, there is a counterpoint, the rhythmic ok of mother's rocking, the
sentient softness of the favourite blanket, a continuing good response to
favorable external events (if this is indeed a favoured child), which also is
available for replay in today's transactions. This is the flip side, the happy
child, the carefree, butterfly chasing little boy, the little girl with
chocolate on her face. This comes on in today's transactions, too. However, our
observations both of small children and of ourselves as grown-ups convince us
that the not ok feelings far outweigh the good. This is why we believe it is a
fair estimate to say that everyone has a not ok Child.
Frequently I am asked, When do the Parent and the Child stop
recording? Do the Parent and Child contain only experiences in the first five
years of life? I believe that by the time the child leaves the home for his
first independent social experience - school - he has been exposed to nearly
every possible attitude and admonition of his parents, and thenceforth further
parental communications are essentially a reinforcement of what has already been
recorded. The fact that he now begins to 'use his Parent' on others also has a
reinforcing quality in line with the Aristotelian idea that that which is
expressed is impressed. As to further recordings in the Child, it is hard to
imagine that any emotion exists which has not already been felt in its most
intense form by the time the youngster is five years old. This is consistent
with most psychoanalytic theory, and, in my own observation, is true.
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If, then, we emerge from childhood with a set of experiences
which are recorded in an inerasable Parent and Child, what is our hope for
change? How can we get oft the hook of the past?
At about ten months of age a remarkable thing begins to happen
to the child. Until that time his life has consisted mainly of helpless or
unthinking responses to the demands and stimulations by those around him. He has
had a Parent and a Child. What he has not had is the ability either to choose
his responses or to manipulate his surroundings. He has had no self-direction,
no ability to move out to meet life. He has simply taken what has come his way.
At ten months, however, he begins to experience the power of
locomotion. He can manipulate objects and begins to move out, freeing himself
from the prison of immobility. It is true that earlier, as at eight months, the
infant may frequently cry and need help in getting out of some awkward position,
but he is unable to get out of it by himself. At ten months he concentrates on
inspection and exploitation of toys. According to the studies conducted by
Gesell and Ilg, the ten-month-old child ... enjoys playing with a cup and pretends to drink. He brings
objects to his mouth and chews them. He enjoys gross motor activity: sitting and
playing after he has been set up, leaning far forward, and re-erecting himself.
He secures a toy, kicks, goes from sitting to creeping, pulls himself up, and
may lower himself. He is beginning to cruise. Social activities which he enjoys
are peek-a-boo and lip play, walking with both hands held, being put prone on
the floor, or being placed in a rocking toy. Girls show their first signs of
coyness by putting their heads to one side as they smile. {3}
The ten-month-old has found he is able to do something which
grows from his own awareness and original thought. This self-actualization is
the beginning of the Adult. (Figure 4.) Adult data accumulates as a result of
the child's ability to find out for himself what is different about life from
the 'taught concept' of life in his Parent and the 'felt concept' of life in his
Child. The Adult develops a 'thought concept' of life based on data gathering
and data processing. The motility which gives birth to the Adult becomes
reassuring in later life when a person is in distress. He goes for a walk to
'clear his mind'. Pacing is seen similarly as a relief from anxiety. There is a
recording that movement is good, that it has a separating quality, that it
helps him see more clearly what his problem is.
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Figure 4. Gradual emergence of the Adult beginning at ten months
The Adult, during these early years, is fragile and tentative.
It is easily 'knocked out' by commands from the Parent and fear in the Child.
Mother says about the crystal goblet, 'No, no! Don't touch that!' The child may
pull back and cry, but at the first opportunity he will touch it anyway to see
what it is all about. In most persons the Adult, despite all the obstacles
thrown in its way, survives and continues to function more and more effectively
as the maturation process goes on
.
The Adult is 'principally concerned with transforming stimuli
into pieces of information, and processing and filing that information on the
basis of previous experience'. {4} It is different from the Parent, which is
'judgemental in an imitative way and seeks to enforce sets of borrowed
standards, and front the Child, which tends to react more abruptly on the basis
of prelogical thinking and poorly differentiated or distorted perceptions'.
Through the Adult the little person can begin to tell the difference between
life as it was taught and demonstrated to him (Parent), life as he felt it or
wished it or fantasized it (Child), and life as he figures it out by himself
(Adult).
The Adult is a data-processing computer, which grinds out
decisions after computing the information from three sources: the Parent, the
Child, and the data which the Adult has gathered and is gathering (Figure 5).
One of the important functions of the Adult is to examine the data in the
Parent, to see whether or not it is true and still applicable today, and then to
accept it or reject it; and to examine the Child to see whether or not the
feelings there are appropriate to the present or are archaic and in response to
archaic Parent data. The goal is not to do away with the Parent and Child but to
be free to examine these bodies of data. The Adult, in the words of Emerson,
'must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must examine if it be
goodness'; or badness, for that matter, as in the early decision, 'I'm not ok'.
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The Adult testing of Parent data may begin at an early age. A
secure youngster is one who finds that most Parent data is reliable: They told
me the truth!'
'It really is true that cars in the street are dangerous,'
concludes the little boy who has seen his pet dog hurt by a car in the street.
'It really is true that things go better when I share my toys with Bobby,'
thinks the little boy who has been given a prized possession by Bobby. 'It
really does feel better when my pants aren't wet,' concludes the little girl who
has learned to go to the bathroom by herself. If parental directives are
grounded in reality, the child, through his own Adult, will come to realize
integrity, or sense of wholeness. What he tests holds up under testing. The data
which he collects in his experimentation and examination begins to constitute
some 'constants' that he can trust. His findings are supported by what he was
taught in the first place.
It is important to emphasize that the verification of Parent
data does not erase the not ok recordings in the Child, which were produced by
the early imposition of this data. Mother believes that the only way to keep
three-year-old Johnny out of the street is to spank him. He does not understand
the danger. His response is fear, anger, and frustration with no appreciation of
the fact that his mother loves him and is protecting his life. The fear, anger,
and frustration are recorded. These feelings are not erased by the later
understanding that she was right to do what she did, but the understanding of
how the original situation of childhood produced so many not ok recordings of
this type can free us of their continual replay in the present. We cannot erase
the recording, but we can choose to turn it off!
Figure 5. The Adult gets data from three sources
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In the same way that the Adult updates Parent data to determine
what is valid and what is not, it updates Child data to determine which feelings
may be expressed safely. In our society it is considered appropriate for a woman
to cry at a wedding, but it is not considered appropriate for that woman to
scream at her husband afterwards at the reception. Yet both crying and screaming
are emotions in the Child. The Adult keeps emotional expression appropriate. The
Adult's function in updating the Parent and Child is diagrammed in Figure 6. The
Adult within the Adult in this figure refers to updated reality data. (The
evidence once told me space travel was only fantasy; now I know it is reality.)
Figure 6. The updating function of the Adult through reality
testing
Another of the Adult's functions is probability estimating. This
function is slow in developing in the small child and, apparently, for most of
us, has a hard time catching up throughout life. The little person is constantly
confronted with unpleasant alternatives (either you eat your spinach or you go
without ice cream), offering little incentive for examining probabilities.
Unexamined probabilities can underlie many of our transactional failures, and
unexpected danger signals can cause more Adult 'decay', or delay, than expected
ones. There are similarities here to the stock ticker in investment concerns,
which may run many hours behind on very active trading days. We sometimes refer
to this delay as 'computer lag', a remedy for which is the old, familiar
practice of 'counting to ten'.
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The capacity for probability estimating can be increased by
conscious effort. Like a muscle in the body, the Adult grows and increases in
efficiency through training and use. If the Adult is alert to the possibility of
trouble, through probability estimating, it can also devise solutions to meet
the trouble if and when it comes.
Under sufficient stress, however, the Adult can be impaired to
the point where emotions take over inappropriately. The boundaries between
Parent, Adult, and Child are fragile, sometimes indistinct, and vulnerable to
those incoming signals which tend to recreate situations we experienced in the
helpless, dependent days of childhood. The Adult sometimes is flooded by signals
of the 'bad news' variety so overwhelming that the Adult is reduced to an
'onlooker' in the transaction. An individual in this situation might say, 'I
knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't help myself.' Unrealistic,
irrational, non-Adult responses are seen in a condition referred to as traumatic
neurosis. The danger, or 'bad news' signal, hits the Parent and the Child at the
same time it hits the Adult. The Child responds in the way it originally did,
with a feeling of not ok. This may produce all kinds of regressive phenomena.
The individual may again feel himself to be a tiny, helpless, dependent child.
One of the most primitive of these phenomena is thought blocking. One place this
can be seen is in psychiatric hospitals that have a locked-door policy. When the
door is locked on a new patient, his retreat is rapid and pronounced. This is
why I am opposed to treating patients in a setting where the emphasis is on
parental care. Catering to the helpless Child in the individual delays the
reconstructive process of restoring the Adult to the executive function.
An ideal hospital would be a comfortable motel with 'play area'
for the Child, surrounding a clinic building devoted to activities designed for
achieving autonomy of the Adult. The nurses would not wear uniforms or serve as
parents to the Patients. Instead, nurses in street clothing would apply their
skills and training to help each individual learn the identity of his Parent,
Adult, and Child.
In our treatment groups we use certain colloquial catch phrases
such as, 'Why don't you stay in your Adult?' when a member finds his feelings
are taking over. Another of these is, 'What was the original transaction?' This
is asked as means of 'turning on the Adult' to analyze the similarity between
the present incoming signal producing the present distress and the original
transaction, in which the small child experienced distress.
The ongoing work of the Adult consists, then, of checking out
old data, validating or invalidating it, and refilling it for future use. If this
business goes on smoothly and there is a relative absence of conflict between
what has been taught and what is real, the computer is free for important new
business, creativity. Creativity is born from curiosity in the Child, as is the
Adult. The Child provides the 'want to' and the Adult provides the 'how to'. The
essential requirement for creativity is computer time. If the computer is
cluttered with old business there is little time for new business. Once checked
out, many Parent directives become automatic and thus free the computer for
creativity. Many of our decisions in day-to-day transactions are automatic. For
instance, when we see an arrow pointing down a one-way street, we automatically
refrain from going the opposite way. We do not involve our computer in lengthy
data processing about highway engineering, the traffic death toll, or how signs
are painted. Were we to start from scratch in every decision or operate entirely
without the data that was supplied by our parents, our computer would rarely
have time for the creative process.
Page 32.
Some people contend that the undisciplined child, unhampered by
limits, is more creative than the child whose parents set limits. I do not
believe this is true. A youngster has more time to be creative - to explore,
invent, take apart, and put together - if he is not wasting time in futile
decision making for which he has inadequate data. A little boy has more time to
build a snowman if he is not allowed to engage Mother in a long hassle about
whether or not to wear overshoes. If a child is allowed to be creative by
painting the front room walls with shoe polish, he is unprepared for the painful
consequences when he does so at the neighbor's house. Painful outcomes do not
produce ok feelings. There are other consequences that take time, such as
mending in the hospital after a trial-and-error encounter with a car in the
street. There is just so much computer time. Conflict uses a great deal. An
extremely time-consuming conflict is produced when what parents say is true does
not seem to be true to the Adult. The most creative individual is the one who
discovers that a large part of the content of the Parent squares with reality.
He can then file away this validated information in the Adult, trust it, forget
about it, and gets on with other things - like how to make a kite fly, how to
build a sand castle, or how to do differential calculus.
However, many youngsters are preoccupied much of the time with
the conflict between Parent data and what they see as reality. Their most
troubling problem is that they do not understand why the Parent has such a hold
on them. When Truth comes to knock at the Parent's door, the Parent says, 'Come,
let us reason together'. The little child whose father is in jail and
whose mother steals to support him may have a loud recording in his Parent, 'You
never trust a cop!' So he meets a friendly one. His Adult computes all the data
about this nice guy, how he gets the ball game started in the sand lot, how he
treats the gang to popcorn, how he is friendly, and how he speaks in a quiet
voice. For this youngster there is conflict. What he sees as reality is
different from what he has been taught. The Parent tells him one thing and the
Adult another. During the period of his actual dependency upon his parents for
security, however tenuous this security may be, it is likely he will accept the
parents' verdict that cops are bad. This is how prejudice is transmitted. For a
little- child, it may be safer to believe a lie than to believe his own eyes and
ears. The Parent so threatens the Child (in a continuing internal dialogue) that
the Adult gives up and stops trying to inquire into areas of conflict.
Therefore, 'cops are bad' comes through as truth. This is called contamination
of the Adult and will be examined in
