January 2020
by Dr Elizabeth McCardell,
M.Couns., PhD
What’s worse than
someone who argues with you all the time? To my mind it is someone who refuses
to say what they want but tries to get you to do what they want anyway. This is manipulation, plain and simple
–but it isn’t so much dishonest, as unaware behaviour. Such a person can seem
to be reasonable, fair and equitable, on the surface, but they are incredibly
controlling just the same.
Though not a game Eric
Berne wrote about in his famous book Games
People Play, The Psychology of Human Relationships (1964), this is up there
among the most notable. In a minute, I’ll explain why.
Berne posited that we
all possess three ego states when we engage in transactions with others: the
Parent, the Adult, and the Child. These represent an individual’s internalized
model of parents, adults, and children.
The Child ego state is directly linked to the emotional life of the
child during their first five years of life. If the person responds in most
human interaction from that early emotional place, then the Child ego state is
their most dominant. If they operate from a punitive position, you must do such
and such (eg, always chew with your mouth closed), then the Parent ego state is
dominant. The third ego state, the Adult is one where a person exercises
autonomy and responds not out of emotional reactivity (as for the Child) nor in
order to control the other person (as for the Parent), but with a capacity to
utilize whatever it takes to share equitably and rationally.
When two people
operating from the Adult ego state converse, each listens to what the other has
to say and chooses what to respond to. There is a maturity in the transaction.
When one person is responding from the position of the emotional Child state,
it is quite hard to steer the conversation from the Child-Parent position as it
is this dynamic that is the most familiar. It’s hard for the other person to
avoid taking the Parent ego state position when the other’s Child ego state is
saying, ‘poor me, help me, I don’t know this’ that reaches out for a Parent to
make all things better, and yet this is what we all need to strive for.
In the Child ego
state there is magical thinking going on. What the person is feeling about
themselves is confused with they imagine the other person is feeling. So, for
instance, they’ll insist that because they feel sad, the other person is also
feeling sad, or what they want is essentially what the other person wants. They’ll
even say so. Essentially, it’s, I want… therefore you want it and when you say
you want it, I know because it’s what I want, and I know these things.
I know such a person as I’ve described
above, and being with her is incredibly hard work. There is a disconnect in all
conversations. Her Child ego state just never seems to grow up, stuck in a
mind-state that doesn’t allow for fundamental change, nor it seems, any capacity
for realizing that what isn’t already known can be learned. The Child just
wants what she wants now and wants the other person to accommodate her, without
discovering ways to fill out the areas she has no knowledge of.
Transactional
Analysis, as developed by Berne is a post-psychoanalytic theory and method of
therapy where social transactions are analysed to determine the ego state of
the client (whether parent-like, childlike, or adult-like) as a basic for
understanding behaviour. This ‘why is it so’ gives us a way to reframe our
presentation of self to how we interact with others.
To redirect the
trajectory of the Child ego state in one person with the partnered Parent ego
state in the other person to an equitable conversation between two Adults requires
concerted focus, effort, and awareness. The familiar old way isn’t particularly
healthy as it inhibits growth and understanding. We need to, I think, learn to redirect
the dynamic of human transactions from reactivity to mutual sensitivity and responsibility
toward self and others.
