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stella41b -> Past experience or a part of you? (10/1/2009 3:40:05 PM)
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Greetings everyone.
I'm stuck on something and I'd like your opinions.
I'm in the latter half of my book on my theory of modern theatre and am working on a chapter dealing with Dramatic Transactional Analysis. This is derived from Transactional Analysis developed by Dr Eric Berne in the 1950's where Berne revised the three Ego states of Freud - the ego, super-ego and id into Parent, Adult, and Child.
I have replaced Berne's exteropsychic ego state Parent with Character, his neopsychic Adult ego state with Self, and his archaeopsychic ego state Child with Experience.
Now this has to do with communication which is formed of course of strokes and transactions, which are flows of communication which take place between people both linguistically (what is expressed through speech and language) and psychologically (what isn't spoken, but expressed through projection).
As we know strokes are the attention, recognition and responses we give each other when communicating. They can be positive (the 'warm fuzzies') or negative (the 'cold pricklies') but also as strokes can be motivated by external stimuli and triggers they can be actual or real (i.e. coming from current or present stimuli) - 'The dog needs to be taken for a walk', 'I can't find my keys', they can be artificial or contrived (i.e. coming from a role, or social or cultural convention) - 'How are you?' 'Fine thanks, and you?' - and they can be derived (i.e. coming from a past stimulus or trigger)
Thus
CHARACTER - The 'you' in any sort of role, as a parent, a worker, a boss, a client, a patient.
SELF - The 'you' as you are now, you being 'yourself'.
EXPERIENCE - The 'past' you, how you once were and how you communicated in past or redundant transactions or relationship cycles.
Consider:
A: 'Good morning. How can I help you?' (Character to Character)
B: 'Good morning. I'd like a biro please.' (Character to Character)
A: 'How was your holiday?' (Self to Self)
B: 'It was brilliant. Too bad I have so much work to do now.' (Self to Self)
Note that this conversation takes place in a shop.
So how about this?
A: 'Have you done the washing yet?'
B: 'No Sir, I'm sorry but I haven't.'
A: 'Do it now!'
B: 'Yes sir.'
This is a conversation between a Master and his slave.
Now bear in mind that I have stated explicitly that communication between people often involves issues of power and control, domination and submission, and that some people create pressure on others to communicate in a particular style and that others feel more comfortable when handling such pressure. This implies of course that a relationship based on such communication and an authority transfer dynamic is perfectly normal.
But what ego state would you ascribe to each stroke in the above transaction between Master and slave using what I have defined above?
How are they communicating? Self-Self? Character-Character?
How would you define the strokes here? Real? Artifical? Derived?
Do you feel that your preferred style of communication in relationships is inborn, i.e. a part of you, or triggered by some past experience or relationship cycle?
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