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Past experience or a part of you? - 10/1/2009 3:40:05 PM

stella41b

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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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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/1/2009 3:58:34 PM

leadership527

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quote:

ORIGINAL: stella41b
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.

Interesting question Stella, but I'm left scratching my head a bit. I don't think I have a "SELF" as you describe. I know of no "default Jeff",

As I would envision it, during the conversation I would be in several different characters all at once:

HUSBAND: (Oh man, I'm almost out of clean socks)
MASTER: (Why wasn't my commanded followed more promptly? Time to follow-up on it.)
FRIEND: (*laughs* Sucks for you that you have to do the laundry, next time around YOU should be the master)
LOVER: (Wanna have sex on the washer?)
BUDDY: (Oh hell, if you've procrastinated this long, let me do the laundry for you. You must really be despising the idea today).

I think all of those would be happening simultaneously. So I would interpret everything as character-character since I don't acknowledge the self-self. Because I would see it as many different charactes all at once, the origin of the strokes would be similarly complex... different origins for different characters and strokes.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/1/2009 4:23:59 PM

Prinsexx

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quote:

ns] >> General BDSM Discussion >> Past experience or a part of you? Page: [1]

I'm just going to throw a spanner in the works here and say that my experience (aha) is that most self to self communication is not authentic and is actually transacted just as character to chracter is not authentic but transacted.
Which pat of me is authentic? No one of my parts according to transactional analysis. Authenticity? I would have yo define authenticity as a product of ego transaction...accrding to the model.
But in a more direct answer to your question....my 'slave' role was definitely 'self' when I was a slave,
Now? Since I have 'come out' and returned to being a switch...then 'slave' has become a character and as such so has Mistress become a character. My 'acting out' however is just the start of a process of practice of rehearsal if you will until I reach authenticity point. The 'point' of rehearsal of role is that it becomes increasingly authentic.
When there is an inner authenticity of response which is directly in the moment and directly responding to other then I am self rather than character.
That same authenticity happens on stage I believe. That is also what Stanislav. was getting at. The closer one got to the inner self (the essence of his method) the closer that authenticity communicated itself to the audience. Acting becam real. The character became a real self self.
SORTED !

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/1/2009 8:47:51 PM

sravaka

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This is a fascinating/thought-provoking question....

I can't help thinking that *any* of the possibilities you've given might be applied to each component of the master-slave dialogue, depending on the relationship. Any of them might be self, character, child. (and, I quite like the way you divided that up), interacting with any of the others. Maybe that's why wiitwd is so screwy-- we *try* to bring all of them into play rather than being confined to the prescribed partial roles.

I imagine you are more familar than i with the distinction between "persona" and "anima"? I confess, I don't quite get how the tripartite freudian view meshes with that... (personally, i think freud is a dork, though i realize i'm a bit excessive & willful in this)....

I wonder what's at the bottom of it? What is "real"? Character, in your schema, I imagine is more learned than "real" (adaptive vs. innate)... But what is the relationship between self and child? Are we trying somehow to get back toward the *truth* of the child, or the alternate *truth* of the (adaptive) self? and how do these relate to our counterparts in D/s relationships? (equal and opposite? neither? something betwixt? something (dare i hope) that encompasses the whole range, the whole "truth"?)

Perhaps I've gone overboard (and incoherently at that) but I wonder about these things too.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/1/2009 9:30:35 PM

Musicmystery

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quote:

As I would envision it, during the conversation I would be in several different characters all at once:

HUSBAND: (Oh man, I'm almost out of clean socks)
MASTER: (Why wasn't my commanded followed more promptly? Time to follow-up on it.)
FRIEND: (*laughs* Sucks for you that you have to do the laundry, next time around YOU should be the master)
LOVER: (Wanna have sex on the washer?)
BUDDY: (Oh hell, if you've procrastinated this long, let me do the laundry for you. You must really be despising the idea today).

[Exeunt Jeff, singing "The Duke's Duet" from Il Schizophreno...]

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 9:59:59 AM

DesFIP

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But I didn't emerge from the womb fully formed, my past experiences are part of me, have helped to shape me into who I am.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 10:55:08 AM

Amaros

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It's an interesting question, I wish I could be more helpful, I've been more into the concept of "tripping" lately, i.e, identity submersion, but I'll give it a shot.

My initial assessment, in the form of external:internal:

A: 'Have you done the washing yet?' (Parent to Parent: Character to Character: social-economics dictate that one must appear in public in clean clothes, not smelling like a donkey or potentially lose economic status, and suffer a reduction in resources to take care of ones dependents, so literally, no hidden agenda - is the laundry done?)

B: 'No Sir, I'm sorry but I haven't.' (Child to Parent: Character to Self: fuck the laundry, I have people waiting in chat, I wish I'd started this an hour ago - "sorry" indicating experience, awareness of expectations.)

A: 'Do it now!' (Parent to Child: Character to Experience: economics have a higher priority than chat, reinforcement of Experience/expectations.)

B: 'Yes sir.' (Child to Parent: Experience to Self: it I don't there will be consequences.)

There are probably other ways it could go, depending on personality and there will be overlap as lead suggests, Parent/Adult, Character/Experience, occurring more or less simultaneously or sequentially but rapidly enough to appear simultaneous, etc.

If sequential, then you have a prioritization scheme: Character/Self vs. Self/Character with different ego states being dominant or recessive in the mix.

Hope that helps.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 5:06:59 PM

ncbabe

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I agree with sravaka in that any combination could be applied to the dialogue, depending on the tone and circumstances in which it was uttered.

I would think that the strokes are real, assuming that the washing does in fact need to be done.

My own preferred style of communication in relationships is triggered by past experiences/relationships. I am who I am, but how I communicate with others is something I have only learned how to do from experience.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 7:58:07 PM

IronBear

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I tend to agree with Prin here. I'm not a huge fan of Freud but prefer Jung's archetypes and archetypal behaviours (The occultist in me of course). For me I use myself as the primary sounding board for most things I am brooding over and this includes verbally talking to myself to test arguments etc. Thus I do not see the character to character or self to self using different personae but rather bouncing (verbally or mentally) ideas and concepts off the aether to see how they resonate and seeking flaws which I can rectify.

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 9:06:08 PM

AcademyForSlaves

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The doctor says to the patient: "Analyze yourself"

The patient replies: "Then why am I wasting my time asking you?"

The Adult in me says "Don't ask why anymore, just move on with your life and enjoy being you."
The Parent in me says "Don't listen to others when it comes to your own life, they only want to change you into something they can understand, name, and categorize. Only you know in your heart what's best for you."
The Child in me says "I'm bored, when's recess?"

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RE: Past experience or a part of you? - 10/3/2009 10:00:22 PM

IronBear

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[thread hijack]
Hmmmm The Doctor, the Patient and the Child..... I have the Doctor, the Patient, the Psych/Therapist, the Priest, the Mystic, the pragmatic Occultist, Warrior and the Child... Bloody hell are we all having a group discussion for suffers of Multiple Personality Disorder?
[/thread hijack]

< Message edited by IronBear -- 10/3/2009 10:02:40 PM >

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