Script analysis

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Script analysis is the method of uncovering the 'early decisions, made unconsciously, as to how life
shall be lived'.[1] It is one of the five clusters in transactional analysis, involving 'a progression from
structural analysis, through transactional and game analysis, to script analysis'.[2] Berne focused on
individual and group psychotherapy but today, transactional analysis and script analysis is
considered in organisational settings, educational settings and coaching settings.
The purpose of script analysis is to aid the client (individual or organizational)
to achieve autonomy by recognising the script's influence on values, decisions,
behaviors and thereby allowing them to decide against the script.[3] Berne
describes someone who is autonomous as being 'script free'[4] and as a "real
person".[5] For organizations, autonomy is responding to the here and now
reality, without discounting the past, the present or the possibilities for the
future.
Script analysis at the individual level considers that 'from the early transactions
between mother, father and child, a life plan evolves. This is called the
script...or unconscious life plan'.[6] Script analysts work on the assumption that
a person's behavior is partly programmed by the script, 'the life plan set down
in early life. Fortunately, scripts can be changed, since they are not inborn, but
learned'.[7] Many of these same people developing a life plan, start businesses
or work into leadership positions in organisations. Owners and CEO's bring with
them their life script and have tremendous influence on the fate of the
organisation.

Contents

[hide]

1History
2Winners and losers
3Psychology of human destiny
4Later developments
5Criticism
6See also
7References
8External links
History[edit]
Eric Berne introduced the concept of the script in 'the first complete
presentation, and still the fundamental work on transactional
analysis...Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy[1961]',[8] since when
'definitive studies of the origins and analysis of scripts are being conducted by
a number of Transactional Analysts'.[9]
In that work, Berne described 'a true long-term script, with all three aspects of
protocol, script proper, and adaptation'.[10] For Berne, 'the household drama
which is played out to an unsatisfactory conclusion in the first years of life is
called the protocol...an archaic version of the Oedipus drama'.[11] Thereafter
'the script proper...is a unconscious derivative of the protocol', which in later
life, as 'compromised in accordance with the available realities...is technically
called the adaptation '.[12]
Berne himself noted that 'of all those who preceded transactional
analysis, Alfred Adler comes the closest to talking like a script analyst,' with his
concept of '"the life plan...which determines his life-line"'. [13]

Winners and losers[edit]

Berne came to believe that 'from earliest months, the child is taught not only
what to do, but also what to see, hear, touch, think, and feel....each person
obediently ends up at the age of five or six with a script of life plan largely
dictated by his parents. It tells him how he's going to carry on his life, and how
it's going to end, winner, non-winner, or loser'.[14] That is, the child is given
information both about themselves and also about the external world (which
may be factually correct or incorrect) by the parent concomitant with which the
child is encouraged by the parent to use this information in order to decide how
to live.
For Berne, 'a winner is defined as a person who fulfills his contract with the
world and with himself', and the object of psychotherapy was to 'break up scripts
and make losers into non-winners ("Making progress") and non-winners into
winners ("Getting well", "Flipping in", and "Seeing the light")'.[15]
In the first flush of enthusiasm for script analysis, proponents would proudly
proclaim that 'my experience is that most people with a loser's script can
change this to a winner's script during the process of therapy '.[16] Later
practitioners would more cautiously observe that '"script cure"...is seldom a
once-for-all event. Much more often, cure is a matter of progressively learning
to exercise new choices'.[17]

Psychology of human destiny[edit]

Drawing on the work of Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell, in The Hero With A Thousand
Faces, which is the best textbook for script analysts, Berne argued that fairy-
tales, legends, mythology and drama were the early tools for mankind 'to distill
out and record the more homely and recognizable patterns of human living'[18] -
and that they still provide keys to the framework of the contemporary life
script.
 Berne made 'script analysis...a central theme of his last book',[19] subtitled The
Psychology of Human Destiny, in which he explained that 'one object of script
analysis is to fit the patient's life plan into the grand historical psychology of
the whole human race'.[20]
According to Berne, not only is there an individual script but there is also a
family, community and national script. Ultimately there is a script for mankind
which determines the fate of the human race.

Linking the script to the repetition compulsion, Berne concluded that 'script analysis
is then the answer to the problem of human destiny, and tells us (alas!) that
our fates are predetermined for the most part, and that free will in this respect
is for most people an illusion'.[21]

Later developments[edit]
'Many authors, after Berne's death, put forward the idea that scripts concern a
general attitude to construct and organize reality...this "open" frame of
reference'[22] linking script analysis to narrative psychology.
In such a perspective, 'the main purpose of script analysis is to elicit the
multiple meanings inherent in a person's life script'.[23]
Fanita English argued that the idea of scripts was associated perhaps too much
with the idea of pathologies, whereas it is an episcript (a concept that she
proposed) which is harmful. Eric Berne makes brief reference to it, calling it an
overscript. English said that, "it is possible for a 'donor' to 'episcript' a
'vulnerable recipient' into taking on a harmful life task, such as murder or
suicide. ... A tragic demonstration of the culmination of an episcript was offered
on 9/11, when perfectly intelligent, educated young men attacked the World
Trade Center Towers in New York at the cost of their own lives after having
carefully planned to do so because they had been episcripted by Osama bin
Laden".[24]

Criticism[edit]
Fanita English considered that 'Berne tried too hard to turn script analysis into a
science...devised far too technical a system for script analysis'.[25]
Others have remarked that 'script analysis...is overly psychoanalytic in attitude
and overly reductionist'.[26]

See also[edit]
Thomas Anthony Harris
Claude Steiner
 References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK (1969) p. 68

2. Jump up^ Richard Nelson-Jones, Theory and Practice of Counselling and Therapy (2006) p. 161

3. Jump up^ Transactional Analysis Counselling in Action, Page 34

4. Jump up^ Eric Berne, pg. 101, ISBN 0803984677

5. Jump up^ What Do You Say After You Say Hello, pg. 350

6. Jump up^ John M. Dusay, "Transactional Analysis", in Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and
Psychoanalysis (1976) p. 310 and p. 325

7. Jump up^ Dusay, p. 311

8. Jump up^ Dusay, p.330-1

9. Jump up^ Harris, p. 68

10. Jump up^ Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961) p. 117

11. Jump up^ Berne, Transactional p. 117

12. Jump up^ Berne, Transactional p. 117

13. Jump up^ Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) p. 58

14. Jump up^ Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (1070) p. 145

15. Jump up^ Berne, Sex p. 147-8

16. Jump up^ Richard G. Abell, Own Your Own Life (1977) p. 99

17. Jump up^ I. Stewart/V Joines, T A Today (1987) p. 269

18. Jump up^ Berne, What p. 47 and p. 35

19. Jump up^ Claude Steiner, in Erskine, p. 205

20. Jump up^ Eric Berne, What p. 47

21. Jump up^ Berne, What p. 295-6

22. Jump up^ Maria T. Tosi, in Erskine, p. 31

23. Jump up^ Helena Hargaden, in Erskine, p. 55

24. Jump up^ English, F. (2010). "Personal Encounters with a Flawed Genius: Eric Berne". Transactional
Analysis Journal. doi:10.1177/036215371004000305.

25. Jump up^ Fanita English, in Richard G. Erskine, Life Scripts (2010) p. 225

26. Jump up^ William F. Cornell, in Erskine, p. 107-8

External links[edit]
"The Life Script"