IV.
Despooking Defective
Communication
Despooking:
The Understanding and Treatment of Anxiety
Jonathan Wagner
Summary
Careful listening (Ernst) reveals that
many people continue to believe in spooks.
This belief in ghostly images can be heard
in the many versions of "I am being scared,"
including, "He scares me," "I just get
frightened," and, "Their laughter upsets
me." The person is creating a spook to
explain anxious feelings.
This article discusses how a person
develops neurotic anxieties and how these
can be controlled, if not eliminated.
Part I
The Native Equipment
Looking at a new-born baby, we would
hardly expect this tiny person to be able to
create monsters which would be able to
eventually turn on him and immobilize
him. We see an infant who responds to his
comfort and discomfort. If the baby's
primal sensory mechanism gets flooded
with a sudden stimulus, we see a startle
reaction.
It is an immediate reflex response to
sudden, intense stimulation which
demands some out-of-the-ordinary
treatment by the organism. As such,
it partakes of the nature of an emer-
gency reaction, but it is a rapid, tran-
sitory response much more simple in
its organization and expression than
the so-called 'emotions.' (May, 1950).
NOTE: The name Leadership Parent is used by Richard Chartier with management teams. It captures more of the
positive elements of the Prejudiced Parent. The functional descriptions for the Parent are from Steve Anderson.
The descriptive terms for the Child are my own.
268
Rollo May goes on to show that anxiety
and later, fear, are products of maturatc.n
and learning. Most of us have had some
experiences with a baby falling-and falling
as a limp rag, unaware of the impending
hurt. After a few falls, the child learns
that he will be hurt at the end of falling.
Unfortunately, the learned protective
stiffening often adds to the injury. This
learning through experience is one element
in the development of anxiety.
Studies show that not only this learning
process goes into anxiety. There is also the
maturation of the infant's ability to see and
hear, which allow for the infant to record
the threatening situation. For instance, a
child in a confining situation is complaisant
at 10 weeks, shows mild apprehension at
20 weeks, and fear at 30 weeks.
This progression from startle reaction
to anxiety to fear is the wayan adult suc-
cessfully settles a threatening situation.
Several years ago, as I was leaving a
resaurant and walking to my car, I heard a
loud "bang" and caught a flash of light
from' the corner of my eye. I stopped,
frozen in my tracks, aware of a flash of
light, the noise, and a wisp of air by my ear.
I ran frantically up the street, then back
toward the car, and finally I fell to the
sidewalk. By that time, I had identified
the flash as coming from a gun. I crept to
my car and drove away. Only then did I put
together that the wisp of air was the bullet
going past my head.
Transactional Analysis Journal
 DESPOOKING

My first frozen response was the startle Natural Child or over-adaptions of com-
reaction, which lasted for a second. Then I pliance or rebellion.
resorted to agitation as a negative means of
dealing with my anxiety.
Not-OK Side OK Side
The negative methods consist of
allaying or avoiding the anxiety with-
out solving the conflict which causes Persecutes Protects
the anxiety; or, in other terms, evad-
ing the danger situation rather than Rescues Permits
resolving it.
Finally, as I decided to do something
constructive, my anxiety became focused as
fear of a specified threat. I returned to the
car and my companion, who was already
in the car, to get us both away from the
danger.
The individual confronts anxiety-
creating experiences and moves
ahead without succumbing to them
because the values he identifies with
his existence (e.g., freedom, prestige, Wilts Freewheelin'
etc.) are stronger than the threat.
Underhanded Housebroken
My image of myself as a protector of
others was more important to me than
staying out of the line of fire; I was willing
to face the anxiety of returning to the car.
Self Concept and Anxiety Figure 1
Berne wrote that sensation hunger ex-
plains why roller coasters make money. From the diagram, we can see that a
The choice to brave the anxiety of a new person has four broad options to choose
experience is partly provided by sensation from when anxiety is felt. The person can
hunger and partly by the values-or self- identify the anxiety-creating experience
concept-held in the Child ego state. A and go through it, free-wheeling with all his
young boy who defines himself as shy, creative problem-solving abilities. The
scared, and weak, will pass up a new person can also call upon past experiences
adventure while the boy who defines him- with similar anxiety situations and react in
self as brave and daring will eagerly seek a well-trained manner.
out an anxiety-provoking ride. A child The third possibility leads to neurotic
who is provided with encouragement to anxiety as the person reacts to the situation
try new experiences and given enough excessively. This may be with anger, which
information so as to handle the experiences in turn produces more anxiety through
successfully, will develop an attitude of fantasies of retaliation, or the excess may
going through anxiety-creating experiences be through compliance, which often results
rather than avoiding them. in further oppression. The fourth way in
The child who is not encouraged to face which a person can respond to anxiety is to
new experiences will create a payoff fan- retreat within oneself, with the ultimate
tasy of being a loser. This fantasy will withdrawal ending in death.
then influence his behavior toward the Anxiety may be translated into a solvable
Not-OK side of his Child ego state. The fear with the person moving toward excite-
child then chooses between self-destructive ment and gladness. Anxiety that is allowed
involutional behavior of the Not-OK to be diffuse is symptomized toward

Vol. 9, No.4, October 1979 269

JONATHAN WAGNER
sadness and anger. The direction of the
anxiety depends upon the self-image in
effect at the time. When a loser self-image
(fantasy or Not-OK payoff) is in power,
anxiety is likely to move toward behavior
symptoms on the Not-OK side of the Child.
If a winner self-image is in power, then
chances are that anxiety will be translated
into fear which can be problem-solved.
What self-image is in effect depends
upon many things such as past experiences
in problem-solving, whether abilities have
been discounted or not, the amount of ex-
ternal and internal stroking that has been
taking place, awareness· of the positive
and negative fantasies a person has of him-
self, as well as the size and shape of the
threatening situation.
The Development of Neurotic Anxiety
Neurotic anxiety is the escalation of
anxiety out of proportion to the situation.
It is also being fixated at the point of
anxiety rather than using the energy, the
wide-eyedness, the alertness, to move
toward identifying the feared object,
thought or value.
There are two notable contributions to
the understanding of neurotic anxiety in
T.A. They are the two versions of the witch
parent suggested by Claude Steiner and
Jacqui Schiff.
Steiner's concept of the Child ego state
of the parent, sparking off an electrode
in the child's Child ego state, underscores
how much of the early anxiety developed.
A mother nursing her child gets sexy
feelings and thinks she is wicked. The
mother then becomes anxious about herself
and her baby. The baby notices the change
in the muscles and the decreased flow of
milk and she, too, becomes anxious. Or,
later in life, a mother laughs about her
daughter's dangerous play on the swing
set, calling her gutsy. The daughter sees
that her mother wants her to ignore
dangers, but do dangerous things. Again,
unusual amounts of anxiety will be evoked.
Jacqui Schiff points out that between
ages four and six a child will create fantasies
in its own mind which are both exciting
and used to control behavior. At this time
a mother may say to her child, "Don't
270
pick up that gum. It has germs on it."
The child hears the command but does not
understand what germs are. After all, the
gum looks like it did just before she
dropped it. So she makes up a picture of
many-armed fuzzy creatures hiding in the
gum that will grow into monsters inside
herself.
Steiner's understanding of the witch
parent provides a way to understand how a
person's energy gets spent on negative
self-images. Through direct, although
subtle influences, a parent encourages a
child to avoid, circumvent, or ignore
anxiety-producing situations. To do this,
the child develops compensatory symptoms
to handle or explain reality, notably tense-
ness to avoid feeling, or agitation to diffuse
feelings. To keep the parents' love and
attention, the child decides to ignore her
own feelings, to live with anxiety, rather
than focus on her fear and solvethe problem.
Jacqui Schiff's explanation of the witch
parent shows how the child learns to excite
himself at about the age of five. This ability
can be used for either amusement or terror.
with the same compensatory symptoms of
tenseness or agitation.
A third experience that influences a
child into neurotic anxieties are unreal
expectations he experiences. Parents expect
their child to hold bowel movements before
the sphincter muscle develops, to read
before the capacity for symbolizations
develops, to play sports before eye-hand
coordination develops. A child who is
expected to do something he can't accom-
plish generates excessive anxiety without
having satisfactory experiences with this
anxiety.
This excessiveanxiety which comes from
unreal expectations, self-generated fantasies,
or early script injunctions, is neurotic
anxiety. It is excessive in the fact that it no
longer acts as an early warning system to
alert the person to danger, but becomes a
danger in itself. The person begins to define
herself as a person who is afraid of fear.
She sees herself immobilized by anxiety.
He no longer uses anxiety to become aware
of specific dangers. Instead he acts like a
scared rabbit, a tough guy, a jerk, or
becomes compulsive.
Transactional Analysis Journal

Part II
The Despooking Process
Several years ago I was working with a
person who kept himself stuck by con-
tinually bringing up problems that were
going to happen. I used a time line to show
him what he was doing.
t-'2 Days from now)
HERE & NOW
Figure 1
The dotted arrow to the future showed
him how he was leaving the here and now,
the present, to go into the unknown future.
After a while, we added a second dotted
line to represent how his present behavior
was based on a childhood problem.
PAST 1'''---'', FUTURE
(7 yrs. old) t-"(2
days from now)
HERE & NOW
Figure 2
At this point, it became clear that spooks
were future projections to avoid unsolved
feeling problems from the past. As I con-
tinued to ask the person about his options,
it became clear that his scared feeling was a
racket to avoid what he thought was an
unsolvable problem. Out of this experience
has devloped a procedure for uncovering
spooks and despooking them.
1. To make your diagnosis that the per-
son you are working with is spooking
himself, you need to hear clearly the phrase
he uses to project his problems into the
future. Following Berne's dictum, collect
three clear statements. Then you can begin
despooking intervention (and be a modern-
day exorcist).
2. After drawing the spook time line, get
the person to identify where the dotted
arrow goes into the future. This may be
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DESPOOKING
anywhere from a moment in the present to
years into the future. It is important to
get the person to be clear about when his
particular doom is doing to strike. Being
unclear about time is a major means of
mystifying oneself. When the person is
clear as to the time, move on to the next
step.
3. The third step is to state clearly the
fear of the Child ego state. To do this, I
list the fearful problems on the right side
of the board. To get the list, I keep asking,
"How does this problem scare you?" until
I hear the Child ego state, talking in "I"
statements that sound scary. Such a list
might go as follows:
They're out to get me.
(Who?) People.
(Who?) My family.
(Who?) My mother always puts me down.
(How does this scare you?) She'll reject
me again.
(How does that scare you?) I'm going to
feel rejected, alone. I'm afraid of being
lonely.
4. The fourth step is to find the unsolved
childhood experience that fuels the present
anxiety. One person with whom I worked
felt uncomfortable and embarrassed after
being on the dance floor a while. In work-
ing with him, he remembered that his
friends on the sidelines were laughing and
he imagined that they were laughing at him.
He was afraid he was the butt of a joke.
As we went on to the fourth step, he
came up with a time in first grade when his-
teacher punished him by putting him in a
windowless cloak room. He did not know
why he was being punished. As in this case,
the connection between the present spook
and the past experience may not be obvious.
To get the past experience, I ask, "What
does this spook remind you of from your
pst?" If they only go halfway back, I get
that experience on the board and suggest
they think about what happened in their
life before the age of 12.
5. The next step is to find out more
about the early experience. "How was that
experience a problem to you?" "What did
you decide about life?" These are the two
271
JONATHAN WAGNER
important questions. For the man who
was embarrassed about dancing, the
problem was confusion about his mis-
behavior and terror about the cloak closet.
He concluded that people were out to get
him-a clear connection to his present fear
of his friend's laughter.
6. The sixth step is to find new solutions
for the early childhood experience. The
man above decided he could have asked
what he did wrong. He could have walked
out of the closet, or at least tried the door.
He could have shown his hurt by crying
instead of taking it like a man. Usually, at
this point, I find the person is relieved and
knows what he can do in the present.
7. If the person is not relieved, he may
have fooled himself or me, or he needs
help to think of new options for the present.
I find that the simple, specific language of
a six- to ten-year-old indicates the most
effective despooking is taking place. When
examples get fuzzy, I usually stop the work
and return another day. Once a person
learns to listen to the conversations in his
head and think about the despooking pro-
cess, he can take care of his anxieties.
Additional Treatment Considerations
In listening for the spook, you not only
hear the childhood fantasy, but also the
life script decisions of Never, Always,
Until, After, Over and Over, and Open
End. In order to avoid seeing that a parti-
cular spook is a life decision, elaborate
stories are constructed to keep the spook
out there-in a job, possessing another
person's body, in a house, store, or bus.
Not only is the spook kept external, it is
also talked about from the Parent ego
state (as in step 3 above), which provides
good camouflage for the Child fear.
Despooking can also take place by
using the Kahler Miniscript to understand
the spooking process. It is the Final Mini-
script Payoff that reveals the spook. The
payoff is tightly bound to the Driver. This
is demonstrated in some humor. A young
man was walking home late at night and
decided to take a short-cut through a
cemetery. The night was dark, cool, and
damp. Halfway through the cemetery, he
272
slipped into a freshly-dug grave. For about
an hour he jumped and jumped, trying to
get out, only to slide down again. Finally
he fell asleep. Shortly afterwards, a second
man also cut across the cemetery and fell
into the same grave. Since it was dark and
the second man was scared, he immediately
began trying to jump out, only to feel his
fingers touch the grass and slide backwards.
About this time, the first man woke up and
in a low, mournful voice said, "You'll
never make it." But he did.
The moral of the story is clear. The only
way to avoid the tragic payoff in life is to
try harder. And so it is that the tragic payoff
gets intertwined with the counter script .
Driver and becomes fuel for maintaining
(he Not-OK Miniscript behavior. Like the
drums in the play, Emperor Jones, the
payoff fuels the self-destructive activity.
Also like the drums, it casts a hypnotic
trance that pulls the person back to his doom.
Capers and Kahler like to cut the line
between the Driver and Stopper. I like to
cut the line between the Driver and the
Payoff by understanding the payoff fantasy
and changing it to a positive self-image.
When both lines get cut, the Not-OK Mini-
script falls apart.
A third concept that is useful in despook-
ing is that of the person being a source
of constant energy. That is, the individual
has essentially the same amount of energy
to spend each day. This concept is useful
with those persons who use up their
energy maintaining an anxious position.
They very often say something like, "I'd
like to do something but I don't have the
energy." With such a person, it is useful
to point out that they have a constant
supply of energy to use daily. They need
to see that they have a choice about how
they spend their energy, either by doing
things to avoid the anxiety-producing
situation, or by solving their problems.
Conclusion
Anxiety is an early warning system that
helps a person focus on a feared situation,
a threat to his beliefs or values. When a
person becomes afraid of fear, he stops at
anxiety and escalates it. This generally
happens due to unresolved problems in
Transactional Analysis Journal

3. Outline Unsolved Childhood Experience
PAST
4. List new solutions for Childhood Experience t
HERE & NOW
Figure 3
A Despooking Time Time
childhood. A time line despooking tech-
nique is useful in objectifying the process.
Also useful are the Miniscript and the
concept of constant energy.
Jonathan Wagner, MDiv, pCrM, is in
private practice at Transactional Analysis
Counseling Service, St. Louis, Missouri.
REFERENCES
Berne, E. What do you say after you say hello. New
York: Grove Press, Inc., 1971,21,206.
Vol. 9, No.4, October 1979
DESPOOKING
2. List of Spooks (Move from projections to
Child' 'I" statements
1. Locate specific time ofdoom
FUTURE
5. Listsolutions for present spook
Ernst, F.H. Who's listening. Adresso'set, Vallejo,
Ca. For an understanding of listening as distinct
from hearing see:
Kahler, T., & Capers, H. The miniscript. Transac-
tional Analysis Journal, 1974,4(1),25.
May, R. The meaning of anxiety. (Quoting Landis &
Hunt, The Startle Pattern). New York: Ronald
Press, 1950,47.
Schiff, J. Lectures and personal conversation.
Schiff, J., & Schiff, A. Passivity. Transactional
Analysis Journal, 1971,1(1),11.
Steiner, C. Games alcoholics play. New York: Grove
Press, Inc., p 27.
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