THE PARENT INTERVIEW
John R. McNeel, Ph.D.
The parent interview is a specific
technique to be used in conjunction with
two-chair work. For a number of years
now many people within the ITAA have
been using two-chair work as an adjunct
to their TA therapy. This article will
present some of the issues involved in
two-chair work using TA language: a
common dilemma in therapy, five im-
portant themes to watch for as two-chair
work is being conducted, and use of the
parent interview in order to help the client
make resolution of his impasse.
Background
Two-chair work was created by the late
Fritz Perls in the 1960's.1 He devel-
oped this technique' primarily to help
people own the different parts of them-
selves. This technique has been used by
TA therapists not only to help clients
own different parts of themselves, but
also as a highly effective way to help
clients resolve old conflicts with their
parents or people who were in their
environment as they were growing up.
Two-chair work has also been found an
effective means of injecting affective
content into the cognitive processes of
transactional analysis, structural analysis,
game analysis, and script analysis
(Berne). 2
During the past five years this writer
has had the opportunity to witness a large
number of therapists from different
modalities who all use the two-chair
technique. It became apparent that some
therapists using this technique were able
Trans. An. J., 6:1, January 1976
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to elicit significant results from their
clients; other therapists using the tech-
nique seemed unable to help their clients
change. From this observation the writer
began to pay close attention to those
therapists who appeared to achieve high
gain from a relatively short piece of two-
chair work to determine the techniques
and concepts employed. From this
investigation a common dilemma in
therapy was observed.
A Common Dilemma
Generally, a piece of two-chair work is
activated when the therapist places an
empty chair in front of the client and asks
him to speak either to someone or some-
thing. The person spoken to may be
someone from the person's past such as a
mother or a father, or it may be someone
from the person's present, such as a wife,
a husband, or a boss. The therapist may
invite the client to speak to an inanimate
object such as an old school house, a
troublesome car, God, or, perhaps, a
physiological symptom such as a head-
ache, a stomachache, or a cramp. Regard-
less of the object or person spoken to, the
usual succession of events is for the client
to speak to someone or something on the
chair which is perceived as being a
Parental figure. In this situation the client
speaks from his own chair as himself and
most often from his Child ego state. An
initial diagram of two-chair work can be
seen in figure 1.
When the therapist invites the client to
change chairs with such statements as,
61
JOHN R. McNEEL, Ph.D.
Person
as self
Stimulus
Figure I.
"Now be your mother," "Will you be
your stomachache and speak back," or
"Be your father and answer that
question," the most common response, as
seen in the above diagram, is from the
Parent ego state of that person (or thing)
who is being role played. When the person
is playing himself and making the initial
stimulus three things are typically appar-
ent: I) The person is frequently in his
Adapted Child ego state; 2) There is
generally a request on the part of the
person as himself to the parental projec-
tion, such as, "Tell me you love me,"
"Headache, please go away," or "Tell
me it's OK to succeed"; 3) This request is
likely to be accompanied by some form of
rackety feeling.
When the person switches chairs and
plays the parental projection, one of two
responses is probable: I) The person
responds from a distinctly Critical Parent
position with such statements as, "I told
you you would never amount to any-
thing," "Why are you always bothering
me," or "You make me feel terrible when
you say that"; 2) A more subtle response
which sounds nurturing on the surface
and yet is not - a "Plastic" Parent
response where the words will sound
appropriate to the situation and the affect
will not be. An example of this is a
woman who while recently in treatment
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Parental
Projection
Response
said to her mother on the empty chair,
"Please tell me that you love me." She
then changed chairs and played her
mother saying, "Dear girl, you know how
much I love you. Your father and I have
always loved you so very much, you know
how much I love you." The words were
correct; however, the affect that went
with the words was not appropriate and
was a distinctly different message. The
client does not experience resolution with
either the Critical or the "Plastic"
response.
People tend to do two-chair work
around issues in which they do not feel
any resolution, whether the issue has to
do with a past scene or with a present day
conflict with someone in their life. Since
the person is playing a scene in which
there has not formerly been resolution,
what generally occurs is a reenactment of
the unresolved situation. The aim of the
two-chair work is to help the person make
closure. It is this writer's experience that
those therapists who do not make inter-
ventions and who only sit on the side line
watching the reenactment of an old scene
and waiting for the client to make a
resolution in this process do not achieve
very high results. In such cases, the client
will very likely come back to his own seat
as himself without a sense of resolution
and continue to make requests from his
Trans. An. J., 6:1, January 1976

Adapted Child accompanied by rackety
feelings; he will then switch to the
parental projection position and continue
to respond with either a Critical Parent of
a "Plastic" Parent, neither of which is a
satisfying response.
As most therapists know, a recurring
theme in psychotherapy is helping people
break out of circular cycles where they are
waiting for some unresolved scene in the
past to change. This dilemma can then be
seen in the diagram below (fig. 2) and will
take place if the therapist does not know
the kinds of interventions to make that
will heighten the situation, let the client
see what is going on, and help the client
make resolution through those insights.
Therapists who do not know how to
intervene potently in two-chair work
usually build into their therapeutic
systems a high value on expressing bore-
dom. These therapists will often stroke
people generously for being "honest"
enough to fall asleep while a long,
dragged-out piece of work is going on.
What may be happening in those cases is
the therapist is not using the available
tools at hand to make. crisp, clear inter-
ventions to facilitate a speedy resolution.
Therefore, a methodology is needed
with which to identify what is taking place
in two-chair work so that the therapist can
have some tools to use in making
Person
as self
Stimulus:
Adapted Child
A request accompanied
by the racket resulting
in an endless circular
interchange
Figure 2.
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THE PARENT INTERVIEW
judgments about the type of interventions
he makes.
Issues to Watch/or in Two-Chair Work
Below, the writer will present a number
of issues for the therapist to watch for as
he conducts two-chair work with his
clients. Those therapists who were able to
derive a great deal of gain from the use of
this technique are those therapists who
employed "heighteners." Specifically, a
"heightener" is an intervention which the
therapist uses to clarify the issues involved
in a piece of two-chair work. For
example, when a client says to a parental
figure, "I don't know why you never
loved me" (in a sad voice), the therapist
could intervene with the "heightener,"
"Will you tell your father that you are
going to stay sad for the next 20 years
until he comes back and loves you?" In
this situation the therapist notes the
broader pattern of what is going on and
sees how the client is using his rackety
feelings to elicit change from someone in
his past. When the client is invited to see
his behavior in a different light, he may
switch to a Rebellious Child position and
begin to place more energy in what it is he
can do about his situation, rather than
waiting for his father to come back. A
typical response to the above example
would be, "Bell, no, I'm not going to
wait the rest of my life." Even though this
Parental
Projection
Response:
Critical Parent
or
"Plastic" Parent
63
JOHN R. McNEEL, Ph.D.
clearly is not a final resolution to the
impasse, it is a good step in the right
direction. The intervention by the thera-
pist in this example is a "heightener."
The following items are presented so
that the therapist can recognize what is
taking place and thus make the proper
interventions which will help heighten the
situation and thereby help the client to
make a resolution.
1. When a client wants to work he is
most often in a Victim position. Karpman
has shown us that in most games there are
three basic positions, the Rescuer, the
Persecutor and the Victim.3 These three
positions constitute the drama triangle
and are often phony positions in that they
are contrived. Outside of his awareness,
the client will usually present himself as a
helpless Victim. The focal point of his
concern is likely to be on the behavior of
someone else and the supposed effect of
that behavior on him. An example of this
would be someone who comes to therapy
and says, "I want to drop my anger (so
far the person takes responsibility for
himself), but (you hear the "but" and
your ears perk up) after I tell you all the
atrocities of my childhood and what my
married life has been like for the last
fifteen years, you will surely agree with
me that I am helpless to be anything but
angry." As this person presents himself, it
is important for the therapist to keep
asking himself the questions, "How does
this person create his own hell," and
"How can I help him see how active he is
in this process?" This is particularly
evident in two-chair work. The client may
paint the picture that the other person,
over there on that other chair, is the
creator of his misery. For example, if he
has his wife on the other chair and is
complaining to her, an appropriate
"heightener" for the therapist to use is,
"I have stayed with you for fifteen years
so I can justify my unhappiness."
Another way to approach a client who is
engrossed in his present situation as the
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causative factor of his unhappiness is to
ask him, "And what were you unhappy
about a year before you met your wife?"
It is important for the therapist to
recognize the bogus quality of the client's
Victim position in order to avoid
decreasing his potency with sympathy
(which is different from empathy) for this
"poor" person's plight.
2. At the point of impasse the client is
often waitingfor someone else to change.
A subtle, underlying theme in much two-
chair work which is observable is the
phenomenon of the client asking someone
else to change. It is usually possible to see
the racket actually" at work." When the
client starts from the "self" chair he may
be quite contained and very rational in
asking for what he wants. However, as he
"receives" more and more either Critical
or "Plastic" Parent responses, he will
probably escalate his feelings. The
message of such escalation is commonly
something like, "If I'm sad enough,
angry enough, depressed enough, con-
fused enough, then you might finally give
me what it is I want." By escalating his
rackety feeling the client believes at some
level that he can evince the "necessary"
change from whomever or whatever is in
the parental chair. Other subtle ways of
observing this phenomenon are when the
client makes such statements as "Get off
my back," "Leave me alone," "Don't
talk to me," or "Go away." These
statements are frequently said with a great
amount of defiance or sense of finality.
What is important to hear in each one of
them is that there is an instruction for the
other person to change. That is, the other
person is to go away, to leave him alone,
or to get off his back. In that situation an
appropriate' 'heightener" would be,
"Will you be aware that you are waiting
for her to change?"
3. The importance of being aware of
how the person sees himself in the world.
People tend to come to therapy and dis-
associate themselves from what it is they
Trans. An. J., 6:1, January 1976

wish to change. For instance, "I would
like to change my depression, and who I
am is not someone who wants to be
depressed." In some ways this third
aspect is a synthesis of the first two: I feel
a victim of my depression and I want my
depression to go away and I want all those
people who make me feel depressed to
change." This phenomenon is easily
demonstrated by using a crayon or any-
thing else that an instructor can hold in
his hand. The position often taken by
people in therapy is that they want to be
rid of this crayon and feel no control over
it. What is obvious to the therapist, using
this metaphor, is that the person is
actively holding onto the crayon while
saying, "I want to be rid of it." The task
of the therapist is to help the person to be
in touch with his "other side." Using this
metaphor it is important for the therapist
to help the person be in touch with his
"fingers," the part of him that holds onto
what he says he wants to be rid of. Each
time a client says, "I want to be rid of
this, " the therapist needs to look to the
other side which says, "I won't let go of
this." The client may have difficulty
letting go of his depression in 1976 until
he appreciates the five-year-old inside of
him who still remembers how important it
was to be depressed when he was small.
What takes place is that today's
"enemies" are recognized as having been
yesterday's "friends." This is a partic-
ularly helpful way to enable the client to
see that the process of change is often one
of letting go of an old circumstance or
scene, rather than defeating someone who
is in it. The client accomplishes this when
he is able to know in his guts that he can
take care of the psychological issue
involved in the impasse. For example, "I
don't have to wait for you to love me,
because I know I can love me instead, and
I don't need my depression to get
attention.' ,
4. The practical request versus the
psychological request. During two-chair
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THE PARENT INTERVIEW
work, when the person is in the "self"
chair, he will make many requests either
in his present life situation or in a
regressed scene as a child. Many of these
requests will sound practical. It is
important for the therapist to see beneath
the practical request and hear what the
unresolved psychological request is, such
as, "see me," "hear me," "love me," or
"tell me that it's OK that I exist." An
example of this is a situation in which a
man was remembering himself as a 10-
year-old asking his father for a bicycle
and remembering the trauma over not
getting it. As the work progressed, what
became obvious was that the bicycle was
not of great importance. What was of
great importance was that the father
really refused to "hear" or "see" his son.
The psychological request running
throughout this dialogue was, "hear me
and see me." The therapist can heighten
the situation by helping the client see the
underlying psychological request in the
unresolved situation.
5. Recognizing the "defense response."
If one listens closely, it is possible to hear
that many of the responses which come
from the parental projection have a
defensive quality. Those responses which
are sometimes called witch statements or
ogre statements are the "defense re-
sponses." What makes these "defense
responses" is that their function is
primarily one of defending the scared
Child in mother, father, or whomever.
The defense quality of the response may
be hard to hear or see because the parent
projection will sound so strong or so sure.
It can be heard, however, if one listens to
what is being asked and hears the quality
of the denial. An example of this is a man
who was in treatment recently with a
contract to be more in touch with his
feelings. While being in a regressed scene
where he was five years old, he
remembered wanting to be held by his
father because he was sad, and remem-
bered being rejected. As a five-year-old,
65
JOHN R. McNEEL, Ph.D.
he said to his father, "Please tell me it's
OK to be sad (to have feelings)," to which
he replied when he played his father,
"Stand up straight, keep a stiff upper lip,
little boys don't feel." The defense
quality of father's response is apparent
when one considers that father is talking
to a little five-year-old boy and his
response is inappropriate. If, indeed, this
seemingly ogre response on the part of the
father was a "defense response," then
what is being defended? What is being
defended is the Child ego state in the
father. Thus, part of the impasse for this
man is that he was waiting for his father
to give him Permission to feel and he was
not seeing that his desire to feel was
somehow threatening to the Child in
father. The task, then, is to help this man
see the scared Child in his father so that
he can give up waiting for something he
will never receive. He may then be ready
to drop his rage at his father by seeing him
as a scared child in this scene, rather than
an ogre.
The Parent Interview
The parent interview is a specific
technique to be used once the therapist
has clearly seen the person's Victim
position, the waiting for the parental
projection to change, the psychological
demands involved, an escalation of the
racket in the service of those demands,
Person
as self
Stimulus:
From the Adapted
Child (the P,):
"Tell me it's OK for
me to have feelings."
Figure 3.
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and "defense responses" on the part of
the parent projection, all of which
indicate an impasse situation. At this
point it is appropriate for the therapist to
intervene with the parent interview. This
technique consists simply of talking to the
parent projection as if she or he were that
person. The most common stimulus to
begin the interview is, "What's your
name, Mom?" or, "What's your name,
Dad?" From there the therapist will ask
questions of Mom, Dad, or whomever,
that will be designed to elicit Child ego
state responses. The therapist may receive
some initial defense responses. Useful
questions for interviewing the parent elicit
feelings and experiences of the parent in
response to the son's or daughter's
request. In this way the therapist
demonstrates to the client how his wants
or behavior were once threatening to the
parental figure. This investigation is
based on the belief that the original parent
did not act with malice, but from a
threatened position. Using the above
example of the boy who wants to feel and
the father who says "no," it is possible to
illustrate structurally what is going on and
what the parent interview is designed to
accomplish. In the following diagram
(fig. 3) a second-order structure of the
Child ego state is included to demonstrate
more clearly what is going on.
Parental
Projection
Response:
from father:
"Little boys don't
feel."
Trans. An. J., 6:1, January 1976
 THE PARENT INTERVIEW

At this point the therapist can move in few "defense responses" he may elicit
and begin to talk with "Father." After a the following (fig. 4) from "Father."
Person Parental
as self Projection

(Ego State change)

Therapist: "What do
you experience, Dad,
when your son wants
to be sad and wants to
be comforted by you?"

"I feel scared."

Figure 4.

Now another level of communication speaks from his experience, the following
becomes evident. Once "Father" begins (fig. 5) takes place.
to talk from his Child ego state and

Person Parental
as self Projection

The person begins

to hear with his
Little Professor,
rather than his
Adapted Child

Figure 5.

Theoretically, what takes place is that
the person begins to have a visceral
appreciation for the experience of his
mother or father. In this experience, the
person hears from his Little Professor,
rather than from his Adapted Child. It is
important to note that the person has this
experience in present day reality and sees
that his mother or father was a separate
human being with his or her own personal
Trans. An. J., 6:1, January 1976
problems. He can now make separation
from that person.
One recurring theme is that of
Protection. People often see how they
were actually protecting one or other of
their parents by limiting their own
behavior. Resolution to this type of
situation comes in statements such as, "I
don't have to hold me back to take care of
you anymore."
67

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JOHN R. McNEEL, Ph.D.

Person as Self Intervention by Therapist Parent Projection

Request (often practical) *
* Defense Response (often sounds
reasonable)
Request with escalation *
(racket, and underlying
psychological request)
* Defense Response (also fre-
quently an escalation of stri-
dency)
Esclation and demand for *
change (culmination of
the magical belief)
Defense Response
Parent Interview
Defense Response
Parent Interview
Child Response
Observation by Little
Professor
Child Response
Resolution: Separation and
letting go
*Therapist intervenes where appropriate with "heighteners" in order to expose client's Victim
position and how the client might be waiting for someone or the past to change. The therapist also
intervenes to clarify for the client what the psychological demands are.

Figure 6.

The graph above (fig. 6) indicates the
stages through which two-chair work
often moves and the appropriate time in
which to interject the parent interview.
A Word of Caution
The parent interview can be a highly
intense experience. There are two situa-
tions in which the therapist should not, as
a rule, use this technique. One is if the
client is psychotic or potentially psy-
chotic. This could trigger a psychosis. The
other situation is if the therapist picks up
enough information to lead him to believe
that the mother, father, or whatever
parental figure is being talked with was
crazy. In that situation it is better not to
invite the client into someone else's hell.
An appropriate response in that situation
is to invite the person to return to their
"self" chair and say, "Are you aware
that your mother/father was very dis-
turbed?" and continue with here-now
cognitive work, instead of regressive
affective work.
Also, if the client resists the introspec-
tion involved in the parent interview,
appreciate the resistance and move to
something other than the parent inter-
view.
REFERENCES
1. Perls, F.S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Lafay-
ette, Real People Press, 1969.
2. Berne, E. Transactional Analysis in Psycho-
therapy: A Systematic Individual and Social
Psychiatry. Grove Press, New York, 1961.
3. Karpman, S.B. "Script Drama Analysis,"
Trans. An. Bull., 7:26, April 1968.

68 Trans. An. J., 6: I, January 1976

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