Script Cure?
- A Diagnostic Pentagon of
Types of Therapeutic Change
Petruska Clarkson
Abstract
Although there are scattered references to
different psychotherapy outcomes through-
out Berne's work, nowhere does he bring
them together for comparison, contrast, and
confirmation; nor does he show how possi-
ble psychotherapy outcomes can be
systematically identified and described. This
article presents five possibleoutcomes: Script
Cure, Making Progress, Disintegration,
DisiUuslonment, and Counterscript Cure.
These "faces of change" are discussedas five
separate systems with their own frames of
reference, including idiosyncratic motiva-
tions for seeking/avoiding future changes,
characteristic response patterns, and differ-
ing capacities in managing stress. Each is
associated with an archetypal or mythologi-
cal image which may ald the psychotherapist
in distinguishing, defining, and recognizing
the five types of outcome so that he or she
can facilitate life script changes that are gen-
uine, stable under stress, and provide a fer-
tile and resilient ground for future growth.
A pentagon diagram summarizes these ma-
jor points.
One of the central tenets of transactional
analysis is that people with psychiatric dif-
ficulties can be cured.
This means not just the mildly neurotic,
but the drug abuser, the severely de-
pressed, the "schizophrenic," everyone
with a functional psychiatric disorder....
Thispaper was first delivered at the European Associa-
tionfor TransactionalAnalysis (EATA) Conferencein Ent-
schede in July 1976. A version of this paper has been
published in the ITA News, 17, Summer 1987, and in
Strook in Dutch.
Vol. 18, No.3, July 1988
The notion that psychiatrists could in fact
"cure" the severe emotional distur-
bances of the people they work with was
as radical and stunning a notion as has
ever been introduced. (Steiner, 1975,
p. 7)
Berne viewed script analysis, along with ego
state analysis, transactional analysis proper, and
game analysis, as the primary avenue for cur-
ing people.
Each person decides in early childhood
how he will live and how he will die, and
that plan, which he carries in his head
wherever he goes, is called his script. His
trivial behavior may be decided by
reason, but his important decisions are
already made: what kind of person he
will marry, how many children he will
have, what kind of bed he will die in, and
who will be there when he does. It may
not be what he wants, but it is what he
wants to be. (Berne, 1972, p. 36)
Newcomers to TA often find some difficul-
ty with this apparent contradiction between the
high predictability of script outcomes and our
belief in and experience of major life and per-
sonality changes. "For the Transactional Script
Analyst, as for the play analyst, this means that
if you know the plot and the character, you
know what his outcome will be, unless some
changes can be made" (Berne, 1972, p. 36).
Transactional analysis, as a fundamentally
existential approach to human psychology, em-
phasizes that our scripts were constructed by
our own choice and can be restructured or
abandoned by our own choosing. It is precise-
ly because life scripts are so predictable that
they can be brought into awareness and redecid-
ed, which makes change truly possible.
However, knowing when or if a life script
change in therapy is indeed "script cure" has
intrigued and puzzled many authors, as
211
PETRlsKA CLARKSON
witnessed by an entire issue of the Transac-
tional Analysis Journal (1980) devoted to the
subject.
In his last public address Berne (1971, p. 12)
said that there was only one paper to write:
"How to Cure Patients." He might also have
been interested in this paper, which attempts
to differentiate real cure as he meant it, from
other impostors, jokers, tricksters, and clowns
which masquerade as cure on the psychothera-
peutic stage.
Cure (OK Change)
Berne was interested in the kind of cure
which meant that the individual could break out
of script entirely and "put a new show on the
road with new characters, new roles, and a new
plot and payoff. Such a script cure, which
changes his character and his destiny, is also
a clinical cure, since most of his symptoms will
be relieved by his redecision (Berne, 1972, p.
362). The metaphor Berne repeatedly used was
that of changingprinces and princesses who had
become "frogs" through social and parental in-
fluences back into princes and princesses so that
they could continue their development and
become autonomous, intimate, spontaneous,
and aware individuals.
Erskine (1980) suggested that script cure was
observable through the cessation of behaviors
syntonic with the individual's script. He em-
phasized that such a cure involves changes at
behavioral, intrapsychic (affective and
cognitive), and physiological levels.
OK change or script cure also has
phenomenological characteristics. Clients who
have made such fundamental changes of
character and destiny often report an "ad lib"
quality to their lives and relationships. They no
longer "know what to say," and their social
networks frequently undergo considerable
oscillation, e.g., a spouse considers personal
psychotherapy or divorce, change of friends is
almost always a consequence, and career or
name changes are not unusual. If script deci-
sions determine the most important aspects of
a person's life, script redecisions will affect
them, too.
Often people experience some nostalgia for
"the person I used to be" and may need to
mourn for a valued archaic self even though
it is now defunct or dangerous as a survival
212
adaptation. Script change can also be uncom-
fortable in another way: "He is then faced with
the existential problems of necessity, freedom
of choice and absurdity, all of which were
previously evaded in some measure by living
with the illusions of his script" (Berne, 1966,
p. 311).
The person who has changed his or her script
has a frame of reference where changing is ex-
perienced as satisfying and autonomous. Not
only are changes imposed by the environment
or natural cycles (e.g., aging) welcomed as
learning opportunities, such "cured" in-
dividuals also seek change and growth in con-
tinuing ways. They develop and nourish their
own particular needs for stimulation and excite-
ment, complexity, and diversity which Selye
(1957) referred to as "eustress" (p. 74). The
change process itself is experienced as energiz-
ing, and they are proactive and creative, seek-
ing learning and growth. Such people act upon
their world. They have overcome the subjec-
tive "learned helplessness" (Miller &
Seligman, 1975) which can reinforce the
powerlessness of script-bound individuals and
groups such as women, ethnic minorities, and
the physically handicapped. Research has
shown that senior levels of management derive
satisfaction from working under stresses that
middle managers may experience as sources of
distress. It is hypothesized that this is because
they feel that their decisions actually affect the
outcomes they initiate (Kiev & Cohn, 1979).
The corollary with experienced power over
one's own life is clear.
Characteristically, change after termination
of psychotherapy (permanently or temporari-
ly) continues to be important for the individual,
but it is essentially post-pathological: away
from cure and toward growth. It has to do with
responding adaptively and creatively to life's
stresses (Holmes & Rahe, 1967) and progress-
ing with increasing autonomy and assurance
through adult developmental stages (Erikson,
1968; Levinson, 1978).
Real and lasting script cure is achieved when
the new decision (e.g., "I will still not
suicide") is stable under both ordinary and ex-
treme stresses. Some vicissitudes of life such
as bereavement, loss of jobs, natural disasters,
war, and concentration camps can challenge the
script change profoundly. Frankl (1969) vividly
and poignantly defined the "last of human
Transactional Analysis Journal
 SCRIPT CURE? - A DIAGNOSTIC PENTAGON OF TYPES OF THERAPEUTIC CHANGE
freedoms" as the freedom to choose one's at-
titude in any given circumstances, even
Auschwitz and Dachau:
Every day, evety hour, offered the op-
portunity to make a decision, a decision
which determined whether you would or
would not submit to those powers which
threatened to rob you of your very self,
your inner .freedom; which determined
whether or not you would become
moulded into the form of the typical in-
mate. (p. 65-66)
If you are still following a script based on
other's directives, it is probably impossible to
remain response-able under such severe testing.
The archetypal image of this process is
Odysseus transforming himself and his life on
the adult voyage/journey through life. Aristo-
tle summarized it as follows:
A certain man has been abroad for many
years, Poseidon is lying in wait for him,
and he is all alone. Matters at home, too,
have reached the point at which his pro-
perty is being squandered and his son's
death plotted by suitors to his wife. He
arrives there after terrible sufferings,
reveals himself, and falls upon his
enemies. The story concludes with his
salvation and their destruction. This is all
that is proper to the Odyssey; the rest is
episode. (Aristotle, 1963, p. 31).
This seems an apt metaphor for a man who
seems compelled by his destiny to end up lonely
and dethroned, bereft of all that he holds
precious while he fights other men's battles.
Revealing himself, in his innate "princeliness"
under severe stress, his journey ends in
triumph.
Making Progress (Non-Change)
This outcome of psychotherapy (short- or
long-term) does not represent true change at all,
but mere fluctuations which may be mistaken
for real change.
The patient fights being a winner because
he is not in treatment for that purpose,
but only to be made into a braver loser.
This is natural enough, since if he
becomes a winner, he has to throwaway
all or most of his script and start over,
which most people are reluctant to do.
(Berne, 1972, p. 37)
Vol. 18, No.3, July 1988
This type of change is a masquerade of living
creatively and is played out within the narrow
norms of maintaining what Steiner calls banal
scripts:
Unlike tragic scripts, banal scripts go un-
noticed like water running down the
drain, and those who are participants in
them may have no more than a glimpse,
their anagnorisis, as they draw their final
breath, that their potentialities as human
beings have in some mysterious way been
betrayed and defeated. (Steiner,
1974/1975, p. 115 & 116)
By moving three steps forward, two back, and
then two steps forward, three back, the client
in therapy can give the impression that there
is movement or progress, but a hard contrac-
tual check over any length of time will prove
that in fact no significant long-term stable
change has occurred.
In his writings Berne repeatedly referred
scathingly to this outcome of psychotherapy,
e.g., "something called getting better, or 'pro-
gress' which is in effect making more comfor-
table frogs" (1966, p. 290). People who feel
they have accomplished change but have in fact
"made progress" usually place great value on
maintaining a single world view and tend to find
reinforcing experiences which support the
future avoidance of both positively and
negatively valued stresses. Even in fantasy,
changing or the stimulus to change is perceived
as negative, threatening, destabilizing, and
therefore undesirable. Their goal is homeostasis
or instability within narrow and predictable
limits. Psychotherapy may widen the limits
somewhat, but the basic restrictions on
autonomy and creativity are stretched or
redefined, not changed.
However, making progress obviously has
some value and should be encouraged where
the alternative is a third-degree payoff or a
prematurely forced change against resistance
which results in the therapist becoming, in ef-
fect, "the-rapist" and the client responding
with disintegration or catastrophe.
Changing requires not only the willingness
to take full responsibility for your life, but also
courage. For example, after many years of vir-
tual imprisonment in her home, an agoraphobic
patient has a job, a driving license, and hope.
She needs/wants to leave her kind and gentle
husband who supported her incapacitation in
213
PETRUlKA CLARKSON
a collusive but well-meaning way. As she is
poised for cure, he has a stroke that leaves him
paralyzed. Who will judge for another what
price happiness?
Characteristically, in response to change a
banal system is in a continual state of stress,
holding bound and unbound energy, archaic ex-
periences, and the influenceof introjected others
while at the same time avoiding true contact
with the here-and-now experiences which could
potentially destabilize its delicate homeostatic
balance. Essentially people in such systems
may be chronically stressed, rigid in their at-
titudes, and may frequently experience chronic,
low-level fatigue and minimal tolerance for de-
viance, uncertainty, or ambiguity.
The response pattern of clients who are
"making progress" is recognizably reactive to
the initiative of others, the environment, or
habit. These people are not proactive, but rather
are essentially avoiding stimuli from the en-
vironment and from others and do not actualize
their own lives. These may be the people Berne
(1972) described as waiting for Rigor Mortis.
They often accumulate awareness at the ex-
pense of real change or speak in terms of in-
tellectual knowledge, not really "feeling dif-
ferent in the gut" as a result of it.
The archetypal image of this kind of person
is epitomized by Echo, on whom Juno cast a
spell so that ever afterward she would only
repeat the other person's last words. After Nar-
cissus rejected her love, she grieved until her
flesh shrank away and only her voice was left.
Echo was doomed by her script forever to
repeat the introjected words of a significant
other, never giving voice to her autonomous
existence in the world (Graves, 1986a, p. 287).
Disillusionment (Impossible Change)
This psychotherapy outcome occurs, to
paraphrase Berne (1972, p. 153), when the
client says disappointedly: "Is that all?", much
to the mystification of the therapist, who
thought that he or she was giving the client ex-
actly what the client wanted.
Misguided Utopian hope is indeed one of the
problems that humanistically-oriented
therapies, including TA, are particularly heir
to because of their belief in achieving the seem-
ing impossible (e.g., self-actualization) and
their emphasis on the possibilities rather than
214
the impossibilities of changing lives. Efforts to
change based on illusion can be subjectively ex-
perienced as frustrating and ultimately impossi-
ble. Much heartbreak can be avoided by
recognizing and then confronting widely and
in a timely fashion the realism and achievability
of contracts, goals, and expectations, some of
which are so out of awareness that they may
be revealed only toward the end or after ter-
mination of the psychotherapy. Such disillu-
sionment occurs where the outcome of therapy
or script cure is either overtly or covertly con-
fused with attaining omnipotence, irresistibili-
ty, or practical immortality. The desired change
is experienced as essentially inappropriate and
stressful. "This is the most painful task which
the script analyst has to perform: to tell his pa-
tients finally that there is no Santa Claus"
(Berne, 1972, p. 153).
Furthermore, even after the huge investment
of time, thought, emotion, and money, and the
sacrifice of treasured life beliefs required by
therapeutic change, there will still be people
who are unjust or unkind, trains will still break
down, death and disaster may still occur,
fashionable thinness without injury to one's
health may never be achieved, and the easy-
going phlegmatic attitudinal responses of a col-
league with a constitutionally different tempera-
ment may never be realized in oneself.
Researchers such as Thomas, Chess, and
Birch (1977) have found that temperamental
differences (which are genetically transmitted)
can be identified in very young infants.
Temperament is defined as "inborn, constitu-
tional predisposition to react in a specific way
to stimuli" (Freedman, Kaplan, & Sadock,
1975). In later life these temperamental traits
may remain unchanged or be modified by en-
vironmental circumstances. For example,
substantial research evidence compiled by
Eysenck (1968) showed that people are dif-
ferent in terms of their neuropsychological
make-up. The introvert can probably never
change the biochemical-electrical activity of his
or her cortex to resemble that of an extroverted
friend (or therapist?). The task for therapists
as well as friends, partners, spouses, and
parents is to value and celebrate each other's
different qualities rather than to do violence to
them according to a standard of mass confor-
mity defined by some expert or statistical report
as normal or healthy. Personality or character
Transactional Analysis Journal
 SCRIPT CURE? - A DIAGNOSTIC PENTAGON OF TYPES OF THERAPEUTIC CHANGE
can be changed; temperament can only be
allowed for, influenced, and enjoyed.
Well-trained psychotherapists can avoid the
fruitless quest for this type of change by, among
other procedures, clarifying contracts, check-
ing third-party involvement, learning about the
physiological bases of behavior, and remain-
ing vigilant against extrapolating from one's
own psychology.
Script is not changing who we are, but how
we are in the most important aspects of our
lives. Rather than saying that script cure is im-
possible, it is more accurate to say that tempera-
ment change is highly unlikely. "Script" is not
that which we do not like or do not understand
about other people! According to Berne,
whatever behavior fits in with the formula, Ear-
ly Parental Influence ~ Program ~ Com-
pliance ~ Payoff, is part of the script, and
"whatever behavior does not fit in with it is
not part of script. Every script will fit this for-
mula and no other behavior will fit it" (Berne,
1972, p. 419).
Characteristic of the misdiagnosis of a-
chieved or non-achieved script change is the
reality that the person's psychophysiological
system is simply not designed for the function
being required of it and so suffers despair and
breakdown. Plastic surgery may make noses
smaller and people shorter. Ordinary humans
can walk on fire (as the author has done), but
no amount of redeciding can change the past
or guarantee that other people will behave
honorably. The world is the world, and pigs
don't fly.
Individuals caught in this kind of system can-
not tolerate attempting to change in an
organismically impossible way, nor the stress
of attempting to maintain such an impossible
change. Disillusionment may then mar or ruin
a possible script cure by the vain effort of seek-
ing to change the impossible.
The archetypal character that epitomizes this
process is Icarus, whose father, Daedalus,
made him wings with which to escape from
Crete. Because Icarus flew too close to the sun,
the wax on the wings melted, plummeting him
into the sea (The Shorter Oxford English Dic-
tionary, 1973, p. 1012). Even in ancient myth,
people may fly, but wax still melts near the sun!
Disintegration (Not OK Change) or Casualty
This outcome of therapeutic change occurs
Vol. 18, No.3, July 1988
in a system when a change is not just destabiliz-
ing, but also disintegrating. A casualty is de-
fined as "an individual who, as a direct result
of his experience in the encounter group,
became more psychologically distressed and/or
employed more maladaptive mechanisms of
defense. Furthermore, to be so defined this
negative change must not be transient, but en-
during" (Leiberman, Yalom, & Miles, 1973,
p. 171). Unlike with Icarus types, the desired
change is possible, but it is under the influence
of Mortido, the death instinct (Federn,
1953/1977). The system can neither tolerate it,
nor creatively respond to it. This outcome
results most frequently from mistimed interven-
tions, inadequate protection, or chaotic treat-
ment planning. The stimulus to change is ex-
perienced as noxious, and the person may in-
sist that unless homeostasis is maintained on the
person's own terms, catastrophe will result.
The response pattern is acting out, often at a
third-degree level, resulting in accidents, im-
prisonment, or hospitalization. This is the
psychotherapy (or encounter group) outcome
referred to popularly and in literature as a
,'therapeutic casualty."
Berne acknowledged the potential effects of
this type of change in several places, e.g.,
"Well, the husband looks a little paranoid to
me, and I'm afraid to cure paranoids because
in my experience they often get a very serious
physical disorder like perforated ulcer or
diabetes or a coronary" (Berne, 1971, p. 10).
Change that strips away defenses without
simultaneously providing protection, skills,
knowledge, and resources can result in such
destructive disintegration. Closing the escape
hatches (e.g., "no suicide," "no homicide,"
"no going crazy outside the therapy room,")
at appropriate times in the therapy process is
vitally important in avoiding such outcomes
(Holloway & Holloway, 1972/1974). It is also
important to attend to the impact of the change
on the person's psychosociologicalnetwork, the
relearning or acquiring of developmentally
impaired skills, maintenance procedures,
and reinforcement practice for stability under
stress.
On the other hand, no matter how conscien-
tiously a therapist honors a client's contract,
there is always the possibility that the client or
workshop participant may be more invested in
forwarding his or her script than in creative
215
PETRlBKA CLARKSON
change.
The demon is the jester in human ex-
istence, and the joker in psychotherapy.
No matter how well Jeder lays his plans,
the demon can come in at the critical mo-
ment and upset them all, usually with a
smile and a ha ha. And no matter how
well the therapist plans his psychothera-
py, the patient always has the upper hand.
At the point where-the therapist thinks he
has four aces, Jeder plays his joker and
his demon wins the pot. Then he skips
merrily off, leaving the doctor to leaf
through the deck trying to figure out what
happened. (Berne, 1972, p. 122)
A person may choose to work out his or her
script curse non-contractually despite impec-
cable ethical and therapeutic procedures on the
part of the therapist or workshop leader.
Almost any topic can "bring up material"
which a script-bound individual can use to turn
a script payoff into a therapeutic casualty.
The archetypal image representing this kind
of individual is Medea who, when her husband
threatened to leave her, reacted to this impend-
ing change not by accepting it, nor by work-
ing through the difficulty with him, nor by find-
ing another man who actually wanted to be with
her, but by destroying her rival (Glauke) and
being responsible for the deaths of her own two
children (Graves, 1986b).
Counterscript Cure -
The Illusion of Autonomy
Jeder carries out his script because it is
planted in his head at an early age by his
parents and stays there for the rest of his
life, even after their vocal "flesh" has
gone for evermore. It acts like a com-
puter tape or player-piano roll, which
brings out the responses in the planned
order long after the person who punched
the holes had departed the scene. Jeder
meanwhile sits before the piano, moving
his fingers along the keyboard under the
illusion that it is he who brings the folksy
ballad or the stately concerto to its
forgone conclusion. (Berne, 1972, p.
65-66).
This type of psychotherapy outcome is a kind
of pseudo-conversion-the belief that one has
changed fundamentally when the change is ac-
tually cosmetic. Changes in the person's
216
behavior have an introjected quality, as if he
or she has adopted new behavior and belief
systems, even a new language (such as trans-
actional analysis), in the service of his or her
pathology. The behavior of such clients remains
adapted and driven. Instead of "Hurrying up"
to kill themselves, they may be "Hurrying up"
to be perfectly self-actualizing TA people who
always ask straight for strokes and let out their
Free Child at parties!
The fantasy is that they have achieved
autonomy and escaped the script payoff, what
I describe as "counterscript cure" or what
Freudians refer to as a "flight into health"
(Greenson, 1967, p. 276). Such a person may
have redecided to "be close" and to "be aware
of their drivers" without a "fundamental
transformation" (Burchfield, 1976) or a
reorganization in the archaic script-driven Child
or compelling Parental ego states. The person
is acting as if change at a deep structural level
has occurred.
Appropriate to this point is the story of a
family who lived in a haunted house. After
much deliberation they decided to move to
another part of the city to get away from the
ghost. On the day of the move, having packed
the van with all their furniture and goods, one
of the neighbors chanced by. "What's happen-
ing?" he asked. A skeletal hand then lifted up
a corner of the tarpaulin and said, "We're mov-
ing!"
Counterscript change can be a valuable
bridge to lasting script change, but it should not
be confused with it. Schiff, et al. (1975) in-
dicated that, because it is supported by clear
thinking, overadaptation is a better choice of
passive behavior than incapacitation or escala-
tion to violence. The dangers of the client's
overadapting to the therapist as an interim
measure is often exaggerated. A client who
stops sexually abusing his children as an adap-
tation to his therapist may start receiving
positive reinforcement for his new behavior;
such reinforcement then acts as a powerful
motivation for constructive change and possi-
ble permanent script redecision. As Berne said
(1972), we know that you can talk a man into
drinking or committing suicide, and therefore
you can talk him out of it. As a way station
along the path toward metanoia, counterscript
change is not necessarily illegitimate and may
be distinctly beneficial or even lifesaving.
Transactional Analysis Journal
 SCRIPT CURE? - A DIAGNOSTIC PENTAGON OF TYPES OF THERAPEUTIC CHANGE

,,"
/" Introjected
// historical parent
// figure(s)
5 / / Therapist and/or
,," Group
It::'

Client
1. Original Counterscript message,
2. Substitute counterscript message incorporated from the therapist or psychological/ideological system.
3. Old program.
4. New samples/role models incorporated from therapist and other group members.
5. Unchanged script message manifesting payoff under stress (psychological message),
6. Area of CounterscriptlCounterscript Change.

Figure 1
"Counterscript Cure" Diagram

The problem with counterscript change in
which the therapist's directives, permission,
values, and example are substituted for the
original counterscript messages of one or both
parents is not that it happens, but that therapist
and client may mistake it for the goal. If clients
get stuck at this level and terminate psychother-
apy without changing at a more fundamental
script level, such contractual changes are
unstable under stress and unreliable over time.
Figure 1 demonstrates how this process may
appear as a psychotherapy outcome. It is a
development of the script matrix which usual-
ly only shows the script (5) and counterscript
(1) plus program (3) from each of the two
parents (Berne, 1972). According to Steiner
(1975), "The counterscript is an acquiescence
to the cultural and social demands that are
transmitted through the Parent" (p. 104). This
diagram emphasizes the potential for a client
to substitute new counterscript messages (2) in-
corporated from the psychotherapist (or the
psychological/ideological system) and/or to
substitute new programming (4) learned from
the psychotherapist or the group which may be
experienced as new sources of parenting.
Berne (1972) pointed out that "The
counterscript determines the person's style of
life, and the script controls his ultimate
destiny" (p. 119). Therefore, although new
programming and new counterscript messages
may be substituted for the original ones, the
original script message may remain unchanged,
manifesting the payoff under stress or con-
tributing "a feeling of impending doom"
(Berne, 1972, p. 33) to the person's existence.
The power of the unchanged script message is
illustrated in Figure 1 by the broken lines. This
corresponds with the third rule of communica-
tion: the outcome of transactions is determined

Vol. 18, No.3, July 1988 217

PETRUsKA CLARKSON
'+--+--f--+--- RESPONSE TO STRESS
)f.---I-----I'----f--+--- ARCHETYPE
PROACTIVE & CREATIVE
SATISFYING & AUTONOMOUS
CHANGE
CURE
Figure 2
THE CHANGE PENTAGON
on the psychological level rather than on the
social level. In the same way, the script out-
come (which is usually transmitted at an ulterior
level) is determined by the original psychologi-
cal-level message unless the client changes this
as well.
Clients often find it useful to see the area of
counterscript-change or "counterscript cure"
shown in Figure 1 (6). It helps them understand
how they might make significant changes at the
counterscript and programming level while
continuing to feel threatened at a deep psycho-
logical level or regressing to script payoffs
under stress. This procedure facilitates clear
contracting and treatment planning for fun-
damental script change and clarifies the poten-
tial for adaptation to the therapist or TA as a
psychological system.
For example, a client who was earlier cured
of vertigo may" accidentally" fall over a cliff
to her death. The underlying curse and the
218
~----TYPE
:"+-_---=~-_-_ SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE
OF CHANGE
__ CHARACTERISTICS
~_---'~_-+-
decision to comply may not have been revoked
in a therapy which primarily paid attention to
change at a behavioral level or which allowed
premature redecisions not grounded in the total
context of her life script, its supports, and sur-
vival defenses. Most experienced clinicians can
adduce similar examples.
The compelling potency of "script power"
in contrast to "will power" (original or new
Counterscript) is poignantly and chillingly il-
lustrated by a recent newspaper report of a man
who was warned by his doctor that cigarette
smoking would kill him. He indeed succeeded
in giving up cigarettes, but choked to death on
a piece of nicotine-substitute chewing gum (The
Sun, 1986).
The symbolic or mythological archetype that
illustrates this type of change is Oedipus, who
believed that he had foiled his destiny. He end-
ed up killing his father and marrying his
mother, thus fulfilling a prophecy made early
Transactional Analysis Journal
 SCRIPT CURE? - A DIAGNOSTIC PENTAGON OF TYPES OF THERAPEUTIC CHANGE
in childhood. Artistotle (1963) sees through the
self deception of Oedipus: "It seems unlikely
that Oedipus, seeking to discover who had slain
Laius, should have overlooked the clue provid-
ed by the murder which he himself had com-
mitted" (p. 27). The functional blindness of
Oedipus leads to the loss of his father, his
mother, his wife, his kingdom, and his eyes.
He preserved the illusion of his autonomy, but
at the price of his ultimately predictable script
payoff.
Figure 2-THE CHANGE PENTAGON-
summarizes this material by lifting out
keywords in each of the following categories:
type of script change, subjective experience,
characteristics, response to stress, and ar-
chetype. It is offered as a visual aid to facilitate
the use and teaching of the five types of out-
comes of psychotherapy and their
characteristics in order to enable clients and
clinicians to discriminate and differentiate be-
tween them and plan accordingly.
There is, perhaps, no better way to conclude
this discussion of different types of change than
to remind both client and therapist of the prayer
attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:
"Lord, Give me the courage to change the
things I can;
The serenity to accept the things I cannot
change;
And the wisdom to know the difference."
Petruska Clarkson, M.A., Ph.D., CTM,
clinical psychologist and practicing psychother-
apist, is the Director of Training of metanoia
Psychotherapy Training Institute. She is cur-
rentlyon the ITAA Board of Trustees and a
Director of the Gestalt Psychotherapy Train-
ing Institute (UK). Please send reprint requests
to Dr. Clarkson at metanoia Institute, 13 North
Common Road, London W52QB, England.
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