The final part of this composition on strengthening the Adult ego state seeks a different path. The previous three parts are examining behavioural strategies to assist a person to increase their Adult ego state functioning when under stress. This section will look at some of the underlying causes that may lead to poor Adult ego …
Fight, flight or freeze in therapy
The person who flees the scene of an accident or the hit and run driver has the flight response.
The bully victim dynamic
As any child therapist knows the ‘client’ is the child and the parent child relationship. They are a package deal.
Examination of the demon personality
Instead you acknowledge its power in the therapy process and begin talking to it and forming relational contact when and how it wants. You don’t have a choice to do it any other way. As Berne says, it holds all the cards to play at any time it wants.
Belief and thinking
Of course it works the other way as well. “Good” belief systems are also resilient and resistant to change.
Introjection and the integrated Adult
People are adding new introjections to their Parent ego state continuously through out life as part of normal psychological functioning.
Introjection – two aspects.
The Child ego state develops through early decisions and the Parent ego state develops through introjections.
Smothering on the separation scale
However as is the case with human behaviour once the script gets set the person will start to do things that promote the life script even as they protest against it.
Symbiosis and identity formation in the teenager
However maybe this is not so true with every adolescent especially the 20% I am referring to. Perhaps there is just not a strong drive or need in this group of people and the assumption that all people have this need is an incorrect assumption.
Children and emotional situations
When a child is in a new and unknown situation that is emotionally charged it will try and read how mother is emotionally reacting in its attempt to get a base line for itself.
Play therapy and the aggressive child
In my office I have a dolls house, which I use when I see children and their parents for therapy. I find it can produce valuable information about the psyche of the child. What is going on inside the child’s head at that time.
Despair and its treatment
A significant attachment figure was never fully internalised in childhood and thus there is a sense of a hole inside self. The therapist is used by the client to fill that hole.
Features of rackets
Anger is a distancing emotion it pushes people apart. When people want distance in a relationship anger can be used to achieve this
Why is anger seen as bad
First and foremost anger is always potentially life threatening.
Parental expectations of children
Research on what parents believe children can do at various ages found significant gaps in parental expectations in some core areas of child psychological development
Developmental significance of jealousy
If handled correctly by the parents it allows the child to develop out of its primary narcissism and to develop a sense of the worth of others.
Goodness of fit in parenting
Of course all parents project onto their offspring and at times identify with personality characteristics in their children.
Birth order and personality
Three children is the maximum that one parent can emotionally cover. After that sub groupings amongst siblings will form.
Four demons I have known
Since that time the work on this concept has continued and the demon like qualities that can also be found in the archetype of Lillith, are applicable to more people but in less pure form as described here.
Psychotherapy with the teenage male
Psychotherapy can in this sense be seen as a feminizing pursuit, particularly for the male.
Duplex transaction
Despite the reason, we humans can’t keep a secret. We will say it out. The key is for the listener to stop listening and start watching. As a therapist it is certainly better to do this regularly with your clients.
Two types of paranoid thinking
As we know A1 thinking can be magical thinking and this would explain why the paranoid personality can have at times quite bizarre beliefs. Such as thoughts being monitored by people who are not of this earth.
Play therapy – The dolls house.
In play children will tend to do what they think is the right thing. Follow formulas that are known to them.
The discipline transaction
That is of course a Critical Parent to Child transaction. A very difficult transaction to do well. And such a crucial one for parents to master
Teenage suicidality
That we can pass on the ‘hot potatoe’ to someone else such that we can avoid sacrificing self.
Child suicide
My personal view is there is a solid argument for the idea that a child cannot suicide. If one uses the term ‘child suicide’ that is quite misleading as the vast majority of people will assume it to have some similarity to the adult suicide which it most definitely has not.
Affluence and identity formation
This makes it especially difficult for children from wealthy families who can struggle to gain a sense of who they are as the parent(s) ‘shadow’ is so large.
Naming a child
Naming a child after a family member or a famous person can be a particularly hazardous task. If a chid is named after uncle Harry, that is all good and well, except that uncle Harry was a boozer and a womaniser. The child is being given that label to wear for its life time.
Violence and personality
This explanation could go some of the way to answering why those who use physical violence in relationships are so hard to engage in treatment programmes. They perceive, feel and experience the use of such violence as a natural, Free Child, ego syntonic thing to do.
Halloween and violent fantasy
Halloween make up, like these pictures, allows the teenage girl to release her sublimated urges to self harm, leading to a healthy outcome.