I was recently discussing Felipe Garcia’s (1984) material on cultural competition that prompted me to develop an updated version. The material below will be incorporated into a book called TA from Then to Now: Professional Context, which will be published soon within the TTN series of free books that I am producing as reviews and critiques of TA literature over the years. Existing books in this series are available free at https://juliehay.org/free-downloads-books-workbooks/ (or at Amazon cost if you want paperback or kindle).
Reality Matrix
Teaching Garcia’s material highlighted how it reflects a typical TA-based view of the world as a place where everyone can achieve what they want in an abundant, and kind, universe. Unfortunately, the world is not like that. Even the current attention to ecology and climate change caused by humans does not negate the history of Earth and its past and current calamities. Earthquakes happen, volcanoes erupt, animals and insects kill other species including humans. All that happens alongside humans killing each other in wars. Some of the counterinjunctions Garcia proposes are just not true: there is not enough for everyone in the universe to be provided abundantly in ways that humans need, the world is not safe, all people do not get their needs met, relationship conflicts cannot all be solved. It may be possible to maintain a philosophical or religious belief that all people are OK but many of them behave in such not OK ways that they must be stopped and that sometimes can only happen when they are no longer alive. It is very difficult to engage in world-wide projects; even in these days of online communication many do not have access and many are too busy doing their best to stay alive and feed themselves and their families.
It seems, therefore, that maybe we need a Reality Matrix. My first attempt at this is shown in Figure X. I will describe this figure below but start with an explanation of the shape that stretches across the internal ego states. This is how I represent biology, and particularly genetic predispositions. We have known for years that addicts are genetically ‘programmed’ differently – their bodies do not make enough of the ‘chemicals’ needed to feel relaxed. They may never know this unless they encounter alcohol – but when they do, the alcohol leads their bodies to feel relaxed and they naturally want that experience again. TA script theory ‘blames’ parental programming for this process but that ignores the likelihood that the parent was also born with a body that failed to relax. No-one blames the parents when a person is short just like a parent, or when they are born with physical disabilities, and we now recognise that Berne was wrong to believe that homosexuality was scripted rather than biological.
Hence, the deliberately untidy shape that stretches across the three internal ego states is meant to represent how biology, genetics, even what happens to pregnant women . . . will have an impact on each of us. It may mean that we are less capable than others of being in the here-and-now Internal Adult, and/or that we have atypical emotional and psychological responses in our Internal Child, and/or that our Internal Parent is unable, or too ready, to incorporate the behaviours and beliefs that others demonstrate to us.
You will see in the Figure that, unlike Garcia, I have not continued the typical way of drawing a script matrix with two ‘parent’ sets of ego states. Also, I have not restricted it to structural ego states only because I believe that much of what is absorbed internally is experienced through our interactions. This is especially so in the case of cultural programming because others let us know how we should believe and behave, especially when we are not behaving in line with the norms. I have therefore included in the diagram my own version of internal and behavioural ego states to indicate how both of these are active in being developed within the context(s) in which they spend time. For many people in the world, this will be only one context, perhaps with changes in culture over time. Those of us who travel to other cultures are still a minority unless we are doing so as refugees and that brings its own problems about culture clashes.
As a reminder, I consider that we have an Internal Parent that consists of copies of others with whom we have had interactions (hence the small sets of 5 behavioural ego states with arms and legs); in this ego state model (more details in the Individual Development book in this series) Internal Adult is our processing unit and is what Berne meant when he wrote of being in the here-and-now; and Internal Child is presented using the metaphor of a tree, as we create rings as we grow, which may be healthy or unhealthy growth and which may contain knots where we were damaged. All are drawn with dotted line boundaries to indicate that all continue operating and are being added to as the years pass. Each has a double-headed arrow to indicate that each internal ego state may result in behaviour aligning to any of the five behavioural ego states, and will be impacted upon by what occurs for each of those five behavioural ego states (for which the behaviours may be positive or negative).
Within the shaded area of culture, which also has a dotted line as the boundary to indicate that it may change, I have included examples of the various people with whom an individual may interact, or by whom they may be impacted upon. These may be the families or national elements that Garcia mentioned – in reality these may be categorised in order of size of boundaries (Hay, 2018) such as family, schools, organisations, regions, countries, etc, or by types such as those in the SPECTRE model (Hay, 2000): social, political, economic, competitive, technological, regulatory and environmental. These may be the same people that become contained within someone’s Internal Parent but they may also be people that an individual never meets. They may be in roles such as politicians, activists for various causes, terrorists, members of the military, criminals – who follow the philosophy/norms of the same or a different region, country, religion, etc. and may have similar or different beliefs and intentions to those individuals impacted upon by their actions..
As I begin to consider what messages people need to ‘receive’ from others within their culture(s), I am conscious that I read TA literature in English. Much of that takes for granted Berne’s (1964) way of defining autonomy as “… manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.” (p 158). He described awareness as living in the here-and-now, spontaneity as options, and for intimacy he repeated spontaneity, awareness and living in the here and now. I have shown these as awareness, alternatives and attachment and have added other elements: authenticity meaning OKness includes accepting that everyone, including ourselves, has faults; accountability in that we accept responsibility for our actions; and appropriateness to reflect that we are limited by the context/culture within which we exist.
Being self-aware and in the here-and-now is not easy for humans – the TA concept of discounting addresses this. We don’t know what we don’t know. The fish does not know it is in the water. We cannot notice everything without being overwhelmed so we discount to stay sane. Imagine if you had to be conscious of every breath in and out, every change in temperature, everything there is to know about everyone with whom you interact. Instead, we take certain things for granted and this is only a problem when we overlook things that matter. Perhaps we all need to grow up knowing how NTA Newman and Rowbottom (1968) explained the four ‘identities’ of organisations: the manifest which is what is written down officially; the assumed which is what people believe to be the case; the extant which is what is really happening; and the requisite which is what it needs to be. We can apply the same four categories to any groups – the family tree, what we get told about the family history, what really happened, and what could or should have happened. The laws of the country as they are written down, how people think those laws are applied, how those laws are actually applied, and how in a just society the laws should be applied.
Some cultures are better at juggling with these levels than the North American heritage of TA – they bring up children who realise that they must pay attention to the psychological level of communication. Other languages have different ways of expressing thoughts and emotions. Perhaps we have no need of injunctions and counterinjunctions – biology programs us to live, eat, defecate, flee from danger or freeze or fight, and some of us to reproduce, and to create groups to achieve things that cannot be done alone.
Reflection Questions: Creating a Reality Matrix
How might grown-ups best equip children to grow up as autonomous individuals within the context(s) in which they are likely to exist?
References
Berne, Eric. (1964). Games People Play. Grove Press.
Garcia, Felipe. (1984). Competition: A Cultural Script Issue in the USA. Transactional Analysis Journal, 14(1), 44-47.
Hay, Julie. (2000). SPECTRE (and timelining). INTAND Newsletter, 8(3), 14-15.
Hay, Julie. (2018). Psychological Boundaries and Psychological Bridges: A Categorisation and the Application of Transactional Analysis Concepts. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research & Practice, 9(1) 52-81.
Newman, A. Derek., Rowbottom, Ralph William. (1968). Organisation Analysis. Heinemann Educational Books.
