Glossary of terms at bottom of this article.

The continuing response to our article twenty-five years ago has been gratifying. The idea of a hierarchy of permissions has proven to be fruitful in a variety of cultures and in the hands of a number of therapists. While there have been no hard research studies in this area, as far as we know, the concept of permissions is highly compatible with a large body of recent research - or at least a large body of research can be conceptualized within this frame of reference. Today, however, we would like to draw attention to eight areas which have been greatly expanded since the publication of the original paper.

First, we have extended our original list of permissions. While many other therapists now use their own versions, our personal list is as follows:

Permission

1. To be, to exist, and to occupy space
2. To live with zest
3. To experience one's own experiences
4. To be appropriately close, to trust and to feel secure
5. To influence one's environment (to be important)
6. To experience one's own feelings across a wide range of emotions
7. To be one's self (of appropriate age, personality and sex)
8. To feel that one belongs (family, friends, community and culture)
9. To feel OK about one's self, others and the world
10. To allow oneself to be soothed and nurtured and to soothe and take care of one's self
11. To experiment, and to change (and also to fail safely and use that failure productively)
12. To think clearly and to solve problems across a wide variety of domains (be sane)
13. To be empathetically responsive to others
14. To "make it" in love and work
15. To make/find meaning

Second, while these permissions do form a kind of hierarchy, it is more useful to think of them as forming a matrix. All are important throughout the life cycle, but each becomes more important at certain times. They also need to be given differently at different ages and their presence or absence manifests itself differently during different life periods. The infant who is learning to make interesting spectacles last, for example, and the adolescent who is comparing religious or philosophical systems can both be conceptualized as manifesting permission to make/find meaning, but at very different levels of development (3).

Third, although many therapists have conceptualized permissions as the antidote to injunctions, there is a difference between an injunction such as "Don't Be" and the lack of permission to be. As a consequence, it seems, some suicidal patients respond better to "You don't have to kill yourself. Don't!" and some to "Live!".

Fourth, some injunctions have a proviso attached. This is most common with the injunctions "Don't be" and "Don't be sane". For example, some people have permission to be, PROVIDED they are not close. To reduce the power of the "Don't be close" prior to dealing with the "Don't be" can be dangerous. There are usually reasons, given the world as they understood it at the time, that patients made the life decisions they did. Their subsequent hesitancy to change can be conceptualized as the Child's fear of abandonment (death), or that someone else (mother) or the world itself (family) will be destroyed, if they behave differently. The patient needs protection by the therapist from all these fears and dangers.

Fifth, twenty five years ago, most of us conceptualized permission as coming from one person, usually the parent who was most important for nurturing. This fit with the script matrix diagram (5), and it is still a useful concept for therapy. However, it is not entirely accurate. Permissions and injunctions can also come from family systems and from the culture. Nevertheless, therapists can deal with them therapeutically, perhaps by analogy or metaphor, by working as if they come from a single person.

Sixth, current research has documented that, on a genetic basis, certain people are especially vulnerable or especially resilient to particular environmental factors, (1), (3). Many of these environmental factors can be conceptualized in terms of permissions or injunctions. Here is one of the most promising areas for the integration of modern biology and especially molecular genetics (6) into transactional analysis theory and practice.

Seventh, over the years, there has been a growing awareness that people ultimately need to give themselves the permissions they need. The therapist "stacks the cards", as it were, but it is the patients who give themselves the permissions they need. It is now evident that this can be done quietly by manipulating context and environment as well as by more obvious therapeutic work, a phenomenon which is especially true for work with young children. One of the authors (JRA), for example, directs inpatient and residential treatment units for children and adolescents using this principle - and rarely mentions the word permission, other than to teach trainees. This line of thinking forms a bridge to current research in the area of psychological resilience (7). Much of this large body of research can be conceptualized in terms of permission and protection (1).

Thanks to the Oklahoma Arts Institute, the authors are currently analyzing a study of an elite group of over 300 gifted and talented young people. One of our goals is to examine the differences - outside basic talent - within and between various subgroups; for example, between poets and sculptors, ballet dancers and actors. This includes an examination of permission and protection. Follow-up studies are planned to examine the differences between those who continue and even become successful in their art form and those who "burn out".

Eighth, in recent years, we have gradually become more aware of the implications of the permission to make/find meaning. This permission applies not only to a child's decisions about who he is, what others are like, and what happens to people like him in the world (his script), but also to the various scenarios we construct to understand ourselves and the world. Unfortunately, these scenarios also limit what questions we can ask, what we can perceive and what solutions we can elaborate. In the last three years, we have had a unique opportunity to follow this process in detail as we have observed the political, economic and therapeutic consequences of the scenarios elaborated around the Oklahoma City bombing. This line of inquiry leads to postmodernism, constructivism, social constructionism, and narrative therapy (2).

In summary, during the last 25 years, there has been a gradual flowering of the understanding of permission, an understanding which brings transactional analysis into contact with a number of other contemporary lines of thought and research. We are indeed grateful to those pioneers who preceded us - Berne, Gouldings, Kupfer, Steiner, Crossman, among others - and to contemporaries who have also worked in this area (4), but we expect to be equally grateful to those who succeed us and further develop these ideas, including perhaps some of you now reading this brief summary from 1998.

References

1. Allen, J.R., Pfefferbaum, B. (1998). Of resilience, vulnerability --and a woman who never lived. Child-Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America. 7(1): 53-57 [back]

2. Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A. (1998) Redecision therapy: Through a narrative lens. In Hoyt, M. (Ed.). The handbook of constructive therapies. San Francisco: Josey Bass, 31-46. [back]

3. Allen, J.R., Heston, J., Durbin, C., Pruitt, D. (1998). Stressors and development: A reciprocal relationship. Child-Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders of North America. 7(1), 1-17 [back]

4. Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A., Barnes, G., Hibner, B., Krauss, R., Moiso, C., Welch, S. (1996). The role of permission: Two decades later. Transactional Analysis Journal 26 (3): 196-205. [back]

5. Steiner, C. (1966). Script and counterscript. Transactional Analysis bulletin 5 (18) 133-135. [back]

6. See http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/publicat/primer/intro.html for primer on molecular genetics: Human Genome Project Information. [back]

7. see ED386327 Aug 95 Fostering Resilience in Children. ERIC Digest. Author: Benard, Bonnie, http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed386327.html [back]

Copyright © James R. Allen & Barbara A. Allen, all rights reserved.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Definitions From:

(EB) Berne, E. (1964). Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. New York: Grove Press.

(A&A) Allen, J.R., Allen, B.A. (1978). Guide to Psychiatry. Garden City, NY: Medical Examination Publishing Co. Inc.

(TT) Tilney, T. (1998). Dictionary of transactional analysis terms. London: Whurr Publishers.

Child, (TT) The Child ego-state which holds the thinking feeling and behavior of childhood. p. 14

Ego State, (EB) ... phenomenologically as a coherent system of feelings, and operationally as a set of coherent behavior patterns. In more practical terms, it is a system of feelings, accompanied by a related set of behavior patterns. p. 23

Injunction, (TT): ...part of the script apparatus and can be conceived as a negative message from [parent to child]. p. 59

Permission, (A&A): One of the clinicians major therapeutic tasks is setting the stage for the patient to give himself the permissions he needs to experience something new, to decide to do something new, and to practice it successfully. p. 336

Protection, (TT): therapeutic procedures to protect the client from the adverse effects of negative script elements during therapy. Therapy involve dismantling the defensive structure that underlies the script. This may leave the client vulnerable to injunctions or other toxic... material. An important aspect of protection is the closure of ESCAPE HATCHES.... p. 95

Script, (TT): We decide our life-plan, or "script" as it is called in Transactional analysis, in childhood, pp. 109-110.

TAJnet reprint of the 1972 article Scripts - the Role of Permission, by James and Barbara Allen...

James R.Allen, M.D. is a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Professor of Child-Adolescent Psychiatry and Program Director of the Child-Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, and a teaching and supervising member of the International Transactional Analysis Association. .

Barbara A. Allen, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist, human ecologist and mental-health planner in private practice in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK.

To write:

James R. Allen M.D.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
PO Box 26901
Oklahoma City, OK 73190-3048

*TAJnet reprint of the 1972 article Scripts - the Role of Permission, by James and Barbara Allen...