With a 1998 addendum by James and Barbara Allen...

Scripts, as Berne[3] pointed out, are designed to last a lifetime. They are based on continually reinforced parental programming and on firm childhood decisions. These decisions, in turn, are based on four interdependent sets of factors: (1) those parental messages which the child accepts, (2) his existential position, (3) his limited life experience, and (4) his level of cognitive development.

From infant and child observation in pre-nursery and child psychiatric settings, the authors have been struck by two factors which have not been sufficiently stressed in the literature of transactional analysis. First, a child does not necessarily pick up the permissions and injunctions of his parenting figures. Some children actively seek alternative programming from nursery school attendants, the parents of other children, or even a fantasized parent. Secondly, as Piaget [13] his students and his critics have made clear, the cognitive style of a child is distinctively different than that of a "miniature grown-up." One three year old girl, for example, became progressively more agitated by the comfort grown-ups tried to give her as she went about pointing to the cast on her arm and wailing "It broke". For her, the word "broke" was very concrete: she expected her arm to fall off.

On such bases as these, however, each of us decides how life is to be and then selectively interacts with and screens the world to support and reaffirm this decision. To change one's script, a person needs to re-decide his early decisions. Dusay and Steiner[7] have drawn our attention to the importance of permission, protection and potency in this process.

A Progression of Permissions

Clinical experience has led the authors to hypothesize that the permissions each child - and each patient - needs can be gathered together into a hierarchical series. Each level is necessary and important in its own right, but it is also dependent upon the solidity of the preceding levels. Cutting across standard diagnostic categories, these permissions may be outlined as follows:

1. Permission to exist.
2. Permission to experience one's own sensations, to think one's own thoughts, and to feel one's own feelings, as opposed to what others may believe one should think or feel.
3. Permission to be one's self as an individual of appropriate age and sex, with potential for growth and development.
4. Permission to be emotionally close to others.
5. Permission to be aware of one's own basic existential position.
6. Permission to change this existential position.
7. Permission to succeed in sex and in work; that is, to be able to validate one's own sexuality and the sexuality of others, and to "make it."
8. Permission to find life meaningful.

This progression of necessary permissions fits with Erickson's assumptions[9] that the human personality develops according to steps which are predetermined by the individual's readiness to be aware of and to interact with a widening social radius, and that society - at least in principle - tends to invite and meet this succession of potentialities, and encourages the optimal rate and sequence of their unfolding.

The authors' conceptual model of a progression of permissions implies, as does Erickson's epigenetic model, that psychosocial development proceeds through critical turning points. It also implies that each level of permission and its corresponding psychosocial strength is related to all the others, that they each are dependent on the proper development of all the others, and that each level exists in some form before its critical time arrives.

While mindful of the warnings of Steiner[15] and Lee[12] that the therapist not be caught up in the patient's ongoing personal drama triangles, we have found this conceptual framework useful in suggesting specific levels of therapeutic concentration. Throughout his life, Berne sought ways to "cure" people more quickly. It seems inefficient, at the very least, to sit each patient down before a seven-course banquet if he needs only the salad! Here is one method of determining which course an individual patient is likely to find most useful.

The authors consider it important that the patient receive permissions in the order in which they are outlined. If therapeutic work is pitched at a high level in the series when the lower levels have not been satisfactorily worked through, the work may be untherapeutic if not downright dangerous. For example, however much a bright young schizophrenic patient may be interested in questions of level eight, exclusive emphasis on such philosophical-mystical questions is unlikely to be profitable to him, and indeed may rapidly exacerbate his symptomatology.

Although varying with the potency of the therapist, most of the numerous modes of psychotherapeutic intervention which are currently popular resonate at more than one level in this permission hierarchy. However, each therapeutic style does tend to emphasize one particular level; for example, Steiner's[16] "permission classes" seem to be pitched at levels one and two. Fanita English',; techniques for dealing with rackets[8] much of the work of Hilde Bruch [5] the sensory explorations of Elsa Gindler, Charlotte Selver and their pupils[14] Gestalt awareness training, bio-feedback training[11] and some aspects of Yoga and movement therapies[1] are pitched primarily at level two. In contrast, Frankl's logotherapy[10], psychosynthesis, peak-experience therapy[4] and the current flowerings of religious and mystical practices are pitched at level eight.

This conceptual framework, we believe, makes clear the role of the therapist: he helps the patient balance the various tendencies within his development, and thereby to get on with his total growth and development. Ultimately, the patient will need to give these permissions to himself. In so doing - that is, changing - this often brings up some combination of four specific catastrophic expectations:

1. "If you change, you will he destroyed or at least punished" (lose love, approval and "strokes").
2. "If you change, someone (mother) will be destroyed."
3. "If you change, the world (family) will be destroyed," (or at least ravaged).
4. "If you change you won't stay that way " (the family homeostatic mechanisms will restore the status quo).

Mankind projects these themes into cosmic significance; they play an active role in our myths. The first theme is found in the myths of Paradise, and in the tale of Icarus. The second is found in the myths of Orpheus, and the third in the myth of Pandora. The myth of Oedipus is a triumph: it combines all three.

To face these catastrophic expectations and to deal with transitional periods of "despair," when he is unwilling to continue on as he had and yet is uncertain as to what to do in its place, the patient needs the other two of the three great p's from his therapist: potency and protection.

REFERENCES

[1] Allen J. R.: "Drop-Outs and Wonderers of the Hip Generation", in The American Handbook of Psychiatry, Volume 3, Aricti S. Caplan, G. (ed), Basic Books, in press.

[2] Assagioli R.: Psychosyn thesis, Viking Press, New York 1965.

[3] Berne E.: Sex in Human Loving, Simon and Schuster, 1970, p163.

[4] Bindrim P.: "Facilitating Peak Experiences", in Ways of Growth, Otto H. and Mann J. (ed), Viking Press, 1968

[5] Bruch H.: "Obesity" in Adolescence: Psychosocial Perspectives, Caplan G. and Lebovici S. (ed), Basic Books. 1968

[6] Campos L.: "Transactional Analysis of Witch Messages", Transactional Anal. Bull. 9:34, 1970

[7] Dusay J. and Steiner C.: "Permission Protection and Potency" in Comprehensive Group Psychotherapy, Williams and Wilkins, 1971, p198.

[8] English F.: "The Substitution Factor: Rockets and Real Feelings" Trans Anal. J. 1:4, Oct., 1971, pp225-230.

[9] Erikson E.: Childhood and Society, Norton & Co., 1950

[10] Frankl V.: "Beyond Self-Actualization and Self -Expression", J. of Existential Psychiatry, Volume 1, 1960.

[11] Green E. and Green A.: "On the Meaning of the Transpersonal" J. of Transpersonal Psychology 3, 1971

[12] Lee R.H.: "The Psychotherapist as Rescurer", Transactional Anal. J. 112, April 1971

[13] Piaget J.: Psychology of Intelligence, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1950

[14] Selver C. and Brooks CVW: Chapter in Exploration in Human Potentialities, Otto H. (ed), Charles Thomas, 1966.

[15] Steiner C.: "Script and Counter-script", Transactional Analysis Bull, 5:18, April 1966

[16] Steiner C. and Steiner V.: "Permission Classes", Transactional Analysis Bull, 7:28, October 1968

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

See also the 1998 addendum by James and Barbara Allen...

In 1972, at the time of this article's writing,

James R.Allen, M.D. was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Center.

Barbara A. Allen, M.S.W., M.P.H. was Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Center.

*This article was originally published in the Transactional Analysis Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, April 1972, pp. 72-74.