  ISSN: 1524-0029 |
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ISSN: 1524-0029 |
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AUTHOR'S NOTE (1999) The following article was published in 1970 and is now part of early TA history. It has not been changed from the original and should be viewed in its historical context. In today's terminology, modern TA theory has departed from the use of metaphors such as "witch" parent and "curses." When a person is in a child ego state he may perceive his mother negatively as a "witch" and feel as if his behavior is under the control of her "curse." But in modern day scientific terminology we are more inclined to view negative family influences and the childhood decisions that incorporate them in terms of the more objective language of a person's life "script." A fundamental premise of transactional analysis (TA) theory is that you have three selves or "ego states": a Parent (P), an Adult (A), and Child (C) ego state. The C of any person's parent communicates "injunctions" to the growing-up child (which remains in the C of the grownup), which may be unhealthy for the child's growth. My observation of normal and disturbed adults in treatment suggests that when they were children, transactions with parents were governed by the child's belief in the magical (witch) power of the parent. Steiner (1969) and others have pointed out that parents who seem reasonable and pleasant to our adult perceptions can be perceived by their children as witches or ogres. My examination of primitive families (Campos, 1969) and American families of the traditional authoritarian kind (Campos, 1970) reveals a strong belief in witchcraft or the attribution of power to someone who uses it to influence, change, or transform the individual in some way. I think this comes out of the kinds of transactions between parents and their children. Parents use their authority to gain control by conveying messages to their children that they have power of a magical kind which they can wield over the powerless child. (James & Jongeward, 1969). In my study of the traditional Spanish-American (SA) family, I find that the parents use the "stern glance" to discipline offspring. The C in the SA adult is then programmed with the belief in the power of such a glance to determine health or sickness. It becomes the "evil eye" or Mal Ojo. The C in an adult will also set up transactions which are designed (magically) to give power to another person to assume responsibility for him, control him, or heal him (this is found in transactional games of the "Do Me Something-I'm Only Trying To Help You" variety). My earlier analysis of "bewitchment" as practiced by non-literate cultures and latter-day faith healers (Campos, 1969) led to the following inferences:
It can be shown that to the C in a client, parental injunctions have a power and malignancy of supernatural witchcraft and often are received as "curses" by the child. They are called witch messages because they are communicated from the C of the parent below the parent's A awareness and contradict the constructive messages from the P of the parent. Hence, from the P of the parent, a child may be enjoined to grow up, but from the C of the parent comes the witchy message, "Don't (please) ". Witch messages often take the form of prohibition injunctions: "Don't be (exist) "; "Don't be yourself (a man, a woman, sexy, etc.)"; "Don't grow up"; "Don't make it (succeed) "; "Don't enjoy"; "Don't feel"; and "Don't think". Simply put, the aim of these injunctions is to not allow the C of a person to be free to make his own decisions about how to live his life because such autonomy or permission to have freedom of choice is perceived as a threat to the survival of the C in the parent in some way. Thus, in the parental injunction, "Don't grow up", some threat or deprivation is felt by the C of the parent should the child grow up, i.e., feelings of isolation, desertion, or abandonment. As a security measure, the witch message is programmed into the child. It is a gallows transaction, in that by obeying the parental injunction the individual engages in behavior, or plays transactional games with others, for the purpose of getting strokes to please the witch mother. English (1969) calls it the Hot Potato Game, in that the C in the parent, wishing to avoid a tragic life-script outcome does so by passing on the curse to the child with the message: "I will suffer unless you are sacrificed to me." Thus, securing need satisfaction for the C of the parent sacrifices the child's own needs. According to English, the basic message transmitted by the C of the parent to the child is, "I bewitch you, to dewitch me." Basic threats communicated to the child by the C of the parent (often in alliance with the P of the parent) are: threat of death over the child ("obey or die"); threat of abandonment; threat of loss of love; and threat of disapproval. These witch messages are primarily motivated by the wants and feelings of the C of the parent. Thus, for "Don't be (kill yourself)", the C of the parent says, in effect, "If you exist, you'll threaten my survival!". For "Don't grow up", it might be "I'll feel abandoned (I don't want to be left alone)". For "Don't make it", it might be "If you do, I'll feel inferior". The jealous C of a parent may communicate the message "Don't enjoy" with "If I don't enjoy, why should you?". In treatment, the therapist can help the client identify these "crazy" witch messages by proffering educated guesses, fantasies or hunches. The client is always the final judge of the validity of these inferences. Since injunctions are often communicated through the non-verbal responses of discomfort or anxiety in the C of the parent, or in subtle signals of approval and disapproval, the client may not initially recognize the witch messages. With increased awareness he soon learns to identify them and validate them. Three clinical examples are cited here to demonstrate how the C in clients still believes in witchcraft: Bob is a 16-year-old delinquent and methamphetamine user, with a history of runaway from home and escape from institutions. He is currently living at home with arthritic mother who twice married and divorced his quick-tempered, alcoholic father. Throughout his childhood he was caught up in the marital hassles of his parents. His father removed the child from the mother's home during periods of separation when he was aged three, nine and eleven, and he identified his father as the "villain" in his life drama. He was subjected to mother's fears of father's belligerence as she fled from home at night with the child. He has had asthmatic attacks since he was six, and, over the past few years, has been on tranquilizers for a "nervous condition". Treatment Contract: "I want to stop being nervous all the time." Bob was involved in 15 hour-and-a-half TA group treatment sessions in a Youth Authority institution for delinquent boys before release to parole. A principal witch message came from the C of mother: "I'm seared (for your safety), RUN." Father meanwhile provided Bob with the program for his life course: through his own running away from life problems in alcoholism, he showed Bob how to run, In treatment [1], the C of Bob was surfaced and with it many early memories of his desperate need to hide and terror of his father's aggressiveness. Running became equated with feeling safe and protected in his mother's arms. Even overtly, she would say to Bob on one of her visits: "If you must continue to run, that's OK by me, if that's what you want. You'll get caught anyway and be put back in the YA---at least then, you'll be safe." Actually, Bob's running fulfilled the safety needs of the C in mother. When confronted with the decision to not run anymore, Bob would feel the old desperation, the terror of incipient danger. When confronted in treatment by the critical moment of decision to change, patients like Bob tend to regress to a position of non-change or non-decision. In TA language, this is a "cop-out" of the C who is still complying with the witch message. Confronting such cop-outs helps to validate the analysis of the witch message. Mary is a 29-year-old woman unhappy in her marriage. She reported that her husband, an optometrist, invested his money in projects without including her in his planning or communicating with her about his plans. This left her with the feeling in her C that, "Nobody ever listens to me" (communicated inaudibly). In a TA marathon, she reported that her mom did not listen to her feelings, especially during her early rivalry over possessions with her younger brothers. She came to treatment feeling guilty whenever she wanted to do what she wanted. A principal witch message read: "Don't want for yourself". Treatment Contract: "I want to do what I want without feeling guilty". Whenever Mary was about to make a decision based on her wants, she would sense some incipient terrible consequence. As it turned out, mom had communicated the premise (couched in a parental slogan): "You make your bed, you lie in it." Mom, in a sense, predicted for the daughter what would happen to her. Mary expressed this by stating she felt that whatever happened to mom, would happen to her (mom had made an initial poor marital choice and ended up with several divorces). Metaphorically speaking, mom had given her a "witch's broom" to ride on throughout her life. As my co-therapist [2] stated, her C was out to prove she was as good a witch as mom. In working towards the critical moment of decision to give up this "witch's curse", the following series of transactions were exchanged between co-therapists and client and illustrates again the C's cop-out to the witch mother: C: I want to make a decision-but I don't believe just by doing that, I will make it come true. T: You said you wanted to make a decision. OK. When? C: Now. T: OK, what's your decision? C: I can't. T: Can't or won't? C: Won't. T: So again you settle for less than what you want for you. How come? C: I'm scared. The cop-out of her frightened C indicates how terrible her C believes the consequences could be to her if she should assert her adult autonomy. Her reluctance to throw away her "witch's broom" at this point is the C's avoidance of the decision to change. This copout served so that she could hold on to old failure feelings, so that she could feel not allowed to want for herself, and so that she could continue to find people who would not listen to her. After being helped through the terror-associated moment of decision, she threw away her witch's broom and her bewitchment. In follow-up TA group sessions, the group members remarked on her changed appearance: she seemed to grow with greater youth and beauty and felt more confident in herself. Her self-change was surprising to her and she reported that she felt "different". Her voice was now audible and others were listening to her. Viola was a 45-year-old woman married to alcoholic husband. She was in treatment for ten years prior to TA treatment with me. She came with a history of overconcern with body dysfunction, a host of physical complaints, and hypochondriasis. Medical confirmation was obtained to show benign breast cysts and benign fibroadenoma of the uterus. These benign physical conditions were rendered "malignant" through witch messages that programmed the C of the patient to hold on to aches, pains, and worries about her body. Mother died of cancer at 60 and before her death often communicated concern about her body. Father was a health buff and preached about health values throughout the patient's childhood. The little girl in her came to treatment searching for a "magic wand" that would do away with her chronic bad feeling. For years, she sought therapy thinking that if she could only find out why she ached and worried she would be cured ("Maybe if I can know why I feel bad, I will feel good"). Treatment Contract: "I want to feel good". Viola's C felt that whenever she felt good, something bad would happen. Like other patients I have treated, she had a premonition that something bad would happen if she felt good. In treatment, whenever she was on the verge of achieving her contract, the little girl in her found something to feel bad about. Like other patients, when she sensed self-change, she became frightened and found herself copping out to the old witch messages: "Feel bad. Worry about dying" ("If I can't feel good, why should you"?). To break the witch's curse, her cop-out was confronted as she became alerted to these witch messages. Viola became aware that whenever she found herself feeling good, she would then begin to feel bad. Her magically-thinking C collected "evidence" from critical moments, in her life that supported the witch's, curse: right before her father died, she was feeling good; right before she suddenly had a miscarriage, she had felt good, and so on. In treatment (with my protection), she dared to challenge the curse and freed herself of her bad-feeling rackets. In conclusion, the, C's magical thinking can be used therapeutically by the therapist in counteracting destructive parental injunctions from the C of the parent--just as it was the task of the witch doctor in primitive and medieval times to ward off so-called "evil spirits", The process of TA treatment gives the client permission to do what his or her autonomous A wants rather than what the C in the parent wants. Once liberated of witch-like life-script messages, the client is free to exert his Adult power to further his own autonomous growth. Footnotes [1] Co-therapist was Paul McCormick. [2] Co-therapist was Anita Roggenbuck, MSW. REFERENCES Campos, L.: "The Witch's Curse", paper read at the annual meeting of the International Transactional Analysis Association, Monterey, California, August 22, 1969. Campos, L.: "Spanish-American Children of Separation and Divorce", Children of Separation and Divorce, L. Abt, ed., 1970. English, Fanita: "Episcript and the Hot Potato Game", TAB 8:77-82, 1969. James, Muriel and Dorothy Jongeward: Born to Win. Unpublished manuscript, 1969, later published by Addison-Wesley, 1971. McCormick, P. and L. Campos: Introduce Yourself to Transactional Analysis. Transactional Pubs, Berkeley, California, 1969. Steiner, C.: Script Analysis in Alcoholism. Unpublished manuscript, 1969, later published as Games Alcoholics Play, by Grove Press, 1971. Copyright © Leonard Campos, all rights reserved.
*This article was originally published as: Campos, L. (1970). The transactional analysis of witch messages. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 34, pp. 51-57. |
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