January 1999

In 1972 I conducted a research project ^[1] correlating drivers, ego states, psychological needs, life positions, rackets, script injunctions, scripts, roles, games, and myths. I administered the Kahler Transactional Analysis Script Checklist, which I had created for my dissertation ^[2], to 1,200 people. With completed responses by 982, six of the ten Drivers (five from Child and five from the Parent) were selected as the most experienced: Please you, Try hard for you, Be strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be strong for me, and Be perfect for me. Although this study did not demonstrate significant correlations between these six major groupings of driver (types) and expected item responses, there were significant correlations among non-driver related item responses constituting a natural loading on six clusters. For example, there was a strong correlation between and among, -CP, frustration, NIGYSOB, I'm OK - You're Not OK, Don't have fun, and the Until script. The mutually exclusive and significant factor loadings strongly suggested that six patterns were representing at least 95% of the negative behaviors, as identified by these T.A. terms. I had shared many of these correlations with a good friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Ware, who had read Shapiro's work ^[3] and later postulated six adaptations ^[4]. We both seemed to be on the same track, from differing directions.

I started teaching and writing about the six patterns and their correlations, calling them Overreactors, Workaholics, Doubters, Manipulators, Disapprovers, and Daydreamers, adding a seventh to identify some of the clinically unaccounted for population, and called this adaptation Cyclers ^[5].

About 1975, I began to travel and lecture a great deal, and slowly shifted away from clinical presentations to personal awareness and growth seminars, and then to business application conferences. With my role at NASA in 1978 in the selection and placement of the astronauts, came an obvious need for more efficient ways of interviewing hundreds of candidates.

The timing was perfect. Although I had not focused any more on clinical or miniscript applications, I had looked and thought a great deal about the positive behavior patterns of these primary six adaptations, and I began calling them personality types. It was time for more research.

For several years, I had been looking at personality structure as a layering of these six (positive) personality types. I trained a group of Parent Educators in Florida over a period of twenty years. They in turn taught about ten thousand parents (an average of 500 parents of two through five-year olds in ten Lab Schools each year) how to assess personality structure, connect with their children, motivate them, and deal with their negative behaviors. We hypothesized that this ordering of these six personality types within an individual was mostly set by age seven. Subsequent test-retest research ^[6] has substantiated that personality structure remains consistent over time.

In about 1978 I made perhaps the most important theoretical discovery of my life, including the miniscript ^[7]. I called it phases. I was searching for a key to unlock such questions as:

1. Why people were motivated by different psychological needs at different times in their lives?
2. Why a person's primary driver never changes even though he or she might have a [negative]^[*] miniscript sequence that will correlate to a [positive] personality type other than the one associated with this primary driver?
3. Why people will or can have a different predominant script at different times of their lives?
4. Why people can demonstrate not just one, but two [negative] miniscripts?

In order to answer these questions I began another study, finished in 1982 ^[8], that included a research a paper and pencil inventory, and expanded the questions to connect personality types with character traits, environmental preferences and management styles. It also tested for phases, the emergence of a foreground personality type that determines, to some extent, what our new psychological needs will be, and what the new [negative] miniscript will be.

This research also tested for what had been observed in the perceptions of each of the six personality types. This was a consistent and logical outgrowth from Paul Ware's model ^[9] of expanding Berne's feeling, thinking and behaving designations. I renamed feelings to emotions. I observed the singularity thoughts to be a mixture of thoughts and opinion). And I observed behaving divided into action, reaction, and inaction. Results indeed indicated significant correlations between Reactors and emotions, Workaholics and thoughts, Persisters and opinions, Promoters and actions, Rebels and reactions, and Dreamers and inactions.

Three experts in assessing these six Personality types independently interviewed 100 people. All six Personality types were represented in the sample. All three judges agreed on 97 assessments, yielding an interjudge reliability significant at >.001.

These same experts were to determine phase. Using again Kendall's coefficient of concordance, W, and testing this significance with the critical values of chi-square, interjudge reliability was again significant at >.001.

An additional number of people were assessed and selected by the judges independently so that a minimum number of 30 persons were available for each classification of Personality type, yielding a total sample of 180 identified assessed people.

Two hundred and thirteen items including extractions from the original study item pool were administered to 112 randomly selected subjects. Analysis of this data indicated once again a natural loading on six criteria - - the six Personality types.

Two hundred and four of these items were administered to the 180 identified Personality types. Only items with a correlation of greater than .60 (significant at >.01) were accepted for inclusion in the final Personality Pattern Inventory (PPI).

I was elated not only with the results of the research, but with using it to reinterpret the 1972 research findings.

To illustrate with a typical example:

In the original research, if a person had a primary Be perfect driver, it was hypothesized that he or she would then experience the following cluster of behaviors: -CP, Don't have fun, frustration, NIGYSOB, Until, I'm OK - You're Not OK, etc., as these all were highly correlative.

Yet to be realized was the most important human behavioral factor, phases. In the above example, if the person had phased and was currently in the second floor identified as Please you, then even though his primary, that is, most used observable driver, was still Be perfect, the actual [negative] miniscript behavior will start with Please you and contain such correlatives: I'm Not OK - You're OK; -AC, victim; Stupid and Kick Me; confusion; Don't feel your anger; Almost; etc. With such concurrent and predicative validity results, we could conclude that when a person does not get his/her phase-psychological-needs met positively, they will attempt to get the very same needs met negatively by coping and defending with the [negative] miniscript pattern that correlates with that phase personality type.

Therefore, since each person's behavior can be observed, described, explained, categorized, and monitored second by second with this model, I liken personality structure to a six floor condominium, complete with an elevator. The order is determined by birth (probably the first floor) and by environment (probably floors two through six.) There are 720 unique combinations, and with the identification of the phase, this yields a total of 4,320 unique personality structures, each floor of which has energy that can be measured from 1 to 100%. In other words, one could interpret that there are millions of positive miniscripts.

Although originally I identified five drivers from the Parent (i.e., I'm OK - - You would be if...) and five from the Child (i.e., You're OK - - I would be if...), only six of these ten drivers significantly correlated with other six factor loadings: Please you, Try hard for you, Be strong for you, Be perfect for you, Be strong for me, and Be perfect for me. In other words, observation and research suggests that six [negative] miniscript sequences describe and encompass a significant percentage of the general population.

Another result of the second research endeavor was the production of a paper and pencil inventory that gives these business, personal, and clinical correlations in the forms of profile reports and seminars. More than 500,000 people have now been profiled, in more than 20 countries, in 10 different languages, complete with reliability and validity scales. 135 people have been certified in the U.S. and 170 internationally.

Although it is not my purpose here to give a treatise on Process Therapy, I would be remiss if I did not caution the reader on several points postulated in the original article. Most importantly, drivers should neither be confronted directly, nor should they be eliminated. The phase driver starts a [negative] miniscript sequence that connects that driver and a decisional consequence at the script injunction level. Therefore, the driver functions as a defense mechanism and should be treated as such: (As I recall, Bob and Mary Goulding identified this correctly and offered this caveat) There are, however, preferred transactions and perceptions to use when you transact with a person in a driver. Furthermore, just providing permissions relating to drivers or stoppers (functional script injunctions) is not likely to be profitable.

For those who would like an annotated research, including ten dissertations, and a presentation list or an overview of Process Therapy, including [negative] miniscript sequences, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Please note that any teaching or training of non-clinical applications of the miniscript model (a.k.a. Process Communication Model) is copyrighted and requires certification by Kahler Communications, Inc. in the U.S., and Taibi Kahler Associates, Inc. in all other countries.

*I wish I had called the Not-OK miniscript the negative miniscript - - it's a bit more descriptive and a little less evaluative.

Footnotes

^[1] Kahler, Taibi, Ph.D., Personality Pattern Inventory Validation Studies. Kahler Communication, Inc., 1982.

^[2] Kahler, Taibi, Ph.D., Purdue University, 1972. Dissertation. Predicting academic underachievement in ninth and twelfth grade males with the Kahler Transactional Analysis Script Checklist.

^[3] Shapiro, David, M.D., Neurotic Styles. Basics Books, 1972

^[4] Ware, Paul, M.D., Personality Adaptations. Transactional Analysis Journal, January 1983

^[5] Kahler, Taibi, Ph.D., Process Therapy in Brief. Human Development Publications, 1979.

^[6] Stansbury, Pat, Report of Adherence to theory discovered when the Personality Pattern Inventory was administered to subjects twice. Kahler Communications, Inc., 1990.

^[7] Kahler, Taibi, Ph.D. with Capers, Hedges, Miniscript, Transactional Analysis Journal, January 1974

^[8] Kahler. op.cit.

^[9] Ware, op.cit.

Copyright © Taibi Kahler, all rights reserved.

Taibi Kahler holds a Ph.D. in Child Development and Family Life from Purdue University, is a licensed psychologist, and is the originator of the Process Communications Model - used in sales, management, education, parenting, mentoring, relationships, team work, assessing and predicting of personal and professional distress sequences.

He is the recipient of the 1977 Eric Berne Memorial Scientific Award for the Miniscript. In 1978, he was invited by Dr. Terry McGuire, NASA's psychiatric consultant, to be an interviewing psychologist. As a result, astronauts have taken Dr. Kahler's profile as part of their selection process and have used his communication and team-building model in their training program.

He has held membership in 13 national and international organizations, 4 high-I.Q. societies, and has been the guest speaker at more than a dozen international congresses, and 400 local and national conventions. A prolific writer, Dr. Kahler has authored 3 books and more than 40 articles, booklets and profile reports.

He was hired as the psychodemographer in the Clinton/Gore 1996 campaign, and is a consultant to the President.

TAJnet reprint of the 1974 article The Miniscript, by Taibi Kahler and Hedges Capers...