(Case Study One)

 Bob was the leader of his group of friends, and it was he who always set the time for them to meet, where they were going and what to do. He often shook his finger at his friends disproportionately. People in his circle of friends eventually got tired of him, and many left the group.

(Case Study Two)

Mary and Joan were good friends and they went everywhere together. When Joanna's mother died, it was Mary who cared for her and often put her arm around Joan, saying words like 'Don't be afraid of things. I will help you with all your work; I love you very much, you know.

 The above are examples of controlling parenting behavior and parenting behavior of the mother Ego state
 
The parental ego state contains the attitudes and behaviors observed and copied from the individual's caregivers and figures. In other words, the spoken and unspoken rules. Life's "should" and "should". The individual's early parent is formed in the child from birth to approx. five years, and in transaction analysis, the parent is called the child or P1. The complete overall ego state or P2 is formed from five years to ca. twenty years as a result of even more external stimuli from their authority by the deputy.  

When P2 is activated in later life, the person will act in the ways that their authority figures will have acted, this is actually the model that the individual has incorporated into their own parent, although it should be noted that each individual will have one. second parent ego status and will act in their own unique way.  

The ego state for adults  

(Case Study Two)  

James decided to go and see his aunt who lived in the next town - having never left his city before, he had to get his card out to find out how he wanted to get there - he did this successfully and he came to his aunt's house at the time he said he would. Thus, we can see that James used his adult egostat to work logically, given the facts of how to solve a given problem.  

The adult egostat occurs about six months in the child and is primarily concerned with assessing facts, reasoning, thinking, evaluating and responding to available data.  

It is described by many transaction analysis writers as a computer that deals only with rationality and logic.

 However, I think this attitude is somewhat misleading, and I prefer Bernese's comment describing the adult as coming from an integrated position, which does not mean that when the person activates their adult ego, he comes from just a rational position, but that he also has access to emotions, thinking and attitudes. In fact, the person will be part of the 'here and now' and experience and come from an integrated adult attitude.  

Child Ego State  

(Case Study One)  

When John's mother died when he was three years old, he was too young to really understand what had happened, he just felt hurt that his mother was gone. When he was fifteen years old, John had difficulty trusting women - he often complained about women leaving him and failing him a lot when he needed them most. Other people thought women were really good to him and helped him a lot.  

(Case Study Two)  

 Fiona when a little girl could make her dad do what she really wanted. Growing up, she was actually very good at getting men to do what she wanted. Later, she was fired from several jobs by her bosses who said they felt she was manipulating them.  


(Case study three)  

As a child, Freda's parents argued a lot, and her main defense method was to pull out and spend a lot of time alone on long walks. At eighteen, she was fired from many jobs to dream and fantasize. In her personal life, she would withdraw mentally if her friends quarreled with her. They got tired of her and left.  

People who spend a lot of time operating from a child gut condition usually act as they did when they were a child. Eg. Freda lost many jobs because she dreamed about when she should have concentrated on her work. Fiona tried to manipulate men in her life with the expectation that she would get what she wanted, as she had from her father when a child.   Being in your child's ego state does not mean that you become childish. It simply means that you act as you did when you were a child.  

Child Ego State

Child Ego State is primarily concerned with emotions, although it does not mean that when in 'here and now' the person does not have access to attitudes and thoughts, but it simply means that when activated emotions are usually the executive energy force. The child goth state is the part of the personality that is preserved from actual childhood; it also contains all the impulses a person was born with.

The child ego state is, as I said, primarily about spontaneous feelings, needs and desires of the child. It is also important to note that the child's ego state contains 'recordings' of childhood memories and experiences. Therefore, when the person feels and behaves as they did when he was very young, they experience their child's ego status.

The personality can be further divided into the caring and controlling parent and the free and adapted child. An example of the nurturing side of the parent goth condition is the person who lovingly cares for the dog that is injured while crossing the road. An example of the controlling parent being activated would be in the person who can say that 'all dogs should be kept on the lead and not allowed to roam free' and do nothing to care for the injured dog. From this particular example, we can see how the same ego status can act in different ways according to the person's previous messages.

An example of the difference between the free and personalized child ego state would be, for example, the person who adheres to almost anything and may automatically say 'thank you' while suppressing other emotions as opposed to the free children's attitude of free and spontaneous feelings, everything according to the situation. The free child is naturally curious, curious and often acts without thinking about the consequences.

Another attitude to the adapted child position is a pseudo-rebellion. In other words, an attentive adaptation to a particular situation is the flip child in the compatible child's attitude.

Again, I think it is important to mention here that different people react differently to situations, and that different ego states are activated according to their previous messages in life. But almost certainly, most people will have access to all parts of their personality if they wish, though according to their particular pathology, certain ego states may well dominate their personality in corn situations in their lives.



Structural pathology


This is the part of TA theory that deals with when we are stuck in an egostat or part of the Self. The two most important parts of structural pathology are pollution and exclusions.

Pollution between the different parts of the personality or ego states simply means that two ego states overlap or distort, so the person often feels that he cannot keep the different ego states apart.

He will often describe a 'firm' feeling in his personality. Much work is being done on transaction analysis to alleviate this 'stuck' sensation or de-contamination as it is known. An example of a child / adult contamination from a child's attitude would be someone saying, 'If I think my mother is not dead long enough, she won't be'

Or

'If I wear my lucky medallion, I'm bound to pass my exams without even revising.'

In other words, in these statements there is obviously a distortion of adult reality from the child's perspective. It is then necessary to kill the adult. Pollution can also occur between parent and adult and often does; you can even diagnose dual pollution between parent and adult and child and adult ego state.

Pollution, whether from a dominant parent or a dominant child ego state, will lead to a dysfunctional ego structure and the person will remain in the unreal position for him or her. This may provide some degree of security for the person as they will be familiar with them, but it will also hamper the real potential for positive change in their lives. What the person needs to be able to do is have access to all ego states and also be able to redistribute his energy evenly in all of them.

An example of a parent / child pollution would be when a person uses such statements as 'colored people are inferior to white people' and 'boys are smarter than girls'.

These examples are blatantly prejudice and occur when the person acts or acts as if something he believes is the absolute truth and valid for all time. It often comes directly from their own authority figures and is not necessarily true, so the person, instead of moving to check faith by using his adult egostat, instead takes it directly on board to his own parent.

Identifying the egostates of the self.  

So far, I have described the structure and function of the various personality units and how you may be aware of what part you may be working on in your life experiences. To allow you to identify even more specifically which egostat you are coming from in a particular situation, there are certain clues that will help you. There are many 'behaviors' that are typical of each ego state.

Child Ego State

Your baby boy Coming from a Child Ego State, your tone can be one of laughing, screaming, anger, rebellious, whining, helpless, stubborn or playful. Your words can be 'wow! I love you. Brill. I hate you. Es. Amazing. Amazingly, I never do it right. Sorry!

Your critical parental status

Your tone of voice can be harsh, strong, even fair, critical, orderly, dogmatic, uncompromising, overbearing. The posture here is likely to be vertical, hands on hips, rocking finger, head vertical, invasive, erect. The words could be - lots of "wild, shoulder" disappointed you, disturbed by your behavior, eating all your food, children to be seen and not heard, don't be late, stupid, when to do …… .., why are you does not ……….

Your adult nostril The tone can be measured, clear, precise, crisp, rational, logical. Words may well be very factual. 'I can see you're fine, how long is it for London, what time is it, it's a fact that it's cold today!

All the above words and behaviors then give you a clue as to what ego state that person is operating from and thus what you can do to change the situation for yourself. However, it should be remembered that these are just some of the clues to accurate ego analysis, you need more evidence or information for a positive and accurate diagnosis. You may need to ask more historical questions and certainly you will need to see the person in 'here and now' to be sure of your analysis.

Egogram in TA theory

Talking about the ego structure and not to mention the innovation of the Egogram by Jack Dusay in the early 1970s would be a bear service in my opinion for Transactional Analysis.

An Egogram is simply defined as:

'A bar chart showing the relationship between the personality parts and each other and the amount of psychological energy emanating from the outside.'

The egogram is a bar chart showing the amount of energy in the person's ego structure and how he will distribute his energy within the various egos at a given time. The most important aspect of using Egogram in modern psychotherapy is that it provides an evaluation of the distribution of energy in the personality, and it can be used by the individual to show how much energy is needed to be distributed. to other parts of the personality to bring about positive change. It is easy to construct and use, for example, firstly draw a horizontal line on a piece of paper. Below, select the five ego states - adapted child, free child, adult, controlling parent, and parental care.

Think of yourself at this particular time or at a specific point in the past, draw what you feel is the most activated part of your personality, and draw it with a vertical line. (This will be your highest column.)

Now use your intuition to draw the lowest live part of your personality as it is in comparison to the other. (This will be the lowest column.)

Then fill in the other modes as you see them in comparison to the above.

 After doing the exercise, you should now have an egogram of the distribution of your energy within your personality at a given time. This will help you see where you may need at some point to distribute your energy to help solve problems in life or therapy.

 At this point, it is important to mention the constancy hypothesis. As John Dusay suggests in his book on Egograms, when the energy of one Ego state increases, the energy drops in another Ego state, which means that one can successfully distribute one's energy from one Ego state to another. Having successfully used Egograms in my own self-evaluation, while in therapy, and with my own clients in my practice, I have come to the conclusion that the creation of Egogram by Dusay has been invaluable to modern psychotherapy and especially transaction analysis. Certainly, it graphically shows the type of person you are and will show you how to positively change yourself into being the person you want to be in your life.