Problems with polygraph lie detection.

This test relies on the liar have an emotional reaction to the act of lying. The more the reaction the greater the indication of lying as the polygraph picks up the emotional tension. This statement describes what happens to some people when they lie

Thus the lying transaction could be diagramed as such

The lying transaction. 

The Parent ego state of the individual tells the Child ego state that it is wrong to lie. The Child ego state feels guilt in response to that parental directive if they choose to lie. The Child ego state also experiences another emotion, that of fear of getting caught.

For most people this applies. However there are a group where this does not apply and that is with the anti social personality. As a consequence one of the personality traits of this personality is that they lie more than most. Another feature of the anti social personality is they do not feel fear like the average person. They fail to comprehend the long term consequences of what they are doing and hence feel less anxiety. A teenager is also like this. They will take risks because they do not perceive the potential danger and thus do not feel the fear in the first place.

I didn't do it!

So the polygraph is less effective with the anti social personality and to a lesser extent the average teenager.  The anti social will have less of a fear reaction and hence it wont show up on a polygraph test. They also have poor moral development in their Parent ego state and hence do not have a moral directive against lying. Hence they do not feel guilt like the average person and again this make the polygraph test ineffective.

I would also add one other possible flaw with the poly graph and one sees this particularly with drug uses. In the drug subculture lying is endemic. People often lie to conceal the activities they are doing. As a result lying can become habitual like any behaviour can. When working with them you will find them lying at times when there is no reason to. They are simply doing it out of habit. I would suggest that such a person who lies habitually would also have much less of a fear and guilt reaction in a polygraph test.

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Fear and my counter transference reaction

It does not happen often these days, that I get that so moved working with a client. Especially with someone whom I have never seen before and will probably never see again. I tend to get more effected by clients who I know quite well but in this case, as I say, I will probably only ever see him the one time that I already have. But with this man who I recently counselled I was certainly emotionally moved by him and his plight

After counselling for 30+ years I have heard a lot of things. I hope I have not become too hardened by some of the things I hear in my work but I did notice this the other day and I noted the exceptional nature of my counter transference reaction.

A man in his mid 50s came to see me with his wife of about the same age. He initially presented what we call in the psychotherapy business a ‘calling card problem’. Typically these problems are the more socially acceptable issues like wanting to loose weight, wanting to give up smoking or maybe something like insomnia. People tend to see these as ‘normal’ people problems. As the client gets to know the therapist more the hidden issue tends to comes out which can happen in the first session or sometimes it can take quite a number of sessions to come out. The calling card problem gives the client time to assess the therapist and then can decide if they want to mention the underlying reason for seeking counsel.

His initial request was did I think he was depressed and if so what could be done about it. So I asked him questions which he answered and his wife was commenting also about their life, him and their work. As I acquired more information it became obvious there was another matter which troubled them both. The man was showing some clear symptoms of early onset dementia.

I decided to bring it right out into the open and stated there could be some signs of dementia. When I mentioned this they were not taken by surprise or shocked. They had obviously talked about this before and may have suspected something like this. By this time the question of possible depression had been forgotten and the ‘real’ issue was being openly discussed.

They had come to see a trained person, me, to confirm if I thought what they thought was dementia. I stated to him that he was showing some common symptoms of that condition and referred him onto someone else who specializes in that area. As I said this I saw the fear in his face as he knew what was coming with the probable demise of his memory and intellect and this is what moved me so. One could see the true fear in his face.

Indeed my referral probably was a reflection of a counter transference reaction on my behalf. My Adult reason for referring was because this is a serious matter and I did not want to get it wrong and therefore he should see one who has special expertise with dementia It is highly likely he will get a diagnosis of some kind of dementia and probably my Child ego state was so moved by his fear that I did not want to be the one who gave the final answer. Hence the real reason for the referral.

So it seems he presented me with a calling card problem because of his fear and I left him with a calling card referral because of my fear.

My fear met his fear

But it is one of those ones that you don’t forget about. Some clients you just don’t seem to forget over time and it is quite possible this will be one of those for me, even though I only ever saw him one single time.

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Adult and Child information processing

On my facebook there has been a discussion about trauma. I wrote the following:

“In recent months I have been working with a US marine who served in Iraq. He says that whenever he hears fireworks going off he has an instant strong anxiety reaction. Apparently the sounds are similar to explosions one hears in war. He also says that if he sits and watches a fireworks show he has no anxiety reaction at all. It’s curious how the Child ego state works sometimes.” (end quote)

Dena commented about the different neurological processing that would go on in the different circumstances which was interesting. In addition to this there would also be alternate psychological processing going on. It is a good illustration how the different ego states function differently especially in how they process information in order to come to conclusions about the world.

The US marine presented two different situations he found himself in:

1. When hearing fireworks he only has audio information - anxiety experienced.

2. When watching fireworks he has audio and video information - no anxiety.

This demonstrates how the Adult and Child ego states process information differently. This is explained further in the following three diagrams.

When he can only hear the fireworks (and not see them) he knows in his Adult they are only fireworks and not real bombs. However his Child ego state he is not 100% convinced they are not bombs. This is a type of magical thinking. His Child believes that some how by magic they may be real.

To the person who has not been traumatized in a war zone it is not important for the Child to be fully convinced. To the marine who has been in situations where he could have been killed by the bombing it becomes very important and hence he experiences high anxiety in reaction to those sounds.

When he can watch the fireworks directly, see what is going on and see the bangs being connected to the fireworks exploding he has no anxiety. This shows how important video is to Child ego state information processing. With such visual confirmation his Child is 100% convinced they are not real bombs and he experiences no anxiety.


Magical thinking




Anyone who has studied child psychology knows the importance a young child puts on what they see rather than on words they are told. Children quickly learn that a parent’s actions are far more important than what a parent says. Indeed when it is preverbal it only has visual (& kinesthetic) information available to it.

The US marine reminds us that we never loose the Child ego state part of us even when we are a mature adult. We continue to process information in an illogical way with magical thinking no matter how old we are.

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Life isn’t fair

This is an interesting concept that comes up reasonably often in psychotherapy. Indeed I will often bring this idea up with a client. Some people have the belief that life should be fair. That people are reasonably equal and if something unfortunate happens to some one then something should happen in response to that to make things fair.

From what I have seen of people, most have a view that fairness in life is a good thing. The whole concept of I’m OK, you’re OK is based on fairness and that people are equally OK. Anti discrimination laws are based on a view that fairness is a good thing. People are not discriminated against because they are of a particular race or gender. Indeed the whole legal system of some countries has the idea of life being fair at its core. The adage of “an eye for an eye” could be seen to take on the concept that life should be fair.

However in counselling the more one has the view that life should be fair the more they will suffer psychologically. If a person has the view or belief that life isn’t fair (sometimes) then they are more psychologically robust and healthy. Whilst one may want life to be fair and governments often publicly espouse that view of society, in the reality of day to day living, life just isn’t fair, sometimes. For a person to accept this allows them to be more adjusted to life and to not get stuck or fixated.

The person who’s Child ego state accepts that life isn’t fair (sometimes) is more psychologically robust than the individual who does not accept this view. This unfairness can range from the banal to tragic. You are waiting in a car in a long line of traffic. Another car passes you in the empty lane beside you and then pushes in up the front of the line. That isn’t fair and an example of minor acts of unfairness that we come across each and every day.

At the other end of the scale, your spouse is walking along the road and is run down and killed by a drunk driver. The trial comes and the driver gets a very minor sentence. Some may find this grossly unfair. The more the individual can understand that this was a grossly unfair set of events and then accept that sometimes life just isn’t fair the less they will be negatively impacted by it.

As mentioned before the more one accepts that life is not fair (sometimes) the less likely they are to get stuck or fixated on an event. What is wrong with getting fixated on an event? Consider the words of Deepak Chopra

“Holding on to anything is like holding on to your breath. You will suffocate.” 

Accepting that life isn’t fair allows one to avoid the process of getting stuck on an unfair event. It allows one to move through life and ‘let go’ of past events more easily than the person who has the view that life should be fair.

Some subcultures of society operate on the basis of an 'eye for an eye'. That is fair.

This takes on special importance when working with a client on their childhood traumas. Many people have feelings that unfair things happened to them as children. The more they accept that life isn’t fair the more they will be able to move on from and transcend those early events that trouble them in the here and now.

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Early decisions and a child's thinking

In Transactional Analysis the A1 or Little Professor ego state is of considerable importance as it is a core component to the formation of our personality and script beliefs. In CBT terms this is how we get our thinking errors. It is the A1 that makes the early life script decisions that determine how we live the rest of our lives. 

Unfortunately these decisions are usually made in the first 6 years of life and as will become apparent that means they are made with little or no A2 or fully formed thinking ability. They are made by the A1 in what are known as the stages of sensori motor egocentrism and pre-operational egocentrism.

This is some what disconcerting if not frightening because as will be demonstrated that thinking is quite illogical and distorted meaning the young child can make quite illogical and distorted decisions that are not reality based at all.

However this does explain how a child can make the suicide decision early in life which some people consider a bizarre thing to do. 

There are in fact seven suicide decisions a child can make:

If you don’t change I will kill myself

If things get too bad I will kill myself

I will show you even if it kills me

I will get you to kill me

I will kill myself by accident

I will almost die (over and over) to get you to love me

I will kill myself to hurt you

 In my book - Working with suicidal individuals - I state the following:

In the histories of suicidal individuals one finds parents can say many things which imply the suicidal message. For instance parents can say to the child:

“He’s our little accident”

“If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have had to marry your mother”

“We only stayed together for the kids”

“When you were born you tore your mother apart”

“You’re always hanging around me Jenny, why don’t you go and play on the freeway, Ha, ha, ha.”

Of course these only imply a possible suicide decision and as always it is up to the illogical thinking of the young child to conclude what it thinks about its own life. However if these kinds of things are said repetitively then it makes it more likely a child will made the suicide decision but is by no means a certainty.

What follows is an explanation of A1 thinking in order to demonstrate how a child can make what is a seemingly bizarre decision about how it should live or not. (Some of this is adapted from:  Helman & Austin TAJ 1977.)

Egocentrism

Piaget noted this as a major cognitive limitation in a child’s thinking as it develops.

Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate one’s cognitive perspective from that of others. The child mistakenly believes that its thoughts and beliefs are also held by others around it.

Cognitive development proceeds from an egocentric perspective to a more objective perspective.  Objective thinking remains in the domain of the Adult (A2) ego state. In this type of thinking the person understands and acknowledges perspectives other than her own and they can be taken into account in any decision making process.

A mother who is arguing with her husband and then finds her daughter not in bed yet may hit the child angrily. A child who is only capable of A1 (Little Professor ego state) thinking cannot take into account other objective causal facts for the anger. The child may think. “There must be something wrong with me to make her so angry that she hits me.”

An older person with A2 thinking is able to understand there may be other causes of mother’s anger, such as just having had an argument with her husband. Thus it is less likely to make false conclusions about itself and mother.

Sensori motor egocentrism  (Birth to 2 years)

A1 thinking is beginning and the child cannot differentiate between her own physical and cognitive being, and that of others. The child does not comprehend there is a separate physical boundary between mother and itself and of course all its rudimentary thoughts are perceived as belonging to mother and self as they are perceived as one entity.

Pre-operational egocentrism  (2 to 7 years)

A1 thinking continues to predominate but the child is now aware there is a physical boundary between itself and mother. However cognitively she 

1. Does not understand that others have cognitive perspectives besides her, or

2. Does understand this but is incapable of taking them into consideration at the time of her decision making.

Two girls (Jenny and Jody) are running along, Jody trips and cuts her face badly. Jenny who a few hours earlier had been angry at Jody thinks either:

1. Her anger caused the accident. “People will get hurt if I am angry at them.” Jenny is incapable of seeing Jody as being separate from her.

2. Jenny is capable of seeing herself as separate from Jody thus knowing she did not physically cause the accident. However she did feel angry at Jody and still has the belief that the anger caused the accident.

Also in this stage the child has the view that everyone thinks like she does and the whole world shares her feelings and desires. This sense of oneness with the world leads her to assume that she is magically omnipotent - “The world is created for me and I can control it magically”.

Finally in the stage of pre-operational egocentrism we have pre-causal reasoning which to many mature adults appears disconcertingly illogical

Phenomenism

The child makes causal connections between events that just happen to occur together when there is no causal relationship.

The child sees a red object floating and says that it floats because it is red.

“When I was angry, mummy looked sad, I can control (am responsible for) mummy’s feelings”.

Finalism

Things happen because they are supposed to. There is always a reason for things occurring as they do

“Bad dreams happen to punish me because I am bad.”

Artificialism

There are two parts to this. First the child believes grownups are omnipotent, so the child feels defined by what they say. A child spills milk and mother says, “You always do these bad things to me”. Child then believes, “I am bad so things would be better if I was not here”.

Second, the child identifies with these omnipotent beings and believes she is omnipotent as well. This can result in grandiose thinking. Watching and angry father the child may think, “You could kill (obliterate) me. I can kill (obliterate) you.”

Animism

Child believes world and nature are alive and have consciousness like it does.

“A stone is alive because it moves”.

“It gets dark at night so I can go to sleep.”

Concrete operational egocentrism  (7 to 11 years)

Child becomes able to coordinate other people’s perspectives using both A1 & A2 processing. As she interacts with more people she learns there are others who have different perspectives and she becomes more able to coordinate these differing perspectives. This also results in a giving up on beliefs like father christmas and the tooth fairy due to peer input and increasing A2 abilities.

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Stage fright and performance anxiety

What is stage fright?

This it seems safe to say this is an anxiety based condition

I will mainly talk about people giving a workshop or some kind of public speaking as I have dealt with this mainly, including my own public speaking. However I have dealt with many others over the years who present the problem of stage fright in a wide variety of areas. For instance I knew a woman who plays the guitar and she used to get very anxious before any performance and used to take Beta blockers before auditions.

That is one solution to stage fright, some kind of anti anxiety medication. I recall another client who was very religious and had strong views against drugs or alcohol of any kind. She had to give a presentation in a tutorial to fellow university students. I recall being surprised when she said that before the tutorial she dank a glass of beer. She was that anxious that she dropped her views on alcohol to deal with the fright. This demonstrates just how significant stage fright or performance anxiety can be for some people.

I think it is fair to say that every person who does some kind of public presentation suffers stage fright to some degree. The Free Child ego state will naturally be nervous as you are performing to some degree. You are up there in front of an audience who are all looking at you and who will make a judgement of you of some kind. 

For some however the anxiety is neurotic in that it is beyond the normal degree of stage fright or has some other psychological meaning. People who present for stage fright or public speaking anxiety in counselling usually have all sorts of thoughts and produced many scenarios about how the audience will negatively asses them. Interestingly however, stage fright has little to do with them (the audience) and much more to do with you. In most cases the audience is somewhat irrelevant to what is going on psychologically.

There is a small group who suffer stage fright because of a problem in the Child ego state of the presenter. In this case the person has significant doubts about their own worth or OKness. They feel bad as a person in themselves. In their mind they start to link performance with OKness such that if they perform badly then that proves they are a bad person or their sense of personal worth is diminished. 

This person can suffer very badly from performance anxiety because each time they go out and perform their very sense of self worth is on the line. Whilst this does occur I would say that this is a small group of sufferers of stage fright. Most sufferers usually have an active internal Critical Parent ego state which they project onto the audience. This is why I say stage fright has much less to do with the audience than the performer them self.

When a client says the audience will think they are bad, performed poorly or give them a highly critical assessment I usually respond with - “Some will and some wont”. Those in the audience with a high CP will give a critical assessment no matter how good you are and those with a low CP will give a non critical assessment no matter how bad you are. (This is to be distinguished from an Adult ego state assessment which audience members can also make, however this is not usually what the stage fright person is anxious about.)

Stage fright is about how much CP the performer has in their own mind. Usually those who come from a background with highly critical parents often have their own high CP and those with less critical parents will have a lower CP and suffer less performance anxiety.

Dealing with stage fright is about 

Increasing internal NP

Reducing internal CP

Developing a strong A

Making sure the Child feels OK about self such that its OKness is not linked with performance.

After a presentation of a workshop or performance of some kind one needs to use their Adult to make an assessment and hence a robust Adult is most useful. Sometimes you do well and sometimes you don’t do so well. An Adult ego state assessment allows the presenter to get better and learn from each presentation they do. It is important to assess self but it must be an Adult assessment and not a CP assessment.

Finally there is a related type of stage fright that is solely a male condition. Indeed, it is often referred to as stage fright. Some men cannot stand at a urinal and urinate especially when there is another man standing next to him. However even if no one is there, for some men the thought that another man may enter the toilet and stand at the urinal is enough to produce significant anxiety. 

When that happens either the internal and/or external sphincter will not release and the urine cannot flow. He will have to wait for a cubicle to become available or urinate elsewhere. In many ways this is similar to the stage fright I discussed initially. It is an anxiety based condition that can revolve around a Be Perfect type of mindset and is a kind of performance anxiety. He thinks the other men will see he is not urinating and imagines they are making a CP assessment of his ‘performance’ at the urinal.

Whilst this may seem odd or even mildly humorous. Urinating can hold a special place in the male psyche that many women do not understand. Most men can recount urinating competitions when they were young boys. Competitions to see who can urinate the highest up the wall or over the longest distance are important psychological rituals for any young boy. With the winner achieving a special status amongst his peers (no pun intended). Who knows, maybe the grown man who cannot urinate in the public toilet suffered damage to his psyche by poor performances in these early urinating competitions.

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The theory of contracts - Part 1

Central to the theory of Transactional Analysis is the idea of contracts. It’s what is called a contractual therapy.

Two definitions of a contact:

Berne - A contract is an explicit bilateral commitment to a well defined course of action

James & Jongeward - A contract is an Adult commitment to one’s self and/or someone else to make a change.

I have a problem with these in some ways. My definition of a contract would be:

 A contract is a statement the client makes to self about how they will behave, think and/or feel in the future. 

This statement is often made in the presence of a counsellor but it is a statement that the client is making to self. It only involves the counsellor as an outside person who can report back to the client about incongruencies in making the contract, self sabotages that may exist in the contract or other issues such as the lawfulness or morality of making such a change. 

A contract is made from the Adult ego state of the client along with consultation with the Parent and Child ego states in the client (and in the therapist). The contracting transaction could be drawn as such. As one can see it is quite complex process

1. Client thinks of a contract

“I will finish my assignment by Tuesday.”

2. Parent ego state of the client gives its view on the contract

3. Child ego state of the client gives its view on the contract

4. Client makes the contract from Adult with the views of the Parent and Child ego states taken into consideration. The transaction is drawn as coming from the client’s Adult ego state and returning to it. That is, the client is making a statement to self rather than to the counsellor. However the client is stating it in the presence of the counsellor because she wants the counsellor’s thoughts on the contract. She is letting the counsellor listen to it but it is not being made to the counsellor.

5. The counsellor’s Adult ego state hears and understands the contract.

6. The counsellor’s Parent expresses its thoughts on the contract to the Adult of the counsellor.

7. The counsellor’s Child expresses its thoughts on the contract to the Adult of the counsellor.

8. The Adult of the counsellor assesses the contract in their Adult with the views of the Parent and Child ego states taken into consideration and reports to the client what his thoughts of the contract are.

With a contract like, “I will finish my assignment by Tuesday.” there is unlikely to be many problems reflected by the Adult, Parent and Child ego states of both the client and the counsellor. However there maybe if it is what is called a magical contract. If it happens to be Sunday and the client still has to read 5 research papers and write 20,000 words then it cannot be completed in two days time. It is simply not possible to do and thus it can be seen as a magical contract by the client.

If the Adult of the client does not realize this anomaly then the Adult, Parent and Child ego states of the counsellor is more likely to. Thus one can see the usefulness of having an outside person looking in on the contracting by the client. However it still remains that the client is making a statement of the contract to self but can refine the contract with the help of the counsellor. The contract is not made to the counsellor nor is it a bilateral commitment between the two of them as Berne’s definition of contracting states.

Contract ambivalence

Every contract a client makes reflects a state of ambivalence in them. The Free Child wants to make the change and the Adapted Child does not want to make the change and will set about sabotaging the contracting process. This diagram is seen to show how the ambivalence exists in the personality.

In any contracting these two forces in the personality will be involved and thus you can again see the necessity to have an outside observer who can identify when the AC is sabotaging the contracting process. If the person 100% wanted to change then they would already have and wouldn’t need a counsellor. If they 100% did not want to change then they would not come to counselling in the first place.

For example the AC can interfere and influence the Adult to construct what is called a change others contract. The client may make the contract:

“I want my husband to show his love”

“I want my kids to behave at grandmas house”

A change others contract is not uncommon for a client to present. It can never work because the husband and kids are not in the counselling session and thus they cannot change. In this sense it can also be seen as a magical contract but the client’s Adult does not identify it as so because the AC is working unconsciously in the background sabotaging the contracting process. The counsellor’s Adult will hopefully see this and suggest the client alter the contract so it is not a change others contract.

Parent ego state difficulties with contracts

In my new book Working with drug and alcohol users, I describe a therapeutic procedure called the harm reduction contract. This is where the drug user makes a contract to behave in a more safe way when they take drugs. For example if a heroin user recently almost died from an OD he may make the contract to only use heroin when he is in the company of others. Thus reducing the chance of fatal OD.

However using heroin is illegal and some have a moral problem with assisting clients to take drugs more safely. They believe the client should abstain and then there is no reason to have a harm reduction contract. Or they believe there is a moral issue in working with a client who is contracting to do something illegal. Hence we can see how the Parent ego state of the counsellor could influence the Adult response to the client not based on a Child magical thinking contract but because of a disagreement from the Parent ego state.

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The young therapist - Part 2

Life experience is an interesting thing which older therapists have more of than younger therapists. Most view it as a positive but it can also be a negative especially if one is a psychotherapist. Without a doubt life experience can be a positive thing for a therapist to have. A person who is 45 will obviously have more life experience than a person who is 25 years old. If they are a practicing therapist this can influence how they work. The older person has extra knowledge about life that the younger person does not have.

If one has been married and divorced they have first hand knowledge of that. Some one who has never been married and divorced can not know about it in the same way which is more likely for the younger therapist. If a client presents who is currently going through a divorce then the therapist who has been divorced knows more about the process and more importantly more about the psychological process one goes through when getting divorced.

If the therapist tells the client they have been divorced then the client can have a feeling of more confidence in the therapist and can have a sense of increased connection with the therapist. The client feels that he and the therapist have a commonality in that way, which they do. In this way the life experience of the therapist can assist the therapeutic process.

However it is not always so sunny. If a couple come to counselling because of marital disharmony and learn the therapist has been divorced this may result in a lack of confidence in the therapist. They have the view that if the therapist cannot sort out his own marital problems how can he ever help others to do so. The young therapist who has never been married or divorced can not have this problem.

Similar to this is the client who seeks counselling for parenting difficulties. They are having difficulty managing their own children or adolescents. I have heard people say they would never seek assistance for their parenting with a therapist who is not a parent them self. However what if the therapist’s children are not all that well adjusted and may be causing all sorts of difficulties for the therapist. Will that be a positive or a negative for the therapist in the eyes of the client. All parents stuff up some where along the line and all children have emotional difficulties to some degree. The young therapist who has no children does not have this on their resume.

In my new book to come out next month - Working with drug and alcohol users - I discuss this very topic. If a drug counsellor has had a history of drug issues is that a positive or a negative. If a client asks a drug counselor directly if they have ever used drugs, does the therapist answer the question, and if so how. How it is dealt with by the therapist can result in the personal life experience of the therapist (whether they have used drugs or not) being a positive or a negative for the therapy.

However there are more things to consider in the life experience conundrum. When one has a major life experience like a divorce that will psychologically impact on them. Their own Child ego state will be effected by the experience and that may be a negative psychological experience. The Child ego state of the young never divorced psychotherapist has never been negatively effected in that way.

Some come out of a divorce feeling bitter and pessimistic about the opposite gender. If the therapist has been impacted like this, is their extra life experience going to be a positive in the therapeutic process especially if the client is of the opposite gender? The young therapist is never going to have this dilemma. 

Is the ex smoker (or smoker) going to be better at helping people give up?

Life experience does afford the therapist an extra knowledge or deeper level of understanding of the client who is going through the same experience. This can then allow more of a connection between the client and therapist. However the therapist’s Child ego state may be negatively effected by that experience which may negatively impact on how effectively they work as a therapist on this issue.

Related to this is the idea of the hot potatoe. It is observed sometimes in the field of psychology that some therapists gravitate to counselling in those areas that have been part of their own life experience. The woman who suffer PND herself ends up counselling other women suffering PND. The person who was sexually abused as child ends up counseling others who have been through the same. The man who had a significant drug problem ends up counseling in a drug rehab centre.

In all these areas the therapist’s personal life experience can be a good help in the ways I have described above. However the question needs to be asked - what’s in it for the therapist to work with clients who have similar issues? What is their own Child ego state getting out of it? For most there is no problem, however the phenomena of the hot potatoe is real and does exist for some.

In this instance the therapist is in some way living through the client because they have not dealt with their own difficulties about their similar life experiences. The therapist can pass their own issue (the hot potatoe) onto the client. If this happens all sorts of counter transference problems can develop. The young therapist who has never had children can never have suffered PND and thus can never have these sorts of difficulties like the hot potatoe.

Life experience it seems, is a double edged sword. As with so many things in human psychology its not a matter of having a particular trait or feature (in this case life experience) its what you do with it when you have it. The older person who has more life experience can use those experiences to impede their work as a therapist or to improve their work as a therapist. The younger person has less life experience and therefore in their work as a therapist they do not have this same dilemma.

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Parenting and the use of adverse emotions

One of the most primary tasks of any parent is to facilitate the development of the Adapted Child ego state in their son or daughter. 

When a child is born it is all Free Child ego state. The parents must do something to the child such that the Adapted Child ego state increases and is used by the son or daughter when necessary. The child learns how to conform when necessary such that it can exist in a society. It learns how to behave appropriately when necessary. So over time the FC must decrease and the AC must increase. How much the AC must develop is a matter of debate. However that is not the topic of discussion here. What is to be discussed is how parents can go about doing that with their son or daughter.

In this diagram CC has been used instead of AC

There are many ways it can be done and most are well known. The parents can use techniques like time out, consequences of behaviour or simply talking with the child such that it understands why it needs to conform in a particular situation.

There is another way to get a child to conform that is particularly effective. It involves using emotions. These are quite powerful at getting a child to behave in a way the parents want and hence they are used because they do work. There are three emotions that can be used in this way and they are fear, guilt and shame.

These are obviously painful emotions that people do not like feeling. As a result people, including children will modify their behaviour in order not too feel them. 

If things go wrong here she could end up feeling shame.

Fear

Parents can use the fear of abandonment to get a child to conform.

“Unless you go to bed now mummy will get a policeman to come and take you away.” 

A child at a playground is not following mother’s directive to leave now to go home. Mother just starts to walk away in the direction of home. Most children will begin to squeal loudly in protest (and fear) at mother walking away. Eventually however most will succumb, leave the playground and follow mother. It works.

Guilt

“Mummy felt upset and really sad that you did not behave properly at nana's house.”

“You promised mummy you would clean up your room and you haven’t done it.”

The child feels guilt and it works so next time the child will behave in the way mother wants it to. 

Shame

“You should be ashamed of yourself for...”

The parent in some way derides or humiliates the child in front of its peers or siblings.

The child feels shame and it works so next time the child will behave in the way mother wants it to.

These two children are being compliant. How has that been achieved?

These are usually quite effective ways of getting a child to modify its behaviour to do what mother wants. They work. 

But there is a problem. They have unwanted long term side effects. The boy who has been threatened with abandonment by mother may grow up and have dysfunctional relationships with women because of it. 

He may constantly feel the threat of abandonment and become pathologically jealous. He may habitually pick women who do cheat on him and leave. 

He may forever remain single because he fears the abandonment that might one day happen.

If shaming is used as a way to get a son to conform then he will grow up and develop what is called a shame prone personality. In adulthood he will experience the feeling of shame more often than others do. Shame is a very unpleasant emotion and can have devastating consequences on the self esteem. Many a social phobia can have some kind of shame component as can happen with chronic shyness or a sense of just feeling worthless.

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Suicidal ambivalence

Monologue by me about the concept of suicidal ambivalence that I discuss in my book - Working with suicidal individuals. What it is and how it can be used in therapy with clients.





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The Be Perfect driver - editted

KYLady asked a good question that anticipated the next part of this post I was going to do.

Perfectionism is most often found in conditions like depression, OC and eating disorders.

Perfectionism can have both positive and negative outcomes and has been shown to be associated with adjustment, academic achievement and self-efficacy.

Perfectionism can be

Self oriented perfectionism

Other oriented perfectionism

Socially prescribed perfectionism

Self oriented perfectionism endeavors to avoid self criticism (I’m not OK)

Socially prescribed perfectionism endeavors to avoid the criticism of others (I’m not OK)

Other oriented perfectionism involves having unrealistic standards for others (You’re not OK)

The six principle components of perfectionism are

Personal standards

Organization

Concern over mistakes

Doubts about actions

Parental expectations

Parental criticism

Most have two or three of these areas which they feel driven to be perfect in. Interestingly enough the Be Perfect driver person will often have a particular place in their life where it is chaos, disorganized and very ‘imperfect’ such as a room, a cupboard, their car, their paperwork or the like.

Perfectionism and performance

As mentioned before perfectionism can have positive consequences in that it can result in an increase in performance at work or at school. However this needs to be considered in more detail as perfectionism can also result in a reduction in the level of performance.

The graph shows the average person will have a satisfactory level of performance. Those who are subject to the Be perfect driver will initially have an increase in performance as the degree of perfectionism increases. The job at hand gets done better the more ‘perfectly’ it is done. The more perfectly done the more energy has to be expended on the job compared to the person who does the job at an average level.

As the degree of perfectionism increases it reaches a critical point where the level of performance starts to decrease. This can be seen to occur in one of two ways.

1. If one is writing an assignment at school on the different perspectives about feminism in the currant millennium the average person would write it and that would be that. The Be Perfect student would write it but consider more people’s perspectives and consider each perspective from many more perspectives and different people’s perspectives on each of those perspectives. As you can see a point is reached where the need to be perfect makes the assignment worse because each and every variable are considered. Hence the level of performance decreases than if it had been done in an average way.

 2. The more perfectly a job is done the more energy is required. The student given the assignment knows how he operates in doing such tasks. Most importantly his Child ego state knows the level of perfection required by his Parent ego state and he knows that reaching that level of performance is exhausting and very tiring. As a result the Child ego state starts to avoid doing the task and hence we end up with one cause of procrastination. He delays it for as long as possible because he knows how much he will suffer whilst doing it. As a result the level of performance goes down because jobs don’t get done or only get done at the very last moment.

However this situation can go even further. In some cases the degree of perfectionism can be extreme and when that happens one can end up with a thought disorder and other psychotic behaviour. A common one is the thought disorder known as overdetailing. When the person talks they go into so much detail that it becomes incomprehensible. In their thinking they constantly consider many different perspectives, factors and permutations such that eventually the thinking becomes disordered to the extent that the person is not capable of looking after them self or performing basic day to day tasks. At this point the person can only achieve a very low level of performance due to the degree of perfectionism.

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