Transactional Analysis Journal

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Challenging the Faith

Robert L. Goulding
Transactional Analysis Journal 1981 11: 50
DOI: 10.1177/036215378101100111

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 Challenging the Faith
Robert L. Goulding
Abstract
Emphasizes the need to challenge belief
systems of Eric Berne and of transactional
analysis. Compares this to challenging a
client's belief system to facilitate decon-
tamination of the client's Child. Identifies
and considers typical belief systems of
transactional analysis as these derive from
Berne and others, e.g., "group therapy is
good." Suggests that, although analyses of
ego states, transactions, games, and scripts
are important, true change occurs when the
Child is deconfused and understands
and redecides. Cautions that TA is not the
treatment of choice in some instances,
e.g., the treatment of phobias.
One of the therapeutic confrontations
a good TA therapist does, starting with
Eric Berne, is to challenge belief systems
that people have-in the process of de-
contaminating the Child. For instance,
in the Mediterranean area a common
belief is "Don't feel too good or something
bad will happen." This is often referred to
as the Evil Eye. It is very difficult to get
people to give up such a belief system, as
the Child has been learning it through
hundreds of generations. I remember a
patient from that area who had just
worked through a particular impasse. She
looked overjoyed for a moment, and then,
shortly afterwards, asked if she could work
again. Her face changed, she tightened
her body, and we asked her what she was
doing. She just remembered, she said, what
her grandmother had said to her: "The
bird that sings in the morning will be caught
by the cat before evening." Before she
could allow herself to feel good about her
work, she had to give up the belief system
that she would die if she felt good.
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It is also important to challenge some
of our TA beliefs, for if we don't con-
stantly challenge what we have been taught
or have initiated ourselves, we will be
falling into the same errors that psycho-
analysis has fallen into. Freud today
would not believe some of the things he
believed in in 1939-he would have con-
stantly grown; many of his second and
third generation students, however, are
still stuck in the model Freud was in in
1939. Others constantly challenge, and
these analysts then begin to learn Gestalt
and TA and other theories and skills,
in order to improve their patient care. Berne
with his genius was constantly challenging,
of course; TAwas a result of challenge.
He would have changed too, would have
challenged some of his own beliefs, had
he lived through these past ten years.
One of the first beliefs most of us in
ITAA have is that group therapy is good.
TA therapists who do groups see approxi-
mately 8 patients for an hour and a half or
two hours once a week. This is the way it
is done, and so this is the way we do it.
But is it good? 90 minutes for 8 patients
gives each of them about ten minutes. As
fast as we are here, we usually take about
20-30 minutes to work through a given
impasse, or to quit if the patient is stuck
in the impasse. We gave up on-going group
therapy in favor of the workshop type
therapy many years ago, because we
thought and think that the environment is
an important part of the process, and that
intensive short term experiences are more
productive than long on-going therapy.
Other TA therapists have lengthened the
time to three or four hours, or have in-
stituted marathons occasionally as part of
the therapy.
Most of us also work in a way that en-
courages transference, because that is the
Transactional Analysis Journal

"It is also important to challenge some of our TA beliefs ... "
way we were trained, and yet how do we
know that transference is good? And how
well are we trained to allow the patient to
work through the transference? The reso-
lution of the neurotic transference is one of
the analysts' tools of the trade, but how
many of us non-analysts have any training
in that resolution? Yet somehow we
believe that transference is part of the
therapeutic process. I teach therapists to
not encourage transference, and one of
the ways not to encourage it is not to do
long term therapy, not to say things like
"tell me" or "do one thing for me," or
"what I would like you to do is ... "
Another piece of transference many en-
courage in TA is the belief that a therapist
must be potent, permissive, and protective.
Why? Because someone said so once in an
article. But let's look at that! How do we
know it is so? True, these qualities are
important in the patient. He or she must
be potent-my words for this are well
known-THE POWER IS IN THE
PATIENT. The patient must also protect
himself, and give himself permission to
change. I can't do it for him. The more I
give permission, the more I protect her,
the more transference I am encouraging. I
happen to believe that our job is to facili-
tate the patient's own impasse resolution,
and that what I do is to facilitate, not treat.
Any good cop can protect the patient from
his own destructive impulses-it doesn't
take a therapist to do that. I don't deny
my own potency, of course, but more im-
portant is that I have to be clever, bright,
knowledgeable, experienced, funny, and a
lot of other things to be a good facilitator.
Another belief system we have is the
belief that true change occurs when a deep
relationship is developed between patient
and therapist, which takes a certain amount
of intensive individual therapy-and the
American Academy of Psychotherapists
"He (Berne) would have changed too, would have challenged
some of his own beliefs, had he lived through these past ten
years."
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CHALLENGING THE FAITH
bases part of their membership criterion
on therapists having had a certain minimum
amount of individual therapy. That is the
belief. My belief, and the belief of many
TA therapists, is that patients need to
develop their deep relationships with
their spouses or lovers and their children,
and perhaps their parents, and not with
the therapist. Therapy is designed to allow
the patient to work through the impasses
he has about closeness, so that he allows
himself to develop deep relationships with
his real world, not the fantasy world of
therapy. Again, this long term therapy
develops transference, encourages depen-
dency upon the therapist. We challenge
that belief.
Berne stated in Principles of Group
Treatment, and in other writings, that the
way to get well was to analyze the ego
states, transactions, games, and scripts.
These four analyses are important, in fact.
However, the true change comes not just
from understanding in the Adult. The
true changes occur when the Child is de-
confused; when the Child understands and
redecides. The fat man that we wrote about
in "Changing Lives Through Redecision
Therapy" can understand perfectly well
that he learned to eat too much because
his father insisted he eat too much, at the
pain of punishment if he didn't clean his
plate. He can understand that his evergrow-
ing weight is a danger to his life, and that
he decided as a little kid that he would
rather die than be beaten by father. When
he regresses to an early scene, in which he
experiences father's fury when he states
that he will not clean his plate, he re-
fuses to tell "father" in fantasy that he
will not obey him, because even now, with
no real father in the room, he "experiences"
in his Child that he will be beaten, even
though he knows in his Adult that he will
not be beaten. No amount of permis-
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ROBERT L. GOULDING
sion, potency, or protection will get him
to defy his father at that point, except
in an adaptive response to the therapist,
which will not be effective as a therapeutic
maneuvre unless the therapist is skillful
enough to facilitate the client's movement
into Free Child, non-adapting. He must
get to it himself, by beginning to experience
his own power; by beginning to give him-
self permission to defy father's fantasized
rage, and by being aware that he can pro-
tect himself against father, especially be-
cause his Child finally realizes that father
was present in the past, not the present or
future.
"The true changes occur
when the Child is deconfused
when the Child understands
and redecides."
Another client we worked with re-
cently had difficulty in playing racket ball.
When he got into a tight match, he froze,
although he is a very skillful player. When
we worked with him to go into an early
scene, he went to playing stick ball as a
little kid. As he tells the scene in the present
tense, his face becomes very sad. He tells
about running after a ball, and missing it,
and all the other kids laughing at him. We
asked him, as usual, to take a different
response. First he wanted to have the kids
not laugh, but we won't allow him to
change the others. Then he wanted to not
miss the ball, to catch it; we won't allow
that either, because that changes the action,
and thus doesn't require him to change.
Finally he chooses to lie down on the street
with all the other kids and laugh with them
at his own clumsiness, quite natural for a
little kid. Then he tells how his father de-
manded perfection, which we had known
all along, and he said "I'd rather die than
have him criticise me." So his counter in-
junction is "Be perfect" and his injunc-
tion is "or don't be," and he has to do
work that will deny both. He goes back
into the stick ball scene and tells the other
kids, with considerable amusement, that he
doesn't have to be perfect, to catch every-
thing, and he's not going to kill himself
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if he misses the ball. Now he has done the
necessary work-the simple cognitive
understanding of the script is not enough.
Then, today, he says he wants to work
again, this time to stop scaring himself
about singing in groups. I said "You al-
ready did that yesterday!" He answered
"No, that was racketball yesterday." I
said "It is the same redecision-the re-
decision you made was that you would not
demand perfection of yourself, and you
wouldn't kill yourself if you missed the
ball. It is the same thing." "Oh," he said.
"Sing," I said. And sing he did, with some
abandon that got better as he then led us
in the song. Then he said "Is it the same
thing with my public speaking phobia?"
"Answer" I said. "Yes" he responded.
"Then speak" I said, and speak he did.
While I am still on the validity of the
four analyses being the critical issue-
analysis of ego states, transactons, games,
and scripts, I want to add one more point.
Many times TA is not the treatment of
choice, as in phobias. Most phobics can
be cured in just a few minutes with desensi-
tization, and we don't need to know any-
thing about the above four items, nor does
the patient. Here a skillful therapist will do
fantasy and/or reality desensitization, not
go into analysis of anything. Here again if
we don't challenge this belief system of
Eric's, we will lead both the client and our-
selves astray. One analyst who heard of
our work with phobics couldn't or wouldn't
challenge his belief system, and said of
our technique "Don't you know that you
are depriving him of the opportunity of
working through his castration anxiety)(!!)"
One of the difficulties of pure TA is that
is encourages cognitive understanding and
affective display, but not together. Berne
stated in Principles of Group Treatment
that TA, "like psychoanalysis, clears the
way to expression of genuine affect rather
than encouraging mere abreaction or
dramatic incidents based on spurious
motivation, which often serve mainly as a
relief of boredom in patient and therapist."
True as far as it goes, but it is not the
experiencing of genuine affect that leads to
change and cure, but rather the utilization
of the understanding in the Adult of the
Transactional Analysis Journal

"Some of the real delight we
have had in the past ten years
is the carrying of the TA
methods to the rest of the
world."
Child; the utilization of the Free Child's
Little Professor at the exact time in the
experiencing of the affect to change the
statements, the decisions, that he or she
had made in the original scene with that
original affect.
So the cowboys keep challenging the
faith. We can not afford to say "but
Eric said" as if his picture would really
fall off the wall if we stated that something
he said was no longer valid. We keep
changing, and we keep growing. Some of
the real delight we have had in the past ten
years is the carrying of the TA methods
to the rest of the world. Many TA therapists,
of course, have taught in most of the coun-
tries of the Western World, and we and
other Institutes have had therapists here
from all the countries of Europe, many of
the countries of Central and South America,
from all over North America, and from
Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zea-
land, and some of the mid and south
Pacific islands. Mary and I just attended
the Third TA German Conference, which
252 people signed up in advance from
Germany and the U.S. True, we have lost
some members from ITAA in the past two
or three years, but that is administrative;
those people who were members, and have
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CHALLENGING THE FAITH
dropped out, were and are still touched, and
influenced, by TA. This month we have
one therapist from the Communist world,
and Graham Barnes is teaching in Yugo-
slavia regularly. Thomson, Dusay, McNeel,
Fraser, English, James, Novey, Erskine,
Garfield, McClendon and Kadis, and many
many others are now teaching regularly
overseas. Who knows what the future
may bring?
" ... and I know that there
is no way in which the Cow-
boys and Cowgirls won't
continue to ride off in all
directions."
I am remembering the early sixties, at
the time that Eric and Dave Kupfer and
John Gamble and I were remodelling our
building that we had purchased for our
offices. We would be excited about a re-
quest from Chagrin Falls, Ohio or Des
Moines Iowa to hold a workshop. And
now I think about Jeff and Maggie White
way off in Perth, on the Western edge of
Western Australia, and Saroj and Carlos
Welch on the other side of the world, in
India and I know that there is no way in
which the Cowboys and Cowgirls won't
continue to ride off in all directions.
Robert L. Goulding, MD, CTM, is co-
director of the Western Institute in Watson-
ville, California.
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