Everything here has got to be based on function. If this model is not functional -- or any part of it -- then throw it out. Function dictates everything. Did our Creator create a part of our body that does not have a function? Hardly! And so it has to be with this model.
The danger of creating a model with too many 'compartments' in it, is that is prone to create too much analysis. You know what they say about too much analysis -- it creates paralysis.
The best thing I learned at Gestalt Therapy was how to keep things -- 'existential'. Alive! Too much analysis turns life into death. Movement into stagnation. Excitement into boredom. Growth into entropy.
Through all of this 'model-building', we need to stay alive. It's like watching a professional basketball game -- or any sport or performance. The analyis is done in the dressing room, but the game still has to be played on the court or the field or the ice or the stage... There is a 'dialectical dance' going on here between 'analysis' and 'existentialism' as well as between 'wholism' and 'reductionism'. Again, we must keep things in balance. We must not lose track of the existentialism in the analysis; similarily, we must not lose track of the wholism in the reductionism. We need a 'ping pong game' back and forth. If there is an emphasis at all it is on keeping the existentialism -- the dialectic encounter -- alive, and similarily, the wholism. We must not get so caught up in 'part-function analysis' that we forget how everything is integrated into a sophisticated whole. This is the way with the body. And this is also the way with the mind.
As well as being a post-Hegelian philosopher, and a post-Nietzschean philosopher, and a post-Freudian philosopher, I am also a post-Gestalt philosopher. Although it has been about 17 years since I have been involved with The Gestalt Institute, and I am not authorized to speak for them, still I spent the greater part of 12 years, off and on, participating in various group workshops at The Gestalt Institute. And Fritz Perls was a very entertaining and educational writer. He had the same type of flare and 'existential gusto' as one of our common mentors -- Nietzsche. Anyone who has been touched by the work of either Nietzsche and/or Perls -- and/or The Gestalt Institute -- is not likely to forget it. Gestalt Therapy is very much a living extension of much of Nietzschean philosophy.
So as I start to unfold the following DGB model -- with all of its different 'ego-functions and compartments' -- using the Transactional Analysis model mainly as my starting-point -- it remains on my existential conscience that we not lose track of the 'dialectical pulse of life', the stuff that makes our existence important and meaningful more than anything I can say 'analytically'. Perls -- and Gestalt Therapy -- had/have an 'allergy to analysis' which I do not follow quite as 'anally-retentively' as they do -- but still, I have a healthy respect for their motto of 'Get out of your head and into your senses'...or paraphrased...live your life existentially -- and with dialectical aliveness -- not cognitively, and put people, including yourself -- asleep. Live your life totally in your head and you put yourself, and others, asleep. Know when it's time to get out of your head and into your senses...That's a very important part of the 'dialectic dance' of living...
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It is two days later from when I wrote the paragraphs above. I needed a break to churn on what I was about to write. I was afraid. I was seriously wondering -- and questioning -- the model I was about to present. Was/is it good enough to make any kind of a serious impact on those people who are in the 'know' -- the psychologists, the psycho-theorists, the psychotherapists, the clinical psychologists out there -- who have spent many, many countless hours indulging in these types of issues, asking these types of questions, and delivering their own particular types of answers?
At the same time, I was/am trying to hold onto a different type of reading audience -- the psychology and/or philosophy student at whatever level of academia he or she has progressed to, as well as the 'lay intellect' and the 'self-teaching/taught student' who may be seriously entering this type of territory for the first or near to first time.
I say all this because one of main things that we will be talking about below as we delve into the realm of 'personality theory' is the different 'ego-states' in the personality -- 'ego-states' being a term that the post or neo-psychoanalyst, Eric Berne, made famous during the 1960s with books like 'Games People Play' and 'What Do You Say After You Say Hello'.
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Dr. Eric Berne, Psychiatrist and Creator of Transactional Analysis
Author of Games People Play
Dr. Eric Berne is the author of Games People Play, the groundbreaking book in which he introduces Games and Transactional Analysis to the world. According to Dr. Berne, games are ritualistic transactions or behavior patterns between individuals that can indicate hidden feelings or emotions. A runaway success, Games People Play spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list in the mid 1960s - longer than any non-fiction book over the preceding decade. Games People Play and Transactional Analysis have gone on to influence and inspire millions of people, including Thomas A. Harris, author of the book I'm OK - You're OK, and Muriel James, author of Born to Win.
Five million copies later and nearly forty years after it first debuted, Games People Play remains popular and continues to sell across the world. It has been translated into over 10 different languages, with millions of laypeople and trained psychotherapists employing Dr. Berne's techniques.
Dr. Eric Berne
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Games People Play
"An important book . . . a brilliant, amusing, and clear catalogue of the psychological theatricals that human beings play over and over again. The good Doctor has provided story lines that hacks will not exhaust in the next 10,000 years"
-Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in Life Magazine
"Original, disturbing, and delightful, a prime conversation piece... Many of these games are real-life horrors, played in dead earnest in public places, the parlor, bedroom, consulting room"
- The Chicago Tribune
"A fascinating book... These are not necessarily 'fun' games. In fact, most of them are hair-raisingly neurotic rituals in which tensions are discharged and satisfactions are gained, usually at the expense of others"
- Newsweek
ALSO! A 2004 essay in the New York Times on the impact of Games People Play, as well as an excerpt from a 1966 article in which Dr. Eric Berne plays games with Frank Sinatra.
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Dr. Berne with his trademark pipe Dr. Eric Berne (1910-1970) was a prominent psychiatrist and bestselling author. He grew up in Montreal, Canada, and received his MD degree from McGill University in 1935. He completed his psychiatry training in the United States and then entered the US Army as a psychiatrist.
After the war, Berne moved to Carmel, California. He continued his work as a psychiatrist, but felt increasingly frustrated with the psychoanalytic approaches at the time. As a result, he began developing a new and revolutionary theory, which he called Transactional Analysis. In 1958, he published the paper "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of Group Therapy" where he outlined this new approach.
After creating Transactional Analysis, Berne continued to develop and apply this new methodology. This led him to publish Games People Play and to found the International Transactional Analysis Association. He led an active life and continued his psychotherapist and writing duties up until his death in 1970. He left a remarkable legacy, including the creation of Transactional Analysis, Games People Play and 30+ other books and articles, and the founding of the International Transactional Analysis Association.
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Berne specifies 6 different ego-states on three different 'topological levels' similar to Freud's dividing the personality into three or more different topological levels -- depending on the year he was writing -- such as the 'id' basically in the 'basement' of the personality, the 'ego' on the 'main floor' of the personality, and the 'superego' on the 'top floor -- or 'penthouse' -- of the personality. With Berne it was the 'adapted child', the 'natural child', and the 'rebellious child' on the bottom floor of the personality, the 'adult' on the main floor of the personality, and the 'nurturing parent' and 'critical parent' on the top floor of the personality.
With an integration of different names influenced by, and borrowed partly from, Psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analyis, Adlerian Psychology, and Gestalt Therapy -- DGB Personality Theory will continue this topological approach with a host of partly old and partly new 'ego-states' and/or 'ego-compartments' to talk about.
I have a high level of respect for the 'self-teaching and self-taught student' -- meaning that there are no universities and/or colleges involved -- because after 1991, all of my learning falls into this category. I learned what I read. I read what I dug up with my 'Sherlock Holmes' nose. And what I dug up with my Sherlock Holmes nose -- at just the time I needed it -- seemed to come from the deepest depths of my intuitive, genetic unconscious -- or 'soul'. Perhaps it is not surprising then, that one of the main features of my DGB model of the human psyche -- influenced mainly by Carl Jung's 'collective unconcious' and the 'creative projection' of my own psyche -- is the 'genetic unconscious', 'the genetic blueprint and/or template' -- or the 'genetic soul'. I wouldn't even cry foul if you and/or I said that it was 'our own personal, unique, genetic soul as created by God.'
When I was wandering the halls of The University of Waterloo back around 1978, preparing to write my honours Thesis in psychology, and I wandered into the University library, visiting the psychology section to see what I could find -- I stumbled upon a book by 'Alexander Bain' called 'The Emotions and The Will'. Was I looking at the work of a great, great, (great?) grandfather?
At this point in time, I do not think so because I think I read in an old Encyclopedia Brittanica that Alexander Bain had no kids. Still, he remains what I would call an 'archetypal mentor/figure' for me -- consciously, and/or unconsciously perhaps if there is some sort of a 'genetic connection'.
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From the internet...
Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier
by Robert M. Young
Synthesis of Associationism and Sensory-Motor Physiology
Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'.[1] His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it.[2] He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form. Ferrier and Jackson strongly influenced each other, and together they
1 Murphy, 1949, p. 107.
2 Boring, 1950, p. 235.
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Within my concept of the genetic unconscious, I include Freud's concept of the 'id' -- paraphrasing Freud, 'the bridge' between human biology-physiology-bio-chemistry', biological-hormonal impulses like 'sex impulses (in Freud's more genetic-deterministic terminology -- 'sex instincts') -- and finally, the human psyche. More on this at a later date.
And within my concept of the genetic unconscious, I include Jung's concept of the 'collective unconscious' or what I would call the 'mythological-symbolic unconscious' -- the stuff that 'night dreams' and 'psychotic hallucinations' are made of. Freud once wrote -- and I paraphrase: The psychotic dreams while he is awake. (My apologies but I will have to dig for the source. The best I can come up with so far is: Freud, 1940, An Outline of Psychoanalysis. I will see if I can find it upstairs in my library. How about this?: 'A dream, then, is a psychosis, with all the absurdities, delusions and illusions of a psychosis.' Sigmund Freud, 1940, pg. 49.)
'Topologically', I would put the genetic unconscious in the 'basement' -- or the deepest depths -- of the human psyche. Or alternatively, call it the deepest basement of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Dare I say that we have 15 more 'ego-compartments' to go -- classifying the genetic unconscious as an 'unconscious ego-compartment' -- something that Freud definitely would not have done. For Freud, neither the 'id' nor the 'super-ego' were to be construed as a part of the 'ego' -- except perhaps in an earlier, evolutionary personal and/or cultural stage of development. Nor did Freud ever -- to my knowledge talke about 'ego-states' and/or 'ego-compartments' -- a type of terminology that would surface years later under the influence of Object Relations -- and then more definitively under the influence of Berne's 'Transactional Analysis'.
It is to Transactional Analysis that our next discussion will return to as a starting point. And upon checking my research records -- rather than my faulty memory -- the first thing I noted was that the Tranactional Analysis model of the human psyche is a 'six-ego-compartment or ego-state' model; not a five compartment model as I first stated in this article a couple of days ago. I was digging some 25 years back into my memory -- back I would say to about 1983 when I last studied Eric Berne -- so I guess it is not too surprising that my memory was not foolproof. We will fix this up in the next essay.
-- dgb, May 14th, 2008; modified and updated May 18th, 2008.
