Transaction of Ego sates
From my recent Toastmasters' 7min talk …
Let me begin with a small story.
If you ever go for any jewelry shopping, you may agree that you go to such places with a budget in mind, and you try your best to purchase within that budget. However, in such places, you might find three kinds of sales representatives.
One, with whom you cannot open up outright to mention about your budget constraints. With such salesmen, you may agree, your shopping experience to be a bit difficult.
The second ones are the types with whom you can open up nicely and explain to them your exact requirements. Those ones will also show you all the possible options for you to make a choice.
And then there are of the third type, these salesmen play games. They play mind games. They would even though show you certain options, and if you want to see more designs, they would challenge you by saying that the other ones are the best we have but it is beyond your budget.
Having your inner ego-challenged, with childlike eagerness, you might also check out those options, and end up buying them.
So, what did that salesman do over there?
How did you move from a confident and assertive state of mind to an anxious and inferiorly imperative state of mind?
The field of psychoanalysis has an explanation for that. Sigmond Freud was one of the pioneers in the field of behavioral psychoanalysis. In his theory, in the early 1930s, he mentioned that people have repressed emotions and experiences which causes them to take certain steps in certain situations. Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining “insight”.
However, this method of psychoanalysis could not be practiced well, until Eric Berne in 1949 came up with the theory of Conversational psychoanalysis called Transaction analysis.
And what does Transaction analysis explain?
Eric Berne explained, that people have three essential ego state of mind. And a person with a healthy psychological frame of mind can switch between these ego states effectively as per the scenario.
These three ego states are the Parent, Adult, and the Child within us.
A parent ego is a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent’s actions.
For example, how you may explain a kid to stay away from live electrical wires. You may use the knowledge from your prior experience and give them a very practical explanation of the consequences if one touches those live wires. And if the previous approach doesn’t work for you, may want to use some harsh words or may even shout. Transaction analysis explains this as two aspects of our parent ego. One of it is a nurturing parent ego, and the other is a controlling parent ego.
An adult ego is a state in which a person is capable of doing an objective appraisal of reality. This ego helps us think of consequences and take measured steps in life situation.
A child ego is a state in which people behave, feel, and think similarly to how they did in childhood. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond by looking at the floor and crying or pouting, as when scolded as a child. Conversely, a person who receives a good evaluation may respond with a broad smile and a joyful gesture of thanks. The Child is the source of emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity, and intimacy. The two aspects of a child ego are a submissive and, a playful child.
Each person has all these three ego states, and they use each of these based on the different scenario of conversation. Often these ego states are also decided by the social stature of the adult ego. Adult ego remains between our parent and child ego states and helps us identify which one to shift to.
The goal of Transactional analysis is to help people be conscious of these ego shifts that we may take during certain conversations, and help us be in equilibrium. The study of these ego shifts in a conversation is called PAC analysis, or more generally called conversation analysis.
Eric Berne, who is also considered the father of Conversation analysis, also talked about the concept of equilibrium of ego states.
Let me take an example of an employee who somehow could not make in time for an important meeting and his manager is a little furious for that reason. The moment this employee comes to meet the manager, The manager tells her, “Why did you not come at the time? You are useless”
Here the manager is displaying a controlling parental state of mind. He displays a sense of authority and also is judgemental in doing so. In doing so he didn’t even consider what could be the employee’s state of mind at that moment.
To this, the employee replies, “I am sorry. This won’t happen again.” The employee at this moment has displayed a submissive child state of ego.
These first two conversation strokes steer the direction of the discussion towards an equilibrium. And both the manager and an employee come to an agreement. However, during the course of the discussion, the manager may shift from a controlling parent state of mind to a nurturing state of mind.
Earlier, I talked about the state of equilibrium between ego states. If you look at what happened in the first scenario, you may observe the exchange of strokes to be aligned. And there you have a state of ego equilibrium.
The scenario could have been different. If the employee would have replied by saying, “You can’t talk to me like this. I have been on time for all other meetings”. If you observe the lines here, they are not aligned which is a state of ego conflict.
To this, the manager would have either continued in the parent state of ego or shifted to a submissive child state of ego to attain an equilibrium. The final goal of all the transaction of ego states if to attain an equilibrium.
If the state of equilibrium is not a comfortable one, i.e. not abiding by the social stature equilibrium, there will always be possibilities of another ego conflict.
Transaction analysis is the foundation of all kinds of conversation analysis. It finds its application is not just the field of psychology.
You may wonder about a person who you can never say a no. A lot of life coaches working in the field of image management, teaching us how to say NO using these approaches of conversation analysis.
Transaction analysis is also extensively used in the field of computer science for applications like gamification and Natural Language Processing. Next time when you are conversing with any voice assistance system like Siri, you can look for such intentional ego conflicts that the algorithm tries to induce in the conversation. This is just to keep you engaged.
Humans do shift their ego states and so does Siri.
After all, Siri is also trying to be human.
Thank You!
