Transactional Analysis Theory and Practice: Transactional Analysis Theory

Saturday 7 April 2018

Transactional Analysis Theory - Miniscript

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, a Transformational TA Coach

+919822024037; ajitpkarve@gmail.com

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Miniscript

Drivers are do messages lodged in the Parent received from both parents. They are manifestations of counterscript messages and show up as compulsive behaviours. They shield the affected person from being victimised by operation of injunctions. Thus they form a defence shield and provide the person with a sense of conditional OK-ness. As long as the person keeps implementing the driver energetically the slide to script may be prevented. This may not be possible at all times. If failure occurs the person shifts to script in a miniature form. This shift and the script positions taken up by a person is mapped in a model developed by Taibi Kahler. It is called Miniscript. The Miniscript diagram is shown in Figure 43.

Figure 43

There are four positions in the Miniscript diagram. They are described in the figure 44. Each of them has a related life position and accompanying racket feelings.

Figure 44

Stress caused by any stimulus may be mild, moderate or strong. The first shift is to exercise driver. Being Perfect, Pleasing Others, Being Strong, Trying Hard in the main. The duration of time spent in driver may be short lived or last a while. This shift is noticeable. It shows up in terms of physical sensations, tones, gestures, postures and facial expressions. There is a characteristic tightening of muscles around the mouth, forehead and eyes related to each driver. If the driver fails to hold on to the stress the person moves to the control of script. It is marked by a reactive response as racket feelings. These are experienced by the person and can be reported. The person feels having been used, exploited, insulted, not accounted, marginalised, ignored, let down, taken for a ride, cheated, helpless, cornered among many others. Every person has an individually unique sequence. It is called as the miniscript sequence.

It proceeds like this: Having smarted in a racket feeling for a while - this may last a few moments or minutes or may extend over several hours or days depending upon the intensity of affect. The person then exits the dynamic with his favourite psychological trading stamp. Miniscript represents the dynamic of racketing. A modified miniscript diagram is given in figure 45 showing the exit from the three positions.

Figure 45

Person exiting from the stopper position will likely exit with feelings of inadequacy, used, hurt, or pained; or exiting from the blamer position will likely exit with feelings of triumph, anger, dislike, righteous; or similarly exiting from the despairer position will likey exit with feelings of helplessness, rejection, depression. The stamps mentioned here are only indicative and others of the variety may also be experienced.

Miniscript is a useful tool to understand one's dynamic resulting in generation of psychological trading stamps.

It is the author's contention and this is backed by Andrienne Lee's drowing person diagram that drivers are a mechanism for a script ridden person to survive. After moving into miniscript sequence a script ridden person returns to driver and stays there to be free of the debilitating effects of script. A revised miniscript diagram devised by the author to depict this is shown here:

Andrienne Lee's drowning person's diagram is given again below. It is to emphasise the importance of drivers in keeping a person free of script at least in the moment prevailing. For, so long as the person is engaged in driver behaviour, he is unlikely to be driven to execute the script impulses.