Transactional Analysis Theory - Script and Time Structuring

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, BSc, BTA, a Transformational TA Coach

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Script and Time Structuring

The need to have a script, is dictated by the need to spend time in a structured manner and for obtaining preferred strokes.  

Withdrawal, Rituals, Activities, Pastimes, Games and Intimacy represent ways in which people structure short durations of time. Engaging in thinking and feeling rackets also help to structure time. Games help to structure time for periods lasting from a few minutes to a few days, months or even years. Script represents a plan which a person lives out over his entire span of life.  Withdrawal ...... pastime engagements help to avoid boredom, monotony and stereotypy, and to obtain strokes. Thinking and feeling racket engagements help in intense mind talk, justification, fantasies and autistic thinking. Berne calls a variety of feeling rackets 'transactional rackets'. They help to intensify racket feelings generated as payoffs of games, convert them into stamps and structure time as well. Pastimes, games and rackets form segments of script. 

We spend a lot of time in 'psychological time'. There is clock time. In clock time the clock determines the duration of an activity. The game of football is an example. It lasts a fixed period of time. Then there is event time or goal time. In goal time the event determines the amount of time that will be apportioned for it. The game of baseball is an example. The game ends when the teams have done all their turns. It is not dependent on clock time. Then there is psychological time. Psychological time is the time when mind activity engages our attention without our conscious awareness. This time engagement may be in the form of intense mind talk, fantasies, thinking about things yet to happen or things that have happened, wild thinking about persons, events, happenings, what one said, the effects of what we ourselves said to others, planning to give back and the like, remaining in lock-jams in feelings of hurt, pain, insult, injury, fear, anxiety, distress, dislike, hatred, resentment, sadness, grief, guilt, embarrassment or in remaining stunned  and the like. Then there are transactional rackets. They are sets of reach backs and after burns. They happen because we do not give a date and time to tasks. They also happen because we do not delegate our tasks. Another reason is that we do not trust others. They all constitute withdrawal.

Another way we spend time is by engaging in process scripts. These are ways in which people spend their time over their life span. They are called Until, After, Never, Always and Almost I and Almost II. Detailed account is available in the link at > 03.11 Process Scripts.

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