The word contamination for many invokes the idea of disease. For instance, we tend to use the word when bacteria have gone into milk. Well, this is similar to the case with the contaminated Integrating Adult ego state.
This occurs when we talk as if something is a fact or a reality when really this is a belief. Casteism is an example of this. The Integrating Adult ego state is contaminated in this case by the Parent ego state.
We belong to one specific caste, we might have lived with parents or significant others who said such things as “People belonging to a specific caste take our jobs”. Growing up it is likely, that having no real experience to go by, we believed this.
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We might also have been told that people belonging to a specific caste are aggressive. In our Child ego state, may well lodge some scared feelings about the specific caste people and in this ego state, we may start to believe “All people of this caste are scary”.
This would mean that there would be a double contamination of the Integrating Adult ego state. However, we would think that such statements were facts rather than beliefs and when this happens, we say that this is Integrating Adult ego syntonic.
That is, they fit with the Integrating Adult ego state and only those people outside our situation and sometimes outside our peer group or culture can see that, objectively, such beliefs are just that and therefore they can be changed.
The Transactional Analysis Theory of Change Cluster:
Transactional analysis is essentially a cognitive-behavioural theory of personality and change that nevertheless retains an interest in the psychodynamic aspect of the personality. It was designed as a contractual, cognitive (adult-centred), behavioural (transactional) group therapy.
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The premise was that if people became aware of their transactional behaviour-in particular, their games and underlying script-they would be able to modify their lives in a positive direction.
Consequently, an important therapeutic function was to provide “permission” for changing behaviour and “protectien” for sustaining the change in the face of social and internal pressures to maintain the status quo.
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The implication of the permission transaction is allied with the concepts of “guidance,” “problem solving,” “treatment strategies,” and “interventions.” Protection is allied with the concepts of “support,” “empathy,” and “secure base”.
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Echoes of each of these clusters of concepts can be found in writings in the fields of psychology, social psychology and psychotherapy, where they exist independent of any awareness of their possible transactional analysis origins. Transactional analysis includes all five in a sophisticated, interconnected theory of personality and change.
From the social sciences literature, we have collected a portfolio of method, theory and research that corroborates each of the five theoretical clusters. This portfolio is summarised in the following sections. In his last book, what do You Say after You Say Hello?
Berne (1972) made it clear that analysis of transactions between ego states is the fundamental activity of a transactional analyst. He focused on ego states and transactions because they are eminently observable. Ego states and their representation as three stacked circles are the icons of transactional analysis.
Berne postulated the existence of three basic ego states-Parent, Adult and Child-each with an important function. However, he also introduced possible additional ego states by subdividing each of the three.
For example, the Child had three options: Adapted Child, Little Professor, and Natural Child. Dusay (1972) further identified the large number of potential ego states to five: Nurturing Parent, Critical Parent, Adult, Adapted Child and Natural Child.
These five ego states have been widely researched with varying degrees of scientific rigour. A number of researchers have attempted to demonstrate reliability and construct validity for these ego states. The fact that the three ego states are most often named as the reason why people find transactional analysis useful is a powerful reason for maintaining them as our flagship concepts.
That there is such a phenomenon as separate manifestations of the ego (if not necessarily the three Berne mentioned) has been widely observed and postulated as multiple “egos,” “selves,” or “personalities.”
There is ample evidence of the occurrence of multiple personalities, but they have been consistently regarded as pathological abnormalities, thus ignoring the possibility that multiple states of the ego may be normal and in fact, desirable.
Rowan and Cooper (1999) introduced the notion of pluralistic models of the self, in which a normal person is seen as a multiplicity of sub-personalities.
