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Current brain research and TA theories
Analogies, challenges and practical implications
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Elbing, TSTA
Key questions
• From which position and with which attitude do we transactional analysts look into brain research?
• What can we assume as a basis?• Where do TA concepts and brain
research findings correlate, where do they challenge each other?
• What does that mean for TA practice?
Positions on brain research (1)
• “Given the importance of synaptic transmission in brain function, it should practically be a truism to say that the self is synaptic. What else can it be?” (Le Doux, 2002, in: Hine, 2005, p. 40)
• “In summary, therapy can be regarded as a change of neuronal networks” (Allen 2003, p. 158 – translated).
• “Ontogenetically, the I in its multifarious features is a late product of the brain” (Roth, 2004, p. 37 – translated).
Positions on brain research (2)
• “The traditional understanding of science, which is geared towards natural sciences, is not sufficiently suitable for the science of life. [...] (The) felicitous concepts (of TA) are works of art. They therefore defy reduction to a closed theory that would be traditionally acknowledged as scientific.” (Klöcker, 2002, p. 23 – translated).
Positions on brain research (3)
“The danger of moving uncritically towards science, medicine, and economics must be avoided, and what must be accepted is the challenge of appreciating those scientific acquisitions for the field in which they are valid, in as much as naturalism is part of the necessary criteria for therapeutic intervention but is far from being sufficient” (Scilligo, 2004, in: Tosi, 2008, p. 119).
Positions on brain research (4)
• “(…) different psychological disorders often cause similar changes in information processing (...). In this respect, psychological disorders definitely have neuropsychological effects, but they must be considered from a different perspective than neurological diseases.” (Lautenbacher & Gauggel, 2004, p. 3 – translated).
My positions on brain research
• An equation or immediate correlation of psychological processes (and thus the TA concepts that describe them) and brain processes is at least precarious from a scientific theoretical point of view.
• And it would very much hinder a mutual fruitful dialogue at eye level.
• But this constitutes a chance for the future of TA.
Sound starting points (1)
• Optimism regarding change and development are corroborated and differentiated by brain research.
• New assessment of the time factor for sustainable learning processes
Sound starting points (2)
• The key role of relationship and bonding for learning, change and development is corroborated by brain research.
• “The following is important for every form of learning: learning takes place where there is positive experience (...), positive experience per se consisting in social contacts. (...) Shared activities are probably the most important ‘booster’. This immediately illustrates the biological roots of the therapeutic situation.” (Spitzer, 2004, p. 53 – translated).
Analogies and challenges
The brain is the result of its utilisation (biography).
Knowledge is not passively acquired but actively constructed.
The autopoetic subject in Transactional Analysis
• The concept of decision in TA– Survival decision– Active script confirmation: baits,
rackets, racket/script system, mini-script ...
– New decision
• Aspiration
Learning in early youth is different from learning as an adult in that experience and learning processes leave far more solid and durable traces in the brain of a child than in the brain of an adult.
The brain is plastic; its plasticity decreases with increasing age but does not go down to zero.
The modern script concept
• BABCOCK & KEEPERS 1976: Plasticity, lifelong reorganisation
• ENGLISH 1977: solution-orientation, human necessity, meaning-making (PIAGET, KEGAN)
• CORNELL 1988: constructivist perspective in the lifespan – sense and meaning
• ALLEN 1999: coherent script
• MOISO & NOVELLINO 2004: lived-out, continuously and interactively created stories
Understanding of script as pathological as open for developmentL
I F
E S
P A
Nsc
rip
t
prec
onsc
ious
repr
esse
dBERNE 1961,1972 script draft(protocol, “predisposition”due to first traumatic experience)
palimpsests . .
script proper
adjustmentcompromise formationadaptation
ERSKINE 1991, 1998coping, modern concept of defence,not necessarily unconscious; life script as macro expression of transference
dec
isio
ns
GOULDING & GOULDING 1976 re-decision
ALLEN & ALLEN 1988
permissions to decide
FRIEDMAN & SHMUKLER 1992matrix structuring transitional space( Winnicott)
ENGLISH 1977solution-orientation, human necessity, meaning-making( PIAGET, KEGAN)
BABCOCK & KEEPERS 1976 plasticity, lifelong reorganisation
CORNELL 1988constructivist perspectivein the lifespan – sense and meaning
ALLEN 1999
coherent script
MOISO & NOVELLINO 2004lived-out, continuously and interactively created stories
constructionistneuropsychologicalnarrative
script apparatus
understanding of the script proper as path.
whole
lifespan
© Ulrich Elbing 2005
Remembering in terms of re-calling the same thing again and again does not exist.
Remembering means activating cognitions in ever new contexts. “Each act of remembering changes the retained content by implying a new context.”
Annette Scheunpflug, 2001
Each re-calling of memories (‘ecphory’) entails a new storing (re-encoding) process, by which the re-stored, ‘old’ information is consolidated but also modified and adapted to the present.
Dialectics of repetition and change in TA
• “Dialectic potential” in the concepts:– Game benefit– Degrees of script addiction– Script system as an ‘unheard-of’ story (Thomas
Weil)
• Problem: on/off-model behind the concepts of game pullout, script pullout, decontamination, script reinforcement and confrontation
Memory systems and news of the unconscious
• Explicit and implicit memory
• Unconscious:– Unsymbolisable memory contents– Suppressed and unsuppressed contents
• De-pathologisation of the unconscious
• New definition of the I It relation
The unconscious and TA concepts
• Unconscious communication (Novellino, 2005)– Psychological level: unconscious construction of
associative links– The psychological level cannot be made
conscious deliberately– Contents: narrative about a third outside the
therapeutic relationship– Objective: message about contents that are
unacceptable on the conscious level (among others, about the therapeutic relationship)
The unconscious and TA concepts
• Ego states:– Adding the physical aspect to thinking,
feeling and behaviour (Thomas Weil)– Ego states as carriers and expression of
conscious and unconscious relationship history (Maria T. Tosi, 2008)
TA concepts interesting for brain research
• Ego state changes
• Process of decontamination
• The little professor
• Racket feelings
Practical meaning
• Learning to listen in a new and different way
• Caution: discount! Or: the unconscious is busy
• A new way of dealing with the unutterable and understanding (or wanting or having to understand)
• Exercise is good for you...
Theses for discussion (1)
• TA can regard itself confirmed by brain research (as other procedures, too).– What can the dangers of a naive joy of
confirmation be?
• Brain research helps to further de-pathologise TA concepts.– What do the findings on learning and
remembering mean for concepts such as script, games, contract?
Theses for discussion (2)
• TA will have to integrate new facts.– What does the more recent understanding of
the unconscious mean for concepts such as decision, transactions, transactional rules?
• Trusting perception and describing it thoroughly has been and still is an important key to the development of new TA concepts.– Which phenomena do I know and perceive that
don‘t fit the established TA concepts (well)?
Literature
• Allen, J.R. (2003). Neurophysiologische/entwicklungsbedingte Grundlagen von TA. Zeitschrift für Transaktionsanalyse 20(2), 146-162.
• Hine, J. (2005). Brain structures and ego states. Transactional Analysis Journal, 35(1), 40-51.
• Klöcker, N. (2002). Die TA im Spannungsbogen zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Zeitschrift für Transaktionsanalyse 19(1), 5-24.
• Lautenbacher, S. & Gauggel, S. (eds) (2004). Neuropsychologie psychischer Störungen. Berlin: Springer.
• Novellino, M. (2005). Transactional psychoanalysis: Epistemological foundations. Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2, 157-172.
• Roth, G. (2004). Wie das Gehirn die Seele macht. In Schiepek, G. (ed.) Neurobiologie der Psychotherapie (p 28-41). Stuttgart: Schattauer.
• Tosi, M.T. (2008). The many faces of the unconscious: A new unconscious for a phenomenological Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 38(2), 119-127.
• Spitzer, M. (2004). Neuronale Netzwerke und Psychotherapie. In Schiepek, G. (ed) Neurobiologie der Psychotherapie (p 42-57). Stuttgart: Schattauer.
Positions on brain research (3)
• ”The danger of moving uncritically towards science, medicine, and economics must be avoided, and what must be accepted is the challenge of appreciating those scientific acquisitions for the field in which they are valid, in as much as naturalism is part of the necessary criteria for therapeutic intervention but is far from being sufficient” (Scilligo, 2004, in: Tosi, 2008, p. 119).
TA concepts relevant/interesting for brain
research
• Ego state changes
• Process of decontamination
• The little professor
• Racket feelings
