Parent, Adult, and Child

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed
authority.
- Paul Tillich
Early in his work in the development of Transactional Analysis, Berne observed that as
you watch and listen to people you can see them change before your eyes. It is a total
kind of change. There are simultaneous changes in facial expression, vocabulary, gestures,
posture, and body functions, which may cause the face to flush, the heart to pound, or the
breathing to become rapid.
We can observe these abrupt changes in everyone: the little boy who bursts into tears
when he can't make a toy work, the teenage girl whose woeful face floods with
excitement when the phone finally rings, the man who grows pale and trembles when he
gets the news of a business failure, the father whose face 'turns to stone' when his son
disagrees with him. The individual who changes in these ways is still the same person in
terms of bone structure, skin, and clothes. So what changes inside him? He changes from
what to what?
This was the question which fascinated Berne in the early development of Transactional
Analysis. A thirty-five-year-old lawyer, whom he was treating, said, 'I'm not really a
lawyer. I'm just a little boy.' Away from the psychiatrist's office he was, in fact, a
successful lawyer, but in treatment he felt and acted like a little boy. Sometimes during
the hour he would ask, 'Are you talking to the lawyer or to the little boy?' Both Berne and
his patient became intrigued at the existence and appearance of these two real people, or
states of being, and began talking about them as 'the adult' and 'the child'. Treatment
centred around separating the two. Later another state began to become apparent as a
state distinct from 'adult' and 'child'. This was 'the parent' and was identified by behaviour
which was a reproduction of what the patient saw and heard his parents do when he was a
little boy.
Changes from one state to another are apparent in manner, appearance, words, and
gestures. A thirty-four-year-old woman came to me for help with a problem of
sleeplessness, constant worry over 'what I am doing to my children', and increasing
nervousness. In the course of the first hour she suddenly began to weep and said, 'You
make me feel like I'm three years old.' Her voice and manner were that of a small child. I
asked her, 'What happened to make you feel like a child?' 'I don't know,' she responded,
and then added, 'I suddenly felt like a failure.' I said, 'Well, let's talk about children, about
the family. Maybe we can discover something inside of you that produces these feelings
of failure and despair.' At another point in the hour her voice and manner again changed
suddenly. She became critical and dogmatic: 'After all, parents have rights, too. Children
need to be shown their place.' During one hour this mother changed to three different and
distinct personalities: one of a small child dominated by feelings, one of a self-righteous
parent, and one of a reasoning, logical, grown-up woman and mother of three children.
Continual observation has supported the assumption that these three states exist in all
people. It is as if in each person there is the same little person he was when he was three
years old. There are also within him his own parents. These are recordings in the brain of
actual experiences of internal and external events, the most significant of which happened
during the first five years of life. There is a third state, different from these two. The first
two are called Parent and Child, and the third, Adult. (See Figure 1.)
These states of being are not roles but psychological realities. Berne says that 'Parent,
Adult, and Child are not concepts like Superego, Ego, and Id ... but phenomenological
realities.' {1} The state is produced by the playback of recorded data of events in the past,
involving real people, real times, real places, real decisions, and real feelings.
Figure 1. The Personality
The Parent
The Parent is a huge collection of recordings in the brain of unquestioned or imposed
external events perceived by a person in his early years, a period which we have
designated roughly as the first five years of life. This is the period before the social birth
of the individual, before he leaves home in response to the demands of society and enters
school. (See Figure 2.) The name Parent is most descriptive of this data inasmuch as the
most significant 'tapes' are those provided by the example and pronouncements of his
own real parents or parent substitutes. Everything the child saw his parents do and
everything he heard them say is recorded in the Parent. Everyone has a Parent in that
everyone experienced external stimuli in the first five years of life. Parent is specific for
every person, being the recording of that set of early experiences unique to him.
Figure 2. The Parent
The data in the Parent was taken in and recorded 'straight' without editing. The situation
of the little child, his dependency, and his inability to construct meanings with words
made it impossible for him to modify, correct, or explain. Therefore, if the parents were
hostile and constantly battling each other, a fight was recorded with the terror produced
by seeing the two persons on whom the child depended for survival about to destroy each
other. There was no way of including in this recording the fact that the father was
inebriated because his business had just gone down the drain or that the mother was at her
wits' end because she had just found she was pregnant again.
In the Parent are recorded all the admonitions and rules and laws that the child heard
from his parents and saw in their living. They range all the way from the earliest parental
communications, interpreted nonverbally through tone of voice, facial expression,
cuddling, or noncuddling, to the more elaborate verbal rules and regulations espoused by
the parents as the little person became able to understand words. In this set of recordings
are the thousands of 'no's' directed at the toddler, the repeated 'don'ts' that bombarded him,
the looks of pain and horror in mother's face when his clumsiness brought shame on the
family in the form of Aunt Ethel's broken antique vase.
Likewise are recorded the coos of pleasure of a happy mother and the looks of delight of
a proud father. When we consider that the recorder is on all the time we begin to
comprehend the immense amount of data in the Parent. Later come the more complicated
pronouncements: Remember, Son, wherever you go in the world you will always find the
best people are Methodists; never tell a lie; pay your bills; you are judged by the
company you keep; you are a good boy if you clean your plate; waste is the original sin;
you can never trust a man; you can never trust a woman; you're damned if you do and
damned if you don't; you can never trust a cop; busy hands are happy hands; don't walk
under ladders; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; do others in that they
don't do you in.
The significant point is that whether these rules are good or bad in the light of a
reasonable ethic, they are recorded as truth from the source of all security, the people
who are 'six feet tall' at a time when it is important to the two-foot-tall child that he please
and obey them. It is a permanent recording. A person cannot erase it. It is available for
replay throughout life.
This replay is a powerful influence throughout life. These examples - coercing, forcing,
sometimes permissive but more often restrictive - are rigidly internalized as a voluminous
set of data essential to the individual's survival in the setting of a group, beginning with
the family and extending throughout life in a succession of groups necessary to life.
Without a physical parent the child would die. The internal Parent also is life-saving,
guarding against many dangers which, perceived experientially, could cause death. In the
Parent is the recording, 'Don't touch that knife!' It is a thunderous directive. The threat to
the little person, as he sees it, is that his mother will spank him or otherwise show
disapproval. The greater threat is that he can cut himself and bleed to death. He cannot
perceive this. He does not have adequate data. The recording of parental dictates, then, is
an indispensable aid to survival, in both the physical and the social sense.
Another characteristic of the Parent is the fidelity of the recordings of inconsistency.
Parents say one thing and do another. Parents say, 'Don't lie,' but tell lies. They tell
children that smoking is bad for their health but smoke themselves. They proclaim
adherence to a religious ethic but do not live by it. It is not safe for the little child to
question this inconsistency, and so he is confused. Because this data causes confusion
and fear, he defends himself by turning off the recording.
We think of the Parent predominantly as the recordings of the transactions between the
child's two parents. It may be helpful to consider the recordings of Parent data as
somewhat like the recording of stereophonic sound. There are two sound tracks that, if
harmonious, produce a beautiful effect when played together. If they are not harmonious,
the effect is unpleasant and the recording is put aside and played very little, if at all. This
is what happens when the Parent contains discordant material. The Parent is repressed or,
in the extreme, blocked out altogether. Mother may have been a 'good' mother and father
may have been 'bad', or vice versa. There is much useful data which is stored as a result
of the transmission of good material from one parent; but since the Parent does contain
material from the other parent that is contradictory and productive of anxiety, the Parent
as a whole is weakened or fragmented. Parent data that is discordant is not allowed to be
a strong positive influence in the person's life.
Another way to describe this phenomenon is to compare it with the algebraic equation: a
plus times a minus equals a minus. It does not matter how big the plus was, or how little
the minus was. The result is always a minus - a weakened, disintegrated Parent. The
effect in later life may be ambivalence, discord, and despair - for the person, that is, who
is not free to examine the Parent.
Much Parent data appears in current living in the 'how-to' category: how to hit a nail, how
to make a bed, how to eat soup, how to blow your nose, how to thank the hostess, how to
shake hands, how to pretend no one's at home, how to fold the bath towels, or how to
dress the Christmas tree. The how to comprises a vast body of data acquired by watching
the parents. It is largely useful data which makes it possible for the little person to learn
to get along by himself. Later (as his Adult becomes more skilful and free to examine
Parent data) these early ways of doing things may be updated and replaced by better ways
that are more suited to a changed reality. A person whose early instructions were
accompanied by stern intensity may find it more difficult to examine the old ways and
may hang on to them long after they are useful, having developed a compulsion to do it
'this way and no other'.
The mother of a teenager related the following parental edict, which had long governed
her housekeeping procedures. Her mother had told her, 'You never put a hat on a table or
a coat on a bed.' So she went through life never putting a hat on a table or a coat on a bed.
Should she occasionally forget, or should one of her youngsters break this old rule, there
was an over-reaction that seemed inappropriate to the mere violation of the rules of
simple neatness. Finally, after several decades of living with this unexamined law,
mother asked grandmother (by then in her eighties), 'Mother, why do you never put a hat
on a table or a coat on a bed?'
Grandmother replied that when she was little there had been some neighbour children
who were 'infested', and her mother had warned her that it was important that they never
put the neighbour children's hats on the table or their coats on the bed. Reasonable
enough. The urgency of the early admonition was understandable. In terms of Penfield's
findings it was also understandable why the recording came on with the original urgency.
Many of the rules we live by are like this.
Some influences are more subtle. One modern housewife with every up-to-date
convenience in her home found she simply did not have any interest in buying a garbagedisposal unit. Her husband encouraged her to get one, pointing out all the reasons this
would simplify her kitchen procedures. She recognized this but found one excuse after
another to postpone going to the appliance store to select one. Her husband finally
confronted her with his belief that she was deliberately not getting a garbage disposal. He
insisted she tell him why.
A bit of reflection caused her to recognize an early impression she had about garbage.
Her childhood years were the Depression years of the 1930's. In her home, garbage was
carefully saved and fed to the pig, which was butchered at Christmas and provided an
important source of food. The dishes were even washed without soap so that the
dishwater, with its meager offering of nutrients, could be included in the slops. As a little
girl she perceived that garbage was important, and as a grown woman she found it
difficult to rush headlong into purchasing a new-fangled gadget to dispose of it. (She
bought the disposal unit and lived happily ever after.)
When we realize that thousands of these simple rules of living are recorded in the brain of
every person, we begin to appreciate what a comprehensive vast store of data the Parent
includes. Many of these edicts are fortified with such additional imperatives as 'never'
and 'always' and 'never forget that' and, we may assume, pre-empt certain primary
neurone pathways that supply ready data for today's transactions. These rules are the
origins of compulsions and quirks and eccentricities that appear in later behaviour.
Whether Parent data is a burden or a boon depends on how appropriate it is to the present,
on whether or not it has been updated by the Adult, the function of which we shall
discuss in this chapter.
There are sources of Parent data other than the physical parents. A three-year-old who
sits before a television set many hours a day is recording what he sees. The programmes
he watches are a 'taught' concept of life. If he watches programmes of violence, I believe
he records violence in his Parent. That's how it is. That is life! This conclusion is certain
if his parents do not express opposition by switching the channel. If they enjoy violent
programmes the youngster gets a double sanction - the set and the folks - and he assumes
permission to be violent provided he collects the required amount of injustices. The little
person collects his own reasons to shoot up the place, just as the sheriff does; three nights
of cattle rustlers, a stage hold-up, and a stranger foolin' with Miss Kitty can be easily
matched in the life of the little person. Much of what is experienced at the hands of older
siblings or other authority figures also is recorded in the Parent. Any external situation in
which the little person feels himself to be dependent to the extent that he is not free to
question or to explore produces data which is stored in the Parent. (There is another type
of external experience of the very small child which is not recorded in the Parent, and
which we shall examine when we describe the Adult.)
The Child
While external events are being recorded as that body of data we call the Parent, there is
another recording being made simultaneously. This is the recording of internal events, the
responses of the little person to what he sees and hears. (Figure 3.) In this connexion it is
important to recall Penfield's observation that
the subject feels again the emotion which the situation originally produced in him, and he
is aware of the same interpretations, true or false, which he himself gave to the
experience in the first place. Thus, evoked recollection is not the exact photographic or
phonographic reproduction of past scenes or events. It is reproduction of what the patient
saw and heard and felt and understood. {2} [Italics added]
It is this 'seeing and hearing and feeling and understanding' body of data which we define
as the Child. Since the little person has no vocabulary during the most critical of his early
experiences, most of his reactions are feelings. We must keep in mind his situation in
these early years. He is small, he is dependent, he is inept, he is clumsy, he has no words
with which to construct meanings. Emerson said we 'must know how to estimate a sour
look'. The child does not know how to do this. A sour look turned in his direction can
only produce feelings that add to his reservoir of negative data about himself. It's my
fault. Again. Always is. Ever will be. World without end.
Figure 3. The Child
During this time of helplessness there are an infinite number of total and
uncompromising demands on the child. On the one hand, he has the urges (genetic
recordings) to empty his bowels ad lib., to explore, to know, to crush and to bang, to
express feelings, and to experience all of the pleasant sensations associated with
movement and discovery. On the other hand, there is the constant demand from the
environment, essentially the parents, that he give up these basic satisfactions for the
reward of parental approval. This approval, which can disappear as fast as it appears, is
an unfathomable mystery to the child, who has not yet made any certain connexion
between cause and effect.
The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On
the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, I'm not OK.' We call this
comprehensive self-estimate the not ok, or the not ok Child. This conclusion and the
continual experiencing of the unhappy feelings which led to it and confirm it are recorded
permanently in the brain and cannot be erased. This permanent recording is the residue of
having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is
the situation of child-hood and not the intention of the parents which produces the
problem. (This will be discussed at length in the next chapter, about life positions.) An
example of the dilemma of childhood was a statement made by my seven-year-old
daughter, Heidi, who one morning at breakfast said, 'Daddy, when I have an ok Daddy
and an ok Mama, how come I'm not ok?'
When the children of the 'good' parents carry the not ok burden, one can begin to
appreciate the load carried by children whose parents are guilty of gross neglect, abuse,
and cruelty.
As in the case of the Parent, the Child is a state into which a person may be transferred at
almost any time in his current transactions. There are many things that can happen to us
today which recreate the situation of childhood and bring on the same feelings we felt
then. Frequently we may find ourselves in situations where we are faced with impossible
alternatives, where we find ourselves in a corner, either actually, or in the way we see it.
These 'hook the Child', as we say, and cause a replay of the original feelings of frustration,
rejection, or abandonment, and we relive a latter-day version of the small child's primary
depression. Therefore, when a person is in the grip of feelings, we say his Child has taken
over. When his anger dominates his reason, we say his Child is in command.
There is a bright side, too! In the Child is also a vast store of positive data. In the Child
reside creativity, curiosity, the desire to explore and know, the urges to touch and feel and
experience, and the recordings of the glorious, pristine feelings of first discoveries. In the
Child are recorded the countless, grand a-ha experiences, the firsts in the life of the small
person, the first drinking from the garden hose, the first stroking of the soft kitten, the
first sure hold on mother's nipple, the first time the lights go on in response to his flicking
the switch, the first submarine chase of the bar of soap, the repetitious going back to do
these glorious things again and again. The feelings of these delights are recorded, too.
With all the not ok recordings, there is a counterpoint, the rhythmic ok of mother's
rocking, the sentient softness of the favourite blanket, a continuing good response to
favourable external events (if this is indeed a favoured child), which also is available for
replay in today's transactions. This is the flip side, the happy child, the carefree, butterflychasing little boy, the little girl with chocolate on her face. This comes on in today's
transactions, too. However, our observations both of small children and of ourselves as
grown-ups convince us that the not ok feelings far outweigh the good. This is why we
believe it is a fair estimate to say that everyone has a not ok Child.
Frequently I am asked, When do the Parent and the Child stop recording? Do the Parent
and Child contain only experiences in the first five years of life? I believe that by the time
the child leaves the home for his first independent social experience - school - he has
been exposed to nearly every possible attitude and admonition of his parents, and
thenceforth further parental communications are essentially a reinforcement of what has
already been recorded. The fact that he now begins to 'use his Parent' on others also has a
reinforcing quality in line with the Aristotelian idea that that which is expressed is
impressed. As to further recordings in the Child, it is hard to imagine that any emotion
exists which has not already been felt in its most intense form by the time the youngster
is five years old. This is consistent with most psychoanalytic theory, and, in my own
observation, is true.
If, then, we emerge from childhood with a set of experiences which are recorded in an
inerasable Parent and Child, what is our hope for change? How can we get oft the hook of
the past?
The Adult
At about ten months of age a remarkable thing begins to happen to the child. Until that
time his life has consisted mainly of helpless or unthinking responses to the demands and
stimulations by those around him. He has had a Parent and a Child. What he has not had
is the ability either to choose his responses or to manipulate his surroundings. He has had
no self-direction, no ability to move out to meet life. He has simply taken what has come
his way.
At ten months, however, he begins to experience the power of locomotion. He can
manipulate objects and begins to move out, freeing himself from the prison of immobility.
It is true that earlier, as at eight months, the infant may frequently cry and need help in
getting out of some awkward position, but he is unable to get out of it by himself. At ten
months he concentrates on inspection and exploitation of toys. According to the studies
conducted by Gesell and Ilg, the ten-month-old child
... enjoys playing with a cup and pretends to drink. He brings objects to his mouth and
chews them. He enjoys gross motor activity: sitting and playing after he has been set up,
leaning far forward, and re-erecting himself. He secures a toy, kicks, goes from sitting to
creeping, pulls himself up, and may lower himself. He is beginning to cruise. Social
activities which he enjoys are peek-a-boo and lip play, walking with both hands held,
being put prone on the floor, or being placed in a rocking toy. Girls show their first signs
of coyness by putting their heads to one side as they smile. {3}
The ten-month-old has found he is able to do something which grows from his own
awareness and original thought. This self-actualization is the beginning of the Adult.
(Figure 4.) Adult data accumulates as a result of the child's ability to find out for himself
what is different about life from the 'taught concept' of life in his Parent and the 'felt
concept' of life in his Child. The Adult develops a 'thought concept' of life based on data
gathering and data processing. The motility which gives birth to the Adult becomes reassuring in later life when a person is in distress. He goes for a walk to 'clear his mind'.
Pacing is seen similarly as a relief from anxiety. There is a recording that movement is
good, that it has a separating quality, that it helps him see more clearly what his problem
is.
Figure 4. Gradual emergence of the Adult beginning at ten months
The Adult, during these early years, is fragile and tentative. It is easily 'knocked out' by
commands from the Parent and fear in the Child. Mother says about the crystal goblet,
'No, no! Don't touch that!' The child may pull back and cry, but at the first opportunity he
will touch it anyway to see what it is all about. In most persons the Adult, despite all the
obstacles thrown in its way, survives and continues to function more and more effectively
as the maturation process goes on.
The Adult is 'principally concerned with transforming stimuli into pieces of information,
and processing and filing that information on the basis of previous experience'. {4} It is
different from the Parent, which is 'judgemental in an imitative way and seeks to enforce
sets of borrowed standards, and front the Child, which tends to react more abruptly on the
basis of prelogical thinking and poorly differentiated or distorted perceptions'. Through
the Adult the little person can begin to tell the difference between life as it was taught and
demonstrated to him (Parent), life as he felt it or wished it or fantasized it (Child), and
life as he figures it out by himself (Adult).
The Adult is a data-processing computer, which grinds out decisions after computing the
information from three sources: the Parent, the Child, and the data which the Adult has
gathered and is gathering (Figure 5). One of the important functions of the Adult is to
examine the data in the Parent, to see whether or not it is true and still applicable today,
and then to accept it or reject it; and to examine the Child to see whether or not the
feelings there are appropriate to the present or are archaic and in response to archaic
Parent data. The goal is not to do away with the Parent and Child but to be free to
examine these bodies of data. The Adult, in the words of Emerson, 'must not be hindered
by the name of goodness, but must examine if it be goodness'; or badness, for that matter,
as in the early decision, 'I'm not ok'.
The Adult testing of Parent data may begin at an early age. A secure youngster is one
who finds that most Parent data is reliable: They told me the truth!'
'It really is true that cars in the street are dangerous,' concludes the little boy who has seen
his pet dog hurt by a car in the street. 'It really is true that things go better when I share
my toys with Bobby,' thinks the little boy who has been given a prized possession by
Bobby. 'It really does feel better when my pants aren't wet,' concludes the little girl who
has learned to go to the bathroom by herself. If parental directives are grounded in reality,
the child, through his own Adult, will come to realize integrity, or sense of wholeness.
What he tests holds up under testing. The data which he collects in his experimentation
and examination begins to constitute some 'constants' that he can trust. His findings are
supported by what he was taught in the first place.
It is important to emphasize that the verification of Parent data does not erase the not ok
recordings in the Child, which were produced by the early imposition of this data. Mother
believes that the only way to keep three-year-old Johnny out of the street is to spank him.
He does not understand the danger. His response is fear, anger, and frustration with no
appreciation of the fact that his mother loves him and is protecting his life. The fear,
anger, and frustration are recorded. These feelings are not erased by the later
understanding that she was right to do what she did, but the understanding of how the
original situation of childhood produced so many not ok recordings of this type can free
us of their continual replay in the present. We cannot erase the recording, but we can
choose to turn it off!
Figure 5. The Adult gets data from three sources
In the same way that the Adult updates Parent data to determine what is valid and what is
not, it updates Child data to determine which feelings may be expressed safely. In our
society it is considered appropriate for a woman to cry at a wedding, but it is not
considered appropriate for that woman to scream at her husband afterwards at the
reception. Yet both crying and screaming are emotions in the Child. The Adult keeps
emotional expression appropriate. The Adult's function in updating the Parent and Child
is diagrammed in Figure 6. The Adult within the Adult in this figure refers to updated
reality data. (The evidence once told me space travel was only fantasy; now I know it is
reality.)
Figure 6. The updating function of the Adult through reality testing
Another of the Adult's functions is probability estimating. This function is slow in
developing in the small child and, apparently, for most of us, has a hard time catching up
throughout life. The little person is constantly confronted with unpleasant alternatives
(either you eat your spinach or you go without ice cream), offering little incentive for
examining probabilities. Unexamined probabilities can underlie many of our transactional
failures, and unexpected danger signals can cause more Adult 'decay', or delay, than
expected ones. There are similarities here to the stock ticker in investment concerns,
which may run many hours behind on very active trading days. We sometimes refer to
this delay as 'computer lag', a remedy for which is the old, familiar practice of 'counting
to ten'.
The capacity for probability estimating can be increased by conscious effort. Like a
muscle in the body, the Adult grows and increases in efficiency through training and use.
If the Adult is alert to the possibility of trouble, through probability estimating, it can also
devise solutions to meet the trouble if and when it comes.
Under sufficient stress, however, the Adult can be impaired to the point where emotions
take over inappropriately. The boundaries between Parent, Adult, and Child are fragile,
sometimes indistinct, and vulnerable to those incoming signals which tend to recreate
situations we experienced in the helpless, dependent days of childhood. The Adult
sometimes is flooded by signals of the 'bad news' variety so overwhelming that the Adult
is reduced to an 'onlooker' in the transaction. An individual in this situation might say, 'I
knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't help myself.'
Unrealistic, irrational, non-Adult responses are seen in a condition referred to as
traumatic neurosis. The danger, or 'bad news' signal, hits the Parent and the Child at the
same time it hits the Adult. The Child responds in the way it originally did, with a feeling
of not ok. This may produce all kinds of regressive phenomena. The individual may again
feel himself to be a tiny, helpless, dependent child. One of the most primitive of these
phenomena is thought blocking. One place this can be seen is in psychiatric hospitals that
have a locked-door policy. When the door is locked on a new patient, his retreat is rapid
and pronounced. This is why I am opposed to treating patients in a setting where the
emphasis is on parental care. Catering to the helpless Child in the individual delays the
reconstructive process of restoring the Adult to the executive function.
An ideal hospital would be a comfortable motel with 'play area' for the Child,
surrounding a clinic building devoted to activities designed for achieving autonomy of
the Adult. The nurses would not wear uniforms or serve as parents to the Patients. Instead,
nurses in street clothing would apply their skills and training to help each individual learn
the identity of his Parent, Adult, and Child.
In our treatment groups we use certain colloquial catch phrases such as, 'Why don't you
stay in your Adult?' when a member finds his feelings are taking over. Another of these is,
'What was the original transaction?' This is asked as means of 'turning on the Adult' to
analyse the similarity between the present incoming signal producing the present distress
and the original transaction, in which the small child experienced distress.
The ongoing work of the Adult consists, then, of checking out old data, validating or
invalidating it, and refiling it for future use. If this business goes on smoothly and there is
a relative absence of conflict between what has been taught and what is real, the
computer is free for important new business, creativity. Creativity is born from curiosity
in the Child, as is the Adult. The Child provides the 'want to' and the Adult provides the
'how to'. The essential requirement for creativity is computer time. If the computer is
cluttered with old business there is little time for new business. Once checked out, many
Parent directives become automatic and thus free the computer for creativity. Many of
our decisions in day-to-day transactions are automatic. For instance, when we see an
arrow pointing down a one-way street, we automatically refrain from going the opposite
way. We do not involve our computer in lengthy data processing about highway
engineering, the traffic death toll, or how signs are painted. Were we to start from scratch
in every decision or operate entirely without the data that was supplied by our parents,
our computer would rarely have time for the creative process.
Some people contend that the undisciplined child, unhampered by limits, is more creative
than the child whose parents set limits. I do not believe this is true. A youngster has more
time to be creative - to explore, invent, take apart, and put together - if he is not wasting
time in futile decision making for which he has inadequate data. A little boy has more
time to build a snowman if he is not allowed to engage Mother in a long hassle about
whether or not to wear overshoes. If a child is allowed to be creative by painting the front
room walls with shoe polish, he is unprepared for the painful consequences when he does
so at the neighbour's house. Painful outcomes do not produce ok feelings. There are other
consequences that take time, such as mending in the hospital after a trial-and-error
encounter with a car in the street. There is just so much computer time. Conflict uses a
great deal. An extremely time-consuming conflict is produced when what parents say is
true does not seem to be true to the Adult. The most creative individual is the one who
discovers that a large part of the content of the Parent squares with reality. He can then
file away this validated information in the Adult, trust it, forget about it, and gets on with
other things - like how to make a kite fly, how to build a sand castle, or how to do
differential calculus.
However, many youngsters are preoccupied much of the time with the conflict between
Parent data and what they see as reality. Their most troubling problem is that they do not
understand why the Parent has such a hold on them. When Truth comes to knock at the
Parent's door, the Parent says, 'Come, let us reason together'. The little child whose father
is in jail and whose mother steals to support him may have a loud recording in his Parent,
'You never trust a cop!' So he meets a friendly one. His Adult computes all the data about
this nice guy, how he gets the ball game started in the sand lot, how he treats the gang to
popcorn, how he is friendly, and how he speaks in a quiet voice. For this youngster there
is conflict. What he sees as reality is different from what he has been taught. The Parent
tells him one thing and the Adult another. During the period of his actual dependency
upon his parents for security, however tenuous this security may be, it is likely he will
accept the parents' verdict that cops are bad. This is how prejudice is transmitted. For a
little- child, it may be safer to believe a lie than to believe his own eyes and ears. The
Parent so threatens the Child (in a continuing internal dialogue) that the Adult gives up
and stops trying to inquire into areas of conflict. Therefore, 'cops are bad' comes through
as truth. This is called contamination of the Adult and will be examined in Chapter 6