This document provides an overview of Berne's stages of cure in transactional analysis psychotherapy. It discusses four stages: 1) social control, 2) symptomatic relief, 3) transference cure, and 4) script cure. Each stage represents a genuine improvement and change in behaviors, feelings, and beliefs. Different views on what constitutes "cure" are also presented. The document was created by Manu Melwin Joy, a research scholar in India, and contains his contact information. It provides the content in bullet point form and includes a poem by Portia Nelson on self-discovery.

1. Stages of Cure

2. Prepared By
Manu Melwin Joy
Research Scholar
School of Management Studies
CUSAT, Kerala, India.
Phone – 9744551114
Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com
Kindly restrict the use of slides for personal purpose.
Please seek permission to reproduce the same in public
forms and presentations.

3. Content
• Cure according to Berne.
• Stages of cure.
– Stage 1 – Social Control.
– Stage 2 – Symptomatic Relief.
– Stage 3 – Transference cure.
– Stage 4 – Script cure.
• Final stages of cure according to Berne.
• Different views on cure.
• Poem by Portia Nelson : There is a hole in my side walk.

4. Cure according to Berne
• Cure is a progressive process
than a once off process.
• Cure is a matter of progressively
learning to exercise new
choices.
• The client will likely pass
through a series of stages of
improvement, distinct in their
nature although the boundaries
between them might not be
sharply recognizable.

5. Cure according to Berne
• Each stage represented a
genuine gain as compared
to the one before it.
• Therapist and client might
agree to terminate
treatment at any one of
these way stages if the
client found it satisfactory.
• However, only the last
stage represented the
most fundamental degree
of change in the client.

6. Stages of cure
1. Social control
2. Symptomatic relief
3. Transference cure
4. Script cure

7. Stage 1 – Social Control
• In this first stage of cure, the
person takes control over her
behaviors, employing an Adult
ego – state.
• She amends her social
interactions to avoid the ones that
had been causing her difficulty or
pain and to substitute other
behaviors that will produce more
congenital results for her.

8. Stage 1 – Social Control
• At this stage of cure, the person does
not set out to make any change in
unresolved child feelings or confront
outdated parental commands.
• She simply overrides these past
influences by here and now behavioral
control.
• It is by these change in
behavior, together with the client's
reports of outcomes, that we can
observe the attainment of this first
stage of cure.

9. Stage 2 – Symptomatic Relief
• At this second stage, the
person still maintains Adult
as the ego state in charge of
the process.
• However, now she goes on to
address some of the
problematic content of Child
or Parent ego state directly.

10. Stage 2 – Symptomatic Relief
• For example, she may reopen and express some
of the unfinished feeling she is still carrying from
moments of childhood trauma, always
monitoring from the Adult ego state.
• In consultation with the psychotherapist, she
may reappraise outdated beliefs that have
accompanied these child feelings and decide to
replace these beliefs with others that are more
appropriate to her grown up situation.
• These changes in feeling and belief serve to
reinforce, and are reinforced by , the changes in
behavior she has made at the first stage of cure.

11. Stage 2 – Symptomatic Relief
• Often, this process is accompanied by
some relief in psychic or physical
symptoms such as anxiety or muscular
tension. Reports of these are thus one
objective indication of this stage of cure.
• The observer may also note changes in
the person’s posture and muscle tone. A
decrease in the frequency and intensity
of game playing will provide still another
clue to this stage of cure.

12. Stage 3 – Transference Cure
• Here, the client substitutes the
psychotherapist for the original parent. She
now sees the psychotherapist as fulfilling a
role in her script.
• But she experiences him as doing so in a
more benign way than the actual parent
did.
• The client may experience considerable
relief from child fears and anxieties now
that she has this more benevolent parent to
relate to.

13. Stage 3 – Transference Cure
• She may also break free from some of
her original destructive parental
messages, substituting for them the
positive messages she takes on board
from the psychotherapist.
• This stage , however, does not represent
the final goal of cure, since the client
still has to keep the psychotherapist
around in her head in order to maintain
her change.

14. Stage 3 – Transference Cure
• Berne acknowledged the work of the
psychoanalyst Fenichel (1945) in elucidating
the nature of such “transference
improvement”.
• A diagnostic clue of this third stage of cure
is that the client will shift the main focus of
the game – playing on to the
psychotherapist.
• Often, this will be accompanied by a
corresponding reduction in game – playing
outside the therapy room.

15. Stage 4 – Script Cure
• Berne described script cure as follows:
“ At a certain point, with the help of the therapist and
his own Adult, the patient is capable of breaking out his
script entirely and putting his own show on the road,
with new characters, new roles, and a new plot and
payoff. Such a script cure, which changes his character
and his destiny, is also clinical cure, since most of his
symptoms will be relieved by his re- decision.”

16. Final stage of cure according to Berne
Transactional analysis in psychotherapy (1961)
Psychoanalytic Cure
Games People play (1964)
Autonomy
What do you say after you say hello (1972)
Script Cure

17. Final stage of cure according to Berne
• Berne’s concept of the final
stage of cure underwent
some important changes
during his career.
• In his early writing, for
example, in Transactional
Analysis in Psychotherapy, he
still saw formal
psychoanalysis as the
ultimate route to personal
change.
• Thus he spoke of the final
stage of cure as
psychoanalytic cure.

18. Final stage of cure according to Berne
• By the time Berne wrote What Do
You Say After You Say Hello?, he
and his associates had
accumulated a decade of
experience in the
psychotherapeutic application of
script analysis.
• He had reached the view that TA’s
own techniques could be used to
facilitate even the most complete
stage of cure, which he now called
script cure.
• He now believed that the person
could reach this end goal without
the need of psychoanalysis.

19. Final stage of cure according to Berne
• Berne stressed that the TA
practitioner’s job was to cure the
patient , not merely help him
make progress.
• In his book Principles of group
treatment, Berne uses the
metaphor of “frogs and princes”
to underline his own concept of
cure. He suggests that cure means
casting off the frog skin and
resuming the interrupted
development as prince or
princess, where as making
progress means becoming a more
comfortable frog.

20. Different views on cure
• A few years ago, the TA journal
produced a symposium issue in
which various TA writers gave
their own interpretations of
cure.
• There were almost as many
different views as there were
contributors. Here are just a few
of the ideas that emerge from
that discussion.

21. Different views on cure
• Some writers take the
down to earth view that
cure can best be defined in
terms of contract
completion.
• Rather than have any
global goal for change, the
practitioner and client
simply work together until
the client has completed as
many mutually agreed
contract goals as she
wants.

22. Different views on cure
• Most widely held is the view
that, in therapy applications
at least, cure must entail
some kind of movement out
of script.
• Such script cure can be
behavioral, affective or
cognitive or a combination of
the three. In other words,
someone who moves out of
script can do so by acting,
feeling or thinking in new
ways.

23. Different views on cure
• Several writers suggest a
fourth dimension to script
change : somatic cure.
• This means that the
person moving out of
script will change the ways
she uses and experiences
her body. For instance, she
may release chronic
tensions or be relieved or
psychosomatic ailments.

24. There is a hole in my side walk
The romance of self discovery
Poem by Portia Nelson

25. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in..I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

26. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

27. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

28. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

29. Next time,
I walk down another street.

30. Thank You

31. Other TA topics available on slideshare
1. Strokes - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/strokes-24081607.
2. Games People Play - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/psychological-
games-people-play.
3. Structural Analysis - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/the-ego-state-model.
4. What is TA? - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/what-ta-is
5. Cycles of Development - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/cycles-of-
developement-pamela-levin-transactional-analysis.
6. Stages of Cure - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/stages-of-cure.
7. Transactions - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/transactions-33677298.
8. Time Structuring - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/time-structuring.
9. Life Position - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/life-position.
10. Autonomy - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/autonomy-33690557.
11. Structural Pathology - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/structural-pathology.
12. Game Analysis - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/game-analysis-33725636.
13. Integrated Adult - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/integrated-adult.
14. Stroke Economy - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/stroke-economy-
33826702.