Interactional Analysis Model

Interactional Analysis Model
Workshop Slide Presentation

Self-System
(Decreasing limitations and anxiety in the Self-System
decreasing rigidity of self-system, expanding potential
for experience of self, anxiety, problems, needs and
defences.)
Self-System
(Expanding assets in the Self-System increasing
individual strengths - flexibility of self-system, self-
experience, individual strengths, assets and coping.)
Interpersonal Relationships
(Expanding assets in increasing social support -
internal and external sense of support, increasing the
utilization of interpersonal relationships to develop,
sustain and reinforce empowerment and development
of functional primary prevention practices.)
(Decreasing limitations and anxiety in interpersonal
relationships utilizing these to reinforce internalized
support and decrease rigidity of defensive structures in
social stresses.)
Community Character
(Community character increasing environmental
resources and the capacity for the community to
provide an environmental context for the development
of empowering relationships and preventative
strategies.)
Community Character
(Community character decreasing limitations / anxiety
in environmental pressures / stresses that are
associated with the rigid structure of the community
itself, addressing the ways that limitations are or have
historically been reinforced within the community and
develop collaborative alternatives for dealing with a
context conducive to anxiety provocation.)
Expanding Assets Decreasing Limitations / Anxiety

Self-System
Interpersonal Relationships Interpersonal Relationships
Community Character Community Character
Self-System
Expanding Assets Decreasing Anxiety

This workshop is designed to help you:
1 Encounter experientially and utilize the Interpersonal
Empowerment model as a primary prevention technique in
community development.
2 Collaboratively work to identify community members’
environmental sources of anxiety and their assets in
overcoming it.
3 Demonstrate how asset mapping moves beyond needs
assessment and creates a foundation for empowerment.
4 Utilize a task-oriented approach to increase interpersonal
resources for support. The participants will demonstrate how
the Interpersonal Empowerment approach works to establish a
community within an existing community, and aids in the
empowerment and confidence of its members.

Need for the Workshop in the Community
In 1981, the APA’s Board of Director’s appointed a Task Force on Promotion, Prevention,
and Intervention Alternatives. The Task Force’s most central charge was to identify and
support the development of newly evolving and needed approaches in psychology including
the promotion of health, the prevention of disorder, and emerging intervention alternatives to
maximize growth and minimize dysfunction (Price, et al., 1988). This remains a priority.
In 1999, at the APA’s mini-convention in Boston, the United States Surgeon General Satcher
called for a “balanced approach to care” in implementing prevention programs that will solve
community challenges such as crime, substance abuse, and suicidality. A team of clinical,
community and organizational practitioners have developed a multsystemic approach to
prevention and empowerment (Henggeler et al., 1998). We believe this Interpersonal
Empowerment Model will reduce anxiety and isolation among community members and
enable people to access a higher quality of living by offering them an integrated multi-
system solution.
This model has foundations in psychological, environmental and situational precepts that
allow individuals to access their inner strength through acknowledging their assets and
moving toward a solution within a solid community support system. This integration offers a
viable alternative to current treatment modalities based on the medical model and serves as
an action-oriented primary prevention technique to overcoming community challenges.

Description of Workshop Content
Interpersonalists have defined modes of experience and interpersonal relationship which serve as the foundation
for mental health, as well as the anxiety which is its antithesis (Lionells, et al., 1995). The interpersonal theory of
relatedness is the key to overcoming anxiety and the feeling of disconnectedness which can cripple individuals
who face stressors alone (Bromberg, 1998; Altman, 1995).
There is a link between interpersonal theory, community empowerment and primary prevention (Benard, 1996;
Moen et al., 1995; Kessler, et al., 1992 ). This link provides a theoretical and practical intersection where the
personal, interpersonal, multicultural, and environmental factors associated with psychological distress and well-
being can be addressed from a multi-systems perspective (Lundberg, 1998; Borg, 1997; Pinderhughes, 1989;
Jason et al., 1987).
We will present an Interpersonal Empowerment theory and discuss how the concepts can be applied as a primary
prevention technique to address anxiety and isolation in a community setting. Primary prevention and
personal/interpersonal empowerment will be identified as internal and interpersonal capacities that serve adaptive
functions within individuals and can be applied to group and community functioning. As an example we will enact
these concepts by having workshop participants identify anxiety provoking experiences and what they would need
to feel empowered in this setting. Thus, participants will experience for themselves, as members of an ad hoc
workshop community, how this model of primary prevention works.
We will address the metaphor of human beings as already equipped to function at the level of prevention and
empowerment. The hypothesis is that we are already structured with these capacities. This concept will be utilized
to address the ways that these capabilities can be expanded and be applied to prevention/empowerment at the
interpersonal and community level (with the idea being that the ways that these capacities were formulated and
maintained has been in the context of interpersonal relations).

IEI Workshop Principles
1 The primary purpose of an IEI workshop is to understand the interconnectedness among
individuals,their problems and assets, and the environment (organization, community,
neighborhood).
2 Facilitators help community members identify problems and assets in themselves and their
community and emphasize identified assets and how these can be utilized as strengths and
levers for change.
3 Workshops are presented in a manner which allows for collaboration between facilitators and
community members in the continuing adaptations of the interventions to the environment. The
initial “exercises,” are suggestions that will facilitate increased ownership of community
functioning, emphasizing the ideas inherent in empowerment philosophy.
4 Workshops are focused on the present, action-oriented, and target specific and well-defined
areas that the community members target as being problematic.
5 Workshops target sequences of interpersonal functioning within and between multiple systems
that work to maintain the community’s current functioning (especially in areas identified as
“problems”).
6 Collaborative techniques are designed to require daily and weekly effort by community members.
7 The effectiveness of the workshop is evaluated continuously from multiple perspectives.
8 Workshops are designed to promote generalization and long-term maintenance by empowering
community members to address community needs and assets across multiple systemic contexts.

• Early Childhood Experiences
• Societal Experiences
• Anxiety Provoking Experiences
• Genetic-Biological Factors
• Intra-Psychic Factors
• Environmental Factors
Self-System Healthy Aspects
In the IE model a person’s self-protective structure is seen to work as a
form of primary prevention in that it receives internal messages signaling
anxiety and responds to protect the person from the actual experience of
such an emotional state. The primary purpose of the person’s defensive
structure is to ward off anxiety and to maintain as much self-esteem as is
possible. Therefore, this concept is implicit in the connection between
interpersonal theory and prevention/empowerment. This addresses an
internalized approach to prevention.
Facilitators will address defensive systems from the perspective of the
purpose that they serve and thus will help people view them as solutions
and thus increase the person’s sense of choice in the ways that he/she
chooses to protect him/herself. We prevent ourselves from experiencing
(or awareness of) debilitating anxiety, while seeking a sense of
empowerment (maintained self-esteem). The ways that this system works
on the individual level is addressed in terms of its implications for
community functioning. This is consistent with the concept of asset
mapping, and defensive structures will be explored according to the
assets that they have been to the person.
Self-System Unhealthy Aspects
The self-system is a concept that Sullivan used for the total set of security
operations, the effects of which are the “agency” that maintains the integrity
and organizations of the self. As the master, “anti-anxiety device”
(Chrzanowski, 1977, p. 12), the self-system is centrally important in
explaining the theory of personality development. Since awareness of
aspects of one’s personality that are not congruent with the self, with lower
self-esteem and provoke anxiety, this self protecting mechanism acts to
decrease the tension of anxiety through selective inattention or
dissociation. While self-system processes determine what is in and out of
awareness, they are, never the less, always interpersonal operations in that
they are always organizing self experiences in the course of (real or
imagined) interaction that (1) minimize disapproval and maximize approval
and (2) are organized and internally consistent.
The “Self-System,” (or self-protective system) is the defensive/protective
system that infiltrates a persons whole system of behavior (and acts, at
some level, as a mask, or persona, which can make it seem as if the
person has a consistency of self-experience). The problems in this area
relate more to the limitations of experience implied by an overly rigidified
self-system than to its existence, since we all need protection from states of
insecurity.
Creation of Self System

• Early Childhood Experiences
• Societal Experiences
• Anxiety Provoking Experiences
• Genetic-Biological Factors
• Intra-Psychic Factors
• Environmental Factors
Interpersonal Relationships Healthy Aspects
In the IE model a person’s self-protective structure is seen to work as a
form of primary prevention in that it receives internal messages signaling
anxiety and responds to protect the person from the actual experience of
such an emotional state. The primary purpose of the person’s defensive
structure is to ward off anxiety and to maintain as much self-esteem as is
possible. Therefore, this concept is implicit in the connection between
interpersonal theory and prevention/empowerment. This addresses an
internalized approach to prevention.
Facilitators will address defensive systems from the perspective of the
purpose that they serve and thus will help people view them as solutions
and thus increase the person’s sense of choice in the ways that he/she
chooses to protect him/herself. We prevent ourselves from experiencing
(or awareness of) debilitating anxiety, while seeking a sense of
empowerment (maintained self-esteem). The ways that this system works
on the individual level is addressed in terms of its implications for
community functioning. This is consistent with the concept of asset
mapping, and defensive structures will be explored according to the
assets that they have been to the person.
Interpersonal Relationships Unhealthy Aspects
The self-system is a concept that Sullivan used for the total set of security
operations, the effects of which are the “agency” that maintains the integrity
and organizations of the self. As the master, “anti-anxiety device”
(Chrzanowski, 1977, p. 12), the self-system is centrally important in
explaining the theory of personality development. Since awareness of
aspects of one’s personality that are not congruent with the self, with lower
self-esteem and provoke anxiety, this self protecting mechanism acts to
decrease the tension of anxiety through selective inattention or
dissociation. While self-system processes determine what is in and out of
awareness, they are, never the less, always interpersonal operations in that
they are always organizing self experiences in the course of (real or
imagined) interaction that (1) minimize disapproval and maximize approval
and (2) are organized and internally consistent.
The “Self-System,” (or self-protective system) is the defensive/protective
system that infiltrates a persons whole system of behavior (and acts, at
some level, as a mask, or persona, which can make it seem as if the
person has a consistency of self-experience). The problems in this area
relate more to the limitations of experience implied by an overly rigidified
self-system than to its existence, since we all need protection from states of
insecurity.
Function of Interpersonal Relationships

The interlocking patterns of interaction
inherent in a community’s current
functioning as well as in its intercultural
dynamic and developmental history of
interpersonal interaction result in a
character structure.
Community Character Healthy Aspects
This idea is expanded in assessing a community as a self-organizing
system which is why, much like the human, we determine the character of
the community in terms of its coherence, it’s ability to integrate information
from internal and external sources, its overall ability to tolerate anxiety-
provoking circumstances, and the flexibility of its ability to allow for
expanding interactive patterns of behavior. In a community setting a major
force leading to change is available: the social exchange that takes place
between people. The change occurs primarily in the reintegration and
reconfiguring (i.e., expansion of sense of self-experience) of already
existing states of self, in relation to self and to others, that community
members possess. People can mutually create new capacities to
effectuate change.
Community Empowerment is an intensive long-term prevention
intervention designed from within the self-defined community to produce
ongoing changes in what could be referred to as the community’s
character. If the question arises as to what makes such intensive and
extensive implementation necessary, the reply is that time is needed for
the “working through.” From an interpersonal perspective working through
is the collaborative process of changing the many interlocking, relatively
autonomous facets of what we will refer to as the “community character.”
Community Character Unhealthy Aspects
Without an appropriate environment to shape, facilitate and encourage
these changes, they will either not occur or will continue to evolve
maladaptively
Abandoning the familiar patterns of relating to others, ways that work to
preserve the sense of security, produces the very sense of anxiety that the
interlocking relational patterns were developed to thwart. The sense of
anxiety felt within the community members can manifest in a general sense
of disruption of the community itself. This over-riding sense of anxiety will
persist until new patterns of relating to one another is consolidated in the
community.
Community Character

Self-System
Expanding Assets
•Personal Empowerment
• Attitude change (p. 46)
• Empowerment is obtained by whatever means we have found to protect our personal
sense of security, self-esteem, and competence. Viewing this aspect of ones self (out
of the possibility of many potential self-experiences [e.g., roles]), requires us to shift our
thinking concerning what it means to be healthy. We consider a person’s ability to
maintain this sense of security/empowerment to be an indication of the potential for
health, no matter how limited a person’s current means of self-protection may be.
• Individual Security Operations
• Selective inattention
• Dissociation
•Reconceptualizing “problems” as solutions to deepen other
problems may not be recognized as such
•Self experiences
• Multiple experience of self: The range of potential experiences of oneself according to
the level of anxiety experienced in interaction with others and with the environment.
One needs to know what aspects of oneself are aroused in particular
social/environmental interactions.
• Role-portrayal and societal labels: At any given time an individual can have a number
of different roles. How we perceive ourselves will be different according to our roles.
Within each role, whether healthy or unhealthy, we have lowered our anxiety because
we know the rules in that role.
• Redefining ideas and events

•List personal strengths
•Describe self system; flexibility and rigidity
• The self-system, itself, be it a “fence” or a “wall,” is indicative of an incredibly diverse
and dynamic potential for growth and, hence, recovery.
•How coping mechanisms work
• Interpreting emotions through thinking and acting
•Make a plan to build on strengths
• Relating hope to action (p. 58)
•Relate to Primary Prevention
• Address the ways that we internally thwart, or ward off, our awareness of anxiety is
considered a prevention technique. It is a form of primary prevention in that we are able
to detect subtle signals from the environment that alert us to the potential threat of
anxiety. We utilize the protective mechanisms necessary to avert the actual awareness
of the affective state of anxiety. We believe that as a result of the importance of this self-
protection we must focus on people’s reactions to various stressful situations, and that
those problems in living are due to faulty habit patterns in dealing with stress.
• We will address the metaphor of human beings as already equipped to function at the
level of prevention and empowerment. The running hypothesis is that we are already
structured with these capacities. This concept will be utilized to address the ways that
these capacities can be expended and applied to prevention/empowerment at the
interpersonal/community level (with the idea being that these capacities were
formulated and maintained in the context of interpersonal relationships).
• If people are able to expand their repertoire of preventative means of protecting self-
esteem and security this can lead to an increased ability to make choices, to assume
leadership, and to set their own goals and pursue them (even with assistance).

Self-System
Decreasing Anxiety
•Flexibility of self system
• The more flexible the self-system, the more we are able to emotionally experience ourselves in the context of
our relationship to others and to our environment in general.
• How we process anxiety and how much we actually feel it determines our current state of wellness
• Compensating for anxiety is the outcome of learned behavior (conditioning)
• We store our past interpersonal interactions and their perceived outcomes as a basis for reactions in current
situations
• These reactions constitute the roles that we play
• These roles are comfortable to us because they reduce the level of anxiety that currently experience; however,
these roles may limit the range of self-experiences that we have access to
• Therefore, these roles can limit our ability to adapt to new situations and, therefore, leave us vulnerable to
having difficult in our problems in living (especially if we feel that we have to find only individual/isolating
solutions)
• How do current defenses help us address “problems in living?”

•Defenses are triggered by environmental factors
• The self-system is created in response/reaction to REAL circumstances in one’s life/environment
• Defenses assessed from a “wellness” perspective, they were necessary at one time to reduce/tolerate anxiety,
are they necessary, at this level, now?
• Assess necessity of current defenses
• A person’s self-system is heavily influenced by the ability to protect oneself from the experience of anxiety and
may be limiting to one’s ability to relate to others and function in the world.
• Many of the behaviors, which have been viewed as “pathological,” can now be viewed as adaptive maneuvers
for turning a sense of powerlessness into a sense of power. While these behaviors and interactive patterns are
considered adaptive, they can also be exceedingly costly. When someone is reacting, he or she cannot initiate
or be proactive; so one may gain some fragmented sense of power at the expense of limiting one’s potential for
establishing a sense of empowerment in the social world.In reacting,a person does not have an opportunity to
be self-assertive, to decide one’s own goals, to assume leadership, or to know oneself, sine that person, in
reaction, is focused on reacting to another rather than one’s own well-conceived goals, beliefs and values.
When assessing what, in general, people are reacting to we pose that it is an intolerable sense of anxiety
within themselves and supported by the environment. As such, security operations have been developed to
help people tolerate powerlessness associated with mediating anxiety provoking experiences.
•List Challenges
• Preventive problem solving(p. 30)
• Confronting chronic and acute stressors (p.44)
•List fears
• Stresses are additive (p. 41)
•Experiences of anger
• Response rather than reaction (15 seconds)
•Describe problem-focused coping in relation to fears
•Overcoming disappointment
• Self-deception
• Primitive defense mechanism of denial

Self-System Exercise
Role Portrayal and Societal Labels
To see various roles or societal labels and the ways that these function to contain anxiety is a goal of the
program. How we act in those roles, how that makes us feel and how we deal with those feelings is
what makes up how we see ourselves. At any given time an individual can have a number of different
roles. How we perceive ourselves will be different in each of our roles. Within each role, whether healthy
or unhealthy, we have lowered our anxiety because we know the rules in that role. At some level, we
accept the costs and the benefits. From a programmatic standpoint facilitators will foster relationships
which allow all group members (including staff members and facilitators) to:
• Identify aspects of our roles that are healthy and unhealthy.
• Assess the level of anxiety in each role/experience of self (as well as how this role/ experience has
actually been utilized [created] to minimize/prevent anxiety).
• Address the ways that these roles (whether healthy or unhealthy) function to deal with the anxiety
associated with confronting an alternate view of ourselves (sense of self-
esteem/competency/empowerment).
• Facilitate relationships, strategies and resources to increase the chances of feeling healthy and
capable.
Anxiety
The group members assess anxiety as being central to prevention and empowerment in that they have
created self-protective (preventative) systems of self-defense to counteract awareness of anxiety. Self-
esteem (the equivalent of a personal sense of empowerment) has been protected through the
development of a potentially limited, and limiting, view of one’s self in the context of one’s environment,
one’s interpersonal relationships, one’s ability to connect with one’s own emotional life.

Expanding Assets
•Sense of self in interpersonal context
• People are “mirrors” for one another. People provide the context for “reflected self-appraisal,” that is
the idea that we see ourselves through the eyes of significant people around us. This “mirroring”
aspect of relationships is important because a person tends to become better attuned to a reflection
of him or herself that is consistent with his or her own perception regardless of its nature. Therefore
we seek relationships which reflect our underlying sense of self.
•Sense of support internal and external
• Address problems in living within whatever context a person actually lives his or her life, to address
how we already possess tools for empowerment and prevention, and how to utilize interpersonal
support to maximize our efforts.
•Building healthy supportive relations
• Multisystemic approach to development of relationships that foster increased collaboration,
understanding, and empathy between individuals by conceptualizing group/community problems for
how these work as assets
• Change the relational context to challenge the perception of threat, and the experience of anxiety,
which initially was involved in the forming of the symptom or problem behavior.
• When relationships are created which allow for a sense of personal security, then old behavior (and
thinking) patterns can be assessed for their historical function and released as the threat (to
security/empowerment) underlying the anxiety is diminshed.
• Participatory competence: The combination of attitudes, understandings, and abilities that are
required to play a conscious and assertive role in their ongoing social construction of one’s
environment. It is essentially an enabling evolution that establishes the sense of self as subject, or
author, of one’s own history.

•Develop ways to sustain relations
• What is the nature of relationships that can shape and maintain a more flexible, open-ended, and
therefore, healthy, perception of oneself? It is assumed that when it is safe to be vulnerable, to
admit ignorance, and there is an expectation that the information needed will be supplied helpfully,
people can learn from one another.
•Relations to reinforce empowerment
• An interpersonal vision of empowerment first involves people being able to recognize that they have
deeper psychological capacities that transcend their conditioning, current circumstances, past
traumas and/or behavior patterns. This allows individuals to free themselves from conditioned
habits of thinking, and to form support systems capable of encouraging, enhancing and sustaining
psychological development. This is, essentially, challenging the rigidified perceptions of one self
that have been established to thwart anxiety and defend one’s (perhaps small piece of) self-esteem.
Accessing these capabilities frees people from the limitations of their prior conditioning (past),
accesses self-respect, hope and insight, thus engaging productive and assertive states of mind.
•Make a plan to build or initiate relations
• Formulate collaborative solutions to self-defined problems in living

Decrease Anxiety
•Defenses were formed in interpersonal situations, they may be
modified and reconstructed successfully in other interpersonal
situations
• The core of the IE philosophy is the pursuit of interpersonal security and the avoidance
of anxiety. These core processes are cultural (interactional) in origin and function.
• As one develops, the mechanisms (defensive structures) used to ward off the
experience of anxiety become increasingly sophisticated. Essentially, the purpose of
this system is to maintain a sense of security and self-esteem. Self-esteem is equated
with competence and personal power, thus the connection with personal empowerment,
a prerequisite for community empowerment. Therefore, it is possible that one may
utilize an approach to empowerment that works to push people away. However,
because confirmation of oneself by others plays an essential role in the development
and maintenance of self-esteem, this is a necessarily limiting approach to
empowerment.
• Identify the source common in people’s relationship patterns, self-perception and
behaviors and how interpersonal operations developed to support the self-system.
• These patterns can be adjusted within the group process.
• Through the process of “mirroring” in interpersonal relationships, people can unlock the
awareness of how reflections have sustained earlier perceptions of themselves.
• The feelings that cause anxiety will be addressed through the group process that will
focus on the ways that these patterns evolved, how they are maintained and reinforced
(conditioning/mirroring).

•Opening your mind
• When there has been a focus on strength and adaptations people can learn that in some
instances it is not they nor their self-protective mechanisms that are at fault but rather the
degree to which these have become exaggerated and the inflexibility that marks their
use. Intervention strategies based on empowerment will not only moderate exaggerated,
rigid behaviors and interactive patterns in people but will help them to add new patterns
to their repertoire of effective responses
•Seek social support
•Trust building exercises
•Being less judgmental
• The more one becomes aware about one’s own beliefs, goals, and objectives, the more
one is capable of accepting differences in others and the less one is likely to get into
conflict with others over these differences. This leads to recognition of the similarities that
connect member’s of the community to one another in healthy ways.
•Examine degree of control in relation to anxiety

Interpersonal Relationships Exercises
Alienated Outlook
Identify the source common in people’s thinking habits, relationship patterns, self-perception
and behaviors. As well as how these operations developed to support the self-(protective)-
system. These patterns can be adjusted within the group process. Through the process of
“mirroring” in interpersonal relationships, individuals unlock the awareness of how reflections
have sustained earlier perceptions of alienation. These feelings which cause anxiety will be
alleviated through the group process portion of this program that will focus on the ways these
patterns evolved, how they are maintained and reinforced (conditioning/mirroring).
Relational Context
Change the relational context to challenge the perception of threat, and the experience of
anxiety, which initially was implicitly involved in forming the symptom or behavior. When
relationships are created which allow for a sense of personal security; then old behavior (and
thinking) patterns can be assessed for their historical function and released as the threat (to
self-esteem/empowerment) underlying the anxiety level is diminished.

Community Character or Community within the Organization
Expanding Assets
•Community Character defined
• Does a community have a character? Our assumption is that the interlocking patterns of interaction inherent in a
community’s current functioning as well as in its intercultural dynamic and developmental history of interpersonal
interaction result in a character structure not dissimilar to the concept of character as conceptualized by
interpersonal theorists (Sullivan, 1953; Fromm, 1947; Cooper, 1989).
• This idea is expanded in assessing a community as a self-organizing system which is why, much like the human,
we determine the character of the community in terms of its coherence, it’s ability to integrate information from
internal and external sources, its overall ability to tolerate anxiety-provoking circumstances, and the flexibility of
its ability to allow for expanding interactive patterns of behavior.
• In a community setting a major force leading to change is available: the social exchange that takes place
between people. The change occurs primarily in the reintegration and reconfiguring (i.e., expansion of sense of
self-experience) of already existing states of self, in relation to self and to others, that community members
possess. People can mutually create new capacities to effectuate change. However, without an appropriate
environment to shape, facilitate and encourage these changes, they will either not occur or will continue to evolve
maladaptively.
•Community as a natural group
• The way people relate, the way communities operate, has been greatly affected by the possibility and actuality of
the uncontrollable nature of day-to-day life; the myriad ways we impact and are impacted by our environmental
circumstances. This profoundly impacts fundamental human needs: the need for security, for s positive sense of
identity, for a feeling of effectiveness in the world and a sense of control over the important things in one’s life, for
connections to other people, and for having a usable comprehension of reality and one’s own place in the world.
Therefore, a commitment must be made to two important principles when working in the community:
• An ecological principle: The environment plays a crucial role in creating, shaping, and maintaining personality
and problems in living.
• A Participatory principle: People are never simply observers of the data that other people provide, but are also
participants in co-creating that data (Mitchell, 1997).

• We are interested in the change and growth of people in their natural settings – that is, in their residence, at
home, in school, organizations and in their neighborhoods.
• The issues here are viewed through a perspective of community as a natural group, which over time has evolved
patterns of interacting. The range of permitted behavior is governed by a community organization. How wide the
range of behavior that can be included in the community program depends on the community’s capacity to
absorb and incorporate that energy. The information from those within it’s structure as well as from others in the
“outside” world is parallel with the ways that we view the individual.
•Synergy
• Communities already implement (although out of awareness) primary prevention/ empowerment programs. When
there is a perceived threat from inside or outside the community, the community itself seems to take on a life of
it’s own to protect the idea of it’s stable and continuing identity/character (this being the equivalent to it’s sense of
esteem or identity). A perceived threat (from inside or outside the actual community) can reach a threshold where
the community formulates a set of reactions and responses to prevent increases in a generalized sense of
anxiety. This, in turn, limits the community members' ability to actively intervene on his or her own behalf.
Therefore, members feel that they have to protect smaller and smaller “corners” of security, as if this sense
(ultimately a loss of the sense of empowerment) has diminished into a scarce resource to be hoarded and fiercely
defended, rather than a community sense to be mutually built upon and shared. Synergy poses that it is in the
practice of building and sharing that an actual community sense is built, thereby increasing, rather than depleting,
the community resources that are either inherent or possible.

•Community empowerment sustainable prevention
• The empowering action of the intervention requires a continuing attunement to the role of anxiety in affecting the
community member’s capacity to endure the conflict between their current familiarity with their circumstances,
and the creation of a more collaboratively-supported sense of self and community.
•Strengthen internal and external support
• The interlocking network of interaction must be mobilized in order for significant improvement to occur, especially
in the overall access to empowering relationships that members are able to form and maintain. Expanding the
field of inquiry into the many interlocking facets of character changes the way that people relate to others and
therefore produces a fundamental change in the community’s character. Change is produced by developing
capacities for new experiences in relating to significant people inside the community, and therefore expanding the
individual sense of self-experience inherent in the community members themselves. This underlies all aspects of
support (internal and external).
•Expand supportive relations
•Develop long term empowering relations
•Maintain these relations

Community Character or Community within the Organization
Decrease Anxiety
•Closely examine environmental factors that reinforce stress
• Cultures (which could mean families, communities or societies) differ in the definitions of which interpersonal
events are charged with anxiety. The typical methods by which people avert anxiety – the security operations of
the self-system – differ from one culture to another.
•Conjoint security operations system
• Address how programs (treatment) that rehabilitate the individual do not necessarily change the community;
leaving the person feeling changed in some ways, but powerless to change his or her environment.
• Help obtained from joining with others who share in similar problems creates a sense of empowerment. This is
different from help that is seen as given. The difference is that between a sense of control and a sense of
dependence.
•Getting comfortable with change, uncertainty, and risk
• Empowerment is not a static state but an ever-changing process within a socially dynamic and ever-changing
ecosystem. However, when a person must maintain a sense of security and self-esteem (empowerment) in the
context of chronic anxiety-provoking circumstances, this process becomes rigidified and limited.
• Successful empowerment in the social realm, insinuates that the idea of “change as a constant,” must be able to
be tolerated. If this is not the case, then preventative efforts to thwart debilitating anxiety, will work against an
externalized (or community) experience of anxiety. Such an experience cannot be tolerated if the self-protective
mechanisms which work to protect us from overwhelming anxiety are functioning as a “wall” to keep the
experience of empowerment.

•Stressors as they relate to self-system
• A person’s culture or community, has everything to do with who people are to themselves, what aspects of the
self can be allowed into awareness, and what aspects must be dissociated to protect the self from the anxiety
associated with stressors in the environment.
•Prevention in the environment
• The community is conceptualized as an entity representing the interlocking patterns of interaction representing
the individual’s who, based on the sense of security experienced from within the context they themselves sustain,
as well as external environmental impingements, respond and react to one another and the “outside world,” in
ways that operate, first and foremost, to protect an, always tentative, sense of security.
•Experiences of alternative coping (prevention) methods
• Change is difficult because abandoning the familiar patterns of relating to others, ways that work to preserve the
sense of security, produces the very sense of anxiety that the interlocking relational patterns were developed to
thwart. The sense of anxiety felt within the community members can manifest in a general sense of disruption of
the community itself. This over-riding sense of anxiety will persist until new patterns of relating to one another is
consolidated in the community. This may require that the community character itself becomes flexible enough to
allow community members to experience new feelings, maintain new perceptions, and learn new skills. As the
security operations inherent in the community character allows members of the community to expand personal
and interpersonal awareness, there will be an increased sense of flexibility in each participating member’s sense
of self and a greater flexibility in their ability to relate to each other.
•Investigate factors that provoke anxiety

Community Character Exercise
Asset Mapping
Work through an individual’s negative feelings, dysfunctional behavior, or chronic problems
by participating in "asset mapping" to assess an individual's current health state, assessing
rigidity of a self-state via preventative means to suppressing (dissociating from) anxiety-
inducing experiences. We assess “microdots” of self-esteem (empowerment) and the history
of how they have been defended. Problematic behaviors and psychological symptoms are
addressed from the perspective that they have actually been formed and maintained as
solutions (primary prevention techniques) to deeper anxieties. It is important to understand
the relational pattern from within which the symptom developed and the conditioned thinking
habits that sustain it. Behaviors (and symptoms) are recognized as forms of communication,
indicating an individual’s feeling state.

Into Action
Action/Role-Modeling with group members to participate in forming
healthy relationships outside the group context. At some point in the
program intervention homework-like assignments will be implemented
to expand personal awareness (and, hence, usefulness) of the IE
principles in the members life outside the group setting. The members
will be encouraged to recognize that the program is to be integrated
into their personal and community life and not limited to the structure of
the actual intervention.

PART ONE
The Self-System
Discuss with participants who we are and how the interpersonal model works. Also, how it translates into
community empowerment. Establish guidelines for the group. What is shared does not leave the room
and all participants receive an opportunity to share. Convey to participants that through this process a
respected mutual trust among group members is necessary. Question and answer time.
One at a time participants, stand-up, and read their card. Then as a group we try to put ourselves in the
other person's moccasins and list the personality "assets" /strengths involved in dealing with
(overcoming) this stress. Members will respond with a show of hands and then responses are tabulated
on the board. (Each participant takes turns writing these "assets" down on the board.) Active discussion
and equal contribution is important in this phase.
At the close we'll discuss how these "assets" interact with our self-system and how these strengths
create walls or fences that protect us from our environment. Members are asked to interpret these
interactions by looking within. A writing assignment is given to members, asking them to make a list of
goals structured upon these assets and deciding if they work healthily or unhealthily in daily living.
Question and answer time.
The group will close in a way that members choose.
Theoretical Constructs
Expanding assets in the Self-System increasing individual strengths - flexibility of self-system, self-
experience, individual strengths, assets and coping.
Decreasing limitations and anxiety in the Self-System decreasing rigidity of self-system, expanding
potential for experience of self, anxiety, problems, needs and defenses.

PART TWO
Greet group members and review how the self-system model works. Mirroring aspects of healthy
relationships. Role-play different scenarios and have group members pick out different assets evident in
the scripted relationship. Discuss the Inter-actional Aspects, of the interpersonal theory. Describe how
these components are utilized to form healthy supportive relationships. Question and answer time.
Break into groups of five. Members will discuss assets that they listed from their assignment. Sharing
among smaller groups and then interacting with the larger one to get an overall view from the group
about how these assets function. Build in supports both internal and external within the group context by
translating these assets to daily living.
Investigate the various ways group members can maximize their assets and reinforce their sense of
empowerment. This is achieved through using their list of assets in devising a plan to build or initiate
relationships that serve to actualize themselves in furthering their levels of empowerment.
Expanding assets in increasing social support — internal and external sense of support, increasing the
utilization of interpersonal relationships to develop, sustain and reinforce empowerment and development
of functional primary prevention practices.
Decreasing limitations and anxiety in interpersonal relationships utilizing these to reinforce internalized
support and decrease rigidity of defensive structures in social stresses.

PART THREE
Community Character
Greet group members and initiate discussion regarding the structure of their interpersonal relationships
at the present time. Examine as a group how our relations serve to strengthen our internal and external
support system. As a group discuss approaches to expand supportive relations with individuals outside
the group. Ask the question how will developing long term relations empower us? Input measures
developed by the group to maintain these relationships and cultivate them as they grow.
Look at the aspects of our environment that may reinforce stressful or anxiety provoking situations which
limit the relationship growth potential. Examine how these stresses relate to the self-system and what we
can do to prevent them from entering our environment. As a group discuss some behavior methods that
will empower us to develop and maintain supportive relationships within our community.
Devise individual and group goals to build supportive relationships within the community. Ask members to
write these goals in their own language and expand on areas that directly apply to their life. These may
or may not be reflective of members' individual goals.
Community character increasing environmental resources and the capacity for the community to provide
an environmental context for the development of empowering relationships and preventative strategies.
Community character decreasing limitations / anxiety in environmental pressures / stresses that are
associated with the rigid structure of the community itself, addressing the ways that limitations are or
have historically been reinforced within the community and develop collaborative alternatives for dealing
with a context conducive to anxiety provocation.

PART FOUR
Into Action
Greet group members and initiate discussion regarding the processes involved in building supportive
relationships. Ask members to share their list of goals. Address any shifts in behavior that members may
be experiencing as the result of working on these goals. Allow plenty of time for each individual to share
about the assets that they have which allowed them to progress toward goal fulfillment.
List steps involved in actualizing goals. Discuss the essence of this on-going process. Describe how this
process can be broken into smaller pieces. Break into dyads to discuss at 10 minute intervals what we
want to accomplish. Then rotate so everyone has a chance to share. Practice active listening and goal
presentation. That is one person is silent and attentive while the other is describing his / her goals and
the progress involved. Then the roles are reversed.
Share the effects that this experience may have had on the group members. Describe whether it
strengthened or deepened their level of understanding of the group and personal goals. Decide where as
a group they would like to go.
Personal empowerment moving toward interpersonal empowerment.
Self-sustained prevention moving toward community-supported prevention.

Interpersonal Empowerment
It is important to note that pragmatism; pluralism and egalitarianism are fundamental to the
interpersonal tradition. Our open-ended approach to the search for personal and
interpersonal empowerment models the concept of uncertainty; that is, we are collaborators
on this search, and not the ultimate authority. We will continue to develop and refine our
views of the IE encounter, while being always respectful of the fact that actual experience in
the community between equals has to take precedence over theoretical constructs. Primary
to our program are three intersecting areas: Interpersonal Theory, Empowerment, and
Primary Prevention.
What is Interpersonal Theory?
The principles of Interpersonal Theory are as follows:
• The essence of mental health problems is problems in living.
• .Personality structure and dynamics are essentially a result of interpersonal relationships.
• .Everyone is much more simply human than otherwise.
• .Common symptoms do not necessarily have common causes.
• .Cultural factors have a vital influence on personality development.
• .Normal development requires maintenance and enhancement of self-esteem.
• .People are not free to change until they are free to be what they are.
• .Growth requires movement in the direction of an undistorted view of the self and the
world.
• .Anxiety is a debilitating state that people seek to avoid.
• .Facilitators of change and growth are participant/observers in the intervention setting.
• The stages of development are continuous throughout life.

What is Empowerment?
Empowerment, from the Interpersonal Empowerment (IE) model perspective, is defined as a
combination of three intersecting components.
• The first is the development of a more positive and flexible sense of self, nurtured and
supported, in the context of social relatedness.
• The second is construction of a more critical or analytical understanding of one’s social
environment, which includes personal relationships, family, and society as a whole.
• The final component is cultivation of individual and collective resources for social action.
The core of this process involves the creation of relationships that are able to support new,
adaptive and flexible experiences of oneself in the context of relationships, in general,
and the larger society.
Empowerment is obtained by whatever means we have found necessary to protect our
personal sense of self-esteem and competence. Viewing this aspect of one’s sense of self
(out of the possibility of many potential self-experiences [e.g. “roles]), requires us to shift our
thinking concerning health and pathology. We consider a person’s ability to maintain this
sense of empowerment an indication of the potential for health, no matter how limited a
person’s current means of self-protection may be.

What is Primary Prevention?
Primary Prevention has a specific definable characteristics:
• It is proactive.
• It deals with large numbers of people not yet affected with the conditions to be prevented.
• It involves teaching people adaptive skills.
• It sometimes does not deal directly with the people who might not be at risk – it may be
concerned with mass media, the law and changes in social/administrative policy.
• It may involve persons who are not (and need not be) traditional mental health
professionals.
According to Albee (1984), successful prevention requires a series of steps, beginning with
careful epidemiological study of the distribution of disturbance leading to:
• The identification of the noxious agents responsible.
• The sources of effective resistance, and/or
• The ways of preventing transmission.
Prevention programs attempt to reduce stress (anxiety), to strengthen competence (self-
esteem), and to enhance support systems.
Primary Prevention addresses the ways that we internally thwart, or ward off, our awareness
of anxiety is considered a prevention technique. It is a form of primary prevention in that we
are able to detect subtle signals in the environment that alert us to the potential threat of
anxiety. We utilize the protective mechanisms necessary to avert actual awareness of the
affective state of anxiety. We believe that as a result of the importance of this self-protection
we must focus on people’s reactions to various stressful situations, and that those problems
in living are due to faulty habit patterns in dealing with stress. Changing these patterns
occurs through reeducation.

The Facilitator’s Role
The relationships that IE staff members form with community members is one of active engagement
(participant/observation). Our stance is to constantly encourage collaboration among all individuals
involved in the intervention, community members, IE staff as well as staff from other community service
organizations. We encourage each member to express his or her sense of self and to increase
awareness of changes in each person’s perception of him or herself and the contexts within which that
this sense is felt to be flexible or rigid. Within this perspective it is possible that the arena of focus will
shift back and forth between the relationships that members are forming within the structure if the
workshop itself and their lives in the community, depending on the best perspective on some facet of
themselves in the context of the over-riding community character (atmosphere).
Thus, the facilitator’s role is to:
• Develop respectful and healthy interpersonal relationships
• Model a healthy level of self-esteem and confidence
• Support and understand without fostering dependency
• Provide interpersonal mirroring which reflects healthy assets in people
• Show vulnerability in sharing with others as it relates to interpersonal growth
• Talking through fears common in the real world
• Help devise steps to improve group interactions
• Motivate individuals to build healthier and more supportive interpersonal relationships
• Increase cohesion between group members through open-sharing
• Raise and maintain their autonomy by encouraging outreach

Conclusion
For the IE intervention, the goals of the intervention and the experience of the
implementation process are intimately entwined. Sullivan’s (1953) saw the goal
of the practical application of the interpersonal theory to be aimed at “increasing
a person’s skill in living” (p. 175). This includes helping people experience who
they are in the context of their personal lives and interpersonal context while
fostering self-knowledge (Wachtel & Lichtenberg, 1986). This suggest that the
intervention is effective to the point that it helps people function in their social,
cultural, community surround.
The criterion of empowerment is progress toward a salient goal for group
members – interpersonal behavior change and emotional growth in the direction
of individual and shared ideals. This culminating in group member’s ability to
experience a psychological sense of community.

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