The document details Eric Berne's framework for recognizing ego states through four types of diagnosis: behavioral, social, historical, and phenomenological. Behavior is analyzed through observable traits, while social interactions provide feedback on one’s own ego states. Historical context adds depth by exploring childhood influences and past dynamics, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of a person's current ego state.

1. Recognizing ego states

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. Introduction
• Eric Berne listed four ways
of recognizing ego states. He
called them
– Behavioral diagnosis.
– Social diagnosis.
– Historical diagnosis.
– Phenomenological diagnosis.

4. Introduction
• Eric Berne suggested that it
was best to use more than
one of these ways at a time.
• For a complete diagnosis, all
four should be used, in the
order.
• Behavioral diagnosis is the
most important of the four.
• The other three act as
checks upon it.

5. Behavioral diagnosis

6. Behavioral diagnosis
• In behavioral diagnosis, you
judge which ego state a
person is in by observing his
behavior.
• As you do so, you can see or
hear:
– Words.
– Tones.
– Gestures.
– Postures.
– Facial Expressions.

7. Standard clues
• Its traditional for books
about TA to give tables of
standard clues for
behavioral diagnosis.
• For instance, wagging
finger is said to fit with
controlling parent.
• But this is not what ego
state model says.

8. Standard clues
• When I say I am “ in my child”,
I mean I am behaving,
thinking and feeling as the
child I once was – not just like
any child.
• It follows that for a reliable
behavioral diagnosis of my
Adapted Child ego state, you
would need to know how I
looked and sounded back in
my childhood when I was
obeying my parents.

9. Standard clues
• The set of behavioral
clues that define my
Adapted Child or Free
Child will be different
from yours, because we
were different children.
• Because we had
different parents, we
will each have our own
unique set of behaviors
to mark Controlling or
Nurturing parent.

10. Standard clues
• Does this mean that tables of standard clues are
useless?
• No. There are some kinds of behavior that are
typical to children in general and same with
Parent and Adult.
• Instead of using standard clues, it is better to
draw up your own.

11. Activity
• Take a sheet of paper and
draw six vertical columns on
it.
• Head the left hand column
“Clues from “. Head the
other five columns with the
five functional ego state
labels you used in ego gram
– CP, NP,A,FC and AC.

12. Activity
• Go back to the column
headed “Clues from –”. Evenly
spaced down it, write five
headings – words, tones,
Gestures, Postures and facial
expressions.
• Draw in horizontal lines so
that you finish up with give
empty boxes, down each
column.
• The idea is that you fill in the
behavioral clues for yourself in
each column.

13. Standard clues
• Sometimes when you are
observing my behavioral
clues, you may need to
ask more questions to
help you judge which of
my ego states a particular
behavior fits in.

14. Standard clues
• Suppose you see me sitting in a
drooping pose. I am leaning
forward, head in hands. The
corner of my mouth are turned
down. I am sighing deeply, and
my eyes filled with tears.
• From all these clues, you
gather that I am expressing
sadness. But what ego state
am I in?

15. Standard clues
• Perhaps I have just heard that a close
relative has died? My sadness then would
be an appropriate response to the here and
now, hence Adult.
• Or I go back in contact with some memory
of a loss I experienced when I was a child,
and which I have never let myself be sad
about until now. In that case, my feeling
expression is from free Child.
• Still another possibility is that I am replaying
a negative Adapted Child pattern in which I
droop and get sad as a way of manipulating
the people around me.

16. Standard clues
• To back up your assessment of
my behavioral clues, you may
want to ask questions about
how other people relate to me.
• You may ask about my personal
history and what my parents
were like.
• And you may explore what I can
re – experience from my own
childhood.

17. Social diagnosis

18. Social Diagnosis
• The idea behind social
diagnosis is that other people
will often relate to me from an
ego state that compliments
that one I am using.
• Therefore, by noting the ego-
state they respond from, I can
get a check on the ego state I
have come from.

19. Social Diagnosis
• For instance, if I address you from
my Parent ego state, chances are
you will respond to me from your
Child.
• If I open communication with you
from my Adult, you will likely to
come back also in Adult.
• And if I approach you from my
Adapted Child, you may well
respond from your Parent.

20. Social Diagnosis
• Thus if I realize the people often
seem to be giving me Child
responses, I have reasons to think
that I may often be addressing
them from Parent.
• Maybe I am a supervisor and find
my supervisees either crawl to me
or find ways to sabotaging my
orders behind my back.
• Both of these look like Adapted
Child responses.

21. Social Diagnosis
• Possibly, then I am being more of a
Controlling Parent with them than I
had realized.
• If I want to change the situation, I can
list the Controlling parent behaviors I
have been suing in the work situations.
• Then I can experiment Adult behavior
instead.
• My supervises’ ego state responses to
me will give me a social diagnosis of
how far I managed to change from my
parental approach.

22. Activity
• Think of a recent occasion when
someone seemed to be
responding to you from their child
• What behavioral clues did the
other person show which you
interpreted as indicating they
were in child?
• Did you invite this response by
coming from your controlling
Parent or Nurturing Parent?

23. Activity
• If so, look at your list of behavioral
clues and pick out how the other
person saw and heard you in
Parent.
• How might you have altered your
own behavior to invite them to
respond from a different ego state?
• Do the same exercise for recent
occasion when someone seemed
to be responding to your from their
adult or their parent.

24. Historical
diagnosis

25. Historical Diagnosis
• In historical Diagnosis, we ask
questions about how the person
was as a child.
• We ask about the person’s
parents and parent figures.
• This lets us double check on our
impressions of the person’s
functional ego states.
• It also lets us know about ego
state structure.

26. Historical Diagnosis
Historical analysis deals with
both process and content.

27. Historical Diagnosis
• I might see you in a group,
hunching forward with a
frown on your face.
• Your hand is up covering
your eyes.
• I hear you say “ I am
confused. I cant think.”
• Behaviorally, I judge you to
be in Adapted Child.

28. Historical Diagnosis
• For historical diagnosis, I might ask
you “ How did you feel as a child
when somebody asked you to
think”.
• Or perhaps might say “ To me, you
look like a six year old now. Do you
connect with anything in your
childhood?”.
• You might recall “ Yes, Dad used to
badger me to read books, then
laugh because I couldn’t get all
words right. So I used to play stupid
just to spite him.”

29. Historical Diagnosis
• At another moment, you may be
leaning back in your chair.
• Tilting your head back, you look
down your nose at your neighbor.
• You tell her “What you have just
said isn’t right. Here’s how things
really are..”
• Perhaps, she cower down,
hunches her shoulders and raises
her eyebrows in Adapted Child
style.

30. Historical Diagnosis
• Now I have both behavioral and
social clues that you are in
Controlling Parent.
• For a historical Check, I might ask “
Will you freeze your position for a
second? Did either of your parents
sit like that when they were telling
you how things were?”.
• Maybe you burst out laughing and
reply “ Yeah, Its dad again.”

31. Historical Diagnosis
• Your report thus give me a double
check on my behavioral diagnosis.
• Seeing you showing the set of
behaviors which I think fit with your
Adapted Child ego state, I have
confirmed that your internal
experience is a replay of the way you
responded to parental pressures in
your childhood.
• As you show parental clues
behaviorally, your report to me that
you are copying the behaviors of one
of your own parents.

32. Activity
• Look back at the list of behavioral
clues you have drawn out for
yourself.
• Use historical diagnosis to check
the clues for each ego states.
• As you go through the CP and NP
clues, find if you recall what
parent or parent figure you are
copying with each behavior. What
are the copied thoughts and
feelings which accompany the
behaviors?

33. Activity
• For Adapted Child and
Free Child clues, recall
situations in your
childhood when you
behaved in that same way.
• How old were you? What
were you thinking and
feeling at these times?

34. Activity
• For Adult, check that behavior you
have listed are not a replay of your
childhood nor a parental behavior
you have swallowed whole.
• You may find that you want now to
shift some of your behavioral clues
to a different column.
• For instance, some of the clues you
first listed for Adult may turn out
to fit better in Adapted Child.

35. Phenomenological diagnosis

36. Phenomenological Diagnosis
Sometimes, I may re – experience the
past instead of just remembering it.

37. Phenomenological Diagnosis
“ …. Phenomenological validation only
occurs…If the individual can re –
experience the whole ego state in full
intensity with little weathering.”
- Eric Berne

38. Phenomenological Diagnosis
• Suppose you had just recalled
the time when Dad badgered
you to read and then laughed
at you for getting the words
wrong.
• If you and I were working in
therapy, I might invite you to
get back into that childhood
scene.

39. Phenomenological Diagnosis
• Perhaps you put Dad in
front of you in
imagination and tell him
what you couldn’t tell
him when you were six.
• You might find yourself
first whining to Dad.

40. Phenomenological Diagnosis
• Then you might re – contact
furious anger and start yelling
“This is not fair”, while beating
on a cushion in the way you
would have liked to beat on
Dad.
• You and I have a
phenomenological diagnosis of
part of the content of your
Child ego states.

41. Phenomenological Diagnosis
• Berne used the word
“Phenomenological” here in a
sense which is different from
its usual dictionary definition.
• He never explained why he
had chosen to do this.
• Simply register Berne’s
technical meaning as
described above.

42. Ego state diagnosis in practice

43. Ego state diagnosis in practice
• Ideally, we would use
all four ways of
diagnosis.
• But in practice, this is
often impossible.
• When it is, we simply
diagnose as best we
can.

44. Ego state diagnosis in practice
When we use TA in work
with organizations,
education or
communication training, or
simply to help our own
everyday relations with
others, we need to rely
mainly on behavioral
diagnosis.

45. Ego state diagnosis in practice
• Social diagnosis gives
us some backup.
• Even in TA therapy,
behavioral diagnosis is
the first and most
important way of
recognizing ego states.

46. Activity
• To develop your effectiveness
in using TA, practice
continually refining your
behavioral diagnosis,
• Keep referring back to the
table of ego state clues you
have made out for yourself,
revising it as you become
more and more aware of your
own ego state shifts.

47. Activity
• If you have the equipment,
make audio tapes or video
tapes of yourself.
• Analyze your ego states clues
second by second.
• Relate your changes in words,
voice tone and body signals if
you have video, to what you
were experiencing internally.

48. Activity
• Get into the habit of doing
behavioral analysis when you
are communicating with
others.
• Do it when you are in
meetings or classes.
• Do it when you are talking
with your spouse, your boss,
your employee.
• Keep track of other person’s
ego state shifts and your own.
• This may feel awkward at first.
• Persist until it becomes
second nature.

49. Activity
• Take every available
chance to check your
behavioral diagnosis
against historical and
phenomenological
evidence.
• But only do this with
others if you have their
explicit agreement in
advance.
• The more often you check
in this way, the more
accurate will your
behavioral diagnosis
become.

50. Executive and
real self

51. Introduction
• For simplicity, we
usually assume that a
person can be in only
one ego state at a time.
• In reality, it is possible
for someone to behave
in a way that fits one
ego state, while he
experiences himself as
being in a different ego
state.

52. Example
• Imagine that I am at work,
discussing a planned
assignment with a colleague.
• For the first few minutes of
the discussion, I have my
attention fully on the task in
hand.
• If you were watching my
behavioral signals, you
would make a secure
judgment that I am in Adult.
• My own internal experience
also is that I am in Adult –
responding to the here and
now, exchanging and
assessing information.

53. Example
• But as the talk goes longer and
longer, I begin to feel bored.
• I say to myself in my head “ I
wish I were out of here. It is
such a nice day outside – I did
rather be taking a walk in the
fresh air. But I don’t suppose I
can…”.
• Now I am experiencing my
child.
• I am replaying times from my
school days when I had sat
indoors in class, feeling bored
with the lesson and wishing I
could go out and play.

54. Example
• Bored though I feel, I keep
on with the job in hand.
• As you observe my behavior,
you see me continuing to
exchange information.
• Thus outwardly, I am still
behaving in Adult. But my
behavior no longer fits with
the ego state I am
experiencing.
• To describe this situation,
Berne suggested a
distinction between the
executive and real self.

55. Real and executive
• When an ego state is
dictating a person’s
behavior, that ego state
is said to have executive
power.
• When a person
experiences himself to
be in a particular ego
state, we say he is
experiencing that ego
state as his real self.

56. Real and executive
• Most often, the ego state with
executive power will also be
experienced as the real self.
• In the example, initially I had
executive power in Adult and
simultaneously experienced
Adult as my real self.
• But then, as I began to feel
bored, I shifted my experience
of real self into my Child ego
state.
• Nevertheless, I continued to
act in a way that was
consistent with Adult.
• Thus I kept executive power in
the latter ego state.

57. Real and executive
• Suppose my work colleague
had kept up the discussion
for even longer, I might the
have yawned and lost track
of what he said.
• As he waited for me to reply
to one of his points, I might
have blushed and said “Oh,
Sorry, I am afraid, I wasn’t
with you”.
• Now I would have executive
power in Child while also
experiencing Child as real
self.

58. Activity
• Make up at least three
more examples which
illustrate someone
having executive power
in one ego state while
experiencing a different
ego state as her real
self.
• Do you recall any
examples of this from
your own experience in
the past week?

59. Incongruity

60. Incongruity
• The division between
executive and real self
obviously poses extra
problem for ego state
diagnosis.
• Since the ego state with
executive power is the
one which determines
behavior, you would
expect that the person’s
behavioral clues would
indicate that ego state.

61. Incongruity
• So long as that ego state is
being experienced also as
real self, your behavioral
diagnosis will give you an
accurate view of the
person’s internal
experiences.
• But what if the person then
switches into a different ego
state as real self, while still
keeping executive power in
the original ego states?
• How can you detect this
using behavioral diagnosis?

62. Incongruity
• The fact is that
sometimes you can’t
detect it.
• This is most likely at
moments when the
person’s overall
behavior is relatively
inactive.

63. Incongruity
• For example, you may see me
sitting listening to a lecture.
• I am sitting upright, not moving
much and not saying anything.
• At first guess, you might judge
me behaviorally as Adult.
• But internally, I might be in a
Child day dream.
• Without further enquiry, you
have no means of knowing this.

64. Incongruity
• More often, the person does
show behavioral clues to
indicate what is going on.
• When someone has executive
power in a different ego state
from that experienced in real
self, there is a split between his
behavior and his internal
experience.

65. Incongruity
• Externally he usually shows this in the
following way: his most obvious
behavioral signals will indicate the ego
state that has executive power.
• But at the same time, he will exhibit
other and more subtle signals which
do not match those of the executive
ego state.
• Instead they fit the ego state he is
experiencing as real self.
• In TA language, we say then that his
behavior shows incongruity.

66. Incongruity
• When I was having the discussion
with my colleagues at work, my
most obvious behaviors matched
the ego states I had in executive
throughout, Adult.
• But if you had watched and
listened to me with close
attention, you would have
noticed some changes at the
moment I become bored and
shifted into Child as my real self.

67. Incongruity
• Up to that point, the pitch of
my voice had varied noticeably
through my sentences. Now, it
become monotonous.
• My gaze, which until then had
been switching regularly
between the work document
and my colleagues face, now
lost regularly focus and stared
at one point on the table.

68. Incongruity
• These incongruities would
help you judge that I had
shifted my experience of
real self out of Adult and
into Child.
• Recognizing incongruity is
one of the most important
skills you can develop as a
user of TA.

69. Berne’s energy theory

70. Berne’s Energy Theory
Eric Berne developed a
theoretical explanation of
what happens when we
shift executive power and
our sense of real self
between one ego state
and another.

71. Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne followed Freud in
hypothesizing the concept
of psychic energy or
cathexis.
• He suggested that this
energy exist in three forms.
– Bound.
– Unbound.
– Free.

72. Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne followed Freud in
hypothesizing the concept of
psychic energy or cathexis.
• He suggested that this energy
exist in three forms.
– Bound.
– Unbound.
• The additional term “Active
Cathexis” is applied to the sum
of unbound plus free cathexis.

73. Berne’s Energy Theory
• To illustrate the difference
between these three forms of
cathexis, Berne used the
metaphor of a monkey in a tree.
• When the monkey is sitting on a
high branch, it possess potential
energy – the energy that would
be released if the monkey fell to
the ground.
• This potential energy is analogous
to bound cathexis.

74. Berne’s Energy Theory
• If the monkey then does
fall off the branch, the
potential energy is
released as kinetic
energy.
• This illustrates the
nature of unbound
cathexis.

75. Berne’s Energy Theory
• However, a monkey is a
living organism. Rather
than just falling off the
branch, it can exercise the
choice of jump to the
ground.
• Berne suggests that this
voluntary use of energy is
analogous to free cathexis.

76. Berne’s Energy Theory
• Each ego state is
envisaged as having a
boundary.
• Free cathexis can move
readily between one ego
state and another across
these boundaries.

77. Berne’s Energy Theory
• In addition, each ego state
contains a certain measure of
energy which is resident within
its boundary.
• If that energy is not being used at
any given moment, it
corresponds to bound cathexis.
• When the resident energy is
bought into use, the bound
cathexis is converted to unbound
cathexis.

78. Berne’s Energy Theory
• Berne hypothesized that an ego
state will take over executive
power when it is the one in which
the sum of unbound plus free
cathexis (Active cathexis) is
greatest at a given moment.
• The ego state experienced as real
self will be the one which at a
particular moment has the
greatest amount of free cathexis.

79. Berne’s Energy Theory
• At the beginning of my
discussion at work, I had
executive power in Adult and
also experienced Adult as my
real self.
• We can infer therefore, that I
had the highest active cathexis
and highest free cathexis in
Adult during this time.

80. Berne’s Energy Theory
• When I started paying
attention to feeling bored, I
move some free cathexis
into child.
• I continued doing so until
that ego state came to
contain higher free cathexis
than either my Adult or my
parent.

81. Berne’s Energy Theory
• At that point, I begin experiencing
Child as my real self.
• But I kept executive power in Adult,
showing that I still had the highest
total active cathexis in my Adult ego
state.
• If the discussion had gone more
longer, I might have unbound more
and more of the bound cathexis
resident in child until finally that ego
state had more active cathexis than
Adult and so took over executive
power.

82. Berne’s Energy Theory
• It is possible at times for a
person to have some active
cathexis is all the three ego
states at once.
• For instance, I might
continue to keep executive
power in Adult, exchanging
technical information with
my colleagues.

83. Berne’s Energy Theory
• While doing so, I might also
unbind some cathexis in Parent
and start criticizing myself
internally for not
understanding the task well
enough.
• At the same time, I might
unbind some child cathexis
and begin feeling ashamed
that I was not complying with
those parental demands.

84. Thank You

85. 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.