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DanQ  ·  4345 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Most lives are lived by default

It's not so simple as that, Berne and his followers would say. Script-writing, especially as a child, is largely unconscious and based upon our experience of our own mental state and the state of those upon whom we depend. To take a simple (but highly significant) example, a child who learns that he or she can not depend upon his or her caregivers will learn to be distrustful or even paranoid, and this will shape their understanding of other people for the rest of their life, and will be a hard belief to shake. You might expect, then, that such a person would as an adult be self-reliant to an un-necessary extreme, and hold value statements like "You've got to look after number one" and "Charity begins at home". This may even shape parts of their life script, such as by influencing them to favour colder, more-distant romantic relationships, or to target careers which promote independent work over teamwork.

Our ability to challenge our own scripts might be likened to writing, I suppose. There are certainly therapists from schools such as CBT who might say that to change your own behaviour or feelings to something "preferable" requires that one is able to make a convincing alternative story for oneself. Maybe that's a little like "writing" yourself a script.

But hey: for every psychologist who proposes one model of our cognitive development, you'll find two who propose conflicting theories. I just thought it was interesting how closely the article mirrored some of the things that Berne wrote about in The Psychology of Human Destiny (along with lots of examples of script archetypes that he believes that we're taught, and pass on, through the tropes in our fairy tales and other stories).