Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bunny!vaxine!valideast!chb
From: chb@valideast.UUCP (Charlie Berg)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: superego/ego/id : some general questions
Message-ID: <231@valideast.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 88 04:51:39 GMT
References: <6171@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2232@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Reply-To: chb@valideast.UUCP (Charlie Berg)
Distribution: sci
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In article <2232@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
>
>In Transactional Analysis, the Parent, Adult and Child roughly correspond
>to the Superego, Ego and Id, respectively.  However, the two systems are
>sufficiently disparate that the correspondence isn't very useful.
>
>
>-- 
>The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@TTI.COM)   Illegitimati Nil
>Citicorp(+)TTI                                           Carborundum
>3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (213) 452-9191, x2483
>Santa Monica, CA  90405 {csun|philabs|psivax|trwrb}!ttidca!hollombe


Oops.  Sorry.  I didn't think your statement that the Parent, Adult, and
Child corresponding to Id, Ego, and Superego rang true, so I went back
and checked.  My source is "Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy", by
E. Berne (my edition is Grove Press 1961).  I make 3 quotes from this:

"It will be demonstrated that Parent, Adult, and Child are NOT [my
emphasis] concepts like Ego, Id, and Superego, or Jungian constructs,
but phenomenological realities..." (pg. 24)

later, in defining "ego states" (Parent Adult, and Child)...

"The term "ego state" is intended merely to denote states of mind and
their related patterns of behavior as they occur in nature, and
AVOIDS...USE OF CONSTRUCTS (again, my emphasis) such as
....'superego'....".  (pg. 30)

Finally, (on pg. 244)
"Freud does not raise any question of systematic phenomonology, and it
is here that structural analysis can usefully fill a gap in
psychological theory, just as transactional analysis fills a gap in
social theory..."

I think that Berne's work was a behaviorist-like response to the
criticisms against Freud's introspective techniques, i.e. "let's only
deal with the observable".

P.S.  Any truth to the rumor that Berne developed his theory so he could
be come famous and reject invitation to join the Northwestern U.S.
branch of the A.P.A., after they initially rejected HIM for (supposedly)
anti-semitic reasons?


			Charlie Berg
			Valid Logic Systems, PCB Division
			Chelmsford, MA.
			(617) 256-2300
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