Julie’s Ideas Blog 14: Internal Ego States and Decision Making

In Hay (1992) I introduced the notion of internal ego states and used this idea to explain NOICISED, under a heading of Ego States and Decision Making.  I explained that NOICISED was a word I had invented on the basis that it is DECISION spelled backwards. I wrote that I linked together thinking, problem solving and decision making because these separate elements are so often generated as part of the process containing all three. Decision making involves selecting the course of action from alternatives (including doing nothing is a course of action). The stimulus for making the decision is generally the fact that we have a problem to solve. Making our selection requires us to think, so the better we understand our thinking processes the more scope we have to improve our decision-making. This is more likely to happen if we use a structured approach that involves all of our internal ego states.

​That simple approach that I recommended was:

​Need	​Why do I need to make a decision?
​	Why now?
​Objective	​What do I want to achieve:
	​in the short term?
	​    in the long term?
​Information	​What information do I have:
	​about the problem?
	​about possible decisions?
	What information do I still lack?
	How can I get it?
​Strategies	How can I achieve what I want?
	​How else?
	And how else?
	Are these the only options?
Investigate	​What is good about each option?​
	​What are the snags with each option?
	How might I get round the snags?
Choose	​Which option is most likely to help me meet my objective?
	​Are there clear second and third choices?
​Ego States:
​Internal Parent	​What does my previous experience tell me about each option?​
​Internal Child	How do I feel about each option?
Internal Adult?	What is the probability of success with each option
​Decide	Which action am I most likely to be successful with?
	​​What action(s) will I take to ensure I reach my objective?

In 1999 (Hay, 1999) I linked NOICISED to the ego states in terms of the 3 Es - Experience, Emotion and Evaluation. I explained that these were simplifications of the three principal parts of personality as defined within transactional analysis. Experience related to Parent, originally copied as we grew up from the parental figures around us; Emotion related to Child, which is our store of our own responses to the world; and Evaluation related to Adult, which is the part of us that processes what is going on in the present moment.

References

Hay, Julie (1992) Transactional Analysis for Trainers Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill (currently published as second edition, 2009, Hertford: Sherwood Publishing)

Hay, Julie (1999) NOICISED and Decision Making INTAND Newsletter 7:4 7-9

​© 2018 Julie Hay​
 
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