Julie’s Ideas Blog 38: Script and Autonomy Matrices

In Hay (1995) I included the following diagram of a script matrix, emphasising that whenever we draw the matrix it is a good idea to include the aspiration arrow.  It is also important that we show it extending above the height of the caregivers, to signal that we can grow beyond any limitations they may have had.
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Script Matrix

I also wrote that we choose our scripts, explaining that:

“ …  this script matrix has dotted lines from the caregivers, and that these do not reach the individual.  This is to reinforce the notion that our script messages are our interpretations and were generally picked up at the ulterior, or psychological, level.  Whatever the caregiver did or said, they did not insert the messages into us - we interpreted and we decided.
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We made up our own minds about the script messages.  We can therefore change our minds.  This is the decisional nature of TA.  Physis is our own natural urge to grow and develop and to do so we can change old decisions and make new ones.

The reason we fail to make new decisions sometimes is that we are in trance-ference (transference) and countertrance-ference (countertransference).  We have hypnotised ourselves when we were young and now we continue to put ourselves into trance so that we regress and repeat old patterns.  In trance-ference we hallucinate that we and other people in the present are really in the past.  In counter-transference they do the same to us.”

​By the 2nd edition of the same book (Hay, 2012) I had also introduced the autonomy matrix, as shown below.  Putting the parents/caregivers below the child gives a very different impression – now they are holding the child up supportively rather than pushing the child down. Also, thanks to a comment made by Trudi Newton, I have added the aspiration arrows for the caregivers as well. ​

Autonomy Matrix

References

​Hay, Julie (1995) Donkey Bridges for Developmental TA: Making transactional analysis memorable and accessible Watford: Sherwood
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Hay, Julie (2012) Donkey Bridges for Developmental TA: Making transactional analysis memorable and accessible 2nd edition Hertford: Sherwood

​© 2018 Julie Hay​
 
​Julie is a fan of open access publishing so feel free to reproduce any of these blogs as long as you still attribute it to her.
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