Parent and Teacher Guideline for
Gender Dysphoric Youth
PAC- The Parent, Adult and Child Ego-States
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In the PAC model, Parent, Adult, and Child are parts of each individual’s mind. Addressing an individual’s ego state may help identify the deficiency. Are they acting like they did when they were a child, like a past parental figure who was a critical parent, or are they acting as an adult, addressing issues in the here and now? This psychoanalytical model, devised by Erik Berne, is called the PAC model (for Parent, Adult, Child ego-states). Teaching a child this PAC model helps them gain control of themselves and harness their potential. Nomenclature in TA dictates that the ego-states are capitalized to distinguish them from real people.
THE PARENT state is very much like your mother and father or whoever raised you. This part of your personality uses words like ‘should,” “don’t,” “have to,” “you better,” and so on. The Parent part of you is important; when it works well, it is a source of protection and caring. However, when it is not working well, it can cloud thinking, preventing you from discovering who you really are. It may, for instance, only let you be aware of what your Mother and Father, significant adults, church, society, teachers, and Beyoncé believe to be right. Many of these beliefs and values may not be right for you in your present life. And many of them may be just right.
THE ADULT state is the part of your personality that acts like a computer. It is non-emotional, non-judgmental, factual, and logical. If the computer has the wrong information, garbage will come out.
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THE CHILD state is the part of you that is like you when you were a little person, about seven years old and younger. This little person in you has many feelings. Some of these feelings are real, but others may be substitute feelings. The feelings allowed in a family or culture determine how a child can express their feelings. Anger may be a substitute for sadness or vice versa. Also, people are often expected to cover up their uncomfortable feelings with a smile, called a gallows smile.
If you ask yourself what your favorite lousy feeling is – the one you experience over and over and hang onto no matter what - that is the Adapted Child. The Adapted Child is the state that can either comply or rebel. The Free Child experiences real feelings and comprises temperament and a person’s natural disposition. Everyone has the potential of a fully formed seed, like an acorn, growing tall with help from the sun. Trees grown in shade are spindly and small. People who grow up under warped thinking and withheld love will think smaller, especially regarding intimacy.
Figure 4. PAC
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This diagram helps the individual visualize their own mental processes. The Adult is the ego-state I want to work from. Caring and contentious relationships happen when individuals step out of the Child and assert “what they know.” The groupthink, the confluence felt by the Adapted Child, is one part of the Child, where the individual lets others think for her. The other part of the Child is the Free Child, who asserts their own thinking, called the “little professor” in full autonomy.
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Negative messages from the parent’s Child ego-state are examples of injunctions. The injunction is a message given to the child on how he can expect to receive strokes from Mother and Father. In the diagram of ego-states, in the PAC model, Parent, Adult, and Child are parts of each individual’s personality. The Adult is advised by the Parent and Child ego-states. One strives to remain an autonomous Adult, not too emotional, but intuitive and spontaneous. The Parent, Adult, and Child ego state model is generalizable in language that can be understood by most of the population. The Critical Parent is the place in the mind where rules that keep us safe reside. The Critical or Controlling Parent shows genuine concern but does not encourage innovation. Both the Nurturing Parent and the Controlling Parent are beneficial. One positive aspect of the Nurturing Parent is messaging that encourages us to take care of ourselves over others for a change. Other positive aspects are permissions to be less critical and more innovative.
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The basic aim of therapy is to enlarge self-awareness and aid the individual to observe the development of the emerging ego. Good therapy enlarges self-awareness by means of clarifying inner self-defeating conflicts which have existed because the individual has been forced to block self-awareness at earlier times. When a person excludes an ego-state, such as the Nurturing Parent, the self-care ego-state, this loss of awareness is called Exclusion. When an individual is working with a model that is based on an Adult (the correct way to function) but is contaminated by the Child ego-state, this is called Contamination, a not-so-good way to function. Contamination is an adult who uses cocaine at the office and doesn’t think about the consequences. To contaminate the Adult is to let another ego-state take power; to exclude an ego-state is to obliterate part of your thinking.[106]
From the PAC analysis of ego states, I learn what is required to help me gain autonomy from past rules that keep me stuck.
THE SELF is You among the Ego States
Figure 5. Self and Self awareness
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The CEO of your behavior, yourself, is constantly advised in a dialogue among the ego states below conscious awareness. This diagram of TA psychology can help individuals visualize the parts of their personality that they might not think about otherwise.