Explain Ego states described by Paul Ferden

Explain Ego states described by Paul Ferden.

Ans.    Paul Ferden coined the term “ego state.” Ego state is a psychological state of mind. It reflects one’s way of thinking, feeling and behaving at any given time.

TA is based on the assumption that a person has three ego states: parent, adult and child. When two people interact with each other, they interact from one of these three psychological positions or ego states.

The Three Ego States of TA

1.      The Parent Ego State: The parent ego is the ‘taught’ ego state. It includes all the attitudes and behaviors that an individual learnt as a child from emotionally significant older people. It is made up of all the messages that one received as a child from authority figures such as parents, teachers, older siblings etc.

The Parent ego state represents the part of a person’s personality that is authoritative, protective, controlling, nurturing, critical, and righteous.

There are two aspects of the parent ego state – the nurturing parent and the critical or controlling parent.

(a)     The nurturing parent is that part of a person that Is understanding and caring about other people. It is encouraging, loving and warm. It protects and nurtures.

(b)     The controlling parent criticizes, makes rules, gives commands and punishes.

2.      The Adult Ego State:

The adult ego state represents the mature, unemotional, rational, and objective part of a person’s personality. It attempts to make informed decisions by seeking facts, processing data and estimating probabilities. Some of the characteristics of the adult ego state are:

(a)     It gathers relevant information, carefully analyzes it, generates alternatives, and makes logical choices.

(b)     It views people as equal, worthy and responsible human beings. Hence its dealings with people is characterized by fairness and objectivity.

(c)     It evokes behavior that would be described simply as logical, reasonable, rational, factual, calculating and unemotional. It thinks before acting.

3.      The Child Ego State:

The child ego state represents the childish, dependent, and immature part of a person’s personality. It may be spontaneous, dependent, creative, or rebellious. The child ego state desires approval from others and seeks immediate rewards. This ego state develops out of one’s childhood experiences.

There are usually two aspects of the child-ego state – the natural child and the adapted child.

(a)     The natural child is spontaneous, energetic, curious, loving  and uninhibited. It transacts freely  and openly with others. This aspect of the ego state comes naturally when a person is born. The natural child is also at times impulsive, greedy, impatient and self-centered.

(b)     The adapted child acts in ways that are learned from the environment. Through adaptations, the individual learns to cooperate and live in groups. Feelings of guilt, anxiety and envy characterize the adapted child.

Another aspect of the child ego state is the little professor. It is the intuitive part of one’s personality that senses things and gives brilliant solutions. It is in some ways the sixth sense.

The salient features of the ego states are:

(1)     Conversations between people resemble a mixture of reactions from the three ego states.

(2)     Each ego state has positive and negative features which add or subtract a person’s feeling of satisfaction.

(3)       By carefully listening to a person’s words, observing his tone, posture and facial expressions we can detect the ego states. It is more difficult to identify ego states in group conversations.