TA for Learners - 00.02 Psychological Hungers

TA for Learners

00.02 Psychological Hungers

(This Blog is a Chapter in 'My Little TA Book')
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II - Psychological Hungers

Psychological hungers are like biological hungers. They drive persons to obtain their fulfilment. In that sense they are motivators. There are six psychological hungers.

Stimulus Hunger: Physical, emotional, neurological and psychological health is dependent on stimuli since birth. Studies have shown that insufficient stimulating care affects the neurological and psychological development of children. Extreme deprivation of touch and care results in a condition called hospitalism or anaclytic depression. Another name is Marasmus. It results in impaired growth. Strokes satisfy the need for satiating stimulus hunger. Stroke represents an infant's need for touch. In growing years it moves from purely physical, to visual, auditory and verbal forms. TA affirms that people seek strokes because they have a survival value. Bad or unhealthy strokes; and psychological or emotional hurt and pain; are better than no stroke at all. Stroke is defined as a unit of recognition. We all seek recognition for the right reason or wrong reason. We commit mistakes, slip of tongue occurs, naughty behaviour like spilling tea, hurting ourselves physically, and such like other behaviours and activities get rewarded by stroking and recognition. It contributes to social action.

Recognition Hunger: Recognition occurs when we are noticed, recognised, accepted, praised, admired, adored, heard, looked at, held, touched, or criticised, ridiculed, punished or damned. It contributes to social action. Recognition Hunger is fulfilled through the agency of transactions. A transaction comprises a transactional stimulus and a related transactional response. A transaction is defined as a unit of social intercourse. We greet, say a few words, carry on with some give-takes and in the process fulfil our need for satiating recognition hunger. Recognition is viewed in TA as a sublimated form of stroke. It may be proper to say that recognition and stroke are bipolar entities for one cannot exist without the other.

Position Hunger:  Position Hunger shows up in persons to maintain life positions. Life position is also called existential position or basic life position. There are four principal life positions. They are healthy, depressive, paranoid and futility positions. These reflect our view of ourselves, of others and of the world at large. They also reflect our orientation toward situations, problems, difficulties and challenges. By maintaining our preferred life position, position hunger need is fulfilled. We think, feel, act, do, express, interact, perform, in a particular way. The method reinforces our life position and as a result helps to maintain inertia and homeostasis of the neuro-psychic organisation. Any effort to change the prevalent inertia or homeostasis is staunchly opposed.

Structure Hunger: We make every effort to live our day, by structuring time. In TA it is called time structuring. Structuring time helps in avoiding boredom, monotony and stereotypy. Structuring time also helps in  obtaining strokes. It is done in six ways. They are withdrawal, rituals, activity, pastimes, games and intimacy.

Incidence Hunger: Incidence is an occurrence. In the extreme such occurrences are in the nature of physical injuries, material or financial loss, spilling things on clothes, exposure to unprotected sex, and such like other. All these and similar types of events, incidents, occurrences, help to make up the shortfall in stroke content through a process called stroke bank.

Aspirational Hunger: Aspirational Hunger is a manifestation of human desire to grow, to develop and achieve wholeness. It is represented in TA by an arrow that runs through the three ego states. It appears as is shown in the figure on next page. It is a drive which becomes operative by integrating the positive aspects of the three ego states. It is a drive which is capped by script and games. Man is caught in fulfilling the demands of the script so much, that he forgets this basic gift. People who live their lives independent of their scripts, pursue their aspirations.

Aspiration constitutes one of four forces of human destiny the other three being fate, script and constructive Parent programming aided by physis. This last one happens when people day-dream as 'visual pictures of what they would do’ if they could do as they please.

Of the six hungers at the core is position hunger. It determines the orientation of a person toward himself, toward others and toward situations, problems, difficulties, conditions and challenges, toward the world at large and toward life. It also builds one’s self concept. The other five are the means that go to build the inertial frame. A person desiring to live a better life needs to simultaneously tackle all the six psychological hungers in a healthy and balanced way. If this is not done, what change is achieved in one area gets compensated in another or some of the other areas to maintain balance. The final breakthrough comes when the attributes describing one's life position have undergone a change for the better to achieve freedom from script.

Time Structuring

People avoid living their lives in periods of unstructured time. They seek to be free of boredom, stereotypy and monotony. Time structuring also keeps the supply of strokes flowing.

There are six ways of structuring time. The two extremes are Withdrawal and Intimacy. The other four are Rituals, Activity, Pastimes and Game. The two extremes are covered first and the other four thereafter.

Withdrawal  - Withdrawal results in isolating oneself from others. Such isolation need not be physical. It can occur while being in the company of others such as while driving a car, walking with someone to the market or for that matter while participating in a meeting or in a training session. Withdrawal causes one to be removed from here-now. Berne asks this: "Where is the mind when the body is here." In such cases stroke generation may be mild to very high. The threat of exposure is minimal because it is not participatory. It occurs when we are engaged with what another said, or for justifying our position or point of view, or while we are smarting in pain, hurt, insult, loss, due to what happened or, what someone said, or while experiencing a broken heart or in flights of imagination. It is used to generate psychological trading stamps. People spend time fantasising and in autistic thinking - thinking to harm another or to harm oneself or for working out plans to get at another in a particular way, at a particular time or upon a given event presenting. Withdrawal promotes stroke deprivation which contributes to feeling low, feeling depressed, feeling isolated, feeling marginalized or being left alone. In extreme cases it is the sign of loneliness and depression.

Mentally healthy people also spend time in withdrawal. They do so to draw plans, to reflect and find solutions or to revise a talk or lecture. Healthy withdrawal also takes place when one prays or meditates.

Intimacy - Intimacy is rare and valuable. It takes place between persons in moments of open hearted exchange of thoughts, ideas, feelings, opinions, free of ulterior transactions. It happens due to the participation of Free Child and Nurturing Parent. There is great sense of understanding and acceptance between the persons. They foster respect, regard, acceptance, and esteem for the other. Intimacy is more rewarding than other forms of time structuring but threatening because it touches upon one's beliefs about oneself and about others. There is healthy stroke generation during such moments though.

Rituals - Rituals are Parent programmed decent, well mannered, pleasant exchanges of greetings and niceties. From exchanging greetings at one end, to enquiring about each other, saying something nice or even conveying condolence messages at the other end, they are all rituals.

Such exchanges are one to six interactions long and made on the go. They are also undertaken to settle down at meetings or at home by asking what is special for dinner tonight, or care for a drink, and expecting an answer 'no thanks'. In such cases the outcome of rituals is predictable.

Rituals are also seen at inauguration of meetings, while giving vote of thanks, and similarly in religious and social ceremonies. In these cases they can be very long. It leads to some people in the audience  yawning and talking to each other. Rituals help to avoid boredom but do not generate intense strokes.

Activity - Activity is a set of interpersonal exchanges in the context of work, planning, discussions, tasks, conduct of business meetings and the like. The interactions are related to objects, plans, ideas, problems, challenges and the like. Strokes are both +ve and -ve. Strokes come from encouraging and motivational talk extolling the performance of earlier times or through criticism or remarks about poor performance, lack of enthusiasm, lack of participation or contribution.

Stroke production is variable. Strokes also keep coming through learning and education.

Pastimes - As the name suggests, this type of time structuring concerns past-times. People participating in pastime aimlessly or doggedly speak about politics, policies, newspaper articles and news, scandals, sports, cars, bikes, children, and other type of undirected gossip. People participating in pastimes know each other or are introduced to the group. Serious talk, discussion, at times leg pulling, making jokes, also takes place. Pastimes sometimes follow game formats. However, switch and cross up - the distinguishing features of games - are missing.

People part company only when they remember something, or an expected appointment is due. The stroke generation is mild to high, threat is also mild to high. Pastimes provide a fertile ground to switch over to games. This takes place between people who have complementary scripts, and are eager unawarely to try them out.

Games - Games are an ongoing series of ulterior complementary transactions which lead to a well defined predictable outcome in the form of intense strokes called pay-offs. Games are played unawarely. Games are characterised by a switch and a cross-up. Switch happens when the topic changes from a discussion to a person. In games participants usually blame the other and justify themselves. Games result in the parties moving away with their favoured feelings of pain, hurt, insult, put-downs, guilt, feeling ashamed, taken for a ride, treated unfairly, not understood, and the like.

Game players participate energetically. Games generate and foster pseudo intimacy. Games help to generate intense racket feelings.

***

(This Blog is a Chapter in 'My Little TA Book')

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