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| Script (co-creative identity) In a critical review of script theory, Cornell (1988) suggests that script, as presented in most TA literature is ?overly reductionistic and insufficiently attentive to the formative factors in healthy psychological development? (p.270). From a philosophical point of view, this is especially ironic given the potential compatibility of script theory with constructivism (Allen and Allen, 1997). However, if, with Allen and Allen (1995), we are to view scripts as constructive narratives which, like memories, are co-created in the present and projected into the past, then we need to reformulate much of our present understanding of script and script theory. Several points inform this critique: ? Traditional, linear, stage theories of (child) development have been challenged by writers such as Stern (1985): ?it, therefore, cannot be known, in advance, on theoretical grounds, at what point in life a particular traditional clinical-developmental issue will receive its pathogenic origin? (p.256). ? Scripts are co-created - Cornell (1988) refers to the current developmental research that suggests that infants influence and shape their parents as much as they are shaped by their parents. ? Injunctions, programs and drivers/counterinjunctions are, equally, co-created and decided, and only become part of a person?s script if accepted and ?fixed? as such. ? Despite the concept of cultural scripting (White & White, 1975), the script, in one of its most popular and most used manifestations - the script matrix - in its reference only to the heterosexual nuclear family, is deeply culturally-determined. ? A postmodern script theory suggests that we can have several stories about our lives running in parallel - and that we can choose between them. Allen and Allen (1995) state that ?each person is entitled to more than one story? (p.329). The stories we write may be based on motives combining survival, compliance, rebellion, resilience, aspiration, self-assertion, loyalty, revenge and love. Cornell (1988) acknowledges that English (1977) has stood virtually alone in acknowledging scripts as valuable assets. We adopt Cornell's (1988) definition of script because of its applicability to healthy or pathological process and recognition of the significance of meaning: ?life script is the ongoing process of a self-defining and sometimes self-limiting psychological construction of reality. Script formation is the process by which the individual attempts to make sense of family and social environments, to establish meaning in life, and to predict and manage life's problems in the hope of realizing one's dreams and desires? (Cornell, 1998, p.281). As regards the script matrix, we suggest taking the logic of Cornell?s (1988) arguments further in developing a narrative map of the influences on co-creative identity: 1. We agree with Cornell in drawing the script matrix horizontally, bringing the ?parental? influences into a mutual relationship with the ?child? or subject, and 2. We extend the mutuality of vectors to include the Parent vector, and in addition, and perhaps most significantly and radically 3. We replace ?Mother? and ?Father? with any polarity (or continuum) which is significant to the subject, based on their own construction/s of reality (see Figure 3). Thus, the injunctions, programs and drivers of the script cut both ways. A child telling her parent to ?Go away? may be both receiving and responding to and conveying a ?Don?t Exist? injunction. Of course the relative impact on the parent who, predominantly, has more power than the child, will vary according to their own development, history, experiences, pathology and present support, etc. The child who models his parents? various behaviours by, for instance, succeeding at school, also perpetuates the family/cultural ?success? story and this again impacts on the parents. Similarly, the driver messages are equally mutual: ?Pull yourself together, son? (from a father) may be matched by a ?Hold me and be there for me always? (from the son) - which may represent mutual drives to ?Be Strong?. Our horizontal diagram does not represent equality of power in parent-child relationships. It is intended to emphasise our ongoing capacity to influence and be influenced. The matrix can be used to map mutual influences at any stage in the life cycle and may be applied to various situations in which we may be more or less powerful than others by virtue of status, knowledge, financial resources, age or discrimination based upon class, disability, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Figure 3 - Cocreative Script Matrix  We can also consider script influences in terms of other polarities and the continua between them. For example, an important polarity in the identity development of a black child brought up in a predominantly white culture is likely to be black, minority, home culture--white, dominant, school culture. Indeed, there are a number of models of minority identity development (e.g. Atkinson, Morten & Sue, 1989) - and about the development of white racial consciousness (Helms, 1984) - which could be represented by and within the context of the co-creative script matrix. Equally, the predominant polarity which influences the experiences of a child brought up by gay, lesbian or bisexual parents, depending on their circumstances, at certain points in their life, may be a gay-?straight? polarity. The italics represent the fact that such influences are not determined, as is implied by traditional conceptualisations of script, but, rather, in our view, constructed; in other words: the construction of the script matrix is itself a personal construct. Thus, the script matrix becomes a co-created series of matrixes, rather like a constantly changing helix of relational atoms, spinning around us, by which we tell, retell and re-formulate the stories of different influences on our continuing development (see Figure 4). Figure 4 - A Script Helix  In this, scripts as co-creative identity, are, as Allen and Allen (1997) observe, clearly compatible with our postmodernist project of retelling TA - and, indeed, are the precursor of present notions of narrative in(formed) therapy. Next section: Ego States (Cocreative Personality) |
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