Transactional Analysis : Discounts

There are three ways of discounting: yourself, another person, a situation. Now here's some examples. A friend takes you flying in a single engine aircraft and afterwards without really thinking you state "I could never learn how to fly, I'm not smart enough." You've just discounted yourself. So your pilot friend says "Well I wasn't going to say anything, but I agree you don't have it where it counts." Your 'friend' has just discounted you. You have some feeling response to what your friend said, after all its OK for you to cut yourself up but not OK for someone else to. By the time you recover enough to reply, the aircraft is on final approach for landing and the pilot is concentrating intensely, but regardless you say "I resent you saying that. What gives you the right to judge me?" You've just discounted the situation.

In any life situation you have two choices as to how you respond. you can choose to employ the power of your Adult thinking capabilities, or you can respond knee jerk fashion the way you learned to while growing up. The former will require energy, and probably time. The latter will be comfortable, seem right, require little thinking, and be familiar. But it will not include all aspects of the situation. A discount is when a person is not aware that they are ignoring information relevant to the solution of a problem.

In the above example, the first discount is a judgment that has no Adult evaluative component such as information gathering on what it takes to fly, who flies, what training is required, what do the exams include, who typically passes and fails. Your friend's discount is the same in that he or she didn't think about your unique characteristics in relation to the demands of piloting. Neither of you considered that there are several levels of licencing each with its own set of requirements. And the third discount is when you ignore the fact that the most critical phase of flight is in progress and the pilot's attention needs to be on landing the aircraft not in listening to you. Your comment and question come from being out of awareness of the current situation.

Generally, whenever you find yourself feeling like a victim, villain, or rescuer the odds are you are discounting yourself, someone else, a situation or all three. And usually there are others doing the same so you all do this dance - the disco (discounting). See the Drama Triangle for more.

Discounting is accompanied by Grandiosity, the exaggeration of some feature of reality ie. making a mountain out of a molehill. As one feature of reality is diminished or ignored, another is blown up out of proportion. "I could never learn how to fly, I'm not smart enough." is exaggerating the requirements of flying. Your pilot friend promotes him or herself to Chief Flight Examiner by judging you incapable of flying. And your remarks to the pilot while on final approach to the runway imply that either he or she is able to resolve interpersonal conflicts at the same time as landing an aircraft (moderately grandiose), or that the two of you are immortal and need not be concerned about crashing (very grandiose).