Transactional Analysis : The Parent Ego State

In lesson one I introduced the three ego states Parent, Adult, and Child. In lessons two, three, and four I talked about how communicating with another person is actually communicating between various ego states of you and the other person. And in lesson five I introduced the two Child functional ego states Natural Child and Adapted Child. The Parent ego state is also divided into two ego states that can be observed: Controlling Parent and Nurturing Parent.

You are in your Parent ego state when you replay the behaviors of parental figures you experienced as a child. So when you observed your father telling people what to do, criticizing, or being controlling, you recorded those behaviors and may reproduce them now that you are an adult. You may even have replayed them as a child. Either way, those types of behaviors comprise your Controlling Parent ego state. Behind the behaviors you will probably also have the slogans, sayings, beliefs, and assumptions that go along with whatever it is you are doing or saying. You may even have arguments and proofs to support your behavior. Whether appropriate or not for the situation, if your parents or parental role models exhibited the behavior, and you replay it without consciously choosing it, then you are in Controlling Parent.

Likewise, while you observed your father caring for you and others, taking care of people, pets, and the home, you recorded these behaviors. Later you may replay them. When doing so you are in Nurturing Parent.

There are positive and negative aspects of both Controlling and Nurturing Parent ego states. Generally the negative aspects involve a discount and the positive aspects involve respect and regard.

A positive Nurturing Parent validates a person's capabilities and strengths, their importance, their capacity to learn and grow, their ability for self control, that they can be self determining, that they can have their own goals, and that they can be their own person. A positive Nurturing Parent is inviting, gentle, caring, supportive, and affirming of the other person by giving permission to do things well and succeed.

A negative Nurturing Parent sounds supportive but in fact invites dependency and gives implicit permission to fail. This comes about because this ego state judges the other as inadequate, lacking strength, lacking the ability to grow and learn, lacking self control, and lacking self determination. This ego state will blame, rescue or 'help', smother, patronize, seduce, or be sticky. Ultimately the message given is: stay little and fail.

A positive Controlling Parent provides structure and direction, offers protection, offers choices, presents logical consequences, helps the exploration of alternatives and consequences. This ego state demands that life or morally threatening behavior be replaced. This ego state is protective, sets limits and standards, demands performance, is an advocate and encourages success in whatever the other person is choosing to do.

A negative Controlling Parent has been called critical parent because the focus is criticism, abuse, hurtful comments, blaming and shaming,, and discouragement. The undercurrent is a message telling the other person to fail and offering no solutions.