Shamanism can offer Transactional Analysis what lies beyond its maps of the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer: a place, the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer, where the drama triangleDrama triangle. The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this is never played and where GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this can help us walk away from it; a deeper self, Soul, rooted in nature, for a new life script to grow from; ways of finding parts of us that have left altogether; and a source of healing beyond the therapist, which Eric Berne himself acknowledged.
Where does healing come from? #
Not from the therapist alone, as Berne himself recognised. His book on group treatment gives an old saying, “we treat them, but it is God who cures them”.1 TA’s own tools, though, are clear, rational models of what passes between people.
Shamanism puts it at the centre. The power of a shaman comes not from the shaman but from their ability to hollow out and from the strength and depth of their connection with their Guides, and Therapeutic Shamanism is a Spirit-led practice through and through.2 For a TA practitioner, shamanism offers ways of working consciously with the healing that Berne pointed to: journeying, and the help of Guides who are real, independent beings. See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?
How can shamanism help someone leave the drama triangle? #
By giving them somewhere it is never played. TA can name the drama triangle clearly; leaving it is harder. The drama triangle is a middle-world game. It is not played in the Lower-World Tribe, nor anywhere else in the Lower-World or the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, and no true Guide will help anyone play it. What the Guides can and will do, if asked, is help a person walk away from any drama triangle they are caught in, help with whatever healing they need in order to do so, and model healthier ways of being.3
Journeying to meet the Lower-World Tribe gives a living experience of healthy relationship, which many people have never had in the middle-world. The wounded experiences of human relationship that people bring, the drama triangle among them, can discolour what they first meet there, so it helps to be aware of them and set them aside. See What is the Lower-World Tribe? and What can Transactional Analysis offer shamanic work?
What can shamanism add to the idea of a life script? #
A different author for the new script. In Berne’s account, a life script is written in early childhood, around the age of five, and then acted out without awareness.4 TA’s aim is to help a person rewrite it.
Hunter-gatherers met the same problem in their own way. They recognised that, in growing up, a child constructs a middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer and can become lost in the stories it tells. So around adolescence they held initiations designed to dismantle the identity built in childhood and replace it with a new one, rooted in Soul, just as Soul is rooted in Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this.5 Without such initiations, most people today are still unconsciously playing out childhood patterns in their adult lives.6 Shamanism offers TA not just a better script but a deeper place for it to come from: the person’s own Lower-World Soul, met directly in journeying. See What is a rite of passage, and what did we lose when initiation disappeared?
What about parts of us that are no longer there? #
Shamanism can find them. TA, like the other parts-of-self therapies, works with the parts that are present: the ego states that show up in a person’s transactions. But when a child learns that a part of them is unlovable, whether for being angry, crying, answering back or being noisy, they learn to repress that part and send it away.7 Sometimes such a part is not just repressed but leaves altogether, and then it is no longer in the room to be analysed or dialogued with. Shamanic soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer is the practice of finding such parts and bringing them home. See What is soul loss? and What are Parent, Adult and Child, and how do they compare with the parts of the self?
