What are Parent, Adult and Child, and how do they compare with the parts of the self?

What are Parent, Adult and Child? #

The three ego states described by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, founder of Transactional Analysis. Each is a coherent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that a person moves in and out of, usually without noticing.¹

– Parent is made up of what we took in from parents and other parent figures as we grew up. TA usually divides it into a nurturing Parent, which comforts and cares, and a controlling or critical Parent, which sets limits and rules. – Adult deals with the here and now: gathering information, testing reality and thinking things through. – Child is made up of feelings and reactions from childhood, still being replayed in the present. TA divides it too, into a free or natural Child and an adapted Child shaped to please or rebel.

An exchange between two people, a transaction, passes between particular ego states in each of them, and much of TA’s practical value lies in noticing which states are speaking. See What can Transactional Analysis offer shamanic work?

What are the parts of the self in Therapeutic Shamanism? #

Four main parts, each belonging to one of the shamanic realms. The Upper-World Spirit is pure consciousness, a spark of Father Sky. The middle-world self is made of the stories we tell ourselves and the stories society tells us: it is the domesticated, socialised part of us, including the ego and the persona. The physical body belongs to the physical 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 and has its own needs. The Lower-World Soul is our true Self-identity, part of 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 and the unique individual she intended us to be.² Alongside them is the witnessing awareness, the aware self, best understood as our capacity to notice what all the parts are doing without being caught up in them. See What are the different parts of the self in Therapeutic Shamanism?

Where do Parent, Adult and Child fit on that map? #

Within the middle-world self. Our middle-world self is made up of many sub-parts, most of them formed in childhood, and until healing is done these childhood parts are the ones we habitually inhabit.³ Set side by side with the shamanic teaching, TA’s three ego states are a detailed map of this one part of us:

– TA’s Parent is close to what Therapeutic Shamanism calls introjectsIntroject. A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this: the shoulds and musts thrown into us by parents, school, religion and society, which we then use to police ourselves.⁴ – TA’s Child is close to the child parts of the inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer, including the protective fort-holdersFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer that formed in childhood and still try to keep us safe in the old ways. Any part of us that carries childhood wounds is a child-part, not an Adult.⁵ – TA’s Adult is the part best able to meet the present as it is.

What the TA map does not hold are the other three parts of the shamanic map: the body with its own consciousness and wisdom,⁶ the Lower-World Soul and the Upper-World Spirit. Nor does it hold the parts of us that have left altogether through soul loss, which are no longer present to show up in any transaction. See What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?

Is the TA Adult the same as the Adult in Therapeutic Shamanism? #

No; the same word names two different things. In TA, the Adult is an ego state that anyone can step into for a moment, the part that deals with present facts. In Therapeutic Shamanism, an Adult, with a capital A, is a whole person who has grown into their Soul. Being Adult in this sense has nothing to do with a job or a mortgage, for our Adult Soul is of the Lower-World.⁷ In an animist tribe it meant interdependence, not independence, and it carried a list of around thirty qualities, from being grounded and embodied to contributing to the community and treating the other-than-human with respect.⁸ Such Adults are rare in modern culture, which no longer has the initiations that made them.

There is common ground. A true Adult is willing to see things as they are, rather than how they would like them to be or think they should be,⁹ which is close to TA’s reality-testing Adult. The shamanic Adult then reaches further, into Soul and into belonging to the web of life. See What does it mean to become a True Adult?

Who parents the inner child? #

In TA, the nurturing Parent can comfort the Child. In Therapeutic Shamanism, the Adult does the parenting. A wounded child part is lonely, sad, hurt, frightened, angry, lost or confused, and needs a loving, kind parent to comfort and support it. If a person’s own parents could not be that parent, someone else has to step into the role, and that someone is the person themselves: their Adult arrives to parent the child. A therapist can help for a time by modelling Adult compassion and support to the wounded parts, so that the client’s own Adult can develop and take over.¹⁰

Over time the wounded inner child becomes, in effect, an outer child: a part that is looked after and cared for, but no longer in charge. One of the patterns of a healthy tribe is that the Adults are the people in charge, and this applies to the inner tribe too.¹¹ A true Adult is also never alone in this: stepping into the Adult self can include sensing the Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer by one’s side. See What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?

Is the Witness an ego state? #

No. TA’s three states are all ways of being a person in the middle-world, each with its own feelings, thoughts and history. The witnessing awareness is different in kind: it can notice which part, or which ego state, is speaking without being caught up in it. When we hollow out to journey, it is this aware self that travels, not the everyday middle-world self.¹² See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?