Talk Talk: Effective Communication in Everyday Life - Softcover

Mavis Klein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780998821 ISBN 13: 9781780998824

Publisher: Psyche Books, 2013

Synopsis

Using the easily understood vocabulary of Transactional Analysis and her own original contribution to the theory, Mavis Klein presents a handbook that will vividly illuminate and clarify all the issues that arise in our everyday communications. While the aim of this book is primarily to overcome problems in people's working lives - with line managers, subordinates, and peer group colleagues, it provides stunning insight into all that takes place when we talk to others - from a time-passing chat to a stranger at a bus stop to the most profound conversations with intimate others in our lives.

About this title

About the Author

Mavis Klein is a psychotherapist of 35 years standing, a counselling astrologer of 30 years standing, and the author of 9 previous books. She lives in London, UK.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Talk Talk

Effective Communication in Everyday Life

By Mavis Klein

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2012 Mavis Klein
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78099-882-4

Contents

Foreword...................................................................
1
1 Strokes..................................................................
2
2 Foraging for Strokes.....................................................
11
3 Ego States and Transactions..............................................
20
4 The Whole Self in Action.................................................
37
5 From Birth to Maturity...................................................
52
Appendix: About Transactional Analysis.....................................
70
Glossary...................................................................
74

CHAPTER 1

Strokes

What is a Stroke?

People give and receive strokes from each other every time they do or sayanything that acknowledges the other's presence. Any intentionalbody contact made with another person is a stroke, but so, too,are words and many other symbols that show we are aware of theother person. Thus a smile, a frown, a telephone call, aninvitation, a thank-you note, or a threat are all received asstrokes, as well as pats on the arm, smacks, kisses or kicks.Strokes vary in their intensity and value, from the most highlypraised 'I love you' to the very slightly valued nod of recognitionfrom a passing acquaintance.

We need strokes in our daily lives as much as we need food, inorder to survive. And, indeed, in the earliest months of our lives,we need strokes in the most basic sense of skin to skin contact.This was definitively discovered during World War II in Paris,where there was an orphanage in which apparently well-fed andwell-cared for babies were losing weight and wasting away anddying, for no discernible reason. A psychiatrist called René Spitzwas called in to investigate, and he discovered that the reason forthese babies dying was that the staff were so busy feeding andkeeping clean the babies in their care that nobody had any timeto pick them up and cuddle them. And so it has become receivedwisdom that the intimate skin-to-skin contact that a baby haswith its primary caretaker – usually its mother – is as vital to thebaby's survival as the milk it is fed.

René Spitz's finding was supported by the famous experimentsof the behavioural psychologist Harry Harlow who, in the1950s, housed orphaned monkeys in a cage containing twomonkey-shaped surrogate mothers: a wire mesh one to whichwas attached a feeding bottle, and a soft cloth one without anyfeeding bottle. The baby monkeys spent far more time clinging tothe cloth than to the wire surrogate, and they invariably ran tothe cloth one whenever they were startled by a loud noise.

In the light of this knowledge, Eric Berne, the founder ofTransactional Analysis, asked himself, if physical strokes are soimperative a need in infancy, how do we manage without themonce infancy is passed? He decided that we do, indeed, go onneeding strokes throughout our lives, on a daily basis, in exactlythe same way and as imperatively as we go on needing food.However, Berne decided, once the period of infancy is over, welearn to value symbolic substitutes for skin-to-skin contact,including any eye to eye contact we make with another humanbeing.

The first symbolic stroke that we are capable of appreciating– and returning – is our mother's smile, when we are about sixweeks old. And then, as we grow up, we learn to value amultitude of other symbolic strokes - gifts we are given, birthdayand Christmas cards, invitations to parties ... We 'say it withflowers' and in innumerable other ways.

Everything that can be said about strokes is precisely analogous towhat we may say about food.

Although we go on throughout our lives having our strokeneeds met largely symbolically, at the deepest level of our beings,we all yearn for the nirvana we once experienced, ideally, at ourmother's breasts. Loving sexual intercourse is the closest we everget to that nirvana (ambrosia) again, and so is the most highlyvalued experience that life has to offer us.

There have been some experiments done to find out how longpeople can manage without strokes. In one experiment, somenormal, healthy adults were put in a situation where they had nocontact of any kind with another human being, for as long asthey could bear. What would you guess was the longest time thatanybody could manage? After 36 hours there was nobody leftwho didn't feel they were going out of their mind (which, interestingly,is about the same length of time that most people can gowithout food before becoming desperate). And, as we all know,solitary confinement is the most horrible punishment that can beinflicted on people, because it is a situation in which they arecompletely stroke-starved. While there are constitutional differencesbetween people in how long they can survive without foodor water, stroke-deprivation is a sanity – if not life- threateningsituation for nearly everybody.

Different Kinds of Strokes

All strokes are positive or negative and conditional or unconditional.Positive strokes make us feel good about ourselves; negativestrokes make us feel bad about ourselves. But we would ratherhave negative strokes than no strokes at all and, quite rightly, justas nobody who was starving would be foolish enough to refuse aMcDonald's and coke if there was no other food available. Sothose people who, for whatever reason, can't get positive strokeswill choose negative strokes rather than none at all.

By and large, the only truly unconditional positive strokes peopleever receive are from their mothers and fathers. And, if we arelucky, we can rely on our parents to go on loving us throughouttheir lives, no matter what we ever do or say. Unconditionalpositive strokes say, 'I love your existence. No matter what youdo, I will always love you.'

Unconditional negative strokes are given instead of unconditionalpositive strokes to some unhappy people, even in infancy.These strokes effectively say, 'I hate you and wish you didn'texist. There's nothing you can ever do to please me or to make melove you.' Those people in the world who were effectivelybrought up on unconditional negative strokes spend their wholelives, however unconsciously, looking for the unconditionalpositive strokes they were entitled to from their parents, butnever got. They are likely to have many self-destructive propensities.And there are other, less disturbed people who, nevertheless,having been given a surfeit of unconditional negativestrokes as children, are likely to reach out pre-emptively andwith great vigour towards every new person they meet, in thehope that this is the one who will give them the infantile, unconditionalpositive strokes they were deprived of. They are inclinedto see somebody across a crowded room and say, 'Ah, I'm in lovewith you. I knew the moment I saw you that you're the personI've been waiting for all my life;' and then the whole thing blowsup in no time at all, because they provocatively test the unconditionalityof the other's love with their own bad behaviour, andquickly find – of course – that there are limits to the other's love.Eventually, it is to be hoped, such people are able to acquire theinsight to realize and accept, with rational resignation, that theyare never going to get those unconditional strokes of which theyhave been deprived, but that conditional positive strokes are wellworth having.

Conditional positive and conditional negative strokes are theusual strokes that are on offer in the world. For example, 'Tidyup your room and I'll take you out and buy you a new pair ofjeans this afternoon' (conditional positive) or 'Do that once moreand you're grounded for a week' (conditional negative).

Each individual has one or more target positive and targetnegative strokes, respectively the things we like most and thethings we like least about ourselves. When we are given ourpositive target stroke(s) we feel great pleasure; when we aregiven our target negative stroke(s) we feel great pain. As is thecase of each person's more general propensity to invite positiveor negative strokes, target strokes, too, are usually conditionedin childhood. Some common positive target strokes are for looks,intelligence, generosity, and sympathy; some common negativetarget strokes are for stupidity, selfishness, meanness, anduntrustworthiness.

A particular person's target strokes can be ascertained bydirect questioning, such as, 'What attributes others describe youas having make you feel particularly good/bad about yourself?',but a clue to them is what kind of strokes the person tends to giveto others. Thus, 'What a kind woman' is likely to be said by awoman whose own (positive) target stroke is kindness; 'What amean bastard' is likely to be said by someone whose own(negative) target stroke is meanness.

We tend to assume that other people's target strokes are thesame as our own, but in this we are often mistaken. Finding outwhat somebody's target strokes are, and often giving them theirtarget positive stroke, and scrupulously avoiding giving themtheir target negative stroke (despite their provocation), is greatlyconducive to increasing the sum total of happiness in the world.Easier said than done! Many unhappy relationships revolvearound each person continually giving the other their negativetarget strokes.

Making Sense of the World

Why do we go on seeking the same strokes over and over again?Why, for example, does a woman who has been told from infancythat she has gorgeous blue eyes go on wanting this stroke overand over again, in preference to some new strokes that she hasnot received before? She does so because her 'gorgeous blue eyes'are a significant part of the sense she makes of herself in relationto other people and the world.

When we are newborn and entering a world which – we inferfrom the behaviour of newborn babies – is an utterly chaotic,undifferentiated blob of experience, our brains are hard-wiredfor us to acquire knowledge about the world, both physical andpsychological, as quickly as we possibly can, to enable us, step bystep, to achieve independence and autonomy, and not have to belooked after by other people in order to survive.

In the acquisition of our knowledge of objective, physicalreality, we are all very much alike. We differ from each other tothe extent that we each have our own particular ways ofperceiving that highlight some, and gloss over other, aspects ofreality. Thus an artist may tend to see 'nothing but' colours andshapes, a banker will focus on the economic aspects of reality,and a naturalist may find city streets 'empty'. Nevertheless,allowing for the differences of focus that are conditioned bydifferences of interest, by and large, we have all been taught tointerpret the world in ways that all sane people call 'correct'.Experientially, we probably learn nearly all the basic laws ofphysics by the time we are one year of age: hot and cold, roughand smooth, heavy and light ... which get reinforced and elaboratedthrough the answers our parents and others give to ourmultitudinous questions in the first few years of our lives.

Consider, for example, a conversation between a three-year-oldand his or her mother.

Three-year-old: Mummy, why won't my ball stay up?

Mother: Because everything falls back to the ground.

Three-year-old: Why?

Mother: Gravity makes everything fall down.

And if this three-year-old asks her nursery school teacher thesame question, she will almost certainly be given more or less thesame answer.

Thus, we share with all sane others a collection of conventionswe agree on concerning how to perceive and understand physicalreality. This was brought home to me by one of my daughterswhen she was about four and she asked me, 'Mummy, why is itthat all the big aeroplanes are at the airport and all the little onesin the sky?' And I, of course, (in the name of sanity), replied,'Well actually the ones in the sky are really big too. They justlook little because they are a long way away.' But, in giving thisreply, I realized with some poignancy that, in teaching childrenabout the nature of reality, we are closing their minds. There is nometaphysical reason why I could not have replied to my daughter,'Well actually the ones at the airport are really little too. They justlook big because they are very close.' No doubt we couldconstruct a completely self-consistent theory of physical reality inwhich we would agree that things only look big when they areclose, and are really small; but we have decided to put it the otherway round.

Each answer a child gets to his questions about physicalreality makes the world a more predictable place. He now knows abit more and feels that much more secure.

Who has not, at some time, found gratification in testing thesecurity of our knowledge about the world by actions, for example,like covering a burning candle with a glass and 'proving' – again– that, yes, fire does need a continuous supply of oxygen to go onburning?

There are thousands of actual stimuli bombarding our brainsat every moment of our waking lives, yet our brains are onlycapable of processing a handful of them at a time. So we areprogrammed to exclude as 'white noise' the vast majority ofstimuli, in favour of attending only to the very small number thatwe need to be aware of to survive and be effective in ourparticular environment. Those unfortunate people who, by dintof innate brain damage or circumstantial experience, areincapable of blocking out the 'noise' of the world in favour ofhighly selective perception, are deemed insane.

And in exactly the same way, and in order to fulfil the samebasic need to make sense of the world, so as to feel secure in it, welearn about psychological reality. Learning about physical realityenables us safely and confidently to interact with things; learningabout psychological reality enables us safely and confidently tointeract with people. Making sense of people means learning howto give and get strokes.

So, all the time we are asking our mothers and fathers aboutgravity and temperature, animals and birds, night and day, sandand snow ... we are also asking about life and death, love andhate, anger, jealousy, ownership rights and sharing, happinessand unhappiness, good and bad, reward and punishment, etc.etc. And by the time we first leave home to go to school, we arebasically equipped to get our stroke needs met in the world atlarge.

However, we all make one huge mistake – a mistake that mostpeople continue to make for the rest of their lives. We presumethat just because everybody else's physical reality is the same as ourown, so everybody else's psychological reality is also the same as ourown. It isn't.

True, there are areas of overlap between one person's andanother's psychological realities, or else we would all continuallyfail to get strokes from other people. But what we witnessed andwere told about people in our early family life may be verydifferent from what our best friend witnessed and was toldabout in her family. Some families are generally amiable, somesad, some angry and quarrelsome, some loving, some rejecting,some quiet, some noisy, some organized, some chaotic, somechangeable. But it is on the basis of the characteristics of our ownparticular family that each of us decides what human nature and ourpsychological world will be about.

In this way one child becomes the man whose greatesthappiness is his close and loving family life, his greatest difficultyin life being his constant worry about money. Anotherbecomes renowned in his field of work, and feels immenselyrewarded by the honours heaped on him, but constantly doesbattle with his inclination to alcoholism. One woman isconstantly appreciated for her femininity and beauty but feelsinferior for never having completed her secondary schooling,while another is profoundly positively stroked as a mother butmiserable as a wife.

Thus – for the good and the bad in our lives – what is relevantto one person is irrelevant to, and therefore not 'heard' byanother.

The differences between people's target negative strokes wasmade vivid to me some years ago, a few days before Christmas,when I was about to conduct a group therapy session. The groupwas already assembled and, as I walked into the room, I heardone group member saying to another, with obvious discomfort,'Thank you very much for your Christmas card. Um, um, we'renot sending any this year, but I hope you don't think we'reungrateful,' and I suddenly realized that she was giving herselfher own target negative stroke – ingratitude – which providedme with a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the variabilityof people's target negative strokes. That situation, bumping intosomebody who has sent you a Christmas card, when it's too latefor you to send them one - no big deal, but we've all experiencedit and been inclined to have some, however mild, uncomfortablefeeling.

So I took advantage of this situation, which we have allknown, and said, 'OK everybody, it's December the 21st and youbump into somebody who has sent you a Christmas card, andyou haven't sent them one. Quickly and spontaneously tell ushow you feel.' We got 'guilty', 'embarrassed', 'angry','ungrateful', 'ashamed', 'worried', and 'selfish', but what wasmost fascinating was the looks of amazed disbelief on people'sfaces, as others declared their target strokes, as if to say, 'That'snot the feeling you're supposed to have.' There was silence at theend, and then, finally, one of the 'guilty' ones turned to the'ungrateful' one and said, 'But you do feel guilty for beingungrateful, don't you?' And the 'ungrateful' one said, 'No, Idon't.'

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Talk Talk by Mavis Klein. Copyright © 2012 Mavis Klein. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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Edition details

• Publisher: Psyche Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780998821
• ISBN 13: 9781780998824
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 87