There are many reasons for why we form a life script. Whether ours guides us or limits us is linked closely to whether we formed our script naturally to give our life a direction or structure, or in response to a traumatic situation or need.

Unscripted Lives and Anti-Scripts

A follower of Berne and eminent script scholar Dr. Claude Steiner maintained that while there are good and bad scripts, essentially all scripts are harmful, because they force us to act in a certain way (Steiner 104). He claimed that banal scripts (that dictate a “normal” life) were the most prevalent, with tragic/heroic scripts in the minority and un-scripted lives the exception.

Once someone decides to script themselves in a certain role, be it tragic, heroic or banal, Steiner felt that the tenacity with which they stick to this role is based on their genetically determined will (Steiner 99). Depending on the strength of a child’s will against a parent’s, a child who is told to act or be a certain way may immediately concede, obey to a certain extent, or fashion their whole life on extreme opposition, which is what Berne called the “anti-script.” Take a person growing up in an oppressively religious household who then decides to dedicate themselves to a hell-raising, destructive lifestyle. This would still be completely dictated by their parents’ wishes, only in reverse. We can examine ourselves and our potential scripts by asking a few questions and seeing what was the most important thing to us growing up, what were we most resistant to, and how these experiences have either put us on a path we are happy with, or one we feel limited in.

Examining the Script

Berne defined a “stroke” as one unit of a human acknowledging another. A smile, a nod, a word, a sentence, these are all what he called strokes and as humans, we need them to survive (Solomon 21). As children, we need the attention of our caretakers to make sense of the world around us and quickly learn what kind of actions get us this attention, even if the conditions needed to get it are unfavourable, or if only negative attention can be gained.

In her study on TA, Dr. Carol Solomon tells the story of a woman she knew in her late twenties who was pretty and intelligent, but ruining her life with alcohol and debt. She simply could not be convinced that she was a worthwhile person or see her good qualities and her doctor decided to dig deeper and see how or why she may have been scripted into going nowhere. On examination, the girl had been a successful ballet dancer in her teens, but though she was talented and pretty, it was never enough. She was pushed constantly to practice more, to lose more weight, until she learned that no matter how good she was, it would never be sufficient. She learned that recognition was conditional and based on her succeeding in more and more unrealistic ways. This idea carried on into her adult life with extreme and detrimental results.

Dr. Solomon mentions…

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