The Experienced Self as a Developmental Line and Its Use in Script Work

The sense of self as a conscious presence, container of experience, and center of agency is a developmental line that becomes more complex and integrated as we mature. Life narratives, scripts, and episcripts as understood in transactional analysis are manifestations of only one level: the autobiographical self. Conceptualizing verbalizable life narratives as only one level in a development line opens up a wide range of therapeutic interventions for script and episcript work. Indeed, the effects of more specific script work, such as redecision therapy, may be limited unless there is concomitant work on other aspects of this developmental line. The author outlines stages in the development of a sense of self and then uses them as grounding for an expanded understanding of protection and permission, early Child ego states, positive psychology, mentalizing, mindfulness, and the revolutionary new field of environment-dependent gene expression.