The purpose of psychology is to explain and help others to change, if suffering from depression or anxiety or we just want to understand the other or improve ourselves there are different types of psychological therapies to help us. We are aware that psychologists have the know-how, just has mechanics know cars and astronauts know space shuttles and psychics, but we know they know a lot but we know very little possibly because it’s too complicated, it doesn't make rational sense, we don't have enought time or just like my diploma in accounting if its not put to good use it will turn into a vague memory.
Look at my previous thread in cognitive dissonance, it sounds alien to many, it sure sounds to those that I explained it to, that is because its not something we normally hear about so explaining it to others these words and their context also requires a connotation from the listener for cognitive dissonance to make any sense.
My very first assignment was on cognitive dissonance in a paper titled media illiteracy or cognitive dissonance which discussed statistical discrepancies between what people said regarding their preferred news media output -TV or newspapers- and the actual sales/view/quality figures of those two media outlets, in the USA during the 70's and 80's. It turns out that people lied about tv news medium being higher quality than newspapers because the quality is lower than newspapers (local news recorded in many states), the truth is that nobody wants to admit (during the questionnaires for this empirical data) that watching news on tv is easier and lazier than reading. The discrepancy lies on behaviour, we don't want to be seen as lazy so during this state of mental anxiety we tell ourselves that television news is better than the news quality on paper.
Now there is a form of therapy which is easier to understand known as transactional analysis which covers many aspects of us and others.
The purpose of this thread is not to explain everything but just child indoctrination and how it should be understood. We all may know that what occurs in childhood will be part of their adult life. For example a child born from racist parents has a higher chance of becoming prejudice towards other races, children born in 3rd world countries are more comfortable lying and stealing from others including friends and family, and rapist may had been molested or mistreated when they were younger. Last, and this has more to do what will be discussed, a person born from religious parents mostly likely will be in the same religion in their adult life, geographically religion proves this notion, but all is not lost, this is all in a general sense, there can be different circumstances but in general the way we are nurtured plays a crucial part in our adult life.
TA teaches that we all have 3 ego states, Parent, Adult, Child.
Parent is when we are judgmental or concerned about something or others
In adult it’s all about the here and now, e.g. What is the time? Its twelve thirty.
Child is us in a state of sorrow, guilt, rejection. But also creativity and the desire to explore
An example between two people
Person A - you made a huge mistake and I expect you never do it again or you're fired!
Person B - I am really sorry, it won't happen again I promise
Here we have a transition of communication between A and B, A as the Parent and B as the Child
This is a very simplified explanation but it should give you a clear understanding on how easy it is to apply TA , you will never see social interactions in the same way you did before. There is a lot more to it as we will see.
Both Parent and Child ego states are developed when we are children and plays a crucial part in understanding ourselves in adulthood.
Due to a lack of time I will need to leave this for later.
