 Hello and welcome to MIPS TV and with us today is Bob Cook who's going to be reviewing another of his wonderful library. I'm sure your library must be huge is it like is it like is it like the is it like the kind of national library Bob do you have halls of books? It's like it's like Potter's library you know how you Potter. One of those wonderful libraries that stretches all over the house. Oh there you go it's a book everywhere. It's a book everywhere. Fantastic, fantastic and we've got a really interesting book today because you know one of your favorite authors is Eric Byrne the founder of Transactional Analysis but this is quite an interesting one isn't it because it's one that he started and never finished. Correct and it is called Intuition and Eagle States. Correct he wrote these he wrote the major part of these books in the articles which made chapters up in the book between 1950 to 57 and actually formed some of his ideas on his early transaction analysis thinking. Yeah so this is this is really his early work isn't it this is so early early work. So what do we learn from this this kind of early kind of incantation of his work? Well what we learn besides his ideas on intuition which we'll talk about in a minute but we talk about his early ideas from his analyst who was Eric Erickson who wrote the eight stages of men I think yeah and Paul Fadern who was another analyst of the time 47, 48, 49 something like that and Paul Fadern wrote about something called ego images which is very similar to the idea of ego states. Interesting and basically these chapters if you like they really paved the way to his first early thinking on how on ego states really and what he would call well Paul Fadern would anyway ego state images like three egos three ego state images in one personality. So if fame it's sort of like shows his early thinking really. Yeah and it's one of things always really fascinated me about TA. It describes three distinct personalities within the individual where things like the humanistic movement person centered on even Gestalt would just talk about a whole a one you know a singularity and it feels to me like this book is really starting to kind of crystallize Bern's thinking moving into his his big ideas would that be right? Yeah and let's just tell you a story behind that from the book. So in after the war Eric Bern who was then a psychiatrist he was employed by the army to and the insurance companies to make reports out from the soldiers who came back from the Second World War who was suffering from post-traumatic stress and he had to make adjustments of their clinical health within 20 seconds. Good grief. 50 seconds and he very quickly through the ideas of intuition started to realize that people came from different parts of the self when they presented. Oh within 20 to 80 seconds or around that time a couple of minutes he started to realize people really operated from different parts of themselves when answering particular questions such as are you nervous? Questions like I forget the list of them in the book but you can read it when you get the book. And from that he started to realize that people sometimes answered just like a little child because they'd regressed in post-traumatic stress or they answered like someone who might have been their father or their mother and he was really judging the level of fragility or robustness in the here and now which he then called the ego state eventually adult ego state. That's fascinating. So almost he developed the ego state idea as a very quick shortcut because he was limited with time in his in his clinical assessments. Right. And literally by the response of the answer how someone responded? To the question. Yeah to the question he could take a view on how fragile he were or where they were coming from. Yeah in terms of their levels of function. Yeah. And from those early ego images which Paul for you know Paul for don't talk anyway he developed the idea that we come from three parts of the self and they were distinct entities and he called them the well they're quite long names those days so he called them extra psyche which is the extra psyche which can be a state the neo psyche which is the new state which we can the adult state yes and the archaic state which became the child ego state. Yeah I've often wondered how much did Bern take from Freud's idea in ego and superego because a lot of people say he kind of just transposed them but it's not quite the case is it for what I've read. If you look at Freud's idea on the unconscious which is what we're really talking about. Freud's idea of the unconscious was split into three. You had the superego which you link to authority if you like. These are drives by the way yeah it which is the infantile drives and the ego which is really more in the here and now but they were a tripartite. In other words they were three part model of the unconscious. Yes. Well Eric Burns is a three part model of the consciousness. How interesting. So for example if you put somebody in a room and you videoed them and just say for five minutes Eric Burns would be able to say from their behavior and observations you could see in front of you a young child a robust adult in here and now or the mother and father from yesterday consciously. So this would be something they're consciously doing they know they're doing it. So you say the parody state yeah they will be thinking, feeling, behaving as if they were their parent figure. Yes. Their mother, their father and they'll be acting out like that. Take the childhood state thinking, feeling, behaving as you were a kid. So you see in front of you the actions, the behaviors of that four year old consciously. It's not a theory of unconsciousness it's actually a theory of consciousness. Yeah because they're acting that out right in front of you. Yeah so if you were a therapist you'll be able to see the behaviors of the regressed ten year old in front of you. So in terms of this book how did Paul McCormack, how did Paul McCormack kind of capture Burns work? Because he was kind of a half finished book wasn't he? He died before he could finish it. So how did McCormack capture it? Did he take it in any different direction? No not really. Paul McCormack was actually employed by the organization of Eric Burns which Eric Burns started up in 63 which is the International Transactional House Association formed in New York 63. McCormack was employed, he was a therapist himself and I think he was on the board of that organization to put these chapters together right or forward and produce it in 1977 which he did. And this book is full of the ideas I've just been talking about at the beginning of transaction analysis but also the idea of intuition and intuition of course according to Eric Burns had its genesis in what he called the little professor small child. Yes it's always fascinating me just to explain a little bit what the little professor is. Well little professor is really where I think creativity and science come together as I said earlier I think somewhere. So the little professor is before operational thinking it's before it's very very early cognition and it's more based on really feelings because the infant very early in life before cognitive before real concrete cognitive thinking sees the world through feelings. So it's a feeling based system and in that early what Byrne called intuitive functioning and he would argue that the great psychotherapist really need to employ their intuition as well as their clinical observations from a scientific framework and putting the two together makes the genius of the modern day psychotherapist. Yes it's interesting isn't it because one's a evidence-based discipline and the other is a more metaphysical hunch isn't it? Yeah that's right and what a wonderful combination. Yeah insights and science join together. Darwin for example said that if you look at the animal kingdom animals instinctively very quickly choose the actions and arms like an intuitive level and a lot of theories would say about the human race that within a seconds they've made an intuitive hunch if you like about and judgments for the people they meet. That's an intuitive place and what Byrne does in this book is break down levels of intuition and he really does talk about how those two disciplines come together intuition and science in the making of a modern day therapist. So when we're thinking about this book and where its place is where is it where is its place who would be best served by reading this? I think people are interested in intuition to start with. People are interested in how we can use intuition in our general lives as a psychotherapist as well as clinical observation and science and also students because RCA because it's a historical document it goes back 70 years and it's a glimpse into Eric Burns early thinking before he actually developed his concrete model of transaction analysis. I always think that's so useful if you're a student just to get right back to the roots of the theory because I think for me it's kind of like the fundamental building blocks you could once you get to the the root of it then you can work backwards as opposed to starting at the end and working towards it. Well this is certainly the roots because he hadn't formed his four blocks of transaction analysis at this time and the four blocks were ego states which is a theory of personality. Transaction analysis popper which is a third communication script which is an unconscious light plan played out throughout life and games which is repetitive compulsion so he hadn't put the whole lot together he was still grasping the whole ideas of ego state images and ego states and if you like I think from his this is interesting really from the intuition of this book and writing it he started to really play around with the ideas that we like three people in one's psychic skin. Yes yes that's that's an interesting concept isn't it yeah three three individuals yeah so I must read really for students and for anyone who's interested in in how intuition works the book is called Intuition and Ego States it's by Paul McCormack what we'll do is we'll put a link in the comments bar below we'll put a link in there and right at the end of the video we'll put a picture of the book up. Yeah this Burns writings that he Paul McCormack bought alive really. Yes yeah he edited them he was the editor of them and structured them. That's why. Yeah so yeah so maybe maybe one for the Christmas list but if those if those you celebrate Christmas or holidays if you're like put it on here could have made you this around November. Where creativity and cognition come together makes the genesis of a modern day therapist. Yeah yeah that that space between metaphysics and science and you know that isn't isn't that where psychotherapists work all the time that. It has to be yeah it has to be more it just has to be. Yeah yeah so Bob Cook as always thank you very much. Thank you.