Analysing Parent-Ego by entertaining inner dialogues involves a discussion between the three ego states. The parent-ego is constantly in a dialogue with the adult-ego and the child-ego.
A good starting place for this dialogue involves a combination of the following questions.
• What does the child-ego want or seek? What are the pleasures it seeks and the pain the child wants to avoid?
• What does the parent-ego want or require? What are the values it holds in esteem?
• What does the adult-ego rationally decide or prefer? What are the rationally selected goals for the adult? Where does the adult want to be in five years? What problems do they want or need to solve?
Parent-ego seeks to control the child-ego based on the life scripts or constraints taught by parents. Whether those constraints are reasonable given the current circumstances is irrelevant. All that matters is what the parent taught or modeled for proper behavior.
Dialogue Examples
Children live in the moment. Adults live in the present but plan for the future. The child-ego ignores or even avoids demands like working long hours, working hard, following strict schedules or any other social constraint. Adults who have difficulty in their career should have a dialogue with their child-ego.
Are they always late for work in an effort to get back at the boss who they think is a reincarnation of the angry and demanding parent? If so, this re-enactment of the rebelling child hurts the adult’s ability to support themselves. An adult may constantly in debt from an inability to pay bills on time or “splurge” payments.
A dialogue between the adult-ego and the child-ego could discuss how the person wants to have fun, the nice things, pleasurable evenings out or to take up the surprise offer of a ski trip. The adult-ego would respond with the need to control the impulses in order to pay off debt so that overtime and second jobs aren’t needed to keep the lights on and the fridge full and the debt collectors from leaving tons of messages on the phone.
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