Reflections on Montpellier and Legacy

There is a phenomenon in my life that is as predictable as death and taxes. Once I have given a presentation, as I did on Sunday morning on August 10, my brain will go repeatedly over it after the event. This is not an unpleasant process even if I do come up with a few things that I wished I had mentioned or other things I wished I had emphasized or explained more fully. It is just how my brain operates.

It would not have been possible for me to have enjoyed our three hours together more than I did. I had anticipated that presentation for more than a year. I must say I spent more than a little time preparing for it even though I can make most of the presentation in my sleep.  That was an important morning for me, and I hope it was also for those who attended.

I love the concept of passing along legacies.  For those of you who weren’t there I began my talk by recognizing Eric Berne because all of us were sitting in that room because of him. All of us are part of his legacy. Then I spoke of my teachers, Bob and Mary Goulding because they passed their legacy on to me. I am part of their legacy.  And after more than fifty years since they mentored me, I have created my own legacy to pass on in the form of my charts and my writings about them.

I introduced my other extraordinary mentor, Dr. Meyer Friedman because I have combined the legacy he left behind with the legacy of Bob and Mary, just as they not only passed on the legacy of Eric Berne but also of the founder of Gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls. Bob and Mary were the first to combine transactional analysis with gestalt therapy, coining the combination, “Redecision Therapy.”

I recounted my own journey as I sought to refine and expand on Bob and Mary’s original theory on what they called Injunctions. I now call them Injunctive Messages for lots of reasons that are satisfying to me. Either phrase will do. Along with that expansion I have integrated much of what I learned from treating Type A Behavior (TAB), especially in the precision of the diagnosis and the assigning of new behaviors (the Resolving Activities) to replace old habitual ones (The Coping Behaviors).

Most of you reading this paper will be well catechized into the history of Eric Berne and the theory and methodology of Transactional Analysis. By the same token most of you will not have a working knowledge of Dr. Friedman’s work even if you are familiar with the terms, “Type A” and “Type A Behavior.” `Well, I am, having spent thirty-plus years teaching his material and conducting countless hours of groups, not to mention having written a book on it.

To understand the goal of the charts it is important to have a working understanding of his contribution. He recognized and proved the relationship between specific behaviors and emotional states as the primary cause of coronary heart disease. He did not consider Type A Behavior as a psychological phenomenon but a discreet medical diagnosis. He did not intuit the presence of this diagnosis but learned its many markers that are concrete and easily identifiable to the trained clinician. 

Far back in time one of my good friends and colleagues was the late Paul Ware who practiced psychiatry in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was an early proponent of Bob and Mary’s work. In those days it was his habit to hand his patients a list of the Injunctions (about twelve at the time) and he would ask them to identify the ones they thought applied to them. 

Following his lead, I did the same. It was intuitive and people responded with their best understanding. I didn’t realize it was like asking people to identify what was largely invisible to them. Berne once commented wryly that one might be able to be their own therapist, but it was akin to becoming one’s own barber.

On my first day of training at the Institute with Bob (way back in November of 1970), he emphasized the importance of language and our need to hear it. Specifically, he counseled us to be hawks in hearing such phrases as, “I can’t,” “I’ll try,” I wish,” and the word, “it” as in “It feels good” or “It feels bad.” He taught the correctives: “Change the ‘it’s” to ‘I’,” and the words, “Try, Wish, and can’t” to “I will” or “I won’t.”

He wanted people to own their power and not use passive words. But more than that, he wished for people to hear themselves. After all, until someone intervenes and teaches people to hear themselves, they will use those words all their lives and never understand the script meaning.

On that same day, in the afternoon we were listening to someone sharing a tape of his work. There were maybe four or five of us arranged on the floor in front of the couch Bob was sitting on. Somewhere in the conversation that followed the presenter of the tape made a very funny comment and we all laughed. All, except Bob, who literally shouted over our laughter, “I’m not going to laugh at that. I’m not going to laugh at the idea of you being dead.” To which the presenter lamely defended himself by saying he had only been joking. Well, he had, only he was not listening to the content of his words which indeed were not the least bit funny if heard literally.

The moment Bob intervened, I understood immediately, the learning being even more powerful because I too had been laughing. The guy was funny. And the way he said it was funny. But without Bob’s knowing intervention, he had no way to hear his own words or change his behavior.

He could have gone on for the rest of his life not knowing he was using a kind of humor that “is grim and ironic in a desperate or hopeless situation.” (Oxford Dictionary) But then, gallows humor is what I would call a Coping Behavior, making light of feeling despair by putting on the brave face of the Defiant Decision.

In other words, Bob was teaching us to hear those phrases or to see those unconscious body movements that revealed someone’s script behavior in real time and to confront them. Otherwise, to use the words of gallows humor, the continued use of those phrases would serve to “tighten the noose” about the person’s neck while he was looking and sounding cheerful and happy.

 In this way Bob and Mary and Dr. Friedman were the same, confronting what was obvious to them and invisible to the person.  And these confrontations were in the service of lifting back the veil so the person could see their self-destructive/self-defeating behavior patterns.

We cannot change what we do not know about. We cannot alter what we do not perceive, nor do we change unless we truly believe that what we are doing is destructive and that there is a viable alternative.

Where I came to disagreement with my teachers was with their (unstated) belief in the ease with which people could change their scripts. I felt great relief when Dr. Friedman said, “Changing your Type A Behavior might be the hardest thing you ever do in your life.” He had tons of proof that such change was possible, but it took a lot of guidance and a fierce determination on the part of the person.

In this way the material in the charts is not theoretical.  Oh, the exact wording in any given box is certainly up for debate. A colleague recently wrote to me that he had been studying my charts very closely and that he “had serious reservations” about them. Well, me too! The point is not their perfection. There is a validity to them that cannot be argued, if you accept the proposition that the Injunctive Messages exist, had an effect on us as we were growing up, and those adaptations are visible today.

Having accepted that as a worthwhile proposition, then we can proceed with the same confidence as Bob confronting language or Dr. Friedman confronting the distinguishing behaviors that led to the accurate diagnosis of Type A Behavior.  In both cases, it was there to see and to hear. In that regard it is not theoretical. It is concrete.

Once the clinical ear and eye is attuned, it is not difficult to hear the Despairing Decisions or the Defiant Decisions.  Despairing Decisions are spoken unconsciously in present tense, “My life is a mess.” “I hate being alive.” Defiant Decisions are stated without awareness in the future tense, “I will be successful when…” or “I’ll show them…. someday.”

 The Coping Behaviors are visible. Using the word “Try” continually to never displease anyone is a Coping Behavior, just as are the two major components of TAB, Time Urgency (a jiggling leg when someone is talking to you) and Free-Floating Hostility (an angry grimace as someone recalls an unpleasant event from long ago). These things are not “theoretical” but in plain view of the trained observer. 

CONFRONTATION

At this point in my presentation, I emphasized and spoke at some length about the importance of Confrontation, one of what I call “Impasse Allies.” These allies are the strategies that assist us in helping our patients cross the impasse, that space between the left and right sides of the charts.  It is our ability to switch from one ally to another that facilitates the process of therapy by being appropriately responsive to the patient in any given moment. The other “allies” are affirmation, gratitude, acceptance, encouragement, listening, admiration, empathy, humor, invitation and relief as well as confrontation.

As I always do when talking about the ally of confrontation, I emphasized the focus is a person’s behavior, not the person himself.  Confrontation is a means of giving information.  In this case it is giving a person information about behaviors that are harmful to themselves and to those they love.  And ordinarily it is concerning behavior they are manifesting in the present moment but don’t have an active awareness of it nor of its damaging qualities over time.

Again, we cannot change what we know nothing about. If I do not realize that I continually cut people o and finish their sentences for them, I will have no way to change it.  And if I do not know that this is a key diagnostic indicator of an Injunctive Message, then I will find myself defensive when those close to me try to communicate their discomfort with my behavior.  By showing their concern for me, I feel I am being attacked. I will Rationalize my behavior since I will have no idea of an alternative.

Early in our marriage my most loving and kind wife would say to me, “Not everyone in the restaurant wants to hear what you have to say,” or “At the dinner party tonight it might be ok for someone else at the table to share their stories also.” I was aware of neither the loudness of my voice or of my social dominance. Coping Behaviors.

The answer to what to replace the thinking and behaving that have been shaped by the Injunctive Messages is the right side of the charts. Here the person is introduced to truths about life and about themselves that can replace the false beliefs spawned by the influence of the Injunctive Messages.

In confronting the Coping Behaviors, we educate people as to their self-harming habits. These are habits they will not need to use on the right side of the charts. That is, we want them to know of these largely unconscious behaviors and replace them as they cross the space on the chart called the impasse.

But, if they are not to carry these habits with them, what are they to carry? Is everything in their “backpack” contaminated and does it need to be completely emptied. Is there nothing good to carry with them? 

CONFRONTATION 2.0 

In reflecting on the workshop, I became aware of another vital function of confrontation. If confrontation is taken to mean giving someone information that is necessary for their growth, then it is also incumbent upon us to confront people with their natural gifts, talents and strengths. Many people have no grasp as to their natural assets. Bob would tell me repeatedly how bright I was. “What, me!”

Often, upon revealing to someone that I can see how brave or resilient or creative she is, I will be given a look. The look says, “Don’t lie to me.” I respond to the look by saying that I rarely lie and almost always tell the truth, especially if what I am saying is complimentary. As Mary used to say, “We don’t give people sugar cubes,” something sweet with no nutrition.

I make it a point for people to know the deep positives about themselves. Many people presume the only valid truths about themselves are negatives, things they should try to change or feel guilty about. Why is pointing our natural gifts and qualities important?

The goal of the charts is to help people find their way to the right side, which is a life characterized by Contentment and Acceptance. The Coping Behaviors are rooted in trying to stave off the feelings of Struggle and Misery. I always say that no matter what you might think of the charts in terms of their validity, most of us can agree it is better to live life from the right side than from the left side.

But people develop a deep sense of connection to their Coping Behaviors, believing that they have a useful function in their lives and are responsible for many happy outcomes. To the outside observer, this line of reasoning makes no sense. Of the seven false beliefs people need to discard in allowing their TAB to be replaced with healthy behavior, the first one on that list reads, “AIAI (Anger. Irritation, Aggravation and Impatience) hinders, never helps a career.”

Lots of people will protest, “But that is how I got to the top of the mountain.” “That is why I beat everyone else.” What is true is that lots of people through a combination of their intelligence, ability and strength of will do get to their personal mountain top.

The fact that they were often angry and defiant on the journey does not mean these were benefits. It is very hard to accept that one became successful through the dint of their gifts, not because of excess irritation. It is easy to see, however how one could enmesh the two and be leery of giving up the poisonous one in fear of also losing their positive outcomes in life.

For this reason, we must help people know their durable gifts, those aspects of themselves that they will not lose by shedding the constant use of the Coping Behaviors. Over time the Coping Behaviors will erode, even destroy these gifts. Over time smoke will destroy the lungs that the cigarettes have been appearing to calm.

These gifts are portable and can be carried with us across the Impasse as we leave the destructive habits behind. Indeed, one of the primary responsibilities on the right side is to preserve our gifts and nourish them so we can enjoy them and share them.

Had I thought of this aspect of confrontation I would have added it to my presentation at the time.  The old saying is true, “It is hard to see the picture when you are standing in the frame.” We need dependable outsiders, those not “standing in the frame” to inform us of behaviors that are destructive, so we have an opportunity to amend them. It is just as important to be informed of those things we can depend upon so we can feel an undergirding of confidence as we go about our lives.

CONFRONTATION 3.0 

I had one more inspiration that I would have shared had it come to me. Eric Berne and Meyer Friedman share an intriguing similarity.  They both saw patterns of human behavior that had not been identified previously. With Berne it was the identification of Games and with Friedman it was the identification of Type A Behavior.

Both are important, even lifesaving discoveries, and both have been misused to some extent. When Berne’s book, Games People Play became a popular bestseller, a parlor game emerged where people would seek to identify the games other people were playing and speak to them accusingly about their observations. There was no introspection involved, just a new tool use in the pursuit of feeling superior.

This also took place following the publication of Type A Behavior and Your Heart, also a surprise best seller. It became common for people to read the book and often assess themselves as being mostly Type A Behavior free, while liberally seeing the pattern in others and telling them about it, often harshly with a blaming attitude. “I can’t see much relevance for me in the book, but my neighbor could use a copy, not to mention my spouse.”

The problem with both these outcomes is that the presence of both Games and Type A Behavior are diagnostic indicators of severe difficulties, the one seriously confounding a person’s attempts to share closeness and the other a medical diagnosis that at its worst could lead to someone’ early death, not to mention the damage to their personality and relationships over time.

It is not clear to me how this issue was handled by Berne or if it was. I do know exactly how Dr. Friedman handled this problem. We were instructed to teach two strategies to our participants, the first being to consciously not adhere the label “Type A” to anyone in their close circles. 

These folks were all in treatment with us because their TAB had been accurately diagnosed so there was no discussion involving what many readers of the book would say, “Well, I’ve read the book, and I’d say I’m a mixture of both Type A and Type B.” That is like saying,” I am only a little bit pregnant.” I don’t mean to imply that there was no push back. These were groups full of people with highly contentious TAB.

As they were learning all the aspects of their behavior and how to alter it, they were firmly instructed to not carry out any diagnostic activity with anyone they knew. If they knew asked, “So, am I a Type A?” the answer was scripted for them, “I am so busy working on modifying my own TAB I haven’t the time or energy to think about if you might have it.” In other words, they were instructed to not use this newfound information as one more avenue to criticize or “improve’ their loved ones.

They were given a second instruction that might seem contradictory to the first. They were told to actively look for manifestations of TAB in other people, but with no judgement or intervention. Indeed, they were taught to see those behaviors so they could see a reflection of themselves when they were behaving in the same manner.

This turned a possible smear, “Oh, look at that idiot acting like a Type A ass” to a much more compassionate and insightful one, “So that is how I look when I am doing that.” This active searching consolidates the existence of the behavior patterns and their bleak outcomes. It offers a protection from an attack of their own TAB since nothing sparks it in a person so afflicted as the presence of it in someone else.

This is most likely true of the Coping Behaviors. If my Coping Behavior is being defensive, then it is easy to see how that might provoke my partner to use criticism if that is her Coping Behavior. Just as there is no benefit to anyone by saying, “Stop playing your game with me,” so too there will most likely not be a good outcome in saying, “You are just being very Type A with me.”

That does not mean we should not recognize what is in the room, either from our own behavior or that of others. It is important to see the Coping Behaviors someone else is employing while also remembering these are signs of distress, not happiness. They are the markers for the person’s struggle with one or more Injunctive Messages.

This has value for two reasons.  As with seeing TAB, it gives us a picture of how impossible we might feel to someone when we are up to our necks in Coping Behaviors. The second is an invitation to remember the pain these behaviors represent. That remembrance can usher in a degree of compassion in place of our own discomfort or impatience. And that could help us to remember not to take someone else’s Coping Behavior as being personal.

A drowning person will grab onto you desperately and even push you under water while gasping to reach the surface. That doesn’t mean they don’t like you or want to drown you. It means they are drowning and are desperate. This is an apt metaphor.  For any of you reading this who have a history of being trained as a lifeguard, you will remember being trained what to do if the drowning person pushes you under. The Coping Behaviors are the person’s learned strategy for not being drowned by their own despair. 

For a trained lifeguard, the actions of a drowning person are not a surprise, and she will be qualified to handle the situation. So, we too can recognize these harmful manifestations of the Injunctive Messages and know how to handle them.  And in teaching people about their Coping Behaviors, it is also helpful to encourage them to recognize the same in other people.

This is not to give people another weapon to use with criticism or contempt. It is an aid in recognizing harmful from healthy behavior. There is no smugness in this pursuit. Indeed, it can create the opposite. Seeing ourselves and our behavior in others invites compassion and empathy. And those are the two vital elements necessary to resolve issues in the Emotional World. 

COMING TO THE END OF THE WORKSHOP

In a long career of standing up in front of people and teaching, this workshop was like no other. I knew it was to be the last of its type I was going to give. Hopefully this was not my last time to cross the ocean, but it was the last time I would do so for this purpose. It is not quite possible to put in words what this workshop meant to me; how precious it felt. I was able to share my journey of more than five decades to arrive standing there that day.

I would like to share with you how it ended. I will never forget.

Near the end of my power points, I put up one of me with a group of people in June of 1971. We were taking a final photo of our group who had been living at the Western Institute for four weeks training with Bob and Mary. The word, “Magic” is overused but that is what it was. I enlarged a portion of the picture to reveal me kneeling in the front row beside my new friend Jim Heenan. I look as if I could jump out of the picture with my excitement and eagerness.

I was so excited that I was half the way back to San Francisco from Watsonville before I remembered I had broken up with my girlfriend and had no place to go! I managed. But I really hadn’t remembered. Maybe there is such a thing as workshop euphoria dissociative disorder.  If there is, I had it. 

I shared with the audience that the young man in the picture did not know he would be standing in front of them one day sharing what he had learned. But he would not have been completely surprised. One of his earlier teachers, David Sterre at his seminary had consoled him in a moment of discouragement and self-doubt, “You are headed for an enchanted place.” He was right.

I then showed a series of slides of Eric Berne and of Bob and Mary each inscribed with the words, “Thank You.” In various languages, all of which were represented in the room. I showed a picture of me visiting Bob’s grave, his ashes resting in what had been the front yard of the Western Institute for Group and Family Therapy, with the words, “I remember.”

After one of the slides with Bob, I put one up that recalled as closely as I am able all these years later his answer to my question to him about why he did psychotherapy. I was interviewing with him at his invitation the day after he had presented (and wowed me) to my class on group therapy. Here is what the slide said: 

“BOB, WHY DO YOU DO PSYCHOTHERAPY?” 

“Because I truly believe it is the most effective way to end war in the world.
I know it won’t happen in my lifetime.
But I believe if people feel good about themselves
and they feel good about other people;
they will no longer kill each other.”

Not long after giving me this answer, Bob invited (more like instructed) me to travel to California after I had graduated in the spring so I could train with him and Mary at their institute. I said, “I’ll be there,” and I was there the next fall.

As that slide was on the board, I asked for any Ukrainians in the audience to please come forward and have our picture taken together with it in the background. As they came forward, I slipped on my vyshyvanka, a Ukrainian peasant shirt they had given me some years previous. It was a moment.

I had brought a box of my books with me, not knowing exactly what I might do with them other than the determination to not carry them back. I put them on the table and asked for people to make a twenty-euro contribution or less if that was too expensive. I would give the proceeds to a Ukrainian charity. When I counted the money after the workshop those sixteen books had generated over six hundred euros, or almost seven hundred U.S. dollars. That money went to the Prytula Foundation, an esteemed Ukrainian charity.

This was followed by a slide showing Bob and Mary basking in the afterglow of winning the Eric Berne Scientific Memorial Award in 1974 for “Fifteen Injunctions and Redecision Therapy.” Above that picture I wrote simply, “I love you.” And I do.

The next slide had a picture of the charts with the caption:

I CREATED THESE CHARTS
JUST FOR YOU
IMPERFECT AS THEY ARE

And my last side appeared with this written on it:

NOW, IT IS YOUR TURN
I have had mine
Be part of lots of legacies
Become your own legacy
Pass it on
Heal the World 

With that the workshop ended. I was given one of the nicest memories that a person can receive. Everyone should have such a moment.

I wish to end this article both of remembrance and theory with the short poem I wrote to Bob and Mary as I dedicated my dissertation to them. I wrote this at the beginning of my journey. By any measure it is very poor poetry but written with genuine heart by that young man who was once me. He already understood the magnitude of their gift to him. Here it is.

MAGNIFICENCE 

Creative genius,
Moving with unparalleled precision,
Swift resolution
Caring careful calculation

 Masters making certain
Work done with economy
No statues, no structures
Of element defying substance.

Mostly memories of gratitude
Some pages of publication
Poignant pictures in peoples’ minds,
Erased someday in the passage of time.

 How to preserve,
How to communicate
What now is cherished,
What will be past.
The powerful poetry and gentle skill
That leads to magnificence.

August 7, 1974 

And they were magnificent, quirks and all. I remember.

November 10, 2025