The following is a summary of a lecture that can be viewed in the Counselling Student Library.
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In this lecture, Lisa Mathurin (a counsellor, psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer) introduces you to the ego state theory, which comprises the essence of the transactional analysis (TA) theory of personality, psychopathology and communication.
After listening to this lecture, you will be able to:
Identifying and Working with Ego States – Lecture Overview
Lisa introduces ego state theory, drawing on Eric Berne’s seminal work in this field and explaining how having an understanding of ego states can support both your personal development and your understanding of clients’ thoughts, feelings and behaviours. She supports you in building your self-awareness by encouraging you to reflect on your own ego states in recent times.
Turning to the structural model, Lisa explains the three basic ego states, looking at each in detail, before looking at ego state shifts. The functional model, meanwhile, divides the ego states – leading to a total of five – and shows how each is used. You will learn about the key behavioural characteristics in all five ego states.
How can you tell which ego state a person is in? Lisa explains this, again drawing on the work of Berne, who developed four ways of doing this: behavioural, social, historical and phenomenological.
With regard to the TA theory of psychopathology, Lisa notes that there are two categories of structural pathology: contaminations and exclusions. She examines each of these in detail, before looking also at issues involved in constancy.
You will leave this lecture not only with this new knowledge and understanding of the ego state model, but also a list of eight references for further reading and exploration of this fascinating core of TA theory.
Alongside running a successful counselling and supervision private practice, Lisa has been delivering supervision and counselling training since 2009.
She is passionate about the power of group dynamics and the therapeutic relationship and trusts in founding a relationship of respect, trust and confidentiality as an essential way of working with clients and students.
In conjunction with her enthusiasm for community and connection, Lisa is a Wellbeing Consultant for a local charity.
Identifying and Working with Ego States – Lecture Overview
Lisa is a Registered Member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, the UK Association for Transactional Analysis, European Association of Transactional Analysis and the International Association for Transactional Analysis.
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