Falling Apart and Getting It Together

Abstract

This article views script as a dynamic process of attributing meaning to experience throughout life. It proposes that script change occurs through a dialectical tension between destabilization and integration within the psyche. Breakdown is seen as essential to growth. This process of “story-making and story-breaking” (Holmes, 2001, p. 87) ultimately generates an awareness of the self as author of one’s reality. Two client vignettes describe the author’s experience with a gradual and more sudden experience of script breakdown. These accounts illustrate how a relational approach to psychotherapy can facilitate the disintegration of a static script through an encounter with a separate subject. This process involves client and therapist in an intimate process: falling apart and getting it together. The discussion navigates a broader theme of script and intimacy, which lies at the heart of transactional analysis theory.

A Safe Place to Suffer: Psychotherapy With Clients for Whom No Improvement May be Possible

“…However, by the end of the vignette, Leigh responded to the client in such a way that "he is relieved and moved to tears, and we begin thinking about new treatment options" (p. 323). Another example is Stuthridge's (2017) article about a client "falling apart." This provided a case study of "a stubborn impasse" but one that was eventually worked through to enable the client to be "ready to surrender to the healing process" (p. 28).…”