Transactional analysis (TA) posits that injunctions and counterinjunctions,early life messages often transmitted unconsciously from parent to child, influence an individual’s behavior and attitudes later in life. The concepts help in the analysis of communication patterns and interpersonal transactions.

What are injunctions and counterinjuctions?

1. Injunctions:
   • Definition: Injunctions are restrictive or prohibitive messages received by individuals during their early years, typically from authority figures or caregivers (often parents). These messages shape a person’s beliefs about what is permissible or not, acceptable or unacceptable.
   • Types of Injunctions:
     • Don’t (Don’t Exist): Messages that deny a person’s right to exist or have needs.
     • Don’t Feel (Don’t Feel Anything): Messages that discourage expressing emotions.
     • Don’t Think (Don’t Think You Are Important): Messages that undermine one’s intellectual capabilities or self-worth.
     • Don’t Be (Don’t Be Strong/Don’t Be a Child): Messages that restrict a person from being themselves or fulfilling certain roles.
2. Counterinjunctions:
   • Definition: Counterinjunctions are responses or strategies developed by individuals to cope with or rebel against the injunctions they received. These counterinjunctions can either reinforce the original injunction or serve as a defense mechanism.
   • Examples of Counterinjunctions:
     • I’ll Show You (I’ll Show You I Exist): A counterinjunction where an individual may rebel against messages of “Don’t Exist” by asserting themselves or engaging in rebellious behavior.
     • I’ll Feel However I Want (I’ll Show You I Feel): A response to messages of “Don’t Feel” by expressing emotions openly and refusing to conform to emotional suppression.
     • I’ll Think for Myself (I’ll Show You I’m Important): A reaction to messages of “Don’t Think You Are Important,” asserting intellectual independence and self-worth.
     • I’ll Be My Own Person (I’ll Show You I Can Be): A counterinjunction against messages restricting one’s identity, emphasizing independence and individuality.

The presence of these messages can be inferred from the content and manner words delivered by interacting partners. Transactional analysts identify and challenge these messages to help individuals gain insight into their behavioral patterns and work towards more fulfilling and autonomous lives.

Messages can be true or false. Thus, counterinjunctions may be negative. To what extent can positive messages (counterinjunctions, permissions) be just as problematic as negative ones (injunctions)?

When they are false and conditional. Let’s illustrate the dynamic beginning with injunctions.

Injunctions are non-verbal or emotional conclusions reached by the child upon seeing and interpreting non-verbal or emotional messages that come from the parents speaking emotionally.

For example, when the child has broken an expensive vase he gets a disapproving look from his father, probably accompanied by verbal tirades and even a hard spanking. The child interprets this look as an injunction, a “Don’t” message. He might, for example, interpret his father’s look as “I wish you weren’t around,” or to simplify, “Don’t exist.” This is clearly a false conclusion, and painful.

The same child will also receive verbal messages emitted by authoritative side of its parents that serve to counter this injunction. “Behave, take care of the things in this house“, or to simplify, “Be perfect“. The child then combines this with the injunction to reach the conclusion “Be perfect, and you can exist.” This “rule” has the nature of a program. A child might conclude this early, say around the age of 7. That program can stay for life unless changed.

The program is false because it’s not possible to be perfect, a fact that becomes clear with every mistake. Furthermore, the conditional that if you are perfect you can exist is not only false because of an impossible premise; it is also illogical because one can be perfect and still be made to feel that one doesn’t exist, as with a child who is ignored no matter what it does.

Yet, the rule has consequences.

The child, now grown up, lives the rule “Be perfect and you can exist” and its variants “If I do things perfectly, I can exist“, or “If I do things perfectly I shield myself from the pain of feeling I shouldn’t exist.” The person rarely says this script out loud, but the script is there, and it will explain much of what that child does in his adult life.

Usually as a means to avoid pain. The only event that validates that statement is that the child is insulated from the pain, but this never really lasts. As long as the person is “perfect”, whatever that means to him, he feels a sense of worth; he is OK on the outside. He acts normally, he might even achieve great success. But when he fucks up, he no longer enjoys the protection perfection afforded. Surfacing again is the feeling that he is Not OK, not worth anything. He feels the pain of “Don’t exist.” And this will happen again and again because we all make mistakes.

If a mistake at the wrong time or is big enough, say, when he makes a big mistake up the eve of his marriage, he could become helpless, blame the world for his sad state, end up despairing about getting any help or improvement, and then not show up. Or perhaps kill himself.

When there really was no reason for any of that.

The only way out of this is to change the conditional into an unconditional “I’m OK regardless of what I do.” By challenging the entire conditional, this person is not so much shielded from childhood injunctions, which will not be erased from memory, but is strengthened to respond to their occasional surfacing.

A good sign that one is in the grips of a wrong counterinjunction is that his emotional states tend to fluctuate rather wildly: one day feeling great, next day feeling depressed. Or lively with colleagues, depressed with family. A lack of consistency in behavior, a lack of consistency in general suggest that one is living by rules that could be discarded.

We just have to consider that such rules have been used for years and that it might take a lot of sacrifice to discard them.

(Q.C., 231228)