Within Transactional Analysis there is the idea of a life script, the life script refers to the context we gave to life as a child which then continues to impact upon us as adults. The psychologist Eric Berne, famed within the Transactional Analysis school postulated that psychic imbalance and dysfunction is the result of a poorly scripted set of assumptions about life that were formed during our childhood.
The aim of Life Script Analysis within this school of psychology is the rewriting of the operating system that conditions our responses to life.
The term "scripting" in the context of this school of thought can be understood as a mode of behavior, so violent scripting would be assumptions on the nature of life that lead to violence. Violence is seldom random, it is used to attain goals, whether they be physical goals such as the obtaining of possessions or emotive goals like the desire to be feared in order to attain a feeling of worthiness. Thus what can be perceived as the demon inside may well just be poor life scripting, though in fairness, it could well be a demon too!
By analyzing our own behaviors we can discover often subconscious assumptions that run throughout our psyche which we may not previously have been aware of. As with any limitation upon our performance, they must first be identified before we can find liberation from them.
The origins of our life script lie in our own personal modulation of the learned behavior and attitudes we gain from familial and societal norms. This gives humanity as a whole a huge variety in terms of the life scripts we operate with and whilst we should always strive for a greater degree of self knowledge and improvement we should also consider that variety is the spice of life. Indeed, it is necessary that we obtain some degree of poor scripting in order that we gain the opportunity to forge ourselves anew.
To what extent are our hopes and dreams dictated by our life script? This is a complex question and the answer will be in terms of degrees. The types of dreams and hopes we consider worthy and more importantly, possible, are set by the life script. Many of these dreams may be worthy, for it must be acknowledged that the good and bad is contained within.
