Well I was close. I had five.
*recruits sixth voice* Now let's pick a good one this time.
From WIKI:
I'm Ok, You're OK
The Parent, Adult, Child (P-A-C) Model + negative, critical (P-A-C)
After setting out the context for his belief in the significance of TA, Harris sets out his picture of TA, starting point from the observation that a person’s psychological state seems to change in response to different situations. The question is, from what and to what does it change? Harris answers this through a simplified introduction to TA, explaining Berne’s proposal that there are three states into which a person can switch: the Parent, the Adult and the Child.
Harris describes the mental state called the Parent by analogy, as a collection of "tape recordings" of external influences that a child observed adults doing and saying. The recording is a long list of rules and admonitions about the way the world is that the child was expected to take on board unquestioningly. Many of these rules (for example: "Never run out in front of traffic") are useful and valid all through life; others ("Sex before marriage is bad", or "You can never trust a cop") are opinions that may be less helpful.
In parallel with those Parent recordings, the Child is a simultaneous recording of internal events – how life felt as a child. Harris equates these with the vivid recordings that Wilder Penfield was able to cause his patients to re-live by stimulating their brains. Harris proposes that, as adults, when we feel overwhelmed by feelings, it is as if we are re-living those Child memories yet the trigger for re-living them may no longer be relevant or helpful in our lives.
According to Harris, humans start developing a third mental state, the Adult, about the time children start to walk and begin to achieve some measure of control over the environment. Instead of taking in undigested ideas from parents into the Parent, or experiencing raw emotion as the Child, children begin to be able to explore and examine the world and form their own opinions.
They test the assertions of the Parent and Child and either update them or learn to suppress them. Thus the Adult inside us all grows over time, but it is very fragile and can readily be overwhelmed by stressful situations. Its strength is also tested through conflict between simplistic tape of the Parent and reality. Sometimes, Harris asserts, it is safer for a person to believe a lie than to acknowledge the evidence in front of them. This is called Contamination of the Adult.
