The Relationship Between Personality and Human Relationships

With the aim of relate in a more satisfactory way In the different areas of our life, it is useful to know some aspects of human personality. The psychological model of Transactional Analysis explains its structure and functioning in a simple way, so knowing it can help us better understand our interactions with the world and with each other. In this Online Psychology study we are going to discover the relationship between personality and human relationships so that you can better understand our way of being in the world.

Basic personality structure

Let’s first look at the basic structure of personality from Transactional Analysis. As a clarification, specify that when I write “child”, “adult”, “parent” with a lowercase letter I will be referring to the real person and when I write with a capital letter I will be referring to the Ego State of the personality.

The personality of the human being can be structured into three Ego States:

• Parent State (P): behaviors, thoughts and feelings copied from the parental figures we have had. From it you feel, think and act just as your father or mother did when you were little, or according to the internalized messages from teachers or other relevant adults in your life.
• Adult Status (A): Appreciates the present reality in the “here and now” objectively. Calculate possibilities and probabilities based on your experience and knowledge.
• Child State (N): Contains the innate impulses and memories of your early experiences, how you responded to them, and the positions you adopted in relation to yourself and others. It is the part that feels, thinks and acts the same as it did when it was a child.

In a very simplified way: When I make judgments or values, I am in my Father state. When I think and analyze the possibilities I have of achieving something and look for objective information and plan to achieve it, I am acting from my Adult. When I feel shame, anger, joy or any other emotion, I am in my Child state.

The three states of the “I”

Let’s delve a little deeper into the functions of these States:

Functional analysis of the Parent State: P

When the person activates their Parent State it can function in different ways, in relation to how they treat themselves and others:

• Positive Nurturing Parent (PN+): protective and considerate treatment: helping, giving appropriate permissions, explaining what is right and fair, caressing and consoling when appropriate, taking charge of problems and promoting solutions.
• Negative Nurturing Father (PN-): overprotective, gives inappropriate permissions and helps by belittling, from a superior position, too possessive.
• Positive Critical Father (PC+): can behave by protecting when necessary, giving appropriate rules, guiding appropriately, ensuring the safety of others.
• Negative Critical Parent (PC-): too critical, judges and evaluates by discounting one’s own abilities or those of the other, prohibiting, accusing, pointing out. It complexes or inhibits, it instills fear. He thinks he has the absolute truth, he is full of opinions and prejudices, generally irrational.

Functional analysis of the Adult State: A

It is characterized by its objectivity. It is like a computer that captures data, combines it and processes it logically to make the most appropriate decision. When the person functions in this way, they do so from their Adult in a positive way (A+).

However, sometimes the person can deceive themselves, misinterpret or act too coldly and then they will act from a Negative Adult (A-).

Functional analysis of the Child: N

Also in the Child there are different ways of functioning:

• NATURAL CHILD (NN): This part of the Child State is the one that responds impulsively to the sensations of its own body without paying attention to the rules. It is the most natural part, without censorship. However, the NN is not always positive, it can also be fearful or self-centered. If I yawn without covering my mouth in public, I am satisfying the impulses of the NN, but it is not very appropriate.
• THE LITTLE PROFESSOR (PF): It is the intuitive, pre-logical part of the Child State that gives us creative solutions. It is like the Adult of the Child State, it seeks balance between the demands of the outside and those of its interior. But at the same time he is simple and primitive, he does not reason, which is why he often makes wrong decisions and draws erroneous conclusions. Therefore it is convenient that it works in the person together with the Adult Ego State.
• ADAPTED CHILD (NAS / NAR): The child, from the moment it was conceived, is in continuous interrelation with its environment. Its adaptation and development process will depend on environmental conditions and how it responds to them. The Adapted Child is the part of our personality that adapts to its environment to adapt and survive. We are all in the Adapted Child much of the time, we must follow thousands of rules to live in society and be accepted in it.

The person, in his childhood, has different possibilities of responding to his environment: he can tend to do what others expect of him, in a submissive way, Submissive Adapted Child (NAS), or he can act by doing the opposite or delaying what is expected. asks, Rebellious Adapted Child (NAR). These types of behaviors begin in childhood and are usually maintained throughout adulthood as an automatic pattern of functioning in the world.

When a person waits for the traffic light to turn green or asks for their turn when arriving at a waiting room, they are acting from their NAS+; If someone cuts you off in a queue and you are unable to be assertive, you act from your NAS. In the same way, whoever demonstrates and fights to overcome an injustice will activate his NAR+ and whoever always does the opposite of what is asked of him or bothers to attract attention will be in his NAR-.

How ego states manifest

In general, these ego states, They do not manifest themselves in the person in a balanced way. This depends, on the one hand, on the behaviors that our parents have more or less reinforced in us and, on the other, on our own temperament. For example, we can observe a very large Parent state, a medium Adult, and a small Child state. In this case, we would be faced with a person who lets himself be carried away by his value judgments and “what should be,” paying little attention to the data. objectives of immediate reality and without taking into account the emotional part of oneself and others.

Possibly, this person was petted a lot when he complied with the rules and the “shoulds” and was not encouraged to analyze the world objectively or pay attention to emotions. Or we may encounter a person who presents a deficit in his Parent and Adult states and shows a great Child, especially NAS-, so we will be faced with someone who is very complacent, conformist, dependent, who always asks what he has to do. It is very possible, in this case, that his parents were very overprotective figures and he was missing the phase of exploration and assessment of his abilities.

By observing my thoughts, feelings and behaviors I can notice that some part of my Ego States is being underused or undervalued and consequently, I can decide to start practicing behaviors typical of this part. For example, if I realize that I have a very developed Critical Parent, because I spend the day telling others what they have to do, pointing out their mistakes and taking little account of their abilities, given this, I can decide to start enhancing Nurturing Father attitudes, which I am discounting, having genuine consideration for the other person, praising their qualities and proposing options instead of imposing them. In this way, by putting more energy on the Nurturing Parent, it will increase and the Critical Parent will decrease.

In relation to personal interactions, we can keep in mind, from this model, several important aspects. First of all, Communication adopts a form of Stimulus – Response chain, Each response serves as a stimulus for the next. These transactions occur to and from specific Ego States and the consequences may be different depending on the case.

If I am communicating with you, I can choose to address you from any of my three ego states and you can respond to me from any of yours. Most of the time we do not choose it consciously, it is usually unconscious and automatic.

Types of communicative transactions

There are different types of transactions in communication between two people. They can be complementarythat is, the response is given by the ego state to which the stimulus was directed. For example, if from my Adult I ask “what time is it?” This can’t go on like this” and he answers from his Child State “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” The wife broadcasts her message from her Father, waiting for the husband to respond from his Child, and so it happens.

However, it may be the case that the recipient of the message responds from a different ego state than expected, giving rise to a cross transaction. For example, in the case of the wife initiating a communication from her Father, the husband may decide to respond from his Adult instead of from the Child, as his wife expects, and redirect the communication with a response from his Adult, with voice calmly, “It seems like you’re angry, I understand why you feel that way, tell me what you want me to do about it.” With this change, the husband expects his wife to respond from his Adult, for example, “When you take off your shoes, I would like you to put them in the shoe rack.”

Another possibility in communication is when two messages are transmitted at the same timeone direct, on a social level, which usually occurs from Adult to Adult, and another subliminal, on a psychological level, which generally occurs from Parent to Child or from Child to Parent. For example, the husband says to his wife, “What have you done with my pants?” and the woman answers, “I have kept them in the closet.” At first glance it seems like a parallel transaction, from Adult to Adult, but if we look at the non-verbal message, the tone of voice and the posture, we find that the husband asks with a frown and with a severe tone, from his Father , and the wife answers with a trembling and high voice and lowering her head, from her Child.

We must always keep in mind that in any communication, they can never make us enter a certain state of self, at most they can “invite” us to enter, we are the ones who decide where we are going to respond from. In the previous example, the wife can accept the “invitation” to answer from the Child, or she can choose to do so from her Adult and not play along with the husband, saying the same thing but with a calm tone and a neutral, relaxed posture, ignoring the provocation or making it look objectively.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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