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Article

Anxiety and Projection as Related to Games and Scripts

Pages 178-184
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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Although Eric Berne was psychoanalytically trained, there are two concepts common in psychoanalytic thinking that have received little attention in the transactional analysis literature: anxiety and projection. This article discusses: (1) development of self-image, (2) anxiety and its causes, (3) responses to the lack of love in childhood, (4) the anxiety-projection process, and (5) the role of projection in scripts and games. Some of Freud's intrapsychic theories and the interpersonal theories of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney are integrated with transactional analysis and the authors' theory of the role of projection in scripts and games. Projection is a defense mechanism used to maintain script decisions and is the internal process which precedes, and continues, the playing of psychological games.

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Author information

Valerie Chang

Valerie Chang, M.A., ACSW, is a Clinical Teaching Member of ITAA and Director of the Human Services Program at Indiana University East. She also maintains a private practice in Richmond, Indiana.

Muriel James

Muriel James, Ed.D., is in private practice and is co-director of the James Institute, Lafayette, California. She is also Past-President of the International Transactional Analysis Association, an ITAA Teacher & Supervisor in Clinical, Education, and Organization specialties, an international lecturer and consultant, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the author and co-author of numerous articles and fourteen books.
 

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