Table Of Content1
Personality Adaptations
Vann S. Joines, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and President of the Southeast Institute for Group
and Family Therapy, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Accredited by ITAA as a Teaching and
Supervising Transactional Analyst, he was the 1994 recipient of the Eric Berne Memorial Award in
Transactional Analysis for the Integration of TA with Other Theories and Approaches. He is a
Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor of the American Association for Marriage and Family
Therapy, and a Member of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
Ian Stewart, PhD, is Co-Director of The Berne Institute, Nottingham, England. He is accredited by
the European Association for Transactional Analysis (EATA) and the International Transactional
Analysis Association (ITAA) as a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst. He is also a
UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and a Master Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Ian
was the 1998 recipient of the EATA Gold Medal, awarded for "outstanding services to transactional
analysis in Europe".
By the same authors:
TA Today: a New Introduction to Transactional Analysis by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines
(Lifespace Publishing, Nottingham and Chapel Hill, 1987) Also by Ian Stewart:
Transactional Analysis Counselling in Action (2nd edition: Sage Publications, London, 2000)
Key Figures in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Eric Berne (Sage Publications, London, 1992)
Developing Transactional Analysis Counselling (Sage Publications, London, 1996)
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Copyright © Vann Joines and Ian Stewart 2002
Vann Joines, PhD, and Ian Stewart, PhD, assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this
work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright holders
First published 2002
by Lifespace Publishing,
Kegworth DE74 2EN, England,
and Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27517, USA.
www.lifespacebooks.com
For ORDERING INFORMATION please see back page
Printed and bound in England by Russell Press Ltd., Nottingham.
Cover design by Vann Joines and Ian Stewart Page design by Ian Stewart
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-870244-01-X
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Contents
Preface ix
Part I: Introduction
1. Introducing the Six Adaptations 3
"Thumbnail sketches" of the six adaptations 11 Identifying the six adaptations 19 The model and its
basis in reality 20
Part II: The Model of Personality Adaptations
2. A Developmental Perspective 27
Introversion-extraversion, energy level and the adaptations 27 "Surviving" vs. "performing"
adaptations 29
3. The Structure of Personality 34
The theoretical framework: personality structure and ego states 34 Structural analysis of the six
personality adaptations 42
4. Issues in Change for the Different Adaptations 51
The theoretical framework: life script 51
Typical life-script patterns for the six adaptations 60
5. Putting It All Together: The Six Adaptations in Detail 72
Enthusiastic-Overreactor (Histrionic) 72 Responsible-Workaholic (Obsessive-Compulsive) 76
Brilliant-Skeptic (Paranoid) 79 Creative-Daydreamer (Schizoid) 83 Playful-Resister (Passive-
Aggressive) 87 Charming-Manipulator (Antisocial) 91
6. Combinations of Adaptations 97
7. Relation of the Adaptations to the DSM-D7-TR Classifications 106
Part III: Diagnosing the Six Adaptations
8. Driver Behaviours: a Key to Diagnosis 115
Driver messages and driver behaviours 115
How drivers correspond to the six adaptations 117
9. Other Clues to Diagnosing the Adaptations 127
Part IV: Achieving and Maintaining Rapport
10. How to Avoid Inviting Drivers 139
11. The Five Modes of Communication 145
Matching communication mode to personality adaptation 149
12. Using the Ware Sequence for Rapport 153
Working with the "doors" and the five modes 156
13. How the Personality Adaptations Interact 161
Part V: Inviting Personal Change
14. Doing Therapy with the Different Personality Adaptations 169
The therapeutic framework 170
Redecision therapy and the personality adaptations 175
Working with combined adaptations 184
Tracking movements around the Process Model 189
15. Confronting the Process Script 196
Confrontations for each of the process script types 201
16. Using the Process Model in Therapy: an Overview 204
Port VI: Advanced Applications of the Model
17. Diagnosis and Treatment Planning Using the Six Personality Adaptations 215
Correlating adaptations with the quadrants 221
18. Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders 226
Borderline personality disorder 229 Narcissistic personality disorder 232 Treatment 235
Part VII: Personal Change in Practice: Transcripts of Therapy
19. The Histrionic Client: Reclaiming Personal Power 247
20. The Obsessive-Compulsive Client: Learning to "Be" 262
21. The Paranoid Client: Feeling Safe in the World 279
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22. The Schizoid Client: Owning Feelings and Needs 299
23. The Passive-Aggressive Client: Letting Go of Struggle 313
24. The Antisocial Client: Becoming Real 323
25. The Client with Combined Adaptations 341
Afterword 349 Appendices
A. Relating the Personality Adaptations to Previous Classification Systems 355
Historical origins 355
Modern formulations 358
Psychoanalytic contributions 364
Learned coping patterns 372
Pathological versus non-pathological schemas 376
B. Measuring the Adaptations 380
Personality trait measurement 380
Designing an instrument to measure the personality
adaptations 381 Conclusions 388
C. Joines Personality Adaptation Questionnaire 389
References 392 Glossary 403 Index 409
Ordering information 4/9
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Preface
This book is a practical guide to understanding personality. We have written it primarily for
psychotherapists and counsellors. If you are a practitioner or trainee in these fields, we hope and
believe that the ideas we describe here will help you greatly to enhance the effectiveness and
potency of your work. The book will also be of interest to you if you are a non-professional reader
wishing to develop your understanding of personality and your everyday relationships with others.
Central to the book is a model of personality adaptations. This model offers you a way of
understanding people in terms of six personality types. It is based on the evidence of real-life
observation, built up both from formal research studies and from many years' clinical experience in
psychotherapy and counselling.
The book describes the six adaptations in detail, and provides a framework for
understanding how each adaptation develops. We also describe ways in which you can assess
someone's personality adaptations. In particular, we show how you can diagnose personality
adaptations rapidly and accurately - after only a few minutes' interaction, and without the need for
"history-taking" - by observing certain distinctive behavioural clues known as driver behaviours.
We describe additional observable clues that help you further in diagnosis.
As you learn to accurately detect an individual's personality adaptations, you will become
able to tap into a vast store of information that is likely to apply to that person. You will discover
that the model gives you quick and reliable insight into:
• the person's typical mode of relating to others in social situations
• their approach to problem-solving - proactive or reactive
• the communication style the person is most likely to respond to (commanding, asking, nurturing,
playing)
• their preferred area of initial contact (thinking, feeling or behaviour), and how you can move from
one of these areas to another to maintain rapport and achieve optimal results in therapy
• the typical "life patterns" that the person is likely to play out over time, both in the short and the
long term
• the principal issues that are likely to arise for them in the process of personal change
• how you can most effectively work with them to help them achieve the changes they wish.
The model's usefulness is not confined to any one psychotherapeutic or counselling
approach, nor any particular "theory of the person". You can use this model, and benefit from this
book, whatever approach you are trained in. We ourselves - like the original developers of the
model - use transactional analysis as our principal approach. In some of the earlier chapters, we
outline the transactional analysis theory that underlies the model. However, you do not need prior
knowledge of transactional analysis to understand this discussion, since we explain all the terms and
ideas from first principles.
Pronouns, genders, names and cases
We, Vann Joines and Ian Stewart, are "we". You, our reader, are "you". For other people in general,
we use "she" and "he" at random.
All clients' names used in the book are fictitious. If they have any likeness to the names of
real persons, this is purely by chance. All the case illustrations - including the extended transcripts
in Part VII - are based on real cases, but we have changed details to avoid any possibility of the
clients' being identified.
How the book is laid out
In the single-chapter Part I, we give you a "thumbnail sketch" of the six personality adaptations
that are the building blocks of this model. At this introductory stage, we use a minimum of technical
language. All the ideas in this chapter will be revisited and expanded later in the book. We also
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briefly discuss the reality basis of the model. (This topic will later be examined in depth in the
technical Appendices).
The six chapters of Part II develop the model in detail. First exploring developmental
influences, this Part goes on to look at personality structure and at the principal issues that are likely
to arise in personal change for persons with each adaptation. Next, we describe each separate
adaptation in full detail. We look at how people may combine various adaptations. Finally, we
relate the model to the categories that are listed in the standard diagnostic manual "DSM-IV-TR"
(American Psychiatric Association, 2000).
It is in Part II that we introduce the explanatory framework of transactional analysis,
particularly in Chapters 3 and 4. In each of these chapters, we begin with a brief sketch of the
theoretical ideas and terms that we will be using. This will make the chapters' discussion accessible
if you are new to transactional analysis. If you are already familiar with the theory, you can of
course skip these introductory sections. If you would like a more in-depth discussion of
transactional analysis theory, you can find it in our book TA Today (Stewart and Joines, Lifespace
Publishing, 1987).
Part III shows you how to diagnose the various personality adaptations in practice. In
particular, Chapter 8 describes how you can make rapid and accurate diagnoses of the adaptations
by observing the five sets of behavioural clues known as driver behaviours. This route to diagnosis
is one of the most powerful features of the model. It allows you, within only a few minutes'
communication, to access knowledge of all the other features that typify the adaptation(s) in
question.
In Part IV, we explain how you can apply the model to achieve and maintain optimal
rapport with your client during therapy or counselling. You will learn how you can stay "on the
same wavelength" with other persons by choosing the appropriate communication mode - the choice
of how you say what you say. We describe also how you can maximise rapport by attending to
contact area - that is, the choice of thinking, feeling or behaviour as the focus of communication. In
this way, you can target interventions to the area which will have maximum effectiveness, and
avoid getting stuck in the client's defences. This ability is another powerful feature of the model.
Finally in Part IV, we look at how individuals with different adaptations are likely to interact with
each other in personal or working relationships.
Part V, "Inviting Personal Change", goes on to describe in detail how you can apply the
model in psychotherapy and counselling. Of course, the earlier Parts have all also been relevant to
your work as a therapist or counsellor. Now in Part V you will find specific material on therapeutic
techniques and interventions. They cover both the content of personal change (the "what") and its
process (the "how"). You will learn how the model helps you to maintain congruency between
content and process, in such a way as to invite personal change most effectively.
The discussion in Part VI is still focused on psychotherapy, and now moves on to a more
advanced level of both theory and practice. Chapter 17 describes a comprehensive model for
diagnosis and treatment planning. This is a systematic way of diagramming many developmental
and personality features of the various adaptations. It enhances understanding and is a powerful aid
to treatment planning during therapy or counselling.
In Chapter 18 we discuss how this model relates to the personality patterns known as
borderline and narcissist. As you will discover, we regard these personality structures as being on a
different dimension from the six personality adaptations. The model can, however, give some useful
guidance to therapy with borderline or narcissistic clients.
Finally, in Part VII, we give extended transcripts to illustrate actual therapeutic work with
the different adaptations. In Chapters 19 through 24, we look at each of the six adaptations in turn.
The transcript in each case is of work with a client whose therapeutic issue primarily involves that
one adaptation. Finally, in Chapter 25, we illustrate work with a client whose issue involves a
combination of adaptations. In each chapter, the transcript is prefaced by a summary of the main
therapeutic indications for that adaptation. We have added comments throughout each transcript, to
highlight how the therapist used the model to guide the process and content of the therapy.
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"Layers" of explanation and repetition of detail
This model is rich in detail. That is one of the main reasons for its usefulness. However, it also
means that if you were to meet the entire model in its full detail for the first time, you might initially
find it difficult to understand; there would be just too much to take in all at once.
In working with this model over time, and teaching it to many trainees, we have developed a
way of explaining the model that overcomes this difficulty. Instead of presenting the entire model at
once, we build it up piece by piece. We shall follow that approach in this book.
Specifically: we break the model down into successive "layers" of detail. Each layer of
detail describes one particular set of personality aspects. Within that layer, we discuss the six
adaptations one after another, in a standard sequence. For example: in Part II, we start in Chapter 2
by describing the developmental aspects of each adaptation. That is the first layer of detail. Next, in
Chapter 3, we add in a second layer, namely, a discussion of personality structure for each of the six
adaptations. In Chapter 4, we go on to a third layer, reviewing typical issues in change for each
adaptation - and so on through the chapters of Part II.
Each time we add a layer of detail, we repeat (in summary) the description of the previous layer or
layers. For example, in Part II when we introduce the second layer of detail - Chapter 3's discussion
of personality structure - we start for each adaptation by summarising the information on
developmental aspects that you have already met in Chapter 2. In Chapter 4 in turn, we summarise
the details of development and personality structure before describing each adaptation's main issues
in personal change. Our aim throughout is that, whatever page you are reading, you will have all the
information you need immediately at hand, rather than having to search back and forward through
the book.
Acknowledgements
Vann Joines writes: This book is the culmination of over twenty years' work with this information
on personality adaptations. I am deeply grateful to Paul Ware MD and Taibi Kahler PhD for their
keen clinical observations, their clear theoretical formulations, and their precise behavioural
descriptions in initially formulating this information and teaching it to others. I am also indebted to
Eric Berne MD, the developer of transactional analysis, for his genius in expressing such profound
clinical insights in easily understood language that enables precise descriptions. I further want to
thank my mentors, Robert L. Goulding MD and Mary M. Goulding MSW, the developers of redeci-
sion therapy, for what they have taught me and for their continued affirmation of me and my work.
It is rare to find individuals with such a profound belief in human OKness and the capacity for
change.
One of the benefits of directing a training institute for psychotherapy is the exposure to the
many teachers and trainers who have presented their work at our institute over the years. I have
learned from each of these people and would like to thank them for their valuable contributions:
Muriel James, Jacqui Schiff, Ruth McClendon, Fanita English, Paul Ware, Taibi Kahler, Al Pesso,
Irving Yalom, Karl Men-ninger, Gregory Bateson, Carl Whitaker, Seymour Halleck, Mathew
Miles, Richard Fisch, Luciano L'Abate, William Masters, Virginia Satir, Jay Haley and Cloe
Madanes, Erving and Miriam Polster, James Masterson, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, Stephen
Johnson, James Bugental, Jeffrey Magnavita, and Fred Gallo. I also want to thank my colleagues at
the Southeast Institute for Group and Family Therapy over the past twenty five years with whom I
have exchanged many ideas: Graham Barnes, Robert Phillips, Ken Lessler, Josephine Lewis,
Valerie Batts, Gary Peterson, Natalie Boorman, John and Pam White, Jackie Doubles, and Janice
Barkley. I especially want to thank Alice Jeffries, my administrative assistant, who has been such a
help in countless ways in getting this material ready for publication, and my colleague, Ian Stewart,
with whom I have had the pleasure of writing two books. I can't imagine anyone better to have
collaborated with in these endeavours.
The other advantage of directing a training institute for psychotherapy is having contact with
all of the wonderful individuals I have had the pleasure of both training and learning from over the
years. I especially want to thank the members of my training programs in Chapel Hill, NC and
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Nashville, TN, who have given me such valuable feedback in further developing this material on
personality adaptations.
Most of all, I would like to thank my family: my wife Chellie for her love and support, and
for the many insights she has shared, and contributions she has made to the development of this
material; my daughters Andrea and Elizabeth, and my sons Vann, Jonathan, and Adam for their
patience and understanding while I was writing this book, and for teaching me so much about child
development. They have all been a tremendous inspiration and support.
Vann Joines
Chapel Hill, November 2001
Ian Stewart writes: The original idea for this book was Vann Joines's, and he wrote the first
manuscript. When at that stage he invited me to join him as co-author, I was delighted to accept.
Partly, this was because I recalled the pleasant and successful co-operation between Vann and
myself during the writing of TA Today (Stewart and Joines, 1987), our basic text on transactional
analysis that is now the world-standard introduction to the subject. And, like Vann, I have used the
model of personality adaptations as an essential tool throughout more than twenty years of my
career as a psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. I welcomed the chance to add my own
knowledge and experience of the model to Vann's, and to share it with you, our reader.
Above all, I want to acknowledge the work and generosity of Taibi Kahler PhD, who, along
with Paul Ware MD, developed much of the material described in this book. It was Taibi who (at a
memorable training workshop in London, 1981) first brought home to me the power and usefulness
of the model of personality adaptations and of the related ideas that make up his Process Model.
Since then, Taibi has always been ready to give me permission to quote his work in my own
writing, and he gave it again to Vann and myself for our preparation of this book.
I have never had the pleasure of working personally with Paul Ware MD, the other main
developer of the model we describe here. But I certainly join with Vann in thanking him most
heartily for the ideas he has developed on personality adaptations and for his generous readiness to
allow us to use them in this book.
Like Vann also, I have been touched by the genius of Mary Gould-ing MSW and the late
Bob Goulding MD. I had the good fortune to be able to attend some of the last of the Gouldings'
famous marathon-format trainings. I want to thank Bob and Mary not only for the formative
influence they had on me as a therapist, but also for some of their original contributions to the
theory of personal change - notably their work on injunctions - that have been integrated into the
model we present here.
I thank my wife Hicky for reading and commenting on the proofs of this book. I am grateful to her
also for being around, for keeping the practical "wheels turning" while I was glued to the keyboard,
and for reminding me, after hours, that there is more to life than writing books.
Ian Stewart
Nottingham, November 2001
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