Four Ways Life Scripts Are Formed

Richard Erskine shares his well-known definition of life scripts as “a complex set of unconscious relational patterns” and then unfolds four different pathways through which script develops:

• Physiological survival reactions

• Implicit experiential conclusions

• Explicit script decisions

  Introjected thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of significant others Richard illustrates these ideas with a vivid clinical example of a woman who “never decided” she was unimportant – it was simply her reality, shaped by hundreds of small experiences in her family. From there, he describes how each form of script calls for a different kind of psychotherapy:

• body-oriented work for physiological survival reactions,

• active decision work (e.g. two-chair) for explicit script decisions

• ongoing relational therapy for scripts built from implicit conclusions

• working directly with introjected figures for scripts based on identification with parents or other significant people

  Near the end of the conversation, Richard briefly touches on his chapter about the psychological functions of life scripts (self-regulation, compensation, self-protection, orientation, insurance, and integrity) and reframes Freud’s “repetition compulsion” as a “reparation compulsion” – a deeply human drive to repair what was once missing or broken in relationship.