What is a Script?

Literally, as a piece of writing, a script is an instrument for the management and effective control of a play, film or broadcast. In this counselling /therapeutic context scripts are the tools with which we manage our adult life. 

From our earliest and formative years we build a library of scripts through and with which we respond and react to life's ups and down, day by day, minute by minute. Any stimulus is categorised and linked to our response and via our memory is stored in our data base or library. When that same stimulus reoccurs the script will be retrieved and used again at least whilst the response is effective and provides positive affect; that is, it makes us feel better. As we grow older our resource data base increases.

One of the most important functions of human intelligence is the ability to recognise and determine what is similar and what is different. This includes the ability to analyse slight variance and change together with different pattern formations. These vital and subtle abilities enable us to manage numerous and complex scripts.

In Script Theory the units of analysis is called a scene. A scene is defined as any sequence of events linked by the affects triggered during those events. We are able to recognise that our affective experiences fall into patterns in the same way that visual and auditory stimuli also fall into patterns. Thus we may group shaming experiences together according to factors such as the types of persons and places involved and to the degree of intensity of the affect experienced.

We have a virtually unlimited potential for experiences and these are made more capable of management and analysis because we are equipped with a limited number of innate affect mechanisms. Consequently we are able to group large numbers of similar scenes into patterns based on similar sequences of events and affects. It is a logical and accurate filing system.

For example we will have a family of scenes about school which would include positive and negative affects depending on our relative success or failure to different aspects of our school experience. Scenes about our reactions to hunger and our preferences for different types of food will also be grouped. Early in our development we begin to respond to stimuli like hunger, food or school in terms of the overall family or group of scenes with an expectation of what will happen and the sequence of affects that will follow. This affective reaction to group or family of scenes forms an entirely new psychological entity called a Script. (Nathanson 1998)

When affect is triggered in response to a family of scenes it has an impact on all of the other affect contained within those scenes. In this instance the impact of the affect is said to magnify the contents of the script.

Tomkins (1995: 318) gives the example of six-month old infants who cried in pain at their first inoculation who were observed some months later visiting the same doctor in the same clinic. The infants showed no signs of being afraid at the sight of the doctor in the white coat but did cry when they felt pain of the needle. They appear to have no recall or anticipation of the previous bad scene although the pain of each inoculation indeed is amplified by the cry of distress. However, a few months later they did cry of the sight of the doctor and the needle as well as at the point of inoculation. This is psychological magnification, connecting one affect-laden scene with another. Memory joins previous scenes with the present.

In summary, through scripts our adult life is managed and scripts are sets of rules for the management of scenes with which we are confronted. 

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                                            Last modified: December 13, 2006