ABSTRACT
Eric Berne's concept of script analysis is a narrative approach to working with the life story or `script' that each person constructs as a child to make sense of his or her life. `A script is an ongoing life plan formed in early childhood under parental pressure' (Berne, 1972: 32). Berne held that children make script decisions in response to demands made upon them by parents and other authority ®gures, but that the child is also creative in using fairy stories (in our day television stories, or songs or poems or computer games or movies or any stories that they are told or exposed to) on which to base their understanding of their own lives. The script story serves the purpose of making sense of the events in the person's life, of serving an essential meaningmaking function. The script is gradually developed and elaborated upon throughout childhood and re®ned until in early adulthood the person launches the story. Clearly many of the in¯uences on script formation will be non-verbal implicit messages that are conveyed to the child in behaviour or attitude, and these will serve to in¯uence the child's self experience and penetrate his view of himself, others and the world, and in¯uence the creation of the narrative that is encapsulated in his script.
