ABSTRACT
Gestalt psychology is concerned with the experiencing organism's tendency to perceive and remember wholes rather than collections of parts. In addition to the concepts of primary and secondary gestalts, Gestalt therapy continues to draw upon a number of psychoanalytic ideas, particularly the concepts of "ego" and "id" and the notion of defense mechanisms and how they are manifested in contact interruptions. In developing the theory of Transactional Analysis, Eric Berne— like the Gestalt therapists—used the definition of ego as a basic element. Berne used the term "ego state" to describe a state of mind with a coherent system of internal feelings and thoughts and a corresponding system of postures, facial expressions, and other external behaviors. The life script becomes a self-reinforcing, distorted system of feelings, thoughts, and actions. In addition to script beliefs, the script system has two other interrelated and interdependent components: the script display and the reinforcing experiences.
