ABSTRACT
Life scripts are a complex set of unconscious relational patterns based on physiological survival reactions, implicit experiential conclusions, explicit decisions, and/or self-regulating introjections, made under stress, at any developmental age, that inhibit spontaneity and limit flexibility in problem-solving, health maintenance, and in relationship with people. Life scripts are a result of the cumulative failures in significant, dependent relationships. Such life scripts are unconscious systems of psychological organization and self-regulation primarily formed from implicit memories and expressed through physiological discomforts, escalations or minimizations of affect, and the transferences that occur in everyday life. The purpose of a serious in-depth psychotherapy is the resolution of a client’s unconscious script inhibitions or compulsions in relationship with people, inflexibility in problem-solving, and deficiencies in health care. The script system provides a model of how a life script is formed from explicit decisions, implicit and pre-symbolic experiential conclusions, fixated patterns of self-regulation, and/or introjections.
