What are Ego States?
Rahul's Noteblog
Notes on Organizational Behavior
What are Ego States?
What are Ego States?
The three ego states are the Parent Ego state, Adult Ego state, and the Child Ego state. These states always exist separately and cannot merge, and the three alternate within a person.
Parent Ego State
This ego state may represent the mindset of a parent, and may further be divided into Nurturing Parent Ego state and Controlling Parent Ego state. The Nurturing Parent Ego state is the one in which a parent protects, feeds and takes care of their children. The Controlling Parent Ego state is the one in which the parent criticizes, disciplines and even punishes the child.
These two ego states switch back and forth within us; they can help us in our performance and sometimes hinder us. These ego states can firmly control our behaviour and developed when we watched our parents when we were children.
Adult Ego State
This ego state is about making decisions as an adult. This involves analyzing the problem and coming up with a solution using wise logical choices. Using the adult ego state to come up with a solution may involve careful analysis of the data and making decisions based on solid facts, and offering reasonable explanations for your decisions.
Child Ego State
This state is further divided into Natural Child Ego state and Little Professor/Creative Child Ego state, and the Adaptive Child Ego state. The Natural Child Ego state is the original ego state in which we are born. This state enables us to be curious, friendly, loving, spontaneous, and energetic. Nevertheless, it may also make us greedy, impatient and selfish.
Little Professor; Creative Child; Adaptive Child
Little Professor/Creative Child/Adaptive Child Ego state makes us creative and inquisitive. It makes us wonder at how everything works, and it enables us to carry out experiments of our own. It is a philosophical state that reasons based on thought without any tangible proof, eg., a sixth sense.
Adaptive Child
The Adaptive Child ego state, as the name suggests, results from us adapting to environmental change. We learnt this behavior when we learnt to change our according to our environment, and learnt behavior like guilt, anxiety, envy, and depression. These qualities make us more compliant within a group where we learn to listen, agree, disagree and offer our opinions. Furthermore, we begin and learn to socialize, be sensitive and be more courteous.
Additional Readings:
1. Human Relations Movement according to Fred Luthans
2. Definition of Organization Behavior
3. Fundamental Concepts of Organizational Behavior
4. Unconscious Behavior and Sigmund Freud
5. Mechanics of Defense Mechanisms
6. Content and Process, and Abraham Maslow's Need-Hierarchy Theory
7. Theory of motivation by Herzberg
8. Definition of Morale
9. Ego States
10. Determinants of Personality
11. Definition of Perception
12. Attitude, Belief, and Ideology
13. Stress and State of Exhaustion
14. Leadership and Leadership Styles
15. Path-Goal Leadership
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