This is my version of the Drama Triangle which is a model invented by an American Psychiatrist, Stephen Karpman, in 1968. It is used a lot in psychotherapy and you can research it online and find many articles and diagrams.

I hope this version makes sense. To be honest it makes more and more sense to me, and is more and more useful, the more I work with it – on myself and clients.

This article is at three levels:

Firstly the model is often put forward in quite a CBT style approach. 

The model is: If we are addressing unwelcome behaviour that is automatic – unconscious in a shallow sense – then becoming aware of it can lead to change. 

My experience is that this can be very effective. It can significantly moderate our behaviour. And that is very worthwhile.

Most people using the model stop there. However if we find the behaviour is not simply habitual but is compulsive, then we can see that it is coming from somewhere deeper, somewhere genuinely unconscious.

If that is the case I suggest we need a second, deeper level and have to use psychodynamic techniques and uncover the formative experiences that are being acted out in the behaviours. 

Finally there is a short note about the general, cultural level of emotional unhealth.

I would be interested to hear if this all makes sense and is useful to you. Email me on davidjockelson@gmail.com

David 

The simple model is this: People can engage in relationships in conflictual ways, acting various roles:

It is really helpful to explore these roles in detail.  The Victim plays the role of being weak, helpless, and therefore inviting Rescue or Persecution. The Rescuer has the motivation to help, which sounds and feels laudable but can be a way of seeking power and control. The Persecutor more obviously seeks power by overtly or covertly hurting or controlling someone – obviously usually the Victim.

However it is not the case that an individual is always one or the other. We can Rescue to the extent we become Victims i.e martyrs.  We can be a Victim and use it to Persecute people around us.

And it’s worth noting for those of us who identify mainly with the Rescuer, that being a compulsive Rescuer means we come from a place of our needs and that may make us insensitive and unskilful. Also a recent realisation for me is that Rescuing sounds strong and noble – but in fact it can be driven by a need to be a People Pleaser. Is it worth challenging ourselves on that perspective?

As I say above, simply becoming aware of what may be going on is helpful and can lead to changes in behaviour.

The moderate, healthy version can change with increased awareness and can be:                       

It is certainly possible to move to some degree from the unhealthy version to the healthy version by awareness and challenging our habitual behaviour. As a compulsive Rescuer I found that thought of how much that in fact amounted to being a People Pleaser to be rather shocking and uncomfortable and has led me to be less determined to rescue and hopefully more of a Carer.
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You may not be keen to go deeper but, if you are ….

Going deeper:

Even if we do make some changes as explained above, we may find that in fact the behaviour is not changed as much as we’d like just by awareness and willpower. We may find the behaviour is really compulsive – powerful, almost irresistible.  In which case we need to go deeper and try and resolve or at least address the root cause.

My experience and understanding is that the behaviour is the acting out of our own history of having been a Victim in childhood. It is important to say immediately that this does not necessarily mean a victim of gross abuse or trauma – but it can be of a range of adverse childhood experiences which have been ignored, kept secret or normalised and therefore invisible and never processed.

Indeed the adverse childhood experience may in fact be so much within the normal range that it is not actually seen as adverse or is minimised: for example parents who are in conflict or who may separate. Sibling conflict and bullying. Parents who do not give the necessary attention to the child because of mental or emotional health issues like depression and anxiety or addictions like alcohol or work. Indeed workaholism is applauded and the impact on parental availability is often unseen. This I find is very true of successful professionals from middle class or very aspirant home backgrounds.

That discussion is often very challenging because if we have had those experiences, we will tend to think about ourselves either as simply having had a happy childhood with no questions necessary or, if we see the adverse experiences, we can see ourselves as courageous Survivors. It is not at all obvious that it requires extra courage and clarity to see and accept the reality that we were also powerless – Victims – and we retain that feeling deep within us, and that it drives these unhelpful behaviours of role playing Persecutor, Victim or Rescuer or mixing and alternating between the roles.

It may be a question of moving from feeling anxious and therefore generally angry and aggressive or depressed and sorry for ourselves – to feeling anger and sorrow for the child that we were and in some senses still are.  And having those feelings does not necessarily mean either a dramatic or noisy cathartic or a blaming experience.

It can mean gradually letting the anger and the sorrow come up; articulate, ventilate; saying the previously unsaid, possibly the unsayable.  We can then in time achieve a calmer, more matter-of-fact attitude to our histories and then be able to act more in line with the healthy roles described above.

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Finally a social cultural take on the issues: And don’t read this if you’ve had enough already… Being more radical again, I suggest that the Nuclear Family, which is so valued as being the ideal in our culture, is in fact innately unhealthy.

The well known and wise saying “It takes a village to raise a child” highlights the healthiness for a child being raised by a wider group, including older children who are siblings or cousins or friends as well as wider range of adults. These are people who can socialise the child; check them, give them boundaries as well as examples to imitate, rather than the socialising mainly being given by parents.

This idea is explored elsewhere in this website. See “Our culture of permanent adolescence – anger, stress and other addictions.” The roots of the problems: Our culture of permanent adolescence – anger, stress and other addictions