The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model

At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviors, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:

Parent (“exteropsyche”): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent’s actions. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a way of relating that worked.
Adult (“neopsyche”): a state of the ego which is most like a computer processing information and making predictions absent of major emotions that cloud its operation. Learning to strengthen the Adult is a goal of TA. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.
Child (“archaeopsyche”): a state in which people behave, feel and think similarly to how they did in childhood. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond by looking at the floor, and crying or pouting, as they used to when scolded as a child. Conversely, a person who receives a good evaluation may respond with a broad smile and a joyful gesture of thanks. The Child is the source of emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy.

E. Berne differentiated his Parent, Adult, and Child ego states from actual adults, parents, and children, by using capital letters when describing them. These ego-states may or may not represent the relationships that they act out. For example, in the workplace, an adult supervisor may take on the Parent role, and scold an adult employee as though they were a Child. Or a child, using their Parent ego-state, could scold their actual parent as though the parent were a Child.

Within each of these ego states are subdivisions. Thus Parental figures are often either nurturing (permission-giving, security-giving) or criticizing (comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways); Childhood behaviors are either natural (free) or adapted to others. These subdivision categorize individuals’ patterns of behavior, feelings, and ways of thinking, that can be functional (beneficial or positive) or dysfunctional/counterproductive (negative).

Ego-states do not correspond directly to Sigmund Freud’s Ego, Superego and Id, although there are obvious parallels. Ego states are consistent for each person and are argued by TA practitioners as more readily observable than the pats in Freud’s hypothetical model. In other words, the particular ego state that a given person is communicating from is determinable by external observation and experience.

There is no “universal” ego-state; each state is individually and visibly manifested for each person. For example, each Child ego state is unique to the childhood experiences, mentality, intellect, and family of each individual; it is not a generalized childlike state.

Ego states can become contaminated, for example, when a person mistakes Parental rules and slogans, for here-and-now Adult reality, and when beliefs are taken as facts. Or when a person “knows” that everyone is laughing at them because “they always laughed”. This would be an example of a childhood contamination, insofar as here-and-now reality is being overlaid with memories of previous historic incidents in childhood.

Ego states also do not correspond directly to thinking, feeling, and judging, as these behaviors are present in every ego state.

Berne suspected that Parent, Adult, and Child ego states might be tied to specific areas of the human brain; an idea that has not been proved.

In more recent years the three ego state model has been questioned by a marginal TA group in Australia, who have devised a “two ego-state model” as a means of solving perceived theoretical problems:

“The two ego-state model sought to correct inaccuracies in the three ego-state model Berne devised. The two ego-state model says that there is a Child ego-state and a Parent ego-state, placing the Adult ego-state with the Parent ego-state. The information we learn at school is all Parent ego-state introjects. How we learn to speak, add up and learn how to think is all just copied from our teachers. Just as our morals and values are copied from our parents. There is no absolute truth where facts exist out side a person’s own belief system. Berne mistakenly concluded that there was and thus mistakenly put the Adult ego-state as separate from the Parent ego-state.” For anyone interested in sourcing this deviation from mainstream TA, see