Verona and her Dad, a Transactional Analysis

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Title: Verona and her Dad, a Transactional Analysis
Major Warnings: Discussion of parental abuse
Summary: A discussion of why Verona's dad is a literal manchild, through the lens of the psychoanalytic theory of Transactional Analysis (TA). Spoilers up to Out on a Limb 3.4

Hi there! For those of you who were here during the Ward days, you may remember me as that guy who wrote about Carol a bunch. I have an interest in abusive power dynamics, and I find the exploration of such power dynamics (especially in parent/child relationships) through fiction to be fascinating, since it can often be a safe lens for people caught in such abusive relationships to become aware of this fact, or to receive validation that yes, this is, in fact, abusive and they are right to be upset.

In the case of Carol I mentioned above, her abuse is often sneaky, using expected social norms as a cover to get away with subtly putting her child down and framing situations in her favour in ways that are difficult to challenge without looking rude. This can sometimes make it difficult to articulate how and why she makes her victims feel so awful, and the main reason I wanted to write about her was to put these things to words and provide a clearer image of just how she worked and what she was doing.

Verona’s dad does not operate this way.

The ways in which he grinds Verona down are obvious and transparent, and the particular flavour of awful with him comes from the fact that Verona is very much trapped in that house and with that man, because there are no good alternatives for her to go to. In other words, there’s not a ton of things to point to and elaborate on, because most readers will find themselves able to grasp exactly what’s going on here.

But then Verona had her screaming match with him in Out on a Limb 3.1, and it marked a shift in the dynamic that I found interesting and clicked with some of the other things I was thinking about regarding her situation, and I saw fit to finally write a post about it.

For this post, I will be calling on the psychoanalytic theory of Transactional Analysis (TA), which relies on three ego states (parent, child and adult) to explain human behaviour and interactions. I will be giving an introduction to TA first, before discussing how it applies to the situation.

Note: I am NOT a licensed or accredited therapist. I have never studied psychology or any other subject related to this. I am just an interested layman, and everything I have to say on the matter should be read with this taken into account. I get my information on TA from this video series made by TheraminTrees (who is, to my knowledge, an actual therapist), and I highly recommend watching the first five videos of that series.

(This post got a little stuck in the weeds, so if you’re already familiar with TA, or have no interest in it, feel free to skip to the ‘Verona’s shitty, shitty Parent’ section.)

Ego States

Transactional Analysis holds that there are three main ego states (defined as metaphorical groupings of thought, emotion and behaviour) our minds take on when approaching an interaction with another person: Parent (either nurturing or controlling), Child (either adapted or free) and Adult.

The controlling Parent approaches situations from a desire to tell others what to do, often characterised by feelings of outrage or disgust. This type seeks to judge and manipulate others into doing as they say. (This easily sounds negative and autocratic, but this type also provides structure and constructive but firm criticism.)

The nurturing Parent approaches situations from a desire to protect and help others, often characterised by feelings of concern. This type seeks to look after people. (This easily sounds positive and compassionate, but this type can also be smothering, invasive and overprotective.)

The adapted Child approaches situations from a desire to satisfy the demands of authority figures and adapt to their rules, often characterised by feelings of guilt and shame. This type seeks to not rock the boat. (This also covers rebelliousness, as well as fear and compliance, but there are positive sides, like cooperation and accommodation.)

The free Child approaches situations from a desire to, well, do whatever the hell they want, often characterised by feelings of a lack of care for others’ opinions. This type seeks to satisfy their own desires without concern for others. (Again, there are positive and negative sides to this, creativity and curiosity versus egocentrism and lack of consideration of others.)

The Adult ego state doesn’t have two sides to it, and is characterised by openness to information in the here and now, respect and awareness. It’s not subdivided because it is thought of as having access to all information.

The goal of TA therapy is often to strengthen the Adult state, so people will be able to call on it in more situations, and not fall into the patterns that the other options bring with them. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Child and Parent states are bad, because as with many things, there are degrees to these matters. It is, for example, easy to see that Lucy’s position in the group often sees her taking on the Parent state.

But we’re not looking to do therapy here, just analysis, so we’ll leave that part aside, and instead conclude that people change ego states all the time, based on the thoughts and events they experience. They might also change based on the people they interact with.

Interactions

Child states and reactions based on it are often aimed at Parent states in the person one is interacting with, and vice versa. A natural response to someone meekly asking for help with something they feel unable to handle (adapted Child) would be to offer to handle the matter (nurturing Parent), and a response to being shouted at for wrongdoing (controlling Parent) might be to meekly apologise (adapted Child). These complimentary interactions are often seen as stable, but there are other options.

For example, not everyone shouted at for wrongdoing (controlling Parent) responds to this by apologising. Others might well respond with outrage of their own over how they’re being treated and tell the other person off for talking to them that way (also controlling Parent). These crossed interactions are unstable, and either result in the interaction stopping or a shift of ego states in one of the parties. This will be especially important when we get to the interaction between Verona and her dad (I’m getting there, I promise!)

However, as we all well know, human interaction is often way more complicated than that, and sometimes, what seems to be going on is far from what is actually going on. For example, one person may well reasonably be asking for advice, and then have reasonable objections to the advice given, and this looks like a healthy interaction between Adult states, but could very well be a Child state taking advantage of a Parent state response.

This case is especially strong in Verona’s dad.

Verona’s shitty, shitty Parent

It could be assumed that healthy parent/child relationships involve a lot of stable, healthy Parent/Child interactions, and unhealthy parent/child relationships involve unhealthy Parent/Child interactions (see Carol Dallon), but this is not necessarily the case. There is, after all, the phenomenon of codependent parents, and the way they mess up the kids involved by not setting the healthy boundaries a parent should. It’s been pointed out in many a Discord that this is the case with Verona’s dad, which brings me to the main point to set up what happens in 3.1:

In his interactions with his daughter, Verona’s dad is a whiny Child pretending to be a strict Parent, and he is forcing Verona into the role of responsible Parent pretending to be a lazy Child. It looks like he’s just assigning her tasks and assignments he feels are appropriate for her to handle and she’s slacking off in handling them, but what’s really going on is that he’s a whiny, insatiable brat that keeps treating his daughter as his wife/maid/groundskeeper and expecting her to respond to his emotional needs.

This becomes more and more clear with every interaction the two of them have in this story, and it becomes clear that it is a strong, long-lasting pattern (and we know how important patterns are in this world). It is, in TA terms, ‘stable’, if deeply unpleasant for Verona. It makes every scene with Verona’s dad deeply uncomfortable to read, especially because Verona’s ground down enough to keep going along with it.

Until she’s especially stressed, and that’s when we get to 3.1

The Switch

When Verona’s dad arrives on the scene, we can see him immediately slip into the same Child pretending to be a Parent pattern, but Verona simply doesn’t have the energy to play Parent to him the way she usually does, so she instead crosses that interaction to be a Child asking her Parent for help. Her aim here is to get him to actually slip into the Parent role for once, but he refuses.

Verona’s dad continues to be the whiny Child, and demand that Verona play Parent for him, but Verona is absolutely not interested in shifting to match his demands, either. So, instead, they continue to have a crossed interaction until Verona, ah, goes feral and just starts screaming at him. At that point, Verona’s dad makes a half-hearted attempt at going Parent by telling Verona to ‘talk about this’, but it’s too little, too late, and by the time Verona’s spat in his face, it’s clear that this is not going to have any complimentary conclusion.

Moving forward

How this dynamic resolves after this is, as of yet, unclear, since we haven’t been in Verona’s head since. It’s clear her actions in 3.1 left her exhausted and drained (which is always the case when breaking these deep-rooted patterns, but is more formalised in the world of practitioners), and we learn in 3.4 that Verona’s dad is refusing to let Verona stay over anywhere else under threat of calling the police on her if she’s not home at night. This could be a continuation of his Child pretending to be a Parent act, or he could just be slipping into a more straight-forwardly abusive Parent role. I don’t think we’ll know until we see them interact again.

But Verona should not be in that house, and should not be forced to play Parent for a Child like her dad.

This got a little long, and a little too into the details of TA for my own tastes, but I do think it’s a useful framework for analysing a lot of things in Pale, especially surrounding Lucy, who so often finds herself playing Parent to Verona and Avery.

Let me know if you found this an interesting read, or if it was a little too dense!