Goals:
- Describe the major dimensions for classifying scripts and draw a chart to illustrate Tomkins’s classifications.
- Identify the various types of scripts that you recognize from personal or clinical experience.
Readings:
EA, “Script Theory,” pp. 334-353.
TT, Donald L. Nathanson, “Scripts and Interventions,” March 26, 1997.
TT, Melvyn A. Hill, “Negative Affect in Therapy,” December 8, 1997.
Questions on Readings:
- Describe some of the major modular components of scripts.
- What is the difference between scripts where affect is salient and scripts where affect is derivative?
- What are three different strategies for managing risk/benefits?
- What is the difference between monistic, dualistic, and pluralistic scripts?
- What is necessary for positive affect to remain greater than negative affect? Are good health, high social status, intelligence, and wealth enough?
- Why can’t societies ignore affect?
- Describe four types of scripts that deal with risk, cost/benefit. What happens to cost/benefit strategies as the ratio of positive to negative affect decreases?
- How does the affluence script maintain positive affect? Can restriction of focus to positive affects (through affect salience) do this?
- Give examples of types of limitation/remediation scripts. What do they have in common?
- How do major religions script limitation/remediation?
- What is the goal of decontamination scripts, such as the nuclear script? What is the probability of successfully attaining this goal?
- Describe subtypes of nuclear scripts that handle different ratios of positive to negative affect.
- How can anti-toxic scripts reduce suffering?