Script, hungers, strokes, relationships and eating

Drawing on Mandy’s clinical experience and background as a relational psychotherapist, and on Transactional Analysis, this workshop offers a theoretical starting point for thinking about connections between psychological hungers, food, eating and human relationship.

It considers how food may become embedded in personal, social, cultural and transgenerational patterns, and how an understanding of strokes and script can add another dimension to clinical reflection.

What we will explore:

• Eric Berne’s concept of psychological hungers and its relevance to eating and food;
• The relationship between physiological needs and psychological meanings of food;
• Food scripts and the formation of eating-related patterns in TA terms;
• Social, cultural and transgenerational meanings of food and eating;
• The Bernean concept of strokes, applied to food, body and eating, and how food may be used positively or negatively within relationships;
• Ways food can at times come to replace or mediate relationship;
• Reflective use of traditional TA concepts in this specialist area, within the practitioner’s role, competence and supervision.