The Tripartite Division of the Human Psyche

In my recent readings of psychology books, a tripartite division of the human psyche seems to constantly emerge. In Games People Play, Eric Bernes describes how people have three distinct parts to them: an Adult, a Child and a Parent. The Adult observes data and makes rational decisions; the child is highly emotional and the parent holds rituals programmed by society. Similarly, in The Chimp Paradox, Roger Stevens describes three parts of the human brain: the Human, the Chimp and the Computer. This aligns with Bernes’ Adult, Child and Parent. The Human makes conscious, wilful decisions i.e. it acts as an Adult. The Chimp focuses on desires and instant gratification i.e. it acts on Childish impulses. And the Computer holds protocols and memories of routine ways to act, i.e. it contains instructions as if from above – mimicking the authority programming of Parental functioning.

Carl Jung, a more renowned psychologist, also splits the psyche into three: the Ego, the Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious. Whilst the links are more tenuous, I believe we can see an alignment. The Ego is the conscious part of us that is making active rational decisions. The Unconscious is the Child within us which is responsible for reactive patterns, engrained behaviours and actions that emerge as if outside our conscious control. And finally, the Collective Unconscious is the Parent: that voice of reason that supersedes our psyche and resides in the shared knowledge of humanity.

Since the tripartite divide described here is a constantly recurring theme, it seems that it must have some truth to it. A few observations can be drawn. Firstly, most of us think that we are always acting from the Human / Conscious self. However, we actually mostly act on more childish, subconscious urges which go against our "Adult" mode's best interests. And whilst the Child and the Adult parts of our psyche are often at odds with each other, it seems that the final part of psyche, the Parent, is the most important piece because it exerts influence over both the Child and the Adult. That is, the Parent / Computer / Collective Unconscious component of our psyche is the most powerful of the three and the part that holds the key to transforming our lives.

Whilst the Adult is rationality and the Child is emotional, the third component of our psyche can be summarised as the component of authority. It is that authority which a human instinctively abides with. In Psychocybernetics, Maxwell Maltz calls this Computer component of our psyche an “automatic reactive mechanism” – that is, both our rational and our emotional brains follow the instructions given by the automatic reactive mechanisms which represents the largest part of our psyche. Thus, being able to change the voice that we see as authoritative, that computer program or parental edict that influences us both logically and emotionally, gives us the ability to change ourselves.