Personality executive, Jailer or Change Agent I

The adult ego is the rational and analytical part of the human personality. It makes comparisons, determines the odds of events, performs risk analysis and decides what to believe. The adult ego analyzes others’ words for their truth and the perception behind them.

Ideally, the adult ego develops intelligent opinions after considering all sides. The adult ego is the personality executive. The personality executive can be either a jailer or a change agent. The personality executive manages the parent ego and child ego.

In healthy individuals, the individual’s identity is based in the adult-ego and the adult-ego is the executive or in charge. When a person’s adult-ego is not the basis of their identity and the person instead bases their identity on another ego-state, they can experience identity conflict.

When the person’s identity is in the adult-ego but the adult-ego is not the executive or in charge of making decisions, irrational, child-like decisions or decisions based on habit and tradition are made. When an individual is in both the adult-ego state and a child-ego or parent-ego state but is unable to control the actions of the other ego state, the person can be considered neurotic. When someone gives in to an irrational anger or fear while their adult-ego knows that there is no reasonable justification for the extreme reaction, a partial contamination of the ego has occurred.

A healthy personality executive takes the form of the change agent. As new information comes in, the personal re-evaluates their beliefs. This does not have to be a rewriting of one’s ethical stances or religious beliefs. Imagine that you are sitting by a pool and are splashed.

You decide that the person who splashed you is being mean. That is a decision and a belief. Then you look up and see that a young child fell into the pool and the life guard was jumping in to get the child. In a healthy adult-ego, the splashing is forgiven as the side effect of helping a child.

With new information as to the reason, the belief that the splashing was malicious changes to being innocent. For someone not in control of their child ego, there may be lingering resentment at being splashed, regardless of the good the life guard did.

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