Redecision therapy

1. Introduction

Version followed: the classic Goulding model as set out in Robert L. Goulding and Mary McClure Goulding, Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy (1979), as Mary Goulding later demonstrated it in brief-therapy form (Erickson Foundation demonstrations, 1985–2002), with John McNeel's Parent Interview (1976) added as the standard adjunct used by redecision therapists.

Source caveat. The 1979 book and the Gouldings' 1976 TAJ paper are not drawn on directly. Statements tagged [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979] come from knowledge of that text. Treat their exact wording and page detail as [uncertain] until you check the book.

What it is. Redecision therapy is a short-term, experiential form of transactional analysis (TA). Robert Goulding, a psychiatrist, and Mary McClure Goulding, a social worker, developed it at their Western Institute for Group and Family Therapy in California from the mid-1960s. It combines Eric Berne's script theory with Fritz Perls's Gestalt techniques, mainly two-chair work and present-tense re-enactment [source: Erickson Foundation, Redecision Group Therapy; GoodTherapy; Erickson Foundation BT02 catalogue]. The Gouldings worked mostly in groups (weekend workshops and multi-week residential workshops), doing one-to-one work in front of the group [source: Rosseau, Rosseau & Widdowson 2014; Erickson Foundation, Redecision Group Therapy].

How change happens. As children, people make early decisions about themselves and others in response to parental messages (injunctions and counterinjunctions). These decisions were survival solutions at the time and now organise the person's script. The parent sends the message, but the child does the deciding, so the power to change also lies with the client: it is the Gouldings' theme that "the power is in the patient". In therapy the client re-experiences an early scene or a stuck internal conflict (an impasse) with full feeling. From the energy of the Child ego state, with Adult awareness, the client makes a new decision (a redecision). The redecision is then anchored in new behaviour, new feelings and new stroke patterns [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979; Allen 2010 abstract via TAJ 40(2) contents; Rosseau et al. 2014]. The model is brief and contract-driven: Mary Goulding's demonstrations aimed at a contract the client can achieve within the session and at changes in the present life [source: Erickson Foundation, Brief Therapy–Redecision Model].

2. Framework

Redecision therapy is not a fixed session-by-session manual. It is a sequence the therapist moves through within one piece of work (often a single 20–60-minute segment in a group), repeated across sessions or workshop days. The secondary source condenses it into five stages, adapted from Goulding & Goulding 1979 and a 1986 Goulding interview: contact, contract negotiation, impasse clarification, redecision, protection [source: Rosseau, Rosseau & Widdowson 2014]. The fuller clinical sequence below follows the 1979 book [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979].

Typical format.

• Original: groups of about 8–20 run by co-therapists, using marathons, weekends and multi-week residential workshops. Work is mostly one-to-one inside the group, with the group as witness and stroke source [source: Rosseau et al. 2014; Erickson Foundation Redecision Group Therapy (5 volunteers, co-therapy)]. Vann Joines (2010) argues for adding group-as-a-whole work to the one-to-one format [source: TAJ 40(2) contents/abstract].
• Mary Goulding's demonstrations also show single-session individual work: contract, then early scene, then redecision [source: Erickson Foundation, Brief Therapy–Redecision Model; BT02 catalogue].
• Session count: no fixed number in primary sources. A popular secondary summary gives 8–20 sessions, but its citation is unreliable [source: GoodTherapy] [uncertain]. In individual weekly practice, a reasonable pattern is 1–3 assessment and contracting sessions, then a series of impasse and redecision sessions, each followed by anchoring [synthesis].
• Settings described by later authors: personality-disorder inpatient and day treatment (de Viersprong, Netherlands), couples, post-divorce grief, family workshops, executive coaching [source: TAJ 40(2) contents; Rosseau et al. 2014; Kadis & McLendon 1981, cited there].

Moving between phases. No phase is skipped. Without a contract there is no impasse work. Without felt, present-tense experience there is no redecision. A redecision made only from the Adult ("I understand now that…") is treated as incomplete, and so is one made from the Adapted Child ("I'll try to…") [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979; Allen 2010 abstract on the Free Child requirement].

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section: Goulding & Goulding 1979, except where marked; Rosseau et al. 2014 for contract and protection; Lieberman et al. 1973 as reported by Rosseau et al. 2014 for leader style]

• The power is in the patient. The client made the early decision and the client can unmake it. Meaning: you do not rescue, reparent or decide for the client. You set up the conditions and the client does the work.
• Autonomy and responsibility in language. People choose their feelings, thoughts and actions, and nobody "makes" anyone feel. Meaning: challenge "can't", "try", "it", "they made me" and "I don't know" gently and persistently (see 4.3).
• Contract first, and keep returning to it. Meaning: every piece of work starts from, and ends by checking, what the client said they wanted to change.
• Decisions are made in the Child, not argued in the Adult. Meaning: aim for experiential, present-tense work with feeling. Insight alone is not the goal. The new decision is spoken from Free Child energy with Adult awareness [Allen 2010 abstract notes this requirement].
• Here and now. Meaning: even early scenes are worked in the present tense, as if happening now (Gestalt).
• Avoid games, including the therapist's. Meaning: do not ask "why?" (it invites defensive explaining), do not work harder than the client, and do not take up Rescuer or Persecutor.
• No stroking of pathology. Meaning: do not laugh along with gallows humour, and do not give extended attention to misery narratives. Stroke health, change and the client's own competence.
• Protection and safety. Meaning: settle the client's position on self-harm and other escape hatches before deep regressive work. Plan how the new decision will be protected after the session [Rosseau et al. 2014 names protection as a stage].
• Brevity and focus. Meaning: aim for a meaningful change in each piece of work, not long exploration. Mary Goulding's demonstrations target contracts the client can achieve now [source: Erickson Foundation, Brief Therapy–Redecision Model].
• Nurturing, playful, well-structured leadership. Meaning: be warm and moderate in emotional stimulation, explain what you are doing, use humour and fantasy. Lieberman, Yalom & Miles (1973) rated Robert Goulding's group among the most effective leader styles [source: Rosseau et al. 2014].
• The therapist is not the new parent. Meaning: the Gouldings did not use reparenting (in contrast to the Schiff approach). Parent messages are revised by the client, for example via a self-generated permission or a Parent Interview, not replaced by the therapist's authority [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979] [uncertain as to exact framing].
• Respect the parent's reality. Meaning: parents are interviewed and understood, not blamed. The goal is release from the old message, not indictment [source: McNeel 1976; uncertain].

4. Intervention inventory

Unless marked otherwise, interventions 4.1–4.9 and 4.12–4.14 follow [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979]. All example wording is illustrative, written for this guide, and is not a Goulding quote.

4.1 Contract for change

• Purpose / when: At the start of every piece of work, and again whenever the work drifts. It is the organising tool of the whole method [source: Rosseau et al. 2014; Erickson Foundation, Brief Therapy–Redecision Model].
• Steps:
  1. Ask what the client wants to change about themselves, today or in this work.
  2. Turn complaints about others ("I want my husband to…") into changes the client can make.
  3. Make it positive and observable: what they will do, feel or think instead.
  4. Check ownership. Is this the client's goal, or a Parent "should" or something to please you?
  5. Ask how you and they will know it has happened.
  6. Listen for "try", "I'd like to" and "maybe". Invite a firmer statement, or accept that the client is not ready and contract for something smaller (for example, exploring).
  7. In a group, state the contract aloud to the group.
• Example language (illustrative): "What do you want to change about yourself in this session?" — "That's what you'd like your boss to do. What would you be doing differently?" — "When you've got this, what will I see you doing?"
• Watch for: Contracts that are really game invitations ("Make me feel better"), contracts to change someone else, and vague well-being goals. A working contract makes the client sit up and speak in their own voice.

4.2 Script assessment: rackets, stamps, games, strokes, injunctions and early decisions

• Purpose / when: Phases 2–3. Link the presenting problem to an early decision so impasse work can be targeted.
• Steps:
  1. Ask for a recent, specific instance of the problem. Track the chronic bad feeling (the racket), the thoughts, and the behaviour.
  2. Ask what the feeling is "saved up" for (stamps) and what the eventual payoff would be (quitting, a blow-up, illness, leaving).
  3. Identify repeating interpersonal sequences that end in a familiar bad feeling (games).
  4. Ask about stroke patterns: what they get noticed for, what they refuse, and whether they stroke themselves.
  5. Ask about the parental messages. What did each parent say they should do (counterinjunctions)? What did the family atmosphere convey without words (injunctions)? What did the child conclude about self, others and life (early decision)?
  6. Match the material against the Gouldings' injunction list: Don't Be (Don't Exist); Don't Be You (including Don't be the sex you are); Don't Be a Child; Don't Grow Up; Don't Make It; Don't (Don't do anything); Don't Be Important; Don't Belong; Don't Be Close; Don't Be Well / Don't Be Sane; Don't Think; Don't Feel. Later writers add others, such as Don't Trust [uncertain: the exact count and wording vary between the 1976 paper, the 1979 book and later texts]. McNeel (2010) treats injunctive messages as believed falsehoods that redecision resolves [source: TAJ 40(2) contents; Rosseau et al. 2014].
  7. Formulate the likely early decision in the client's own words ("I'll never need anyone").
• Example language (illustrative): "When you feel that sinking feeling, what do you say to yourself about you?" — "In your family, what wasn't allowed?" — "What did little you decide to do about that?"
• Watch for: Intellectualised script analysis with no feeling. Keep it brief and move to experience. Do not tell the client their injunction. Offer it as a hypothesis and let them confirm it.

4.3 Confronting disowning language

• Purpose / when: Throughout. Restore the client's sense of agency so a decision becomes possible.
• Steps:
  1. Notice disowning words: "can't" (where "won't" is accurate), "try", "it" or "you" instead of "I", "he makes me", "I don't know", "have to", "why" questions.
  2. Invite the client to restate: "can't" as "won't"; "try" as either "will" or "won't"; "it" as "I".
  3. Ask them to notice how the restatement feels. Don't argue.
  4. Use humour. Keep it light, never shaming.
• Example language (illustrative): "Say that again, and instead of 'can't', say 'won't'. How does that sound?" — "'Try' — are you going to, or not?" — "Say it with 'I' instead of 'it'."
• Watch for: Over-correcting so the client feels policed. Where "can't" is literally true (a skill deficit, a disability, a real external constraint), acknowledge it [synthesis]. It is working when the client starts self-correcting and their posture firms.

4.4 Refusing the gallows transaction

• Purpose / when: When the client laughs or smiles while describing self-damaging behaviour or misfortune, and invites others to laugh too.
• Steps:
  1. Do not laugh or smile back.
  2. Name the incongruity calmly.
  3. Invite the congruent feeling or statement.
  4. In groups, teach members not to reinforce it.
• Example language (illustrative): "You're smiling as you tell me you nearly crashed the car. I'm not finding it funny."
• Watch for: Shame. Do it warmly. Working: the client drops the smile and the real feeling emerges.

4.5 Stroke work

• Purpose / when: Phases 3 and 6. Change a deprived or misery-based stroke economy and give the client support for new behaviour.
• Steps:
  1. Assess what strokes the client gives, takes, asks for, refuses and gives themselves.
  2. Use exercises: ask the group for specific positive strokes; accept a stroke with a simple "thank you" and no discounting; give self-strokes aloud.
  3. Stroke the client's healthy behaviour and the change itself, not suffering.
  4. Plan stroke sources outside the session.
• Example language (illustrative): "Ask two people here for something you'd like to hear." — "Notice you just shrugged that off. Let it in and say thank you."
• Watch for: Automatic discounting ("yes, but"), and in group settings strokes that feel forced. Working: the client can ask and accept without deflecting.

4.6 Giving up stamps and rackets

• Purpose / when: When the client stores up resentment, guilt, depression or anxiety towards a "payoff" (a blow-up, leaving, collapse).
• Steps:
  1. Identify the feeling being collected and what the client plans to cash it in for.
  2. Ask whether they want to keep collecting.
  3. Invite a decision to stop: express the feeling at the time it arises, or let it go. Some therapists use a symbolic gesture, such as throwing the stamps away in fantasy [uncertain whether this specific ritual is in the 1979 text].
  4. Contract for the new behaviour in a specific relationship.
• Example language (illustrative): "How many more of these resentments do you need before you feel justified in leaving?" — "What would happen if you said it on the day it happened?"
• Watch for: Cashing in that is dangerous (self-harm, violence). Assess and protect first (see 4.14).

4.7 Game interruption

• Purpose / when: Repetitive interpersonal sequences, especially when one is played with you.
• Steps:
  1. Briefly identify the recurring sequence and its familiar ending feeling.
  2. Find the point where the client could do something different (state the need directly, decline the switch).
  3. Do not play: avoid Rescuing ("Why don't you…?" followed by "Yes, but…") and Persecuting.
  4. Contract for a game-free alternative.
• Example language (illustrative): "I notice I'm giving suggestions and you're telling me why they won't work. I'm going to stop doing that. What do you want from me?"
• Watch for: Long game analysis with no change. The Gouldings favoured stopping the game over cataloguing it. Working: the client gets what they want directly, without the bad-feeling payoff.

4.8 Two-chair impasse work

• Purpose / when: When the client is stuck between two internal positions ("I should… / I don't want to…"). This is the main route to redecision. Adapted from Perls's Gestalt [source: Erickson Foundation, Redecision Group Therapy (role-play, fantasy); GoodTherapy].
• Steps:
  1. Set out two chairs. The client speaks from one side of the conflict, then moves to the other chair and answers.
  2. Keep everything present-tense and addressed directly ("you"), not about ("he"). Ask for short sentences.
  3. Have them change chairs whenever the voice shifts. Amplify feeling: repeat a key sentence louder, notice the body.
  4. Identify the impasse type [uncertain on exact definitions; the Gouldings' typology, R. Goulding 1974 and Goulding & Goulding 1976/1979]:
     • Type 1: counterinjunction level. A Parent "should" (work hard, be perfect) versus the Child's wish. Often resolved quickly once the client hears the Parent voice as a borrowed rule.
     • Type 2: injunction level. An earlier, more feeling-laden message such as Don't Be Close or Don't Be Important. Usually needs an early scene (4.9) or Parent Interview (4.10).
     • Type 3: the client experiences the trait as "just how I am, always have been". Both sides feel like the self. Worked as dialogue between two parts of the Child (for example, the compliant part and the wanting part), with no parent figure. Mellor (1980) later re-framed the three types developmentally [secondary].
  5. Stop switching when one side shifts or the client spontaneously states a new position. Then move to redecision (4.11).
• Example language (illustrative): "Sit over there and be the part that says you must keep working. Tell him." — "Now come back. What do you say to that?" — "Say that again, louder. What do you feel in your chest?"
• Watch for: Endless back-and-forth with no new information. Stop and return to the contract, or go to an early scene. Watch for one chair becoming the therapist's position. Working: rising energy, a spontaneous "No", tears or laughter, and a new sentence the client has not said before.

4.9 Early scene work

• Purpose / when: To reach the original decision behind a Type 2 (or stubborn Type 1) impasse and make the redecision inside the scene. The Gouldings typically had the client choose a scene or memory from an early experience of the current problem [source: Rosseau et al. 2014 citing Goulding & Goulding 1979]. Mary Goulding demonstrated revisiting childhood scenes to resolve current impasses [source: Erickson Foundation, BT02 catalogue; Brief Therapy–Redecision Model].
• Consent and safety first [synthesis, consistent with current trauma-informed practice]: Explain what regressive scene work involves and get explicit consent. Agree a stop signal. Check grounding ability. Avoid it, or titrate it heavily, with recent or unprocessed severe trauma, dissociative disorders, active psychosis, acute suicidality, or when there is no follow-up session. Let the client choose a manageable scene, not necessarily the worst.
• Steps:
  1. Start from the present problem feeling ("that sinking feeling").
  2. Ask the client to let a scene come in which they felt this as a child. Have them describe it in the present tense: age, place, who is there, what is happening.
  3. Help them be there: sensory detail, what they see and hear, what the parent says and does, and what they feel in their body now.
  4. Ask what they are deciding in that moment (the early decision) and what they say to themselves.
  5. Bring in contact with the other person: the client speaks to the parent in the scene, or plays the parent in a chair (shifting into 4.8 or 4.10).
  6. When the Child's energy rises (anger, protest, longing), invite the client, as that child with what they now know, to say what they are no longer going to do or believe. Then go to 4.11.
  7. Optionally the client changes the scene's ending in fantasy: leaving, refusing, getting help, doing what they wanted.
  8. Return to the present: chairs, room, adult age. Debrief from the Adult.
• Example language (illustrative): "Stay with that feeling and let yourself go back. How old are you? Where are you?" — "Say it as if it's happening now: 'I'm in the kitchen…'" — "What are you deciding about yourself right now, in this kitchen?" — "Come back to this room. Look around. How old are you now?"
• Watch for: Flooding (dissociation, shut-down, panic). Slow down, ground, shift to Adult narration or stop. Watch for retraumatising re-enactment without new resolution: do not leave the client in the scene. Working: affect plus a felt sense of choice, and the client spontaneously reinterprets the scene ("It wasn't about me").

4.10 Parent Interview (McNeel)

• Purpose / when: When an internalised parent message keeps re-asserting itself, or the client cannot let go of the old decision because the parent figure feels overwhelming. Developed by John McNeel ("The Parent Interview", TAJ 1976) and widely used in redecision training [source: UKATA event title (two-chair, early scene, Parent Interview); GoodTherapy; McNeel 1976 — steps below are [uncertain] at detail level].
• Steps:
  1. Explain: the client will sit in a second chair and be the parent as they experienced them, and you will interview "them".
  2. Address the client by the parent's name. Ask ordinary, respectful questions: their age, their life now and at the time of the scene, their own upbringing, pressures, fears, what they wanted for this child, what they were afraid of.
  3. Do not confront or blame the "parent". Be curious and empathic, aiming to uncover the parent's own script and the pain or fear behind the injunction.
  4. Thank the "parent" and ask the client to return to their own chair.
  5. Debrief: what did they learn? Then invite the client to speak to the parent from their own position, which often leads to recognising that the message was the parent's problem, and to the redecision (4.11).
• Example language (illustrative): "Hello, Margaret. How old are you? Tell me about Sam when he was seven." — "What was going on in your life back then?" — "What were you afraid would happen if he was close to you?"
• Watch for: The client stepping out of role to defend or attack. Gently bring them back. Watch for abusive parent figures: role-taking an abuser can be destabilising, so consider skipping this or keeping it brief and highly structured [synthesis]. Working: compassion and separateness, as in "That was his fear, not my truth."

4.11 Making and stating the redecision

• Purpose / when: The climax of 4.8–4.10, when the client is energised and the old decision is clearly felt.
• Steps:
  1. Invite a statement in the first person and present tense. It should be the opposite of, or release from, the early decision.
  2. Have it said to the relevant figure in the scene or chair, then to the group or to you.
  3. Check congruence of voice, posture and breath. Listen for qualifiers ("I'll try", "I guess", "but").
  4. If it is not congruent, do not push. Ask what is still holding them back, which often reveals another impasse.
  5. If it is congruent, stroke it (group applause, your genuine response) and move straight to anchoring (4.13).
• Example language (illustrative): "Say that to him: 'I'm going to be close to people, whether you like it or not.'" — "Do you mean that? Say it again and notice whether all of you agrees."
• Watch for: Compliant redecisions made for the therapist (Adapted Child), and Adult-only statements without feeling [source: Allen 2010 abstract on why the Gouldings placed redecision in the Free Child]. McNeel (1999–2000) frames redecision as new belief acquisition: recognising the injunction as a believed falsehood [source: Rosseau et al. 2014]. Working: relief, lightness or play, and new behaviour soon after.

4.12 Grief work: saying goodbye

• Purpose / when: Unresolved loss (a death, divorce or estrangement) that sustains depression or a frozen script. Richard Steinberg (2010) extends this to post-divorce impasses [source: TAJ 40(2) contents].
• Steps:
  1. Contract to say goodbye, only if the client wants to.
  2. Place the lost person in the empty chair. Have the client describe them in the present tense.
  3. Invite unfinished business: resentments, appreciations, regrets, things not said.
  4. If useful, the client answers from the other chair.
  5. Invite the goodbye itself, in the client's words, when they are ready. Let them choose to keep what they want to keep.
  6. Anchor with a plan for remembrance and for re-investing in present relationships.
• Example language (illustrative): "Tell her what you're still angry about." — "What do you appreciate?" — "When you're ready, and only then, say goodbye in your own way."
• Watch for: Forcing a goodbye before the client is ready (this is a Rescuer move). Watch for complicated grief with suicidal ideation, especially a wish to join the dead person: assess (4.14). Working: release of grief and turning towards the living.

4.13 Anchoring and protecting the redecision

• Purpose / when: Immediately after a redecision and in following sessions. Rosseau et al. (2014) call this the protection stage: maintenance planning, reintegration and positive reinforcement [source: Rosseau et al. 2014; Allen & Allen 2002, cited there].
• Steps:
  1. Ask what the client will do differently this week and with whom, as concrete behaviour.
  2. Anticipate the parent or partner's reaction and the old pull. Rehearse a response, if needed in chairs.
  3. Arrange stroke sources for the new behaviour.
  4. Review the contract: met, partly met, or renegotiated.
  5. At follow-up, ask for evidence of change and stroke it. If the old pattern has returned, look for the next impasse rather than repeating the same one.
• Example language (illustrative): "What's the first thing you'll do differently tomorrow?" — "When your mother says X, what will you say now?"
• Watch for: Euphoria without a plan. Working: behavioural evidence outside the room.

4.14 Closing escape hatches / no-suicide decision — with current-practice update

• Purpose / when: Original: before or alongside script work with any client who has a Don't Be injunction or suicidal history. The Gouldings, with Drye, asked clients to make and monitor their own decision not to kill themselves (Drye, Goulding & Goulding 1973, American Journal of Psychiatry), linked in TA to Holloway's "closing escape hatches" [source: Drye et al. 1973 and Holloway 1973; uncertain at detail level].
• Current practice [synthesis, not a Goulding source]: A no-suicide contract or decision must not be used as a safety measure in itself. There is no evidence that it prevents suicide, and it can suppress disclosure. Use a standard structured risk assessment (ideation, intent, plans, history, protective factors). Write a collaborative safety plan: warning signs, coping steps, people and places, professional contacts, crisis lines. Include lethal-means counselling (safe storage or removal), involve others where appropriate, and document. Delay regressive early-scene or Don't-Be work until risk is stabilised and there are follow-up and out-of-hours arrangements.
• Steps (TA-congruent use, within the above):
  1. Explore the client's own Adult position on staying alive, as part of the safety plan, not instead of it.
  2. Name and discuss "escape hatches" the client keeps in reserve (killing self, harming others, going crazy) as script outcomes the therapy aims to make unnecessary.
  3. Revisit the topic whenever stamps are being collected towards a self-harm payoff.
• Example language (illustrative): "Part of what we'll do is make your safety plan together. And I'm interested in what part of you wants to live. What does it say?"
• Watch for: A client agreeing compliantly, and any refusal to engage in safety planning. Both are risk signals, not reassurance.

4.15 Family sculpture and one-act childhood dramas (group)

• Purpose / when: In groups, to make early decisions visible. Mary Goulding (2002) had volunteers build one-act dramas and family sculptures from childhood scenes to reveal early decisions and make present-day changes [source: Erickson Foundation, BT02 catalogue]. Her step-level procedure was not available, so the steps below are [synthesis] from standard sculpting practice.
• Steps [synthesis]:
  1. The client picks group members to stand in for family members.
  2. The client positions them in postures and distances that show how the family felt at the chosen age, and places a stand-in for themselves.
  3. The client steps into their own place and notices feelings and what they are deciding.
  4. Optionally, role-players say the key line of each family member, and the scene is enacted briefly as a one-act drama.
  5. The client re-sculpts the scene the way they now choose, then states the redecision (4.11).
  6. De-role all players, then share.
• Example language (illustrative): "Put your father where he was, emotionally, when you were eight. How far away? Facing which way?"
• Watch for: Role-players adding their own material, and group members being triggered. De-role carefully and give time to share.

4.16 Dream work

• Purpose / when: Recurring dreams that point to a script issue. Margaret Bowater (2010) describes redecision work built on a recurring dream [source: TAJ 40(2) contents]. Gestalt-style dream enactment was part of the Gouldings' Gestalt inheritance [uncertain: exact use in the 1979 text not verified].
• Steps [synthesis from Gestalt dream work, consistent with Bowater's description]:
  1. The client tells the dream in the present tense.
  2. They speak as different elements of the dream ("I am the locked door…").
  3. Find the element that expresses the injunction or early decision, and the element that resists it.
  4. Run a two-chair dialogue between them (4.8).
  5. Invite a redecision and, optionally, a new ending to the dream.
• Example language (illustrative): "Be the fruit fly. What are you saying?"
• Watch for: Nightmares linked to trauma (PTSD). Use trauma-focused methods for these rather than enactment [synthesis].

4.17 Later adjuncts (not part of the Goulding core)

Later redecision authors describe these. Use them only with the relevant training [source: TAJ 40(2) contents; all detail is [uncertain]]:

• Hypnosis in redecision therapy: Stephen Lankton (2010) combines Ericksonian hypnosis with redecision for access to early experience and resources.
• Other methods for facilitating redecisions: Curtis Steele and Nancy Porter-Steele (2010) describe several, drawing on practice since 1971.
• Couples work: Phyllis Jenkins and Anne Teachworth (2010) propose "psychogenetics" as an alternative to treating couple problems as projected parent-child issues.
• Group-as-a-whole work: Vann Joines (2010) combines it with one-to-one redecision work.
• Personality disorders: Moniek Thunnissen (2010) describes redecision in a structured personality-disorder programme at de Viersprong.
• Social redecision: Leonard Campos (2010) applies the model at social and community level.
• Family workshops: intensive multiple-family workshops (Kadis & McLendon 1981; Bader 1982) [source: cited in Rosseau et al. 2014].
• Executive coaching workshops: a five-stage adaptation (Rosseau, Rosseau & Widdowson 2014).

5. Handling problems

Tagging: the stance points (no rescuing, "can't" versus "won't", contract renegotiation) follow [source: Goulding & Goulding 1979]. Concrete responses are mostly [synthesis].

• Stuck client, no usable contract. Contract for the stuck point itself ("to find out what you want"), or for a small piece of work. Ask what the client gets from staying stuck, and what they fear would happen if they changed. Do not work harder than the client. Name it if you notice yourself doing so [synthesis based on the Goulding stance].
• "I'll try" / "I can't". Use 4.3. If it persists, treat it as the impasse itself: put "the part that wants to" and "the part that won't" in two chairs (4.8) [synthesis].
• Endless chair-switching or circular early scenes. Stop. Return to the contract. Ask what is missing, then switch method: early scene to Parent Interview, or Type 2 to Type 3 framing ("Maybe this feels like 'just you' — let's hear both parts of you") [synthesis].
• Adapted (compliant) redecisions. The client says the right words flatly or looks to you for approval. Say what you observe, invite them not to redecide yet, and ask whether the decision belongs to them [synthesis; consistent with the Free Child requirement, Allen 2010 abstract].
• Adult-only insight without change. Move to experiential work, keep everything in the present tense, and ask for the felt sense [synthesis].
• Overwhelm or dissociation in early scene work. Pause. Orient to the room (name five things you see, feel your feet). Shift to observer perspective ("watch the child from the doorway"). Lower intensity or stop and debrief. Next time, agree titration and stabilisation first. Consider trauma-focused treatment before more regressive work [synthesis; trauma-informed practice].
• Resistance as protest against the therapist. Treat it as information. Ask the Child what it is protecting. Do not push the redecision. Renegotiate the contract [synthesis].
• Non-adherence to the anchoring plan. Explore without blame: was the plan the client's or yours? Which old message got in the way? Re-plan smaller steps. The Gouldings' emphasis was on client choice, not compliance [synthesis].
• Ruptures (you confronted too sharply, laughed at the wrong moment, the client felt shamed). Name and own your part. Ask what the client experienced. Restore the contract [synthesis]. Joines (2010) and Johnsson (2020) emphasise relational and affective factors that the traditional contract-and-task emphasis underplays [source: TAJ 40(2) contents; Johnsson 2020 abstract].
• Group-specific problems. Members give advice, rescue, or laugh at gallows humour: teach the group norms (4.4, 4.5). A member is triggered by another's scene: offer brief contact and grounding during the work and time afterwards. A member monopolises: hold a contract-based queue [synthesis].
• Clients who idealise or demonise a parent in the Parent Interview. Slow down. Ask about the parent's own childhood to widen the picture. With abusive parents, prefer client-to-parent statements from a safe distance over role-taking [synthesis].
• Suicide risk or Don't-Be material. Follow 4.14: structured assessment and safety planning first, and no regressive work without stability and follow-up. Do not rely on a no-suicide decision as protection [synthesis; current standard practice].
• Cultural fit. Expect participants from some cultures to need more time to adapt to emotionally expressive group work [source: Rosseau et al. 2014]. Adjust confrontation of language to cultural norms of indirectness [synthesis].
• Severe pathology. Brief workshop redecision suits mild-to-moderate problems, according to the coaching adaptation [source: Rosseau et al. 2014]. Severe personality disorders need a longer structured programme, such as the de Viersprong setting [source: Thunnissen 2010, abstract only; uncertain].

Sources

Sources

• Redecision Group Therapy – Mary and Robert Goulding (Erickson Foundation, Pioneers collection)
• Brief Therapy–Redecision Model – Mary Goulding (Erickson Foundation)
• BT02 Workshop 27: The Use of Childhood Scenes to Resolve Current Impasses – Mary Goulding (Erickson Foundation catalogue)
• Rosseau, Rosseau & Widdowson (2014), Application of Redecision Therapy in Executive Coaching Workshops: Part 1, IJTAR 5(1)
• Transactional Analysis Journal 40(2), 2010, redecision issue – contents and abstracts
• Johnsson (2020), Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy Research: Three Methods describing a TA Group Therapy (DOAJ record)
• Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy – Open Library record (lending only; text not drawn on)
• Redecision Therapy – GoodTherapy (secondary; citations unreliable)

Further reading (not drawn on) (claims drawn from them are marked [uncertain] at detail level)

• Goulding, R. L., & Goulding, M. M. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel; Grove Press edition 1982. [uncertain: the 1979 publisher; Grove reissue confirmed via Open Library]
• Goulding, R. L., & Goulding, M. M. (1976). Injunctions, decisions, and redecisions. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1), 41–48.
• Goulding, R. L. (1974). Thinking and feeling in transactional analysis: Three impasses. Voices, 10(1). [uncertain citation detail]
• Goulding, R. L., & Goulding, M. M. (1978). The Power Is in the Patient. San Francisco: TA Press.
• Goulding, M. M. (1985/1997). Who's Been Living in Your Head? Watsonville, CA: WIGFT Press.
• Goulding, M. M., & Goulding, R. L. (1986). Redecision Therapy [video]. San Francisco: ITAA (cited in Rosseau et al. 2014).
• McNeel, J. R. (1976). The Parent Interview. Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1), 61–68.
• McNeel, J. R. (2010). Understanding the power of injunctive messages and how they are resolved in redecision therapy. TAJ, 40(2), 159–169 (abstract only).
• Allen, J. R. (2010). Redecision therapy: Underappreciated developmental, relational, and neuroconstructive processes. TAJ, 40(2), 149–158 (abstract only).
• Joines, V. S. (2010). Combining one-to-one and group-as-a-whole work in redecision group therapy. TAJ, 40(2), 144–148 (abstract only).
• Drye, R. C., Goulding, R. L., & Goulding, M. E. (1973). No-suicide decisions: Patient monitoring of suicidal risk. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130(2), 171–174.
• Holloway, W. H. (1973). Shut the escape hatch. In Monograph IV. Medina, OH: Midwest Institute for Human Understanding. [uncertain citation detail]
• Mellor, K. (1980). Impasses: A developmental and structural understanding. TAJ, 10(3), 213–220.
• Lieberman, M. A., Yalom, I. D., & Miles, M. B. (1973). Encounter Groups: First Facts. New York: Basic Books (as reported in Rosseau et al. 2014).
• Allen, J., & Allen, B. (2002). Redecision therapy as brief therapy. In K. Tudor (Ed.), Transactional Analysis Approaches to Brief Therapy. London: Sage (as cited in Rosseau et al. 2014).