Module 2 Exercise
Script Mapping
This exercise uses a case from your own practice. You will map the scripts operating at each of the three levels, locate the discordance between them, and then see what that does to your formulation. There are no correct answers here, but there is a shape the work tends to take, and a worked example is provided before you start.
Use no identifying information. Your responses are not saved and will be lost when you leave the page, so print or copy them before you go.
The Three Levels
Cultural scenariosThe collective instructions. What sex is for, who initiates, what counts as sex, what a person of this gender is supposed to want and at what point in life. Absorbed rather than chosen, and usually invisible to the person holding them.
Interpersonal scriptsWhat actually happens between these two people. Who moves first, what the moves are, how assent and refusal get signalled, what is sayable and what is not.
Intrapsychic scriptsThe private material. What this person finds arousing, what they imagine, what conditions their own desire depends on, and what they have concluded about themselves as a sexual person.
Discordance between levels does more clinical work than any single level does on its own. A client is rarely troubled by a script. They are troubled by two scripts that will not sit together (Gagnon & Simon, 1973).
Worked Example
A woman in her thirties, married eleven years, presenting with low desire. No pain. She describes the marriage as good and says she does not understand why she has "gone off it."
Cultural
Desire should arrive on its own and precede sex. Wanting is spontaneous or it is not real. Sex means intercourse. A wife who is not interested is failing at something, and frequency is the measure of a marriage.
Interpersonal
He initiates, non-verbally, at night, in bed. She either goes along with it or turns away. There is no third move available to either of them. Refusal is delivered by body position rather than words, and is received as a verdict on him.
Intrapsychic
Her arousal is responsive and conditional. It shows up when she feels wanted for herself rather than needed for relief. She has private fantasy material that does not fit the frame she was given, and she has filed it as evidence that something is wrong with her rather than as information about what works.
Where the discordance sits
Primarily cultural against intrapsychic. The cultural script says desire comes first; her actual desire is responsive. She is measuring a working system against the wrong standard and concluding she is broken. Secondarily, the interpersonal script offers only two options, yes or no, when what she needs is a third: not now, but this instead, or later, or differently.
What it does to the formulation
The presenting concern was her desire. After mapping, her desire is not the target at all. Two things are: the spontaneity belief, and an initiation script with no middle option. That changes the intervention from anything aimed at increasing her desire to psychoeducation plus expanding the couple's repertoire of moves. It also changes who the work involves, because the second target cannot be addressed with her alone.
Step One
Choose a case and map the three levels
A presenting concern from your own practice, with no identifying information. If a level is genuinely unknown to you, write that. An empty level is often the most useful finding in this exercise.
Step Two
Locate the discordance
Which two levels are refusing to sit together? Choose the pairing that carries the most weight in this case.
Step Three
What does this do to your formulation?
Name what you had been treating as the problem, and what the mapping suggests the problem actually is. If nothing has changed, say that too, and say why.
Three questions to test it against
Has the target moved from the person to something between two people, or the reverse? Either move changes who needs to be in the room.
Does the client hold a standard they did not choose and cannot meet? If so, the standard is a target, not a background detail.
Is there something they need in order to become aroused that the interaction has no way of requesting? If so, the work is scripting, not desire.
Reference
Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Aldine.