The healthy personality is able to respond adaptively to life's situations by the appropriate use of one ego state autonomously or of two or three ego states acting collaboratively. Functional pathology is defined as unresolved disagreements between ego states within the total person. Impasses are first degree, contaminations second degree, and exclusions third degree pathologies.
Diagnosis is made in terms of key words which reveal the degree and kind of pathology present. Cure consists of proceeding from exclusions to contaminations to impasses to their effective resolutions.
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