Tag: Reachback

Introduction

Reachback is a psychological term coined by Eric Berne. Reachback, in Berne’s lexicon, is the period of time during which an impending event begins to influence an individual’s behaviour, including their level of stress.

Berne’s Formulation

Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, coined the term in his book What Do You Say After You Say Hello?. He considered that reachback “is most dramatically seen in people with phobias whose whole functioning may be disturbed for days ahead at the prospect of getting into a feared situation, such as a medical examination or a journey.”

For instance, a person expecting to take a trip on Monday starts getting irritable and worried on Friday. He may start trying to clear his overflowing inbox, cut short his evening relaxation, start preparing and packing for the trip, worry about what clothes to take, and so on. However, “for people who have unusual difficulties with anticipatory stress, the reach-back of an event such as a major vacation trip or a wedding may be several weeks.”

Berne differentiates reachback from forward planning, which is done to mitigate negative effects such as reachback.

The flip side of reachback is afterburn, which is defined as the effect a past atypical event continues to have on a person’s schedule, activities and mental state even after it is materially over. Berne considered that “each person has a sort of standard ‘reachback time’ and ‘afterburn time’ for various kinds of situations […] domestic quarrels, examination or hearings, work deadlines, travel, visits from or to relatives, etc.”

Prevention

Following William Osler’s prescription for equable living day-by-day, Berne explained that “living day by day means living a well-planned and organized life, and sleeping well between each day, so that the day ends without reachback, since tomorrow is well planned, and begins without afterburn, since yesterday was well-organized”.

Defence Usage

Reachback is also used in the US Department of Defence as the process of obtaining products, services, applications, forces, equipment, or material from organisations that are not forward deployed.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reachback >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.

Introduction

Afterburn is a psychological term coined by Eric Berne, who defined it as “the period of time before a past event is assimilated”.

Berne’s Formulation

Eric Berne, the founding father of transactional analysis, used the term “afterburn” to indicate the effect an atypical past event continues to exert on a person’s daily schedule, activities and mental state even after it is over: to “those occasions when it disturbs normal patterns for an appreciable period, rather than being assimilated into them or excluded from them by repression and other psychological mechanisms”.

For Berne, afterburn is the flip side of reachback, which is the effect that the event, thanks to the stress of anticipation, has on the person’s life before it. He considered that “in most cases one or the other can be tolerated without serious consequences. It can be dangerous for almost anyone, however, if the after-burn of the last event overlaps with the reach-back from the next … this is a good definition of overwork”.

Remedies

Berne considered that “dreaming is probably the normal mechanism for adjusting after-burn and reach-back”, but that sex and holidays were also useful remedies. “Most normal after-burns and reach-backs run their courses in about six days, so that a two-week vacation allows the superficial after-burns to burn out, after which there are a few days of carefree living. …For the assimilation of more chronic after-burns and deeper, repressed reach-backs, however, a vacation of at least six weeks is probably necessary.”

Other Views

In terms of exam stress management, “afterburn is the time needed after the exam to… set it to rest”, a period of “afterburn time… [with] a host of unexpressed feelings and incomplete tasks”.

“Referring to soldiers recently returned from Iraq, Sara Corbett described this type of delayed reaction as ‘psychological afterburn’… [quoting soldiers who spoke of it to the effect of:] ‘My body’s here, but my mind is there.'”

With respect to therapy, some consider that “you are not ending well when you find that you are thinking about the person’s problems after sessions. This is called afterburn”. Others however see opportunity in such occasions: “You’re sorting out your countertransference, you’re owning your projections, you’re separating out you from the family”—in short, one is usefully employing “those lagging emotions that afterburn following a session”.

Goffman

Erving Goffman has a related but rather different usage of the term “to refer to a sotto voce comment, one meant not to be a ratified part of an encounter, an afterburn … a remonstrance conveyed collusively by virtue of the fact that its targets are in the process of leaving the field”.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterburn_(psychotherapy) >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.