INTRODUCTION

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In recent years, there have been various psychological problems for ordinary people in daily life [1]. One of the reasons would be probably from interpersonal communication associated with increasing stressful matters. In developed and developing countries, our quality of life, activities of daily living, and environment have become better than before from physical point of view. However, our circumstance has not so improved to ideal situation in the light of our states of mind, heart, and spirits [2]. Human may have difficulties in spending every day, unless he feels stable and happy from the points of biopsychosocial aspects [3].

Psychology is one of the crucial fields of medicine with clinical practice and research. In the development of psychology, transactional analysis (TA) was begun by the Eric Berne. It was a personality theory which was easy to understand by everyone [4,5]. TA has been one of the practical and useful psychotherapies because it can evaluate preferable mutual human communication. It can also improve the personality trait and growth in adequate manner. It has been called egogram including three egos which are parent (P), adult (A), and child (C) [4,5].

This useful psychotherapy has been handed over by John M. Dusey. He developed the egogram further and proposed to include five egos. They are critical parent (CP), nurturing parent (NP), Adult (A), free child (FC), and adapted child (AC) [6,7]. Successively, it has become popular and used widely due to its simple usefulness for clinical application.

The concept of the egogram was introduced to Japan and developed by Tokyo University. The psychosomatic group had established Japanese style of the egogram, which is Tokyo University Egogram (TEG)[8,9]. During some decades, TEG has been one of the reliable examination psychologically. It has been proved to be adequate standardization by sufficient statistical investigation [8,9].

On contrast, clinical application and research for TEG have been continued by the authors. Previously, we have already reported clinical research of the personality in music learners and teachers [10]. Moreover, we have given lectures for university students for long, which would be useful for the psychological development of the adolescence period during their meaningful daily life [4]. In this investigation, we show the data of TEG from the students and compare and analyze them in the light of biopsychosocial aspects.

RESEARCH PROTOCOL AND RESULTS

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In this study, subjects enrolled were 376 late teenagers in university students, who were in the Faculty of Engineering of Tokushima University. Approximately 1-2 month after entering the university, they took our class and workshop of the egogram. We gave them special lectures including psychology, culture, medicine, multidisciplinary subjects, and so on. This class concerning the theory and practice of the egogram has been continued for years associated with our management and research. These classes have been provided to the students at the 1st and also the 4th grade of 4-year faculty course and also the 1st grade of postgraduate course.

Methods in this study included the investigation of personality trait using TEG. It has been known as a highly reliable psychological test, which was established with the concept of TA [8,9,11]. TEG has 60 simple questions, and everyone can answer, calculate, and evaluate easily within 5-10 min.

As the evaluation for TEG, it can show and speculate five ego states and personality trait. Psychologically speaking, there are five egos in our mind, such as CP, NP, A, FC, and AC.

Results of the egogram in this study were shown in Table 1. As the interpretation for TEG, there are 29 different types of personality trait. These types have been speculated through continuing TEG research for years. This classification has been accepted for Japanese people and human communication situation.

Table 1

The current data were also compared with the previous standard value, which are from more than 4500 Japanese people [8,9]. From the results of 29 kinds of pattern in TEG, characteristic six types were picked up and discussed, in which frequency was more than the standard value. Those types were (1) dependent, (2) short tempered, (3) self-centered, (4) conflict, (5) solitude, and (6) pessimist.

DISCUSSION

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In the field of psychotherapy, the egogram has been useful and effective for medical practice and research. Several kinds of diseases or states include anorexia nervosa, obesity, coat hypertension, and so on [11-14]. These reasons for the efficacy would be from the characteristic points of psychosomatic diseases from biopsychosocial aspects.

Subjects of this study are in the internet generation. Based on the results, six types were more frequently observed than standard data. The overall trend would be as follows: (1) NP is generally low, (2) CP and AC are relatively high, and (3) distribution of A and FC is wide. In the discussion, we would focus on lower NP and rather higher CP and AC. The main perspectives are internet world and growing environment [15].

With the spread of the internet, SNS has rapidly developed and became a part of communication method. Among them, convenient matter is to communicate with the other party at any time on the internet, unlike actually communicating people. Meanwhile, there could be a risky matter. Since it is not face to face, person may feel that there is no instant replay or that his situation is tightly bound for pending condition. Such situation may bring him stress. It is considered that this stressful state would be caused by a decrease in morality related to interpersonal relationship adjacent to NP decrease [16].

Along with the popularization of the internet worldwide, desiring information can be obtained instantly and easily. As a result, people have tendency not to think deeply, inducing a decreased level of factor A.

Conflicting behavior may be seen in both the normal life world and the internet-related world. In other words, people have been taking high caution and action of other people associated with elevated AC level.

There is always human ego suppressed by AC in ordinary daily life. On contrast, there is no need to worry about other people at all in the internet world. As its rebound reaction, the ego may be reversed and released in the internet [17]. As a result, criticism and violent behavior against others are apt to develop more than usual. For this reason, a flow in which CP rise and NP decrease are conceivable can be found.

Comprehensively, it seems that the spread of the internet is greatly related to the transition of ego state in the student. Considering the environment in which students of 18-20 years old had been raised, the internet was always popular and presents in normal circumstances during childhood and adolescence. Since the generation was brought up in such a convenient and less human-like environment, they could have received various influence of the internet [18].

Furthermore, it seems that the Japanese family structure also affects the decline of NP. In the Showa era, the family composition has included many relatives. However, there are more nuclear families, and the children often tend to grow away from their grandparents. The NP factor is characteristic for its gentle mother heart. Although the influence of the mother is large for NP, the influence of the grandparents is also considered to be equal or greater than that of the mother.

In the past, mothers were always with their children. Even if the parents worked together, the grandparents have always took care of them with affection. Grandparents tend to grow their grandchildren relatively in dependent manners [19]. This relationship may have the possibility that a child will grow a little selfishly. However, children could obtain the valuable temperaments such as kindness, tolerance, and comfort.

As described above, there is a mutual relationship between the internet and the growing environment. As NP gradually declines for years, children are more likely to feel loneliness and lack of love due to nuclear family and dual work of the parents. Consequently, there is a possibility that it may lead to indifference to others [18].

In such situations feeling solitude, the compensation way to fill the heart has changed. In the past, it was an interpersonal relationship and communication. However, in recent years, it has replaced to the internet approach. With this trend, mutual human relationship seems to be weaker for years [20].

Regarding the AC factor, there seems to be some characteristic features in recent years. There are few children brought up by grandparents; then, it seems to be rather rare that AC was acquired with balanced five egos in natural environment with parents and grandparents. On the other hand, due to the current situation of school life, important points have been placed on not disturbing the atmosphere of the place, not disturbing the group and taking cooperative action. For that reason, it is thought that many students do not clarify their own opinion [21]. These situations have brought the elevation of AC, leading to the increased ratio of the ego type of dependent.

In summary, six types were found more in this study. The reasons would be as follows: (1) There is basically a decline in NP and A, (2) high AC is required in daily life, (3) high CP is found for aggressive attitude against people in the internet world, and (4) NP declines due to growth background in nuclear families. We expect that the current results would become a fundamental reference and there will be further developed in the future research.

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