In this 90-minute interactive session, we explore Pearl Drego’s powerful concept of the Cultural Parent—the internalised voice of culture that shapes our beliefs, emotions, choices, and limits. Drawing from Transactional Analysis, anthropology, and lived social realities, the session invites participants to notice how culture operates inside the Parent ego state: normalising injustice, silencing choice, and prescribing obedience and rebellion in equal measure.

Rather than treating culture as something “out there,” we examine how it gets internalised through three interlinked layers: Etiquette (values, rules, and beliefs), Technicalities (procedures and systems), and Character (emotional patterns and permissions). 

In organisations, the Cultural Parent decides how disagreement is handled—or avoided. It shapes what kind of ambition is rewarded, who gets to hold authority, and which emotions are permitted in a boardroom. It rarely operates through policy. Instead, it works through stories, habits, and the unexamined sense of “this is how things are done here.”

This session makes the invisible visible. Participants will apply the ETC framework to real organisational and community patterns, notice where the Cultural Parent is active in their own responses, and identify practical entry points for change.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Map the three layers—Etiquette, Technicalities, and Character—that make up the Cultural Parent
• Analyse a familiar workplace or community practice using the ETC lens
• Recognise how their own Cultural Parent shapes everyday decisions
• Distinguish between healthy and unhealthy Cultural Parent patterns

Pearl Drego received the Eric Berne Memorial Award for this article.