I'm OK--You're OK
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0060724277
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Transactional Analysis delineates three observable ego-states (Parent, Adult, and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. "Happy childhood" notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the Not ok feelings of a defenseless child, dependent on ok others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a "position" about ourselves and others that determines how we feel about everything we do. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is "I'm Not OK - You're OK." This negative "life position," shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational Adult capabilities, leaving us vulnerable to inappropriate emotional reactions of our Child and uncritically learned behavior programmed into our Parent. By exploring the structure of our personalities and understanding old decisions, Harris believes we can find the freedom to change our lives.
120 ‘Blemish’, 133 ‘Confession’, 201, 222 definition of, 49, 116 ‘Husbands Are Stupid’, 67 ‘I Am Bigger’, 150 ‘If It Weren’t for You I Could’, 77, 79, 119, 133 ‘Internal Courtroom’, 219 in international relations, 259 ‘It’s All Him’, 201 ‘It’s All Them’, 176 ‘It’s All You’, 79, 125, 130, 133, 135 ‘Kick Me’, 210 ‘Let’s You and Him Fight’, 119 ‘Look How Hard I’ve Tried’, 176 in marriage, 131–5, 137 ‘Mine Is Better Than Yours’, 50, 116, 131, 134, 150, 196 moral values and, 219
both hands held, being put prone on the floor, or being placed in a rocking toy. Girls show their first signs of coyness by putting their heads to one side as they smile.3 The ten-month-old has found he is able to do something which grows from his own awareness and original thought. This self-actualization is the beginning of the Adult. (Figure 4.) Adult data accumulates as a result of the child’s ability to find out for himself what is different about life from the ‘taught concept’ of life in
about; yet, the Parent in these people steadfastly dominates a portion of the Adult, and they will surround their prejudicial cases with all kinds of irrelevant arguments to support their position. As illogical as their position may seem, the rigidity of their position is in its safety. As illustrated in Chapter 2, it is safer for a little child to believe a lie than to believe his own eyes and ears. Therefore, one cannot eliminate prejudice by an Adult discourse on the subject of the prejudice.
P-A-C in each of them. First we compared the Parent of each. We found she had a strong Parent, which contained countless rules of conduct and many ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’. These included the admonition that you don’t rush into marriage without thinking. There were certain elements of self-righteousness, like ‘our kind’ are the best people. It contained ideas such as ‘you are judged by the company you keep’ and ‘don’t do anything that is beneath you’. It contained the early imprints of a home life
fast in recent years. The preoccupation has been with the anatomy of the beast rather than with its physiology. If the body gets ahead of the nervous system, the animal gets incoordinate – the animal staggers sometimes. With the university we now have to create a nervous system to match the animal. It takes a sophisticated nervous system to deal with complexity, to carry the messages between the differentiated organs. The university needs more and better decentralization, and it needs more and