I'm Ok You're Ok A Practical Guide To Transactional Analysis

The Story

Here is a fresh, sensible, increasingly popular approach to the problems that every human being, including the person in need of psychiatric help, faces every day in his relations with himself and others. Transactional Analysis is a new break-through, one that confronts the individual with the fact that he is responsible for what happens in the future, no matter what has happened in the past. It is both a teaching and a learning device. It distinguishes three active elements in each person's make-up: the Parent, the Adult, and the Child (P-A-C). The Parent personifies the 'don'ts' and a few 'do's' implanted in one's earliest years and automatically accepted as gospel. The Child represents spontaneous emotion. Both Parent and Child must be kept in proper relation to the Adult, whose function is that of a reality computer that grinds out decisions based on the data derived from experience. The goal of Transactional Analysis is the strengthening and emancipation of the Adult from the archaic recordings in Parent and Child to make possible freedom of choice and the creation of new options. Dr. Harris explains that there are four life positions underlying people's behavior. They are: (1) I'M NOT OK--YOU'RE OK (the anxious dependency of the immature); (2) I'M NOT OK--YOU'RE NOT OK (the 'give up' or despair position); (3) I'M OK--YOU'RE NOT OK (the criminal position); and (4) I'M OK--YOU'RE OK (the response of the mature adult, at peace with himself and others). Most people still unconsciously operate from the I'M NOT OK--YOU'RE OK position. Dr. Harris applies the P-A-C system to problems in marriage and child rearing, mental retardation, violence, student revolt, racial prejudice, creativity, adolescence, religion, and international problems, including war. There is a long and helpful chapter discussing when treatment is necessary, with a description of group treatment. It can be intriguing to recognize P-A-C in oneself and others.