Book Returns
Tuning Out the OK Chorale
Eric Berne’s Games People Play
Thomas A. Harris’s I’m OK, You’re
OK
by Susan Prudhomme
I arrived at the Institute for Transactional Analysis in 1972, complete with the humanistic attitudes of the times, and eager to receive therapy under the guise of “being in training” as a practitioner. Instead of the staid, well-appointed offices I expected in an “institute,” I was taken aback to find a notably irritable receptionist presiding over a bare foyer.
This was overrun by young adults indulging in various attitudes and antics—one perched on the receptionist’s desk riffling her hair, another sprawled lazily on the floor, legs stretched across the walkway. I later learned that they were expressing their “Natural Child,” and this was considered a good thing.
Berne versus Freud
The institute’s program for both client and student was the same: Eric Berne’s “TA 101” course. Berne, a psychiatrist who had been denied the title “psychoanalyst” because of his defiance of Freudianism, responded to this disappointment by creating a new personality theory, first published in Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy in 1961 and then in 1964 in the best-selling Games People Play. These works formed the basis for the lecture portion of the “TA 101” course, which also included group therapy and occasional “marathons,” 36-hour sessions with no sleep allowed.
Transactional analysis therapy, I learned, differed from traditional psychoanalysis in that it was not about dredging up one’s early experiences and motivations, but about learning to observe for oneself the ego-states, games, and other transactional phenomena in one’s own behavior and that of others, and to make rational decisions to change.
Freud’s “Id,” “Ego,” and “Superego,” were derived from subjective reporting of inner experience and not observable phenomenological realities. Berne’s “Parent,” “Adult,” and “Child” ego-states, he believed, were behavioral phenomena that could be observed by paying attention to people’s interactions (transactions), and thus could be validated scientifically. This, Berne believed, would go far to legitimize the field of psychology as a real science.
His claim might have been well-received by the established psychiatric order but for the success of Games People Play, published in 1964, in which he laid out his concepts and tools for Everyman in colorful, easily understood terms. In popular thought, the mystique of psychiatric jargon was suddenly passé, and psychobabble was born. The Establishment was not appreciative.
What the Establishment scorned, we students loved. “TA 101” was like no other course of study I had experienced. The lectures were as disciplined as the foyer had been—in other words, high energy and hilarity prevailed, as everyone, including the presenter, exercised his Natural Child. An amazing amount of information was transacted, and we all had a great time.
In group therapy, we not only worked on our own issues, but learned by observing the therapist in action and by practicing on each other. This was also a forum for students to present new and creative ideas. The marathons included lectures, intensive group work, and recreational activities. They were exhausting and designed to break down resistance to therapy and weld us more tightly together as TA devotees.
In addition to the three ego-states and games, we mastered other tools, including the “OK Corral,” which arranged the four life-positions on a grid that demonstrated how they were manifested in relationships. For example, if you are OK and the other person is OK, you will “Get On With” him, but if you are not OK and he is, you will feel you must “Get Along With” or appease him.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
29.4—July/August 2016
on Noticing That Modern Science Has Rendered Atheism Irrational by Harry Biltz
32.4—July/August 2019
Will Islamicization Become Its New Future by Peter Riddell
17.4—May 2004
The Unhappy & Abusive Marriage of Liberalism & Modernism by James Hitchcock
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
