Games appear to be segments of larger, more complex sets of transactions called scripts … A script is a complex set of transactions, by nature recurrent, but not necessarily recurring since a complete performance may require a whole lifetime … The object of script analysis is to 'close the show and put a better one on the road.'#572•
The Significance of Script Analysis in Psychiatry
Most persons who consult psychiatrists are basically "cooled out," pacified, brought back into temporary functioning; and a few are genuinely helped. I believe that psychiatrists who succeed in helping their clients do so because they reject the bulk of their psychiatric training and adopt a stance which comes out of their own experiences, personal wisdom, and humanistic convictions which overpower the oppressive and harmful teachings of psychiatric training.#571•
We do not want to hear that the trouble is to be found entirely within us and that, at the same time, we have no control or understanding of our difficulties. We do not want to hear these things about ourselves not because we are "resistant to change" or "unmotivated" for psychotherapy, but because they are not true, because they insult our intelligence, and because they rob us of our power to control our lives and destinies.#577•
a disease theory of emotional disturbance. Script theory is based on the belief that people make conscious life plans in childhood or early adolescence which influence and make predictable the rest of their lives#568•
Chapter 1: Structural and Transactional Analysis
In addition to what she sees in the person being observed, the observer can use her own emotional reactions and thoughts as information in the diagnosis; a parental reaction in the observer may indicate that a Child ego state is being observed, while feelings of inferiority or rebelliousness may mean that the ego state being watched is Parent, and so on.#587•
The most complete diagnosis of an ego state includes three sources of information: 1) The behavior of the person being observed; 2) the emotional reaction of the observer; and 3) the opinion of the person being observed. When diagnosing an ego state a transactional analyst doesn't say, "That's your Child!" but, "You act and sound as if you were in your Child ego state, and it feels like it is your Child because it brings out nurturing feelings in me.
What do you think?" Naturally, if there are other observers their opinions must be taken into account as well.
(See Chapter 6 for a further discussion of transactional analysis diagnosis.)#590•
The Adult
The value of the Child should not be underestimated. It is said to be the best part of a person and the only part that can really enjoy itself. It is the source of spontaneity, sexuality, creative change, and is the mainspring of joy.#541•
The Adult ego state is essentially a computer, an impassionate organ of the personality, which gathers and processes data and makes predictions#579•
While the Child perceives in color, in space, and from one point of view at a time, the Adult may perceive in black and white, often in two dimensions, and from several points of view at the same time#580•
The Parent
Thus, the Parent ego state is essentially nonperceptive and noncognitive. It is simply a constant and sometimes arbitrary basis for decisions, the repository of traditions and values, and as such it is important to the survival of children and civilizations. It operates validly when adequate information for an Adult decision is not available; but, in certain people, it operates in spite of adequate Adult information.#588•
Voices in the Head
nurse and defend one's young, but most human Parent behavior is learned, built as it were, on those two innate tendencies: nurture and protection.#556•
Exclusions and Contaminations
It might be said that the Parent is ideally suited where control is necessary—control of children, of unknown situations, of fears, of unwanted behavior, and of the Child. The Adult is suited to situations in which accurate prediction is necessary. The Child is ideally suited where creation is desired—creation of new ideas, procreation, creation of new experiences, recreation, and so on.#567•
Transactional Analysis
A very successful technique to decontaminate ego states is having the person alternately speak first for one, then another, of his ego states. This technique, originated in psychodrama and later adapted by Gestalt therapy, is a very convincing demonstration of the reality of ego states. A person who feels guilty because of masturbation could be asked to speak from his Parent about the evils of masturbation, from his Child about the guilt and fears of insanity due to his masturbation, and from his Adult about the well-known fact that masturbation is harmless and normal.
Verbalizing these different points of view tends to separate the two ego states, a process which facilitates decontamination of the Adult.#584•
Games and Payoffs
A game is a behavioral sequence which 1) is an orderly series of transactions with a beginning and an end; 2) contains an ulterior motive, that is, a psychological level different from the social level; and 3) results in a payoff for both players.#563•
Stimulus Hunger
A stroke is a special form of stimulation one person gives to another. Because strokes are essential to a person's survival, the exchange of strokes is one of the most important activities people engage in. Strokes can vary from actual physical stroking to praise, or just recognition. To be effective, a stroke must be suited to its recipient.
For example, Spitz has shown that a very young child needs actual physical stroking to survive.
On the other hand, adults may require only occasional, symbolic strokes such as praise, or an expression of appreciation, to remain alive.
However, while it is possible to survive on minimal strokes, stroke scarcity is unhealthy both physically and emotionally; thus stroke hunger is a major driving force in people.#557•
Structure Hunger
A game is transactionally more complex than the above ritual but it is still an exchange of strokes. It should be noted that "Go to hell!" is as much a stroke as "Hi" and people will settle for the former, negative strokes when they cannot obtain the latter positive ones.#546•
Position Hunger
For White, the game proves that parent types (advice givers) are no good and always want to dominate you, and at the same time proves that children are no good and prevent you from doing things. For Black, the game proves that children, or grownups who behave like children, are ungrateful and unwilling to cooperate. For both Black and White, the existential advantage fits into their script#591•
Chapter 2: Second-Order Structural Analysis
To summarize, the Pig Parent is a scared or angry Child ego state that attempts to protect or nurture and is a failure at it, while the Nurturing Parent is confident, loving, and competent in the nurturing and protective functions.#575•
Chapter 8: Basic Training: Training in Lovelessness
The basic training of life includes a systematic attack on three primary human potentials: the potential for intimacy, namely the capacity for giving and receiving human love; the potential for awareness, namely the capacity to understand the world and its people; and the potential for spontaneity, which is the capacity of free and joyful expression of the Natural Child. I#559•
A Fuzzy Tale
Capers and Holland point out that when peoples' stroke sources fall below a certain point which he calls the Survival Quotient, they become more and more willing to accept negative strokes because they need strokes, any strokes, for survival. Taking negative strokes is like drinking polluted water; extreme need will cause us to overlook the harmful qualities of what we require to survive.#569•
The Stroke Economy
Reich concluded that repression existed not for the sake of moral edification (as traditional religions would have it), nor for the sake of cultural development (as Freud claimed), but simply in order to create the character structure necessary for the preservation of a repressive society.#553•
Herbert Marcuse is another writer who sees a connection between an oppressive society and people's unhappiness. According to him, people live according to the performance principle: a way of life imposed on human beings which causes the desexualization of the body and the concentration of eroticism in certain bodily organs such as the mouth, the anus, and the genitals.#555•
The following theory about the stroke economy is a similar effort in which it will be proposed that the free exchange of strokes which is equally a human capacity, a human propensity, and a human right has been artificially controlled for the purpose of rearing human beings who will behave in a way which is desirable to a larger social "good," though not necessarily best for the people themselves#542•
Chapter 9: Basic Training: Training in Mindlessness
Rationality is not more "scientific" than intuition. It is simply more accurate, when measurable information is available, than is intuition. On the other hand, when measurable information is not available, intuition is more accurate than rationality.#581•
Discounts
A discount is a crossed transaction in which the discountee emits a stimulus from his Adult ego state to another person's Adult and that person responds from his Parent or Child. Consider the following example:#543•
answers with her Adult; she reports that she is afraid. Mother's answer, from her Parent, discounts the facts of the situation, namely that Mary is afraid. At this point Mary will probably get even more afraid and lose what little hold she has on her rationality. If she begins to cry, Mother may get angry or Mother may offer to let Mary come into bed with her.
Whether Mother Nurtures or Persecutes Mary the effect of the discount is to diminish Mary's Adult thinking capacities.#551•
Discounts make people crazy. Ronald Laing, who has an intimate understanding of the discount transaction, gives several examples of discounts and their effect on people in his book Knots:1#549•
Lying
The parent has information that the child wants. In order to be truthful, the parent has to either give the information or, without lying, explain why it isn't given. "I am embarrassed to tell you" is not a lie. "You are too young to know" is. "I am afraid you will get upset" isn't a lie; "I'll tell you when you are ready" is.#589•
Paranoia
In my opinion, what is called "paranoid schizophrenia" by psychiatrists is a state of mind which occurs in people as a result of systematic lying and oppression in childhood and in the person's present life. "When a paranoid person projects what he denies," even Cameron says, "he does not project at random.
He describes hostile and erotic impulses to people who actually exhibit minimal signs of a corresponding unconscious impulse.
Since everyone has hostile impulses … it is not difficult for the selectively hypersensitive paranoid to find persons on whom to project.
Thus there is always a core of truth in paranoid accusations." Here Cameron, in typically convoluted psychiatric jargon, states (only to let it pass) the most important fact about paranoia: namely, stated in my words, that paranoia is a state of heightened awareness#548•
Chapter 11
To the extent that children can do things such as love and understand the world and themselves, and to the extent that they are not allowed to do these things, they are forced into a Victim position with the parents acting either as Persecutors who oppress them in their abilities, or as Rescuers who then do what they have actually prevented them from doing for themselves.#2253•
You will notice that the Rescue situation described above involves: 1) training in powerlessness in relationships by not allowing the child to make his own social contacts and his own decisions about whom he wants to be with and when; 2) training in powerlessness in knowing the world by not allowing a child to come up against situations in which it has to understand the world well enough to make decisions and to think in it; and 3) training in powerlessness in which a child is not allowed to learn about himself, what gives him pleasure, how he feels, and how to act upon it.#2258•
This is because sex-role programming is designed so that women will be an unpaid work force which makes the lot of males easier to bear.#2242•
The main difference between a rescuer and a Rescuer is that the former expects to succeed and usually does while the latter expects to fail and is usually rewarded in his expectations.
Another difference between Rescuers, Victims and rescuers, victims is that rescuers are usually thanked by the victims they help, while Rescuers are usually persecuted by the Victims they help.#2243•
We resent being made powerless, especially when we don't ask for it, and when we find out that someone has been doing for us what they didn't really want to do, we feel humiliated and enraged.
People wanting to extricate themselves from the Victim position can ask not to be Rescued and can demand honesty from those who help them. Often these demands need to be made over and over of people whose tendency is to Rescue and who have trouble with feelings of guilt when they stop.#2245•
Woman Hater
He overcomes his fears of acting (rather than thinking and talking) and changes his behavior and modes of relating.#578•
The Rescue Game in Relationships
People are constantly going places, doing things, participating in activities as Rescuers because they fear that the people whom they would have to "reject" would be hurt, upset, or in some way be unable to take care of themselves.#540•
Thus, any situation in which one person asks another for help and then proceeds to do less than 50% of the work constitutes a Rescue.#576•
This is especially the case when a person who presents himself as needy or powerless (the Victim) ceases to put any effort into his situation as soon as another person who is the Rescuer begins to help#586•
Chapter 19
Most of us have had the experience of becoming more and more concerned and active with someone who subtly became more and more passive until it seemed that his welfare concerned us more than it did him#2248•
For instance, relating to a person who is an alcoholic and who almost constantly displays the role of Victim in search of a Rescuer may be impossible unless one is willing to play the role of Rescuer or Persecutor. That is to say, if one is not willing to Rescue or Persecute the alcoholic, the alcoholic will simply not be interested.
The same is true of certain individuals who demand to be Rescued or who demand to be Rescuers in relationships.#2249•
In every case in which one person Rescues another, whether by going along with something she doesn't want to do, by doing more than 50% of the work, or by not asking for what is wanted, there is always the assumption in the Rescuer that the person is in some way powerless, unable to take care of himself, or in some other way one-down.
In every case, the act of Rescuing another person reaffirms and maintains the power imbalance between the Rescuer and the Victim and prevents the possibility of people becoming equals in the relationship.#2244•
The role of Rescuer is a role in which one person, in a one-up position, denies to or diminishes in another person, the Victim, the power of helping himself by accepting a request for help without making demands for equal participation or by imposing help without a request for it.#2246•
A. Don't help without a contract.
B. Don't ever believe that a person is helpless (unless he is unconscious).
C. Help people who are feeling helpless to find the ways in which they can apply the power they have.
D. Don't do more than 50% of the work in therapy; demand that people do at least 50% of the work at all times.
E. Don't do anything you don't really want to do.#2247•