I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

Introduction

What is the structure behind the human mind? This question has haunted humanity since its earliest records, and despite many successful endeavors and grandiose claims, still appears to be ultimately unsolved. The simpler and more applicable question to ask is: What is the most useful model for our mind and our social interactions? Here fits the pursuit of a big part of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy. Yet it's also a matter of concern for any self-reflection person: why do I act the way I act? Why don't I act the way I want to act? Why do other people do what they do? Folk psychology attempts to answer these questions and is arguably of much greater impact than academic or clinical psychology. The average person has little to no expertise in the area, and yet is expected to make endless decisions where they have to take such motivations into account. This knowledge gap ends up filled with folk knowledge, news articles, TV shows, and self-help books.

In the last few years, a new question has emerged to the general public: the question of Artificial Intelligence. Are transformer-powered models stochastic parrots, or are they able to create? Why is this chatbot not cooperating with me? Despite artificial intelligence being human-made and having simple inner workings, the emergent large-scale behavior sometimes feels even more inscrutable than human behavior, as folk knowledge in this area is still lacking.

Looking at popular attempts to explain LLM's emergent behavior, a particular psychology theory came to my mind: Transactional Analysis. Developed by Eric Berne in the 1950s, Transactional Analysis occupies an interesting spot in psychology. On one hand, it has been both very popular in the 1960s and 1970s in the form of best-selling books such as Games People Play and T.A. for Teens and Other Important People. On the other hand, its simple model, assumptions, and limitations have made it a controversial school of Psychotherapy, eventually not having much influence in mainstream psychology clinics.

Eric Berne was born in Canada in 1910. He came to the US in 1935 and spent 15 years of psychotherapy training, but was refused admission as a psychoanalyst. Challenging the concept of the unconscious and ultimately rejecting the psychoanalytic approach, he developed Transactional Analysis. In 1964, Berne released the book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. While initially directed for psychology professionals, the book turned into a best-seller and led to many following books by followers of the same field.

After the release of Games People Play, Thomas Anthony Harris wrote the book I'm OK, You're OK, which too became a best-seller. Harris, an American psychiatrist, was Berne's long-time friend and follows a similar approach, with some focal and conceptual differences. While Games People Play spends much of its pages describing different kinds of negative interactions between people, I'm OK and You're OK takes a broader approach, focusing on describing the transactional analysis model and its applications. For this reason, I've decided to review I'm OK, You're OK, by Thomas A. Harris.

The book begins by contextualizing the field and defining its goals. Harris' ultimate goal with the book is to explain how people can gain control over themselves and be less affected by what happened in the past. It is an attempt to bring psychiatry to the masses, creating a framework based on hard facts and clear terms, to allow better communication and understanding of the field.

In a way, Berne and Harris's endeavors can be contrasted to Lacan's, their contemporary. Both had little success and some contempt for traditional approaches, yet base themselves directly on Freud. Both Transactional Analysis and Lacanian Analysis seem to have a particular interest in mathematics and meta-approaches. But while Lacan concerns himself with the entirety of Psychoanalysis and expresses himself in an obscure and complicated way, Berne and co. takes the opposite approach. Transactional analysis disregards Freudian concepts of the unconscious, focusing only on what is tangible, clearly defined, and easily expressed. This is done by a focus on the concept of ego states, which are subparts of the Freudian ego.

Transactional Analysis

The book's brain model focuses on the idea that everything that a person experiences is stored as a continuous record. Harris correlates this with neuroscience by referring to Wilder Penfield's temporal lobe stimulation memory recall experiments. The basic idea is that electrode stimulation (as well as stimuli encountered in life) makes people relive the recalled memory wholesale, bringing back both the experience and the associated feelings. This is the start of a pattern that can be seen in the entire book: thinking of the brain as a "high-fidelity tape recorder" and providing mechanistic explanations for human behavior.

The basic unit of Transactional Analysis is the transaction: a unit of social intercourse, defined in an attempt to standardize a language for psychology and make it more scientific. A Transaction is defined by Berne as a social interaction, where one person provides a stimulus and the other a response to the stimulus. This unit is used to construct the entirety of T.A. A transaction might activate one of the different ego states of the person: the Parent, the Child, or the Adult.

The three ego states are too a basic concept of the theory and have very specific definitions. Two of them are literal recordings of experienced internal and external events, and one is a probabilistic machine and the recording of its observations and conclusions. Harris proceeds to describe in detail the origin of each ego state and how it's defined. The two first are the Child and the Parent, both consisting of memories:

• The Parent: a record of all external events a child experiences in their early years. Everything the child's parent says and does is internalized, and their words literally echo. The young child records such experiences without editing or correcting, not having the ability to question what they see. All kinds of stories, images, nonverbal communication, how-to guides, prejudices etc. are stored in the Parent. Unpleasant and inconsistent recordings are played less often - repression and weakening of the Parent data. I identify this also contains one’s priors regarding the outside world, but the concept of interjections is also very important.
• The Child: a record of all the internal events: the responses the young child has to what they see and hear. In the Child are recorded the young child's feelings and fears, their concept of who they are, what they need, etc. Since the child has lots of needs and is unable to fulfill them by themselves, here is recorded a basic negative feeling: "I'm not OK". The child recordings are replayed whenever the person feels cornered or afraid, the child takes over and the person relives their primary depression. Also recorded are positive feelings of comfort and joy: "OK recordings". Basically the priors regarding who you are, which might have too much influence in times of fear.

Harris claims that the Parent and the Child recordings are complete at 5 years old: the child has already experienced all sorts of emotions, and any new events are just a reinforcement of previous recordings. However, a tertiary, more complex ego state appears when the child becomes able to do things by themself: the Adult.

• The Adult: a record of data collected through hypothesis testing. The child figures out the world by experiment. Harris calls the Adult a "data-processing computer" that checks if things really are true and makes probability estimates. The Adult can be blocked in situations of conflict, but when it's free and not lagged by the past, it's able to implement creativity.

And that's the entirety of the concept of the psyche that's studied by Transactional Analysis.

In order to review the interjections contained in the Parent, you can start listing them off and they will come naturally as they're all stored in the same place.

The book then proceeds to define the four life positions, which are answers to the question "AM I OK?" and "ARE YOU OK?" These are related to the child's development and Piaget's stages. For Harris, the person is born suffering and starts with the position "I'M NOT OK, YOU'RE OK". The boy looks at how their parents are OK, and wonders why he’s fundamentally NOT OK - what’s missing from him, and what does he need to do in order to become OK? The position can change to any of the other positions, depending on how much stroking the young child gets from the world.

Harris describes I'M OK - YOU'RE NOT OK as a position of self-stroking that can lead to cruelty, sometimes with a mask of politeness.

The ideal position, I'M OK, YOU'RE OK, can only be achieved by using the Adult to see things clearly and review the priors of the Child and the Parent. Harris basically states that in order to reach this position a person has to review their stuck priors and practice rationality:

The task at hand is how to start a collection of recordings that play OK outcomes to transactions, successes in terms of correct probability estimating, and successes in terms of integrated actions which make sense, which are programmed by the Adult, and not by the Parent or Child, successes based on an ethic which can be supported rationally.

Harris then describes how one can change to a better position. One step is to analyze the transactions in their lives, identifying which ego state is activated at which time, and what is the source of our responses. He then describes the different types of transactions. Same-level transactions are transactions where both people use the same ego-states. Other types of transactions are defined based on which ego states are used. To represent the ego-states, a three-circle diagram is used. Many examples of different transactions are given, which make for some quite fun scenarios and illustrations.

Educational material on TA can be pretty fun on its own, as can be seen on this flipbook by TalkinTA

The PAC (Parent, Adult, Child) model is then applied to describe different kinds of mental illnesses and anguishes. For example, he claims a child that has terrifying or indulgent parents might end up blocking their Parent and live without a conscience, using only Child and Adult.

A chapter is then dedicated to the many types of experiences one might use to structure their time. Six types are defined: Withdrawals, Rituals, Activities, Pastimes, Games, and Intimacy. The first four are acceptable but keep people apart. Games cause trouble and should be avoided, while intimacy is desirable and is based on accepting the position "I’M OK, YOU’RE OK"

The concept of Games is key for the theory, as one should learn to identify them and stop them. Harris claims all of them stem from defenses against growing from the position "I’M NOT OK, YOU’RE OK". They're transactions with ulterior motives and a predictable outcome. The original game is "Mine is Better than Yours", and shows how Berne sometimes borrows directly from Adler. All the other games have funny names but describe ultimately toxic exchanges, many of which you've probably already gotten caught in on web forums or in your life. To get out of a Game, realize that you’re caught in it, understand how the Child and Parent might be clouding the discussion, and work to bring it to an Adult-Adult level.

Harris then spends some chapters describing how TA applies to different spheres of social life: marriage, children, and adolescence. TA is supposed to be simple enough to be taught to literally anyone. He then describes when treatment is necessary, and how TA works: it's primarily a group therapy treatment, where patients in a mixed group learn the technique and help each other. He claims the group approach is preferred due to lower cost, lower demand for therapists, and faster recovery times. I have to wonder, why does it seem like group therapy has fallen out of popularity since those times? Could we be missing something?

One of the later chapters describes how TA relates to moral values and religion, citing figures such as Bertrand Russel, Elton Trueblood and Pierre Teilhard. His approach to the topic often sounds surprisingly modern for a 1967 book, and wouldn’t be out of place in modern discussion. Harris then describes the social implications of the model, talking about how knowledge about individuals can describe international relations and social phenomena. This includes an analysis of the younger generation (Baby Boomers), which holds up surprisingly well. Also can be found here a description of how nations themselves can have a PAC model. He describes how the USA's primary position is “I’M OK, YOU’RE NOT OK”, and how the Vietnamese war is related to a dangerous international game with an ulterior motive. Finally, he talks about how the possibility of reaching the "IM OK, YOU’RE OK" position is the only way to societal progress, and that progress requires individual change.

Takeaways

Transactional analysis might appear reductionist: surely our behavior is more complex than just ego states, transactions, and life positions, right? Yet its clearly defined terms and constructive framework allow it to give an interesting perspective on our behavior. Given its goal of democratizing knowledge, it seems best compared not with other psychology theories, but with folk psychology. In that, it appears especially useful.

The concepts presented on it are also simple and clear enough that they could be useful for explaining more complex and sometimes obscurantist theories, such as much of psychoanalysis. Its position seems right halfway between more evidence-based approaches and more analytical approaches, making it a good stepping stone if one is interested in understanding such approaches.

The information processing-based description of the ego-states makes it especially useful for describing interactions with the current generation of chatbots, which behave like a human who spent their entire early childhood mindlessly browsing the internet and doesn't really know themselves or feel emotions. For transactional analysis, memory recall/reliving is enough to describe most human behavior, and what is missing is filled with internal experience, probabilistic reasoning, and decision-making. The book is an interesting read in that light, and the concepts presented make up a useful map of how such things work.

The book is from 1967, but it holds up well overall. This has a strange effect that when it shows signs of the decade it was written, they sometimes look like anachronisms. This also allows it to provide a clear view of the zeitgeist of the 60s. Many of the ideas contained in it might already be found "In the water supply", but having them presented in clear form is refreshing.

Thomas Harris in specific has a writing style and way of thinking that I could easily mistake for a modern member of rationalist forums. While he gets off on tangents at times, those shouldn't make much of an impact on reading, as the book has a very delineated structure. His application of the idea of having rational Adult discourse in order to have a clear view of reality, of analyzing and updating your priors from the past, of solving the "how to achieve world peace in the Cold War" problem, and of achieving happiness and control over your life seems to have parallels to the themes explored around here over the last two decades. For TA, this is done by learning to be mindful of our thinking and the mechanics in our transactions, so we can pursue an "I’M OK, YOU’RE OK" position. Do we have a clear idea of how this could be done today? The last few years have made it clear that those with the deepest insights on the current key issues don’t have enough influence and a good enough public image, and the first months of 2023 have confirmed it.

Berne and Harris did a great job in communicating their ideas to the general public, appealing both to 1960s progressive and conservative values and making their concepts engaging and clear to society, in the form of best-selling books. I believe we could take some lessons from this book’s success, regarding how to communicate to the general public about key issues and AI risk.