Scripts People Live Read online

  SCRIPTS PEOPLE LIVE

  ALSO BY CLAUDE STEINER

  Games Alcoholics Play

  Healing Alcoholism

  The Other Side of Power

  When a Man Loves a Woman

  SCRIPTS PEOPLE LIVE

  Transactional Analysis

  of Life Scripts

  Claude M. Steiner

  With a New Foreword by the Author

  Copyright © 1974 by Claude M. Steiner

  Foreword to the Second Edition copyright © 1990 by

  Claude M. Steiner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Steiner, Claude, 1935–

  Scripts people live : transactional analysis of life scripts / Claude M. Steiner; with a new foreword by the author,

  p. cm.

  Reprint. Originally published: New York : Grove Press, 1974.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9680-4

  1. Transactional analysis. I. Title.

  RC489.T7S73 1990

  616.89′145—dc20 90-47229

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  I dedicate this book to Eric Berne,

  teacher,

  friend,

  father,

  brother.

  CONTENTS

  Table of Figures

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  Preface and Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  The Basic Assumptions of Transactional Analysis

  People Are O.K

  Communication and Contracts

  Curability

  I’m O.K. You’re O.K. What’s Your Game Give Me A Stroke Cha Cha Cha

  Eric Berne

  Scripts

  Eric Berne’s Script

  Script Analysis

  The Significance of Script Analysis in Psychiatry

  SECTION 1 Transactional Analysis Theory

  Chapter 1: Structural and Transactional Analysis

  Structural Analysis

  The Child

  The Adult

  The Parent

  Voices in the Head

  Exclusions and Contaminations

  Transactional Analysis

  Games and Payoffs

  Stimulus Hunger

  Structure Hunger

  Position Hunger

  Roles and Degrees

  Chapter 2: Second-Order Structural Analysis

  Egograms

  SECTION 2 Script Analysis

  Chapter 3: Oedipus Revisited

  Chapter 4: The Existential Predicament of Children

  Witches, Ogres, and Curses

  Injunctions

  Attributions

  Witchcraft

  Good Magic

  Bad Magic

  Chapter 5: Decisions

  Time of The Decision

  Form of The Decision

  Frogs, Princes, and Princesses

  Chapter 6: Transactional Analysis of Scripts

  The Three Basic Life Scripts

  Depression, or No Love Script

  Madness, or No Mind Script

  Drug Addiction, or No Joy Script

  Transactional Analysis Diagnosis

  Injunctions and Attributions

  The Counterscript

  The Decision

  The Somatic Component

  Chapter 7: Scripts: Tragic to Banal

  A Script Checklist

  Life Course

  Counterscript

  Parental Injunctions and Attributions

  Program

  Game

  Pastime

  Payoff

  Tragic Ending

  Therapist’s Role

  Twenty Questions

  Does Everyone Have a Script?

  Chapter 8: Basic Training: Training in Lovelessness

  A Fuzzy Tale

  The Stroke Economy

  The Stroke Economy Rules

  Chapter 9: Basic Training: Training in Mindlessness

  Awareness

  Discounts

  Discounts of Intuition

  Discounts of Personal Emotions

  Discounts of Rationality

  The King (or Queen) Has No Clothes

  Lying

  Madness

  Paranoia

  Chapter 10: Basic Training: Training in Joylessness

  Injunctions and Attributions for Joylessness

  Chapter 11: Rescue: The Banal Scripting of Powerlessness

  The Rescue Game

  Powerlessness

  The Rescue Triangle in the Nuclear Family

  The Three Roles

  Rescuer

  Persecutor

  Victim

  Chapter 12: Competition: The Banal Scripting of Inequality

  Individualism

  Competitiveness

  Scarcity

  Power Plays

  SECTION 3 Relationships

  Chapter 13: Sex Role Scripting in Men and Women (by Hogie Wyckoff)

  Structural Analysis of Sex Roles—Men

  Structural Analysis of Sex Roles—Women

  Sex Roles and the Family

  Sex Roles and Relationships

  The Sex Role Conspiracy

  Combating Sex Roles

  Chapter 14: Banal Scripts of Women (by Hogie Wyckoff)

  Mother Hubbard

  Plastic Woman

  The Woman Behind the Man

  Poor Little Me

  Creeping Beauty

  Nurse

  Fat Woman

  Teacher

  Guerrilla Witch

  Tough Lady

  Queen Bee

  Chapter 15: Banal Scripts of Men

  Big Daddy

  Man in Front of the Woman

  Playboy

  Jock

  Intellectual

  Woman Hater

  Chapter 16: Relationships in Scripts

  Tragic and Banal Relationships

  The Three Enemies of Love

  Sexism

  The Rescue Game in Relationships

  Chapter 17: Power Plays

  Power

  Power Plays

  One-Up Power Plays

  One-Down Power Plays

  Pitched Battle

  Analysis of Power Plays

  SECTION 4 Therapy

  Chapter 18: Myths of Therapy

  Introduction

  The Myth of the Value of One-to-One Individual Therapy

  The Myth of the Uselessness of Common Sense

  The Myth of Mental Illness and the Relevance of Medicine to Therapy

  Chapter 19: How to Avoid Rescue

  The Rescue Triangle in Therapy

  How Not to Play the Rescue Game

  Chapter 20: Contracts

  Mutual Consent

  Mutual Consent Implies Mutual Effort

  Consideration

  Competency

  Lawful Object

 
; Chapter 21: Strategies of Script Analysis

  Work

  Game Playing

  Antithesis or Command

  Attack

  Fun

  The Gallows Transaction

  Permission

  Protection

  Potency

  Permission Classes

  Marathons

  Homework

  Unloading Negative Feelings

  Held Resentments

  Paranoid Fantasies

  Chapter 22: The Therapy of the Three Basic Scripts: The Therapy of Depression

  Breaking Down the Stroke Economy

  Faith in Human Nature

  Stroke Starvation

  Acceptance and Rejection of Strokes

  Nurturing

  Plastic vs. Warm Fuzzies

  Touching

  Organizing a Stroking Community

  Exercises

  Giving Strokes

  Asking for Strokes

  Self-Stroking and Nurturing Parent

  Massage

  Chapter 23: The Therapy of Madness

  Accounting

  Discount Power Plays

  Accounting for Paranoia

  Chapter 24: The Therapy of Joylessness

  Breathing

  Centering

  SECTION 5 The Good Life

  Chapter 25: Cooperation

  Cooperation Rules

  Two, Three, or More

  Chapter 26: Child-Rearing for Autonomy

  Raising Children for Autonomy: Ten Rules

  Chapter 27: Men’s and Women’s Liberation

  Sex Role Oppression

  Men’s Trust Circle

  Men’s Great Curses: Responsibility and Guilt

  Liberated Relationships and Life Styles

  Chapter 28: After Scripts, What?

  Bibliography

  Games, Scripts and Archetypes Index

  Subject Index

  Authors and Therapists Index

  Table of Figures

  1A Complementary Transaction

  IB Crossed Transaction

  1C Duplex or Ulterior Transaction

  2A Mary, Five Years Old

  2B Mary, Thirty-Five Years Old

  3 Ego States, Their Names and Functions

  4A Jack’s Egogram Before and After Therapy

  4B A Relationship Egogram

  5A The Script Matrix

  5B The Script

  6 How to Raise a Beautiful Woman

  7A Script Matrix: A Young Man

  7B Script Matrix: An Alcoholic

  8 The Rescue Triangle

  9 A Man: Male Sex Role Scripting

  10 A Woman: Female Sex Role Scripting

  11A A Woman and a Man: Sex Role Communication

  11B A Woman and a Man: Become One

  12 A Woman and a Man: Liberated Communication

  13 Radical Psychiatry Center Action Rap

  14A Work

  14B Command or Antithesis

  14C Fun

  15A Permission

  15B Protection

  Foreword to the Second Edition

  Scripts People Live was written in the 1960s at a time decidedly different from the present. Our country was a large, uncluttered space with plenty of opportunity and room for growth. Today young, middle-class Americans who are deciding what to do with their lives face a hard-edged, competitive world, a world in which there is less elbowroom and a smaller margin of error. Scripts People Live is a book about the choices people make and why they make them. Now, as then, this book explores life’s enduring decisions and helps people choose wisely among the alternatives.

  The boundless American optimism of the fifties and sixties has been squeezed into today’s fearsome, self-seeking rat race. People entering the work force in the fifties could expect their real incomes to double over the next few years, while between 1973 and 1987 the median household income, in 1987 dollars, declined by $1,000. Images of plenty nonetheless linger in the collective unconscious, leaching disappointment and cynicism into people’s daily lives.

  Our society is increasingly dividing into two large groups. For those who succeed in the race there is an endless supply of consumer goods and the opportunity to be insulated from the toxic condition in which those who “fail” must live. For the others the safety net is disintegrating, leaving a fearsome void. The poverty rate of families with parents under thirty is 35%. Where poverty resides, homelessness, drug addiction, madness, and despair hang on the gloomy horizon.

  We are puzzled by the occasional example of children born in dismal, even terrifying conditions who grow up to be functioning, happy members of society while others born to wealth and ease cannot cope with life and die in defeat. We read in the same newspaper the story of a once-homeless woman who graduates with honors from Stanford University while a dead homeless man turns out to be the firstborn of a wealthy San Francisco family. These real life stories are seized upon by the hopeful on one hand and the cynical on the other and taken to mean that one’s environment, whether ghetto or upper class, is not relevant to one’s fate.

  There is no doubt that the conditions we encounter in life limit our range of options. Some people are born into riches, some into poverty; some have large, nurturing families; others live with frightened, isolated mothers; some have reliable, sober parents and teachers; some have to cope with infantile, addicted care givers. Some never see violence, death, and abuse, while others witness them daily. Some have strict, disciplining parents, while others are left alone to do as they please.

  Yet each young person still has to decide whether to take life lying down or seize it by the horns. Each individual has a spiritual core that exists independent of the environment and is equally crucial to his or her destiny. It is this spiritual core that is capable of withstanding agonizing hardship, struggling through adversity, making unfathomably wise decisions or inexplicable sacrifices and that propels and carries its owner through the worst of times. It is this book’s task to tackle the puzzle of human fate and to reveal what establishes people’s life scripts—how they are determined, and by what components, and how each person’s peculiar combination of spirit and circumstances contributes to the final path that life takes.

  Some twenty years after it first appeared, this reprinting of Scripts People Live will be read by a new generation born into difficult fin de siècle realities. It speaks of the pressures we all have to deal with in our life journeys and the coping mechanisms passed down the generations by our elders. The theory in this book states that people’s scripts, or life paths, are fairly well decided upon early in life and then held to in what appears to be an inexorable manner unless an active process of redecision is undertaken. Children come to the conclusion that they will be happy or depressed, optimistic or miserly, winners, spendthrifts, or failures, healthy or alcoholic, lawyers, models, or blue-collar workers, unemployed or overworked, long-lived, sickly, or suicidal, and having decided, they will spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to make their decisions come true. Unless a conscious decision to modify one’s life in an active way occurs, the script will hold sway to the end. Psychotherapy, explored in this book, can serve to help people free themselves to make productive, autonomous, optimistic life plans based on the most up-to-date reality.

  Since Scripts People Live appeared, it has helped millions of people understand their lives. The times have changed, but the fundamentals remain the same; I believe that Scripts People Live can help you make the choices that will maximize the quality of your life.

  —Claude Steiner

  1990

  Preface and Acknowledgments

  When I began writing this book, I intended it to be a revision of my previous book, Games Alcoholics Play, updated with respect to the therapy of alcoholics and expanded with respect to script theory. As the work proceeded, it quickly lost its intended character and became, instead, a whole new book on the Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. I have reused some sections of Games Alcoholics Play,
but this book is mostly an extensive and concise statement of recent developments in script theory. Where I have used sections of Games Alcoholics Play, I have carefully weeded out two words which I no longer feel the necessity to use. The two words that I’ve taken out and which occurred hundreds of times in that previous book were the words “cure” and “patient,” both of which are, in my opinion, inextricably tied in with medical practice which, as I take pains to explain later, has nothing to do with the practice of psychotherapy, and the use of which perpetuates the notion that medicine and psychotherapy are in some way legitimately tied together when they are, in fact, not.

  I have preserved the use of the word “diagnosis” against the objections of Joy Marcus who feels that “diagnosis” should have gone out with “cure” and “patient.” I have done so because I feel that diagnosis is not necessarily connected with medical practice, and is a word which I wish to claim for use in the detection and therapy of scripts.

  I hope I make it clear in this book that Eric Berne was the spring whence the major ideas of script analysis originated and that, without his encouragement and support, I would never have come to write this book. I also extensively credit Hogie Wyckoff for her contributions to my political awareness, particularly in relation to sex role scripting. Her insights into women’s and men’s scripts were the beginning of the study of banal scripts, which led to further joint developments concerning power, competition, and cooperation.

  I wish to thank Carmen Kerr for her careful reading and criticism of Section I on Eric Berne.

  I also wish to thank Joy Marcus for her intensive reading of and numerous suggestions about Section III.

  I want further to thank the members of the “body group” in which the understanding of the scripts for joylessness and the investigation of therapies regarding this script are slowly developing. Wyoming, Laura, Rick, Olivia, and Hogie, by openly offering their naked selves and willingly and openly regarding mine, have done much to help me understand the banal scripts which prevent us from fully enjoying and taking power over our bodies.

  I wish also to thank the many people whom I worked with at the Radical Psychiatry Center from 1969 to 1972 and with whom I struggled and learned to understand power and its abuses, and with whose help I developed my ideas on cooperation.

  Thanks are due to Marion Weisberg for suggesting the title Scripts People Live.

  It is difficult to fairly acknowledge the contribution made by Susan Tatum, which could be easily stereotyped by saying she typed the various sections of this book. True, she did type and retype my writings, but to state her contribution in this way would be untrue and unreal; her thinking, her understanding, and her contributions are present throughout the pages of the book, and it is difficult to credit and value them completely. I also wish to thank Karen Parlette for her help in typing and putting together the last stages of the manuscript.