In the 1960, Erick Berne (formerly Bernstein) wrote an immensely popular book called Games People Play that kicked off the Pop Psychology movement. His book laid the foundation for a new set of tools to codify and understand human interaction, collectively named Transactional Analysis.
At the core of Transactional Analysis lies Berne’s idea of “Strokes.” You can think of a stroke as an offering of praise, pity, sympathy, mushiness, sappy adoration, or admiration.* "That so bad, I'm sorry!" or "you've such a good person, he doesn't deserve you" are examples of strokes. Transactional Analysts nicknamed them "warm fuzzies." I think of them as "gooey."
Berne noticed that sometimes people communicated honestly and authentically, but other times communicated with a hidden purpose: to obtain strokes. Because these exchanges (or "transactions") followed predictable sequences and had a goal -- a stroke -- in mind, Berne saw them as Games and catalogued a shit-ton of them in his book..
For example, a person might confess they've been having some problem in their life or relationship. You offer solutions, but they reject them all, starting with the phrase “Yes, but…” and find some technical fault. The conversation might cycle like that for a while until you (or someone else) says “yeah, I know, it’s really hard isn’t it?” STROKE! The person then might look you in the eyes, desperate, and thank you for listening. The conversation moves on. The person was not interested in honest, adult-like communication, but in getting you to pity them and console them, like a parent would do for a child. At that point, both people are playing the game of “Why don't you / Yes, but ("YDYB").
Berne saw people as being in one of 3 ego states at all times: the Adult, the Child, and the Parent. The Adult is the rational, authentic, and honest. It neither initiates nor plays games. The Child behaves like a child would. It is needy and avoids responsibility. The Parent acts as a parent would, critical or nurturing. All games are played from Child to Parent, Parent to Parent, or Child to Child.
In Berne’s view, the stroke reinforced the person’s Life Script, a story they developed about the world and how it ran. In this case, saying “it’s really hard” might reinforce the script that “life is hard, and bad things happen anyway, so I am not responsible for my failures and don’t need to try.”
Homework!
Theories are great, but they're useless unless you put them to work. Do you know any game-players? What ego-state do they communicate from? How do you communicate with your parents or kids? When do you seek strokes?
Final Thoughts
Berne's theory is cool. His division of ego-states can be useful but isn't always the best way of conceptualizing personality. Like any psych theory, you should think of it as one analytical tool among many that is right for some jobs and wrong for others. The real contribution of Transactional Analysis lies in the idea that communication often has some ulterior, concealed motive. Once you practice and become sensitive to that possibility, you start to see dialogue in a new light and can develop very quick insight into people, their motivations, and their core fears.
* Berne defined stroke more broadly as "a fundamental unit of social action" and discussed positive strokes and negative strokes. The positive strokes are the ones discussed in his book, as well as in this post.
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