Claude Steiner read people's life scripts online. Claude Steiner: Scenarios of people's lives. Eric Berne School. Three main life scenarios

15.09.2020

Dear reader!

You are holding an amazing book in your hands. First published in 1974, “Scenarios of People’s Lives” became a bestseller in many countries and, having triumphantly traveled around the world, only in 2003 they were translated into Russian. Since the release of the first edition of this wonderful book Many years have passed in Russian, but the questions and answers covered in it remain relevant to this day.

A few words about its author, Dr. Claude Steiner (1935–2017). The youngest participant in Eric Berne's transactional analysis seminars in Carmel (California), psychiatrist, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), founder of one of the areas of transactional analysis - Radical Psychiatry, co-founder International Association Transactional Analysis (ITAA)… These are just the most important steps professional activity Claude Steiner. He also came to Russia to train specialists in transactional analysis and emotional literacy. The author of these lines was lucky to meet him several times at conferences of the European Transactional Analysis Association (EATA).

What is the book “People’s Life Scenarios” about? About the laws of the formation of human destiny, about how our childhood decisions create the outline of our history - the “scenario”. About why free development is so attractive, who limits it, and what happens to those who live according to the laws of childhood. The book reflects the author's philosophical values. Psychiatrist Claude Steiner was concerned with the social aspects of his profession, and he believed that "while people experience emotional difficulties, they nevertheless remain rational, fully-fledged human beings." His other statement is no less important:

“People are born mentally healthy.”

Actually, these statements contain the idea of transactional analysis: every person is inherently OK. Both phrases are more fully embodied in the pages of this book: the formation of life scenarios, treatment of alcoholism and depression, the use of power in relationships, the basics of emotional literacy are discussed here...

The first chapters of “Scenarios” are devoted to the influence of the educational process on the formation of scenario decisions in a child. Steiner knows how to write simply about the complex. Thus, he views depression, suicide, and alcoholism as the result of a lack of Love, Joy and Intelligence. He writes that these problems are associated with the prohibitions that the child faces and that society imposes.

“In the language of fairy tales, a ban is a “curse,” that is, a prohibition or restriction of a child’s freedom of action.”

Eric Berne developed a theory of motivation and used the understandable word “hunger” to describe basic needs. Having examined 6 types of hunger, among the most important he identified stimulus, structural hunger and recognition hunger. Using case studies, Steiner shows that the formation of tragic and banal life scenarios is influenced by the economy of recognition or strokes (Warm Fuzzies).

The language of the book is metaphorical, filled with vivid images and concepts: Big Pig, Parent Sorcerer, Warm Fuzzies, Cannibals, curses, white and black magic... The story about the Fuzzies is close to all categories of readers. Adults can successfully apply the fairy tale to themselves personally, as well as use it for educational purposes. The characters in the book are drawn from real life and have simple names - such as Black and White (that is, Black and White) - which helps maintain confidentiality.

The problems presented are understandable to anyone - both specialist and non-specialist. The chapters on therapy will be especially useful for professionals, and at the end there are recommendations for raising children and finding happiness in life.

After reading the book from beginning to end, a thoughtful reader will receive answers to many questions that concern him: why are some relationships ineffective, how to avoid games of salvation or games of power, how are gender differences, male and female scenarios formed?..

How else do “Scenarios of People’s Lives” by Claude Steiner differ from the books of his teacher Eric Berne? Continuing the development of the theory and practice of transactional analysis, Steiner went further than his mentor. He was keenly interested in what Berne was trying in every possible way to avoid. Emotions and feelings of a person. The master (Bern) was at odds with this mysterious “subject,” as well as with the ability to understand and express them. Otherwise, his life would not have ended so early (the famous psychologist died at the age of 60).

Throughout the book, the reader will feel the optimism in the author’s words, and this is no coincidence. Claude Steiner was confident that “human nature will always find a way to break through to the surface, like a pure spring, always ready to nourish life with its healing water.”

Elena Sergeevna Soboleva, practical psychologist, Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA, (P)), Training and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA, (P)), member of the St. Petersburg Association of Transactional Analysis (COTA), full member of the European Association of Transactional Analysis (EATA), member of the International Transactional Association Analysis. In 2016 she was awarded a silver

Preface and acknowledgments

I dedicate this book

Eric Byrne:

teacher, friend, father and brother

I started writing this book because I wanted to publish new edition“Games Alcoholics Play,” where I described the treatment of alcoholism using transactional analysis methods. However, as the work progressed, I discovered that the previous text had become completely new book– about transactional analysis of life scenarios. In it I still give some excerpts from “Games That Alcoholics Play,” but most of the book is devoted to exposition the latest discoveries in the field of scenario theory. In the chapters taken from Games Alcoholics Play, I had to get rid of two words that over time began to seem unnecessary to me. These words, which I used at least a thousand times in the previous book, were “treatment” and “patient.” In my opinion, they are too closely associated with medicine, which, and I will explain this in more detail later, has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but the use of these words reinforces the idea in the mind that medicine and psychotherapy are the same thing.

I left the word “diagnosis” despite the objections of Joy Marcus, who said that “diagnosis” should have gone along with “patient” and “treatment.” I did this because for me the word “diagnosis” is not associated with medicine, and besides, I needed it to explain the process of identifying and treating scenarios.

I hope I have conveyed to the reader that Eric Berne was the originator of all the basic ideas of transactional analysis and that without his support and encouragement I would never have written this book. I am also eternally grateful to Hoja Wyckoff for her ideas regarding male and female scripts. They initiated the study of commonplace scenarios, which led to new discoveries in the study of power, competition and cooperation.

I also want to thank Carmen Kerr for carefully reading the first part of my book and commenting on it; she helped me express sincerely and clearly the depth of my feelings for Eric Berne.

Robert Schwebel first introduced me to the importance of cooperation: it was he who introduced “cooperative games” into our therapeutic work at the Center for Radical Psychiatry. I am grateful to Richard Lichtman for criticizing the first part of my book.

I thank Joy Marcus for reading and analyzing Part 3 and for its impact on my life and thinking over the last five years.

Men, like women, have a set of stereotypical scenarios, one (or several) of which they choose in childhood as the scenario for their lives.

This life style often has its own “pair” among women’s scenarios. “Big Strong Daddy” and “Poor Me” meet each other at a party and can fall in love at first sight, even though they don’t know anything about each other yet, because their scenarios complement each other. They were "made for each other" in the factory of banal lifestyles, that is, in the nuclear family. The Unattractive Beauty's parents, the Smith family, knew she had to be a good match for the Joneses' son, Playboy. When they meet, they will fall in love at first sight because their scripts, developed on the basis of national standards of masculine and feminine behavior, match each other perfectly. Because their fate is decided for them, they lose autonomy and their capacity for intimacy, spontaneity, and cognition is significantly impaired.

Brian Allen was the first to name some of the most common prohibitions and instructions given to boys. Most often, they are directly or indirectly told: “Don’t lose control,” “Never be satisfied,” “Don’t ask for help,” “Be taller than women.” Some of the scenarios described below ("Big Strong Daddy" and "Simple Guy") were first outlined by Allen in the early days of hackneyed scenario research.

Big and strong daddy

Life plan. A big, strong daddy is an exaggerated version of a responsible father and husband. He'll marry Mother Hubbard or Poor Little One. In any case, his life consists of one responsibility. He not only supports his family, but also worries about the well-being of each of his loved ones, plans their future, solves their problems, etc. Since he is responsible for almost everything in the house, he is also the sole ruler. He is always right, “knows better” everything and does not allow any doubts on this matter. He allows his family to do something on their own only so that they are once again convinced that they are not able to cope without his help, and not because he believes in their abilities. Since he is overburdened with responsibility, he cannot enjoy life and receives pleasure only from the loyalty of his family. He works hard, devotes a lot of energy to competition and achieves some professional success. When even the slightest thought creeps into his head about leaving his loved ones to their own devices, a strong feeling of guilt immediately stands in the way of its implementation. As he approaches retirement age, he becomes a family tyrant, demanding more and more loyal stroking and unconditional submission, because he feels increasingly that his life has been lived in vain. He resists, starting the escape triangle again and again. Most often, he dies shortly after retirement. He has to give up his job, his children turn away from him, his wife, less affected by responsibility, begins to persecute him for saving her, and, having outlived him, reaps the fruits of their joint labor. A variation of the Big Strong Daddy is Doctor Salvation, a professional healer who, in addition to his household duties, is overloaded with working with patients.

Counter-scenario. He decides to “take life easier,” take a vacation, hire a secretary, work less. He may even get divorced and remarry or become single to avoid responsibility. But in his heart he remains the Savior and therefore is soon drawn back into playing his usual role.

Prohibitions and regulations:

You are always right;
. take care of everyone;
. weakness is unacceptable.

Mythical hero. Daddy Warbucks, Life with Father, Dr. Marcus Welby.

Bodily component. Energetic, he has a large chest. He carries himself as if he has a heavy load on his shoulders. As a rule, he is tense and feels anxious.

Games :

. "The rescue";
. "Trial";
. “If it weren’t for you (not them).”

The therapist sympathizes with him and prescribes him sedatives and sleeping pills. He sympathizes with his patient because he is in the same situation and tells him to hang in there.

Antithesis. He realizes that he is saving everyone and that the reward for this is Persecution. He understands that guilt is a transactional racket and learns to share responsibility with others. He quits playing rescue and learns to take care of himself first. He decides that it's okay to make mistakes sometimes, since he doesn't have to be responsible for every detail of every decision he makes.

Man in front of woman

Life plan. The man in front of the woman, as Wyckoff points out (chapter 14), is less competent than his spouse, the Woman behind the man. He knows that his success would not be possible without the contribution of his wife or another woman. However, he feels the need to pretend that his contribution to the common cause is more significant. Even if he knows that his wife is more competent, more organized and perhaps smarter, he still clings to the lie about her being of secondary importance. He takes advantage of her competence, but constantly makes it clear to her that he is in charge here. They both put their names on the notepaper, but his name always comes first. If they wrote a book together, her name may appear on the cover, but only after his. Mysteriously, one gets the impression that a plan, a spirit, driving force their joint creativity, while she does mechanical work, which is of secondary importance, since any smart woman could replace her in this place. He feels guilty for usurping her copyright and cannot truly enjoy the success he has achieved, since he knows that success rightfully belongs to her. However, sexist social standards force him to continue to lie, even if he himself wants to be an equal partner with his wife.

Antithesis. He realizes that his partner's abilities would be better expressed if they communicated and presented themselves to the public as equals, and this would benefit both of them. He gets the opportunity to let go of the guilt of his dishonesty and become himself instead of playing the Naked King.

Playboy

Life plan. He spends his life searching for the “perfect” woman who doesn’t exist. A playboy is a man who fell victim to the ideal image of a woman in the media. The advertising business uses the image of the perfect female body to sell products, and Playboy buys all these things. He believes in the real existence of the women he sees in glossy magazines, and overestimates them, considering them “more perfect” than the women he meets in life. His perception of people is two-dimensional, like a printed page or a blue screen, and therefore his reaction to a woman is superficial and focused solely on her appearance. He is never happy with his girlfriend because he plays Flaw. None of them completely matches the fictional image that exists in his head, and so he goes from one woman to another, never finding what he is looking for, and never seeing a woman who is this moment is in front of him because she doesn't look like the woman in the advertising picture. When he meets a girl like his dream, he puts her next to him in his Cadillac or Corvette to show her off to his Playboy friends. He is ashamed when he is seen with an “ugly” woman, and never goes out with such a woman, although he does not mind spending time with her when no one sees him.

His partners are Artificial Women and Unattractive Beauties. His romance with the Artificial Woman is brief, and he leaves her when he discovers that she is "empty." His relationship with the Unattractive Beauty is unsuccessful and ends with her leaving. He may accidentally meet a Demonic woman who will definitely harm him (for example, cast a spell that will turn him into “impotent”). Since the media carefully avoids portraying aggressive, demanding women, he is confused and hurt by her anger. He spends a huge amount of time receiving strokes from the women he is attracted to. He works to have enough money to spend free time with Artificial Women and Unattractive Beauties. For his efforts, he receives nothing except second-hand clothes and a long list of mistresses.

Counter-scenario. He finds a woman who is “perfect” for him. Unfortunately, this relationship is short-lived due to the fact that his knowledge of love and relationships is limited to stereotypical ideas gleaned from magazines and movies, and never ends the way he thinks it should ("and they lived long and happily").

Prohibitions and regulations:

Don't settle for anything less than the best;
. don't give yourself away.

Mythical hero. Hugh Hefner, Joe Namath, Porfirio Rubirosa, Don Juan.

. "Violence";
. "Flaw";
. “Why don’t you... - Yes, but.”

Scripted role of the therapist. The therapist derives vicarious pleasure from his adventures and is jealous of his success with women. He agrees with Playboy that women are difficult to understand and hints at his failures in relationships with them.

Antithesis. He realizes that he is chasing an impossible dream. At first it will be difficult for him to see the beauty of the women he meets in life, but he will be able to stop playing “Flaw” and begin to appreciate their true merits. He learns that there are many qualities that make a person attractive and realizes that most of the women he knows are beautiful. He enters into a long-term intimate relationship with a woman who appreciates his sexy, mischievous Child and allows him to be friends with and fall in love with other women.

Simple guy

Life plan. In adolescence, he decides (with the help of Charles Atlas) that the highest expression of masculinity is playing sports. He gives everything to the sport. His body turns into pure muscle. He doesn't feel what he feels, and ironically, despite being so concerned with the physical condition of his body, he ignores most of it. His sexual energy is completely transformed into physical activity. As he enters early adulthood, he suddenly discovers that his athletic figure is not attractive to girls and that his sports activities stand in the way of not only enjoying sex, but also developing the qualities that women value in men. He quits sports and quickly gains excess weight. Because he always overemphasized physical development, his intelligence, intuition and spontaneity did not develop. Peers and peers consider him stupid. He is kind and naive by nature, and time and time again he is surprised to find that the good guys don't win. He regularly attends sporting events as a spectator and thinks about the "good old days" when he was strong and athletic.

Prohibitions and regulations:

Do not think;
. compete.

Bodily component. He has pumped up muscles, but his body is unevenly developed (depending on the sport he has chosen). When he stops exercising, he quickly gains excess weight.

. "Fool";
. "Peasant's Day Off"
. "Let's fool Joe" (as Victim).

Scripted role of the therapist. The therapist considers him stupider than himself and therefore does not listen to his opinion. To avoid individual meetings, he enrolls him in a therapy group, and when he doesn’t show up, the therapist is relieved. The therapist secretly feels superior to him and does not believe that he can be helped.

Antithesis. He understands that stupid things are expected of him and that he himself plays into this expectation. He decides to use his Adult and stop playing "The Fool". He realizes that competitive sports are not doing him any good and becomes reacquainted with his body. His kind nature and belief in fair play help him when he tempers them with the right amount of intuition and rationality.

Intellectual

Life plan. In adolescence, he decides that the highest achievement of man is the development of intelligence. He refuses any physical activity in favor of studying. He reads, teaches, speaks, writes, reflects, mentally traveling through the Universe, and soon begins to feel that his bodily shell and his feelings are an obstacle to intellectual activity. He becomes a 100% Adult with an uncontrollable desire to turn any task into an occasion for intellectual exercise. Because society encourages the development of intelligence, his script is rewarded with “success,” causing his conviction of the correctness of his life style to become even stronger. Unfortunately, his script does not allow him to experience feelings, especially the feeling of love, so he feels emotional emptiness and his life seems insipid and incomplete to him.

His relationships are planned and regulated by his Adult, but he fails to either maintain or develop them. The women he dates complain that he doesn't love them (even though he thinks he does) and that he ignores them (which he doesn't understand at all).

Counter-scenario. He falls in love, experiences a whole flurry of emotions, releases his Child and Parent (option: goes on vacation and relaxes there), but his Adult does not remain in the background for long. Over time, "reason takes over the feelings," he returns to his rational routine, and his life again becomes black and white, straightforward and deadly boring.

Prohibitions and regulations:

Don't feel;
. be smart;
. use your head.

Mythical hero. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Bodily component. The most noticeable part of his body is his head. She is so big that her shoulders bend under her weight. His chest is sunken and his breathing is shallow because he is afraid of arousing his feelings. He thinks of his body as an instrument of the mind, which is the center of his being.

. "Trial";
. “Why don’t you... - Yes, but”;
. "Do something for me."

Scripted role of the therapist. The therapist endlessly analyzes his consciousness. The psychoanalytic method is ideal for maintaining and developing his scenario. Everything is “analyzed and understood,” but nothing changes. He lies on the couch, a computer whirring in his head, his body lying limply next to him, and free associations They are increasingly moving one away from the other.

Antithesis. He understands, with the help of his Adult, that he is on the wrong path and that his life is wasted. He decides to try active psychotherapy and enrolls in a meeting group or undergoes Gestalt therapy or bioenergetic therapy. If the therapist helps him avoid intellectualizing, he will get in touch with his feelings and learn to follow them. He will gradually understand that intellectual activity alone is not enough for a person; he will begin to use his intuition, his Caring Parent and Natural Child. He will overcome his fear of acting (as opposed to thinking and speaking), change his behavior and his relationships.

Misogynist

Life plan. Observing his mother and the way his father treats her, he decides at an early age that women are not good. Most often he is a bachelor, he serves in the army or does other men's work. He puts energy into activities (sports, hunting) in which women have no place and where they are definitely second-class creatures. He views women as weak, incompetent, and prides himself on not needing them. For sexual release, he uses the services of a prostitute or starts a one-night stand. He does not respect women and does not believe that it is possible to maintain long-term relationships with them. Since bachelors do not achieve much career success in our society, he is generally unhappy. He lives in a run-down apartment with a sink full of dirty dishes, and with the floor thickly covered with cigarette butts. His bed is always unmade, and there are cobwebs in the corners. He smokes and drinks a lot and can even become an alcoholic, and his dislike for women eventually spreads to children and, in general, everyone who is joyful, creative people and their activities.

Counter-scenario. He meets a woman he likes. He can even marry her, “domesticate” her and enjoy a short period of love, care and warmth. However, his inhibitions about intimacy and spontaneity are so strong that he cannot respond to his wife’s feelings, so after short period free expression of feelings, he again withdraws into himself, which marks the end of a close relationship.

Prohibitions and regulations:

Don't be intimate with anyone;
. do not trust;
. do not relax.

Mythical hero. General Patton, Herbert Hoover, Dick Tracy, The Lone Ranger.

. “Well, gotcha, scoundrel!”;
. "Flaw";
. “If it weren’t for them (women).”

Scripted role of the therapist. This man doesn't see therapists, and he will never see a female therapist. He appears in the therapist's office only on orders from a judge, boss, or (in the military) a superior in rank. The therapist most often ignores his aversion to the therapy process as such, and therefore he fails to conclude a full-fledged contract. He stops seeing the therapist without budging an inch, and thinks of the therapist as unmanly or “eggheaded.”

Antithesis. For this type of man, the antithesis is difficult. He may meet a woman who will love him and demand the right actions from him at the right time, after which he will open up and begin to enjoy life. He can also build a close relationship with another man. However, since he is bitter and does not admit that anyone is right, it will be difficult for him to change.

Claude Steiner

Scenarios of people's lives

Eric Berne School

Life scenarios are what we choose, but we may not choose!

Claude Steiner's book appeared in Russian translation, although with a temporary delay, but nevertheless extremely timely. The earlier publication in Russia of the works of Eric Berne in the late 80s and early 90s of the 20th century, on the one hand, attracted the attention of readers to the problems of practical psychology, and on the other hand, left transactional analysis in the memory of the majority as only one of the more or less common concepts in the world, the author of which is already part of history. Correspondence of the concept of transactional analysis to reality modern Russia was very superficial, especially considering the overload of Berne's texts with American specifics - these books were written only for Americans or for residents of neighboring countries - Canada and Mexico.

With the work of Claude Steiner everything is different. Over the years since the book was written, it turned out that the trends in the psychological development of modern society, described by Bern’s student, have become an integral part of the process of globalization of the world economy. And in Russia, as part of the world community, psychological development society according to Steiner (and transactional analysis) can be described in terms that coincide with modern studies of differences in national cultures. It is possible that the correspondence of Steiner's ideas modern world in general and Russia in particular is due to the fact that most of his clients at the time of writing the book were mainly people experiencing serious life crises- alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals and victims of crimes, etc. In this he differed radically from Berne, whose practice focused most of his time on less “acute” cases. And while Berne's ideas and books were related to the "normative" behavior of people in America, then Steiner's work is inherently international in nature, since suffering knows no political boundaries. In this regard, it can be said that the world has become more “suffering” over the past 20 years and that people’s discomfort in beginning of XXI century is associated mainly with dramatic changes in the political, economic and technological spheres.

Descriptions of life scenarios such as “without love,” “without reason,” and “without joy,” used by Steiner in 1974, have now become “common” through articles in many newspapers and magazines. The concept of “midlife crisis” has been supplemented with a new one - “crisis of the first quarter of life”, since modern society puts forward often impossible demands on the younger generation, promoting through the media the necessity of early success in any endeavor. The age of highest achievements in life, under the influence of success in sports and e-commerce, is shifting to the life period of 18–23 years, which prepares the onset of the crisis to 25 years.

A concrete embodiment of the modernity of this book is the comparison of Steiner's concepts with the results of the research of G. Hofstede (1980), which describes a study conducted on more than 80 thousand employees of the IBM Corporation in 53 countries, identifying four factors underlying differences between national cultures:

Power distance (a characteristic showing the degree of readiness of members of public institutions of a given national culture who do not have power to agree with the fact that power in society is distributed unevenly);

Individualism/collectivism (individualism is characteristic of national cultures in which ties between individuals are not very close and people are expected to take care primarily of themselves and, possibly, their closest relatives; collectivism is characteristic of national cultures in which people are integrated from birth into cohesive groups that protect them throughout their lives in exchange for loyalty);

Masculinity/femininity (masculinity corresponds to national cultures that clearly separate gender - social male and social female - roles, while male roles are more confrontational and focused on material success, while female roles are softer and aimed at improving the quality of life; femininity corresponds to national cultures , in which there is no clear social division of gender roles);

Uncertainty avoidance (a characteristic showing the level of psychological discomfort experienced by members of a given national culture when faced with previously unknown life situations). The concept of power distance in national culture coincides with Steiner’s idea of the helplessness scenario (Chapter 11), that is, the situation when in the family a child experiences situations of his “salvation” and learns to be helpless. In Western civilizations, an individual citizen can reduce the power distance through the existence of democratic institutions, but this requires his conscious choice, and Steiner writes about this.

A person who is accustomed to being “saved” from birth to death and who refuses to accept responsibility is a typical product of the Soviet system. Of course, the state was interested in raising this type of people, but the changes that took place in the socio-political and economic structure of Russia forced these people to experience a real tragedy. A recent UN study of the consequences of the Chernobyl radiation disaster showed that the maximum damage was caused to the inhabitants of the vast region not by radiation, but by the disruption of family ties, separation from their places of residence and the raising of a generation of dependents who can only expect benefits from the state. Of course, the study did not concern people directly involved in the liquidation of the consequences of the nuclear power plant accident. After reading “Scenarios...” it becomes clear that Claude Steiner’s approach is quite universal and is quite applicable for individual work with both “Rescuers” and “Victims”.

The concept of individualism/collectivism in national culture coincides with Steiner's idea of a scenario of inequality and individualism (Chapter 12). From these ideas, the concepts of competition and power games as elements of North American national culture are further developed.

These ideas also entered the life of almost every resident of Russia and aggravated intra- and interpersonal conflicts. Habitual collectivism was replaced by no less familiar “wild” individualism. “Wild” in the sense that the main emphasis is not on defending one’s own rights and freedoms, but on the harsh seizure of other people’s rights and freedoms, especially economic ones.

This tough, according to Steiner, “power” game brings quite a lot of psychological discomfort to its participants, and the growing popularity of the traditional way of relieving such discomfort - joining the church - can be considered one of the indicators of its prevalence. Since it is obvious that competition in our society will continue to grow (in fact, it is the engine of economic development), it is necessary to be able to constructively implement it and adjust it accordingly.

Masculinity/femininity is discussed in great detail in the articles by X. Wyckoff on gender-role programming of men and women.

Ideas about traditional gender roles in Russia are currently changing from those declared in Soviet time equal opportunities to real equality. However, for such real equality there is still not enough legal practice in specific cases, nor mass adoption throughout the country. Thus, changes in ideas about traditional gender roles create and will create conditions favorable for family quarrels and domestic violence, career crises and work conflicts. The material presented in the book can be a good reason for analyzing personal attitudes towards gender issues in the family and at work.

Uncertainty avoidance as a characteristic of national culture correlates with such a transactional analysis concept as autonomy. It is assumed that if a person is sufficiently autonomous from his own scenario, then for possible developments of events he develops socially acceptable ways of behavior - completely adult behavior. If a person’s script, in accordance with his childhood decisions, controls his life, then this range of socially acceptable, diverse modes of behavior is not available and a single/stereotypical form of behavior is implemented. That is, you can avoid uncertainty by structuring your life based on information about the world around you.

Unfortunately, the lives of modern Russians cannot be structured in sufficient detail and most of them must coexist with life's uncertainty. Experiencing uncertainty for a long time always comes with a high probability of stress and distress, that is, it leads to an appointment with a psychologist (or narcologist).

ERIC BYRNE

Eric Berne was a forty-six-year-old psychiatrist when he abandoned further training in psychoanalysis after fifteen years of work in this field.

He abandoned further efforts in this direction after the San Francisco Institute of Psychoanalysis refused him membership as a psychoanalyst in 1956. This refusal was probably painful for him, but it pushed him to fulfill his long-standing desire to contribute to the theory of psychoanalysis.

He never talked about how it happened or how he took the rejection, perhaps because he was angry with them. I suspect that this was because he was not faithful enough to the psychoanalytic concept (and he was not true to it when I met him two years later). He believed that the therapist should play a more active role in the therapy process than was allowed by the psychoanalytic concept.

For ten years he studied the manifestations of intuition. His interest in this issue began when he saw dozens of conscripts every day as an Army psychiatrist. To have fun, he came up with a game. It consisted of guessing a person’s profession based on his answers to two questions: “Are you nervous?” and “Have you ever been to a psychiatrist before?”

Bern discovered that he could quite accurately guess the profession of a person who came to him, especially if he was a mechanic or a farmer.

This discovery led to Berne writing a series of articles on intuition, which in turn led to the development of the theory of transactional analysis.

When Eric Berne trained as a doctor, he was taught to diagnose “psychopathology,” apply psychiatric concepts to patients, and impose his goals on them without remorse. Consequently, it was not common for him to listen to his intuition.

It was then, as he often said later, that he decided to abandon the “nonsense” he had been taught and “start listening to what his patients were telling him.”

So he began to use intuition in therapeutic work. Instead of using the concepts and categories of traditional psychiatry and using them to decide that the person who came to him was a “latent homosexual” or a “paranoid schizophrenic,” he turned to the patient’s personality and began to collect information about him, relying on intuitive perception.

For example, a male patient who would previously have been diagnosed by Berne with "severe latent homosexuality" was now intuitively perceived by him as a person who felt "as if he were a little boy who, naked and sexually aroused, stands before his elders, suffering from unbearable shame and blushing terribly.” Berne began to call such images ego images. It is important to note here that the key difference between the ego image and the diagnosis is that the source of the ego image is information coming from the client, and the diagnosis is coming from the psychiatrist himself and his mentors.

Berne continued to use intuitive ego imagery in therapy and soon discovered that treating clients in the context of their feelings and experiences helped them more than treating them in terms of a psychiatric diagnosis.

Over time, Eric Berne began to see in each client an ego image associated with the person’s childhood, and to include in the “case history” his childhood experiences that emerged during the conversation. One patient's childhood ego image was "a little girl with blond hair standing in a fenced garden among daisies in bloom," one patient's "a boy who is scared because he is riding in a car with an angry father who is driving her to maximum speed."

Eric Berne realized that every person has ego images and called them ego states. He saw that the “children’s” state differs from the “adult” one, which is a kind of “sign” and therefore most noticeable. Berne later began to distinguish between two "adult" states, one rational, which he called Adult, and the other not necessarily rational, which he called Parent, because it was, as a rule, copied by man from his parents.

Bern continued to observe patients, trying to forget what he was taught. This is how he discovered the importance of stroking and structuring time. He saw transactions, games, pastimes and finally scenarios. By the end of the 60s, his theory was almost completely developed.

He stopped diagnosing patients. Byrne often joked that a client who shows less initiative than the therapist is diagnosed as a “passive dependent,” and one who shows more initiative than the therapist is diagnosed as a “sociopath.”

Berne maintained theoretical connections with psychoanalysis, but they became weaker over time, and psychoanalysis very quickly disappeared completely from his group work.

In the early years of his work, Berne believed that transactional analysis was good for the formation of “social control” (he at that time considered the “real” therapeutic work to be the prerogative of psychoanalysis). Then his beliefs changed, and he began to believe that transactional analysis did the main therapeutic work, and psychoanalysis was necessary when working with scripts. Even later, the analysis of Berne's scripts finally lost its psychoanalytic features, and then his “psychoanalytic thinking” began to appear only occasionally, during clinical analysis.

SCENARIO

At the time of the birth of transactional analysis, Eric Berne was still using methods adopted in psychoanalysis. This means that he practiced individual therapy and that during the session the patient lay on the couch while Berne carried out a meticulous analysis of his personality. His work during the therapy session included analyzing scenarios. Script theory has been part of transactional analysis theory from the very beginning. In his first book on transactional analysis, Berne writes: “Games, it seems to me, are just discrete segments of larger and more complex sets of transactions called scripts... A script is a complex set of transactions, periodic in nature, but not necessarily repeating in the case when it takes a whole life to execute the script... The purpose of analyzing the script is to stop the performance and stage another, better one instead.”

Berne at the time believed that the script was the result of repetition compulsion (a psychoanalytic concept that suggests that people tend to relive unhappy events from their childhood). Therefore, he set himself the task, in the process of scenario analysis, to free a person from the need to experience the same event and help him find a new path. Berne was of the opinion that group therapy provides more information about the scripts that control human behavior than individual therapy. However, he felt that “since human scenarios are complex and full of idiosyncrasies, group work alone is not sufficient for a complete analysis,” and sought to combine group work with individual work, during which he tried to clarify what was emerging in the individual in the group.

Thus, Eric Berne practiced scenario analysis from the very moment he discovered their existence, but mainly in individual work. Over the years, he gradually abandoned the substantive aspect of the psychoanalytic method, while maintaining the formal one: an individual session, held once or twice a week, during which he analyzed scripts.

From time to time, Eric would present to his colleagues a piece of analysis of a script he was working on at the time, and these reviews would usually focus on people who followed certain patterns of behavior over and over again, or about people with a script in which it was written down in advance how many years they will live.

SCRIPT BY ERIC BYRNE

I met Eric on a Tuesday evening in 1958 in his office on Washington Street. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember that when I was leaving, he came up to me and said: “You speak well. I hope you come again."

I came. And over the next years we gradually became the closest of friends. Our relationship was built slowly. We had difficult times when I wanted to leave and never see Bern again, but there were also wonderful moments. Our relationship was particularly strong during the last year of his life, and I am grateful that we felt deep affection for each other before Eric's death.

Around 1967, Eric Berne began holding meetings on Thursdays, from half past eight to ten in the evening, with a group of people interested in his method. In fact, the evening ended when everyone went home (sometimes this happened in the morning).

He was almost always present, except on rare occasions of lecturing or illness. He recorded many of these seminars on tape. We agreed on the topic of the seminar in advance. If there were no people willing to speak, Eric spoke himself. Sometimes he read excerpts from another book, about which those present then expressed their opinions, sometimes he talked about one of his recent group or individual therapy sessions.

At these meetings, professional mystification was prohibited, as well as any form of pomposity - nonsense, as Berne himself put it. If in his presence one of his colleagues began to pour out medical terms, he patiently listened to the end, and then, taking a drag from his pipe and raising his eyebrows, summarized: “This is all great; but all I understood was that you did not cure your patient.”

He did not allow verbiage, he insisted on clear words, short sentences, concise texts and short speeches. He banned the use of the adjectives "passive", "hostile" and "dependent" in relation to patients and encouraged the use of verbs in descriptions of people. He considered words ending in “k” (“maniac,” “alcoholic,” “schizophrenic”) to be especially offensive.

Bern did everything to ensure that his Adult and the Adults of his colleagues were active and worked to the maximum of their capabilities while working together. He condemned therapists' use of physical contact in group work, drinking coffee and alcoholic beverages during meetings, and sudden insights as a way to shift attention to themselves. During scientific conferences, he did not tolerate avoidance (by apologizing), sugarcoating (using big words), distracting from the point (by offering brilliant ideas and hypothetical examples), and drinking.

He spent Tuesdays and Wednesdays in San Francisco, where he had a private practice and worked as a consultant, then returned to Carmel, where he wrote books and ran another practice. He spent weekends in Carmel and went to the beach whenever possible.

It seems his main task was to write books. I think he put this above everything else in his life.

He was a man of principles; He prefaced his book “Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy” with the following dedication: “In Memoriam Patris Mei David Medicinae Doctor Et Chirurgiae Magister atque Pauperibus Medicus.” (“In memory of my father David, Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery.” - Note per.)

This description of his father clearly illustrates Eric's principles of life.

His constant goal was to treat patients. Therefore, he was disgusted by various types of meetings and certain literature, the purpose of which, as he felt, was to justify post hoc (poorly done work).

He was proud of the honest poverty of his father, who was a village doctor. Berne had a bad attitude towards people whose main goal was to make money, and if he felt that one of his colleagues was studying transactional analysis in order to make an income, he did not hesitate to criticize and scold him. He often tested us in San Francisco by inviting applications for lectures on transactional analysis, for which there was no remuneration, and seeing who accepted and who did not. He kept a detailed account of his money and forgave himself for unnecessary expenses (for example, an extra 25 cents for sauce at a restaurant, or the cost of a new shirt) only after the accountant convinced him that if Eric had not spent his money himself, he would have spent it would be Uncle Sam. It seems to me that he wanted to live in dignified poverty ( keyword- “worthy”)

He was very committed to the medical fraternity and sought to maintain ties with the medical tradition. I think it was this commitment that kept his Parent from criticizing medicine and psychiatry in general, while Burn's Child was full of fun at the methods of individual members of the medical community.

On the other hand, he was simply devilishly sharp-tongued. A sense of humor was evident in everything he wrote, for example in the title of the article “Who is Condom?” (that's right, condom is a contraceptive).

He was shy. He was very attracted to the cheerful part of people (Natural Child). His theory was based mainly on the intuitions of his childish part (see Chapter 1). He adored children and Children in adults, but shyness prevented him from expressing his own childish part unless the situation was completely safe. He loved to get strokes from other people and I think that's why he threw parties after the seminars. Bern loved parties with dancing and games, and he was always annoyed by people who disrupted the general fun with their boring, “adult” behavior.

However, he rarely allowed himself to have fun or socialize solely for the sake of pleasure: his whole life revolved around work, and there were only two goals in it - writing books and treating people.

Eric has the idea that people's lives are pre-planned and written into a “script” that they follow without deviating. It seems to me that in the script of Eric Berne's life it was written that he would die of heart disease before reaching old age. It also seems to me that his tragic death was the result of the severe restrictions he unconsciously placed on his ability to love and accept the love of others, on the one hand, and the strict injunction that he must be absolutely independent, on the other.

I know that if he were alive, he would argue with me. He would remind me that heart disease is hereditary and that he did everything he could to stay healthy: diet, stay active, and exercise regularly. medical examination. From a medical point of view, he took excellent care of his heart, but nevertheless, when I think about his death, I feel that it was both unexpected and absolutely natural for me. Some part of me - and him too - knew perfectly well what would happen to him and when. Another part of him pretended not to know, and part of me willingly indulged in this illusion.

Berne was very interested in the question of predetermined life span. Several times he examined before us the cases of people who intended to live only until they were forty or sixty years old, and, as can be easily seen by looking into his last book“People who play games,” he was especially drawn to the life stories of people who suffered from heart disease. If you read his books more closely, you will notice that he hardly mentions other causes of death other than heart disease. The reason for his partiality became clear to me when he died; I learned that his father died when Eric was eleven years old, and his mother at sixty from coronary thrombosis. Berne himself lived a little less than his mother, and died from the same illness. I am sure that his life script was limited in time and he lived it exactly as he planned. He never demonstrated that he was aware of his intention to only live until he was sixty, but now that I look back and remember everything he said about coronary disease and time-limited scenarios, I realize that he followed his script and knew it. When we celebrated his sixtieth birthday, he announced to us that he had completed both books he had planned to write and was now ready to enjoy life. However, two weeks later he told his friends and colleagues that he was starting a new book, a textbook on psychiatry for medical students. He did not let himself go until the last second of his life, when, as planned, his heart stopped.

Of course, Eric took care of his heart in some ways, but in other ways, not related to medicine, he did nothing for it. It makes me very sad when I think how much love was shown to him and how little love he allowed into his heart. All of Eric's close relationships ended quickly and did not give him the warmth he wanted and needed. He defended his loneliness and did not allow himself to be helped in his work. When I think about it, I get angry at him the same way I would get angry at a loved one who undermined his health, for example, by drinking or smoking. Bern took care of his health physically (except for the fact that he smoked a pipe all his life), but not emotionally.

He didn't allow anyone to care; he listened politely to a person if he criticized his isolation, individualism and competition, but then he still acted in his own way. When he needed therapeutic help, he preferred traditional psychoanalysis to group transactional psychotherapy.

He was completely passive in relation to his need for love and human contact. At the same time, he created a number of important concepts regarding love. His theory spoke about the interaction and manifestations of love among people. He was very interested in the issue of relationships. He created the concept of “stroking,” which he interpreted as a “unit of recognition,” but it can also be understood as a unit of love. IN last years During his lifetime he wrote the books Sex in Human Love and People Who Play Games. In my opinion, both of these works were an attempt to break through their own screenwriting limitations. Unfortunately, both he and I reached a real understanding of the role of strokes and scripts too late for it to be of personal benefit to him.

During the early days of transactional analysis (1955–1965), Berne implicitly condemned our attempts to explore stroking, intimacy, and scripts. According to Berne, intimacy was one of the ways in which human beings structure their time, and he defined it as a situation in which there is no aloofness, rituals, games, pastimes or activities. Berne defined intimacy by exclusion and therefore, in fact, did not define it at all. Moreover, Berne was sure that intimacy was unattainable and that a person could consider himself lucky if he experienced at least fifteen minutes of intimacy during his life. When the Carmel Transactional Analysis Seminar moved on to explore stroking and began using techniques that involved physical contact, Byrne was alarmed and immediately publicly declared that “anyone who touches his patients is not a transactional analyst.”

Berne's prohibition against touching in group work had a reasonable basis. He feared that transactional analysis might develop, as Gestalt therapy had already done, into a form of therapy that allowed the therapist to become involved in sexually charged relationships with patients. Berne was conscious of his work and felt that the use of physical contact could harm the effectiveness of therapy and spoil the reputation of transactional analysis. This is why he forbade his students to touch the people they worked with. And although the purpose of the ban was not to limit stroking between people, it nevertheless led to exactly this consequence. Bern himself did not know how to either ask for strokes or accept them. It is interesting to note that of the 2,000 pages he wrote about transactional analysis, no more than 25 are devoted to strokes.

He behaved in a similar way in relation to scripts. His script analysis was incomprehensible to us. Script analysis seemed like an intricate, deep, almost magical process that only Eric Berne could understand. To us, young, practice-oriented and group-oriented therapists, it seemed too complicated and boring. Berne used techniques borrowed from psychoanalysis for script analysis, and he spoke of script analysis, as opposed to all other aspects of his theory, in psychoanalytic jargon. Scripts for Berne were associated with the phenomenon of unconscious compulsion, and should have been worked with during individual therapy.

* * *

Dear reader!

You are holding an amazing book in your hands. First published in 1974, “Scenarios of People’s Lives” became a bestseller in many countries and, having triumphantly traveled around the world, only in 2003 they were translated into Russian. Many years have passed since the first edition of this wonderful book was published in Russian, but the questions and answers covered in it remain relevant to this day.

A few words about its author, Dr. Claude Steiner (1935–2017). The youngest participant in Eric Berne's transactional analysis seminars in Carmel (California), psychiatrist, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), founder of one of the areas of transactional analysis - Radical Psychiatry, co-founder of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) ... These are only the most important stages professional activity of Claude Steiner. He also came to Russia to train specialists in transactional analysis and emotional literacy. The author of these lines was lucky to meet him several times at conferences of the European Transactional Analysis Association (EATA).

“People are born mentally healthy.”

“In the language of fairy tales, a ban is a “curse,” that is, a prohibition or restriction of a child’s freedom of action.”

Elena Sergeevna Soboleva, practical psychologist, Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA, (P)), Training and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA, (P)), member of the St. Petersburg Association of Transactional Analysis (COTA), full member of the European Association of Transactional Analysis (EATA), member of the International Association for Transactional Analysis. In 2016 she was awarded a silver

Preface and acknowledgments

I dedicate this book

Eric Byrne:

teacher, friend, father and brother

I started writing this book because I wanted to release a new edition of “Games Alcoholics Play,” where I described the treatment of alcoholism using transactional analysis methods. However, as the work progressed, I discovered that the previous text had turned into an entirely new book - about transactional analysis of life scenarios. I still include some excerpts from Games Alcoholics Play, but most of the book is devoted to presenting the latest discoveries in the field of scenario theory. In the chapters taken from Games Alcoholics Play, I had to get rid of two words that over time began to seem unnecessary to me. These words, which I used at least a thousand times in the previous book, were “treatment” and “patient.” In my opinion, they are too closely associated with medicine, which, and I will explain this in more detail later, has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but the use of these words reinforces the idea in the mind that medicine and psychotherapy are the same thing.

I also want to thank Carmen Kerr for carefully reading the first part of my book and commenting on it; she helped me express sincerely and clearly the depth of my feelings for Eric Berne.

I thank Joy Marcus for reading and analyzing Part 3 and for its impact on my life and thinking over the last five years.

I thank the participants in body-oriented therapy. Thanks to this course, I understood how scripts lead to a loss of feelings of joy, and developed some methods of script therapy. Wyoming, Laura, Rick, Olivia and Hoji allowed me to see their naked being; they helped me understand how and why commonplace scenarios prevent us from enjoying and owning our bodies.

I also want to thank everyone with whom I worked at the Center for Radical Psychiatry from 1969 to 1972, fighting for freedom, gaining power, understanding the abuse of power, and thinking about collaboration.

I thank Marion Weisberg for suggesting the title the book now bears.

It's hard for me to adequately thank Susan Tatum. I could simply write that she was typing the text of the book. Yes, she really printed and reprinted what I wrote, but that’s not all; Her reflections, her insights and her contributions are present on every page, so I cannot express my gratitude to her enough. I also thank Karen Parlett for her help in typing and helping me put together the final version.

Finally, I thank Fred Jordan for his kindness and gentleness, for his rare but always timely support, which made it easier difficult work for writing a voluminous work, and for his careful reading, thanks to which the book took its present form.

Claude Steiner, 1974

Introduction

Basic Statements of Transactional Analysis Theory

Eric Berne, known to millions of people as the author of the book “Games People Play,” is nevertheless considered by few to be a pioneer in the field of psychiatric science.

I believe that Eric Berne reconsidered the very foundations of the science of mental health and discovered patterns that contradicted established opinions and undeniable truths at that time. Specialists who were trained in psychotherapy within the framework of psychoanalytic doctrine could not accept his ideas without radically changing their ideas about the causes of people's life difficulties and about methods of therapy.

Before going into detail, I will name three premises that distinguish the ideology of transactional analysis from the ideology of traditional psychiatry.

1. People are mentally healthy from birth. Adopting an “I'm OK, You're OK” attitude (by both the psychiatrist and the client) is essential to successful healing and to the emotional and social well-being of any individual.

2. Even when experiencing emotional difficulties, people nevertheless remain intelligent, full-fledged human beings. They are able to understand the essence of their problem, its causes and, with adequate help, solve it. They cannot help but become involved in the therapeutic process if they really want to cope with their difficulties.

3. Any emotional difficulty can be resolved if the right approach is taken and adequate knowledge is used.. The difficulties that psychiatrists encounter in cases of so-called schizophrenia, alcoholism, depressive psychosis, etc. are the result of the ignorance of psychiatrists, and not the incurability of these “diseases.”

People are mentally healthy from birth

The first and most important, in my opinion, concept that Berne introduced into psychiatry, in aphoristic form, sounds like this: “People are born Princes and Princesses, and their parents turn them into Frogs.” Berne presented most of his most radical ideas in the form of aphorisms. Their veiled form hid the course of his reasoning from the minds of those who would distort its meaning. The indirectly formulated concept that people are born happy, and the seeds of emotional discord with themselves, unhappiness and madness are passed on to them by their parents, became acceptable to those who, having heard it in full, direct meaning, would reject it entirely.

Based on his “faith in human nature,” the belief that people are inherently good, Berne formulated variants of existential positions that became popular through the writings of Amy and Thomas Harris. Existential position is the feelings that a person experiences towards himself and towards others. The first, or central, position sounds like “I'm okay, you're okay.” Over time, under the pressure of life circumstances, people change this position to one of three others, namely: “I’m okay, you’re not okay,” or “I’m not okay, you’re okay,” or even “I’m not okay.” okay, you're not okay." Because of this, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to communicate, achieve their goals and, most importantly, enjoy life.

Adopting the “I’m OK, You’re OK” attitude in life is necessary for the full realization of a person’s creative potential. However, it does not imply that any of his actions are acceptable. The existential position “I'm okay, you're okay” is a point of view that views a person separately from his actions and characteristics. This attitude is essential when building close relationships and is key to a person's emotional and social well-being. Berne adds that this attitude is not only good, but also the only correct one.

When a psychiatrist takes this view of “I'm fine, you're fine, your father, your mother, sister, brother and neighbors are fine too,” he has to give up everything that his mentors - experienced psychiatrists - have taught him. Such a specialist will not look for in his patient either a neurotic conflict, or psychosis, or a character disorder, or any diagnostic category from the field of psychopathology, which, according to Berne, offends the person. Instead, he will try to understand what influences explain his client's behavior and feelings, because he will believe that external circumstances, not internal weaknesses, bring people to psychiatrists. This approach is not new to psychiatry: it was foreshadowed by Wilhelm Reich, Carl Rogers and Ronald Lang. However, he still does not find either support or recognition in psychiatric circles. The opinion “I'm fine, you're fine” is a rare phenomenon in modern psychiatry. Most specialists in their work follow the medical model of illness: when a patient comes to a psychiatrist, he must diagnose him by examining him, talking with him and determining what is wrong with him (her) (“You’re not okay, I need just establish what exactly is wrong with you”).

Transactional analysis shifts attention from what is inside a person to what happens between people and what often really things go wrong.

Let me state in my own words the first premise of transactional analysis.

Humans are by nature inclined and capable of living in harmony with themselves, others and nature. If a person is left alone (with the necessary care for his needs), he will follow his natural desire to be healthy and happy, to get along with other people and to respect other forms of life.

People are unhappy, unhealthy, unwilling to learn new things, uncooperative, selfish and disrespectful of life because of external overwhelming influences that override the natural tendency to “live and let live.” However, even when suppressed, this tendency continues to exist in a latent form and is therefore always ready to manifest itself if the pressure is eased. And even if it never manages to manifest itself during the entire life of an individual, it will be passed on to a new generation.

Communication and agreement

Eric Berne radically changed the relationship between therapist and client. He communicated this directly, without using jokes or aphorisms. Berne sought to build relationships with clients as equals in intelligence and capabilities and to share responsibility with them for achieving the common goal of psychotherapy.

His strategy was so radical that it immediately led to conflict with his colleagues. In particular, he believed that patients were able to correctly understand what he thought about them and that he could talk to them as equals. He abandoned the psychiatric tradition of using one language to communicate with clients and another to communicate with colleagues. Formulating the concepts of his theory, he used words understandable to most people. When Berne noticed that people can behave in three different ways, he called these three positions Parent, Adult and Child (despite the fact that the term “Child” is accepted in the Russian-speaking professional community, in the book we will use the more commonly used word “Child.” - Note ed.), although he could give them some other, more “scientific” names, for example Exteropsyche, Neopsyche and Archeopsyche. Speaking about human communication and recognition, he called the unit of interaction not “unit of interpersonal communication”, but “stroking”. He called the communication difficulties that each of us faces from time to time not “dysfunctional communication patterns,” but “games.” The way in which a person lives his life, based on a decision made in childhood, Berne called not a “constantly repeated compulsion throughout life”, but a “script”.

Byrne's terminology and methods scared "mental health professionals" away from him. However, he broke tradition not for the sake of shocking, but in order to attract clients to his side, thus creating “ mutual language", necessary for collaboration. He did this based on the belief that every person, even those called patients, has an “adult state” that only needs to be encouraged to act.

Therefore, which was quite logical, Bern invited his clients to all discussions and conferences where they were discussed. He introduced the practice of having psychiatric patients present when doctors and interns discussed group therapy sessions. He said: “What should not be said in the presence of the patient should not be said at all.”

It is not surprising that Bern’s colleagues, who became “victims” of such an extraordinary approach, did not feel too comfortable. They had to admit that much of what they said in scientific conferences, sounded condescending towards their patients and, most importantly, incomprehensible to them.

A continuation of this approach was the “therapeutic contract” (see Chapter 20) - an agreement between the client and the psychotherapist, which stipulates mutual responsibility for the result of therapy. In this agreement, the client consents to therapy and states his willingness to cooperate, and the therapist accepts himself as responsible for helping the client achieve desired changes and for honoring the contract. According to the theory of transactional analysis, therapy is impossible without a therapeutic agreement. Such an agreement excludes the psychiatrist or social worker from forcing the patient into weekly or daily sessions of brainwashing or sensory deprivation during which they neither participate nor approve (meaning a psychoanalysis session. - Note lane).

This condition also excludes indefinite forms“therapeutic” activities, which boil down only to recommendations regarding the client’s current difficulties. In other words, Eric Berne's approach implies that, unlike medical knowledge, which (rightly or wrongly) is considered too complex for mere mortals, psychiatric knowledge should and can become accessible and understandable to all parties involved in the therapeutic process.

Berne believed that a person with a mental disorder could be cured. This means not only a patient with a moderate form of neurosis, but also a drug addict, and a person in deep depression, and a “sick with schizophrenia” - any person with a functional mental disorder (that is, with a disorder that is not based on a physical disorder or significant biochemical imbalance ) will be cured. By cure, Berne did not mean “transforming a schizophrenic into a brave schizophrenic” or an alcoholic into an arrested alcoholic. To cure, according to Berne, means to help a person “restore his membership in human society.”

The idea that a psychiatrist could cure his patient of serious emotional disturbances was the most radical concept introduced into psychiatry in recent times. Berne required his students to adhere to the following rule: “A psychotherapist practicing transactional analysis must be able to cure his patient during the first session of joint work. If he fails, he must spend the entire week leading up to the next session thinking about what he did wrong and what will need to be done to cure the patient during the second meeting, and so on until the patient is cured or the therapist admits defeat.” . The fact that psychiatrists working in the traditional manner failed to help their clients get rid of alcoholism, schizophrenia and depression did not mean to Berne that these disorders were incurable in themselves. For him, this meant that psychiatry had not yet developed a sufficiently effective approach to treating these disorders. The attitude of psychiatrists towards people whom they cannot cure (and whom they consider either incurable or insufficiently motivated) was unacceptable to Berne.

I'm quoting from one of Eric's last public appearances.

Another favorite excuse of psychotherapists for not doing anything is a false reference to the patient's identity. “Since the entire personality of the client is affected, how can we expect that we will be able to cure him in less than five years?” Fine. Let's say a person stubs his toe. The finger becomes inflamed, causing the person to limp and the leg muscles to become tense. To compensate for the excess tension in the leg muscles, the back muscles in turn become tense. Then the muscles of the neck and skull tense, and soon the person begins to have a headache. From inflammation, his temperature rises, he begins to feel feverish, and his pulse quickens. In other words, the whole organism is involved - the whole personality, including the head, which hurts; and he gets angry at the splinter and thinks: who put this splinter in such an inappropriate place - and he may even go to a lawyer.

In short, his whole personality is involved. And then he calls the surgeon. The doctor comes, looks at the patient and says: “You are seriously ill. The whole personality is involved in your illness. Your whole body is sick: you have a fever, you breathe quickly, your heartbeat is rapid and all your muscles are tense. I think it will take three or four years to cure you, but I can't give any guarantees - in our work you can never guarantee a successful outcome - so I think it will take three or four years - of course, a lot will depend on this from you, and then perhaps we will be able to cure you.” The patient says to this: “Okay, I’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow.” And then he goes to another surgeon, and this other surgeon says: “You have a splinter in your finger!” - takes tongs and pulls out the splinter; and then the temperature drops, and the pulse evens out, and the muscles of the skull relax, and the head stops hurting, then the back muscles and leg muscles relax. And the guy completely returns to normal in forty-eight hours, or maybe faster. This is how a psychotherapist should behave. You just need to find the splinter and pull it out. When I say this, my colleagues get angry with me. They accuse me of not conducting a complete analysis of the client. And they get angry when I ask them: “How many clients have you fully analyzed?” - because the subtext of my question is: “Do you realize how hostile you are towards your customers?” And each of them writes books. In my opinion, the only book worth writing is How to Treat Patients if you want to do your job well.

In this speech, Berne expresses himself in his usual metaphorical manner. Does this mean that curing a psychotic is as easy as removing a splinter from a finger, provided that we know as much about emotional disturbances as we now know about inflammation? Does this mean that rapid treatment is applicable in cases where “the whole person is affected”? Did Berne mean that psychiatrists fool their patients and evade responsibility?

I think that is exactly what he meant, and his faith affected me so much that it pushed me to write the book.

The three basic principles outlined above are implicit in all aspects of transactional analysis theory. I brought them to your attention because I consider them to be the most important part of the theory of transactional analysis. Of course, transactional analysis includes many other things, which I will talk about in detail further, but these three points, in my opinion, are principles that cannot be omitted without depriving transactional analysis of its basis and its true content.

Claude Steiner read people's life scripts online. Claude Steiner: Scenarios of people's lives. Eric Berne School. Three main life scenarios

Big and strong daddy

Man in front of woman

Playboy

Simple guy

Intellectual

Misogynist

* * *

Dear reader!

Preface and acknowledgments

Introduction

Basic Statements of Transactional Analysis Theory

People are mentally healthy from birth

Communication and agreement

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