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OK
I'm OK--You're OK Paperback – Illustrated, July 6, 2004
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The Classic Bestseller that has Changed the Lives of Millions
"Extraordinary. Harris has helped millions find the freedom to change, liberate their adult effectiveness, and achieve joyful intimacy with others." —Los Angeles Times
Transactional analysis delineates three ego-states (Parent, Adult and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. “Happy childhood” notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the not OK feelings of a defenseless child wholly dependent on others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a “position” about ourselves and others that determines how we feel about everything we do. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is "I’m Not OK-You’re OK." This negative "life position," shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational adult capabilities, leaving us vulnerable to inappropriate, emotional reactions of our child and uncritically learned behavior programmed into our parent. By exploring the structure of our personalities and understanding old decisions, Harris believes we can find the freedom to change our lives.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateJuly 6, 2004
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100060724277
- ISBN-13978-0060724276
- Lexile measure1230L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“It’s easy to relate to I’m OK-You’re OK. Again and again the reader will find his own predicament staring up at him from the page, along with its message, “If you don’t like the trap, you can change it.” — Cleveland Press
“Harris has stripped away the technical language of psychoanalysis and presented with lucid logic a way to self-understanding and change.” — Los Angeles Times
“The book reads easily and interestingly for the unlettered in behavior science…. The practicing therapist cannot help but benefit immeasurably, especially if his inclinations are toward family or group therapy.” — Choice
“[Readers] who roam these optimistic pages with their allusions to and discussions of Freud, Wilder Penfield, Elton Trueblood, Eric Berne, Bishop Pike, Teilhard de Chardin, and many other great and not-so-great experts may well make the book a bestseller.” — Library Journal
From the Back Cover
Transactional Analysis delineates three observable ego-states (Parent, Adult, and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. "Happy childhood" notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the Not ok feelings of a defenseless child, dependent on ok others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a "position" about ourselves and others that determines how we feel about everything we do. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is "I'm Not OK -- You're OK." This negative "life position," shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational Adult capabilities, leaving us vulnerable to inappropriate emotional reactions of our Child and uncritically learned behavior programmed into our Parent. By exploring the structure of our personalities and understanding old decisions, Harris believes we can find the freedom to change our lives.
About the Author
The late Thomas Harris was a Navy psychiatrist and a professor at the University of Arkansas. He practiced psychiatry in Sacramento, California and directed the Transactional Analysis Association.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I'm Ok--You're Ok
By Harris, Thomas AnthonyQuill
ISBN: 0060724277Chapter One
Freud, Penfield, and Berne
I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.
--Walt Whitman
Throughout history one impression of human nature has been consistent: that man has a multiple nature. Most often it has been expressed as a dual nature. It has been expressed mythologically, philosophically, and religiously. Always it has been seen as a conflict: the conflict between good and evil, the lower nature and the higher nature, the inner man and the outer man. "There are times," said Somerset Maugham, "when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?"
That man can aspire to and achieve goodness is evident through all of history, however that goodness may be understood. Moses saw goodness supremely as justice, Plato essentially as wisdom, and Jesus centrally as love; yet they all agreed that virtue, however understood, was consistently undermined by something in human nature which was at war with something else. But what were these somethings?
When Sigmund Freud appeared on the scene in the early twentieth century, the enigma was subjected to a new probe, the discipline of scientific inquiry. Freud's fundamental contribution was his theory that the waning factions existed in the unconscious. Tentative names were given to the combatants: the Superego became thought of as the restrictive, controlling force over the Id (instinctual drives), with the Ego as a referee operating out of "enlightened self-interest."
We are deeply indebted to Freud for his painstaking and pioneering efforts to establish the theoretical foundation upon which we build today. Through the years scholars and clinicians have elaborated, systematized, and added to his theories. Yet the "persons within" have remained elusive, and it seems that the hundreds of volumes which collect dust and the annotations of psychoanalytic thinkers have not provided adequate answers to the persons they are written about.
I stood in the lobby of a theater at the end of the showing of the motion picture Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and listened to a number of comments by people who had just seen the picture: "I'm exhausted!" "And I come to movies to get away from home." "Why do they want to show something like that?" "I didn't get it, I guess you have to be a psychologist." I got the impression that many of these people left the theater wondering what was really going on, sure there must have been a message, but unable to find anything relevant to them or liberating in terms of how to end "fun and games" in their own lives.
We are dutifully impressed by formulations such as Freud's definition of psychoanalysis as a "dynamic conception which reduces mental life to an interplay of reciprocally urging and checking forces." Such a definition and its countless elaborations may be useful to "the professionals," but how useful are these formulations to people who hurt? George and Martha in Edward Albees play used red-hot, gutsy, four-letter words that were precise and to the point. The question is, As therapists can we speak with George and Martha as precisely and pointedly about why they act as they do and hurt as they do? Can what we say be not only true but also helpful, because we are understood? "Speak English! I can't understand a word you're saying" is not an uncommonly held attitude toward persons who claim to be experts in the psychological fields. Restating esoteric psychoanalytic ideas in even more esoteric terms does not reach people where they live. As a consequence the reflections of ordinary folk are often expressed in pitiful redundancies and in superficial conversations with such summary comments as, "Well, isn't that always the way?" with no understanding of how it can be different.
In a sense, one of the estranging factors of the present day is the lag between specialization and communication, which continues to widen the gulf between specialists and nonspecialists. Space belongs to the astronauts, understanding human behavior belongs to the psychologists and psychiatrists, legislation belongs to the congressmen, and whether or not we should have a baby belongs to the theologians. This is an understandable development; yet the problems of nonunderstanding and noncommunication are so great that means must be devised whereby language can keep up with the developments of research.
In the field of mathematics an answer to this dilemma was attempted in the development of the "new mathematics," now being taught in elementary schools throughout the country. The new mathematics is not so much a new form of computation as of communication of mathematical ideas, answering questions not only of what, but also of why, so that the excitement of going to the moon or using a computer will not remain exclusively in the realm of scientists but can also exist in comprehensible form for the student. The science of mathematics is not new, but the way it is talked about is new. We would find ourselves handicapped if we were still to use the Babylonian, Mayan, Egyptian, or Roman number systems. The desire to use mathematics creatively brought about new ways of systematizing numbering concepts. The new mathematics of today has continued this creative growth. We recognize and appreciate the creative thinking which the earlier systems represented, but we do not encumber today's work with those now less-effective methods.
This is my position with regard to Transactional Analysis. I respect the devoted effort of the psychoanalytic theorists of the past. What I hope to demonstrate in this book is a new way to state old ideas and a clear way to present new ones, not as an inimical or deprecating assault on the work of the past, but rather as a means of meeting the undeniable evidence that the old methods do not seem to be working very well.
Continues...Excerpted from I'm Ok--You're Okby Harris, Thomas Anthony Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (July 6, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060724277
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060724276
- Lexile measure : 1230L
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #15,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #66 in Popular Psychology Personality Study
- #327 in Happiness Self-Help
- #496 in Personal Transformation Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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journey into high school and it positive and inspirational
The 3 roles are:
Parent- The admonitions and rules that a child heard from his parents and witnessed in what they did; the recording of external events. The no's, the don't's, the praise, the criticism. The author includes some common phrases I'm sure many people have heard from their parents such as "You're judged by the company you keep," "Clean your plate," "You can never trust a man/woman," and so on. This is the authority figure within each person, this is the part that tells others what they're doing wrong and doles out criticism or guidance, and when we beat ourselves up for doing something wrong or not doing enough this is the role we take on; that of the Parent.
Child- The feelings a person feels when he is experiences various interactions with other human beings, mostly his parents; the recording of internal events. Because very young children are unable to converse, most of their early recordings are feelings. Dr. Harris writes "The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, "I'm not OK" (p. 28). He goes on to say "Frequently we find ourselves in situations where we...find ourselves in a corner. These hook the "hook the Child," and cause a replay of the original feelings of frustration, rejection, or abandonment. When anger dominates his reason, we say his Child is in command" (p. 30). The Child also contains positive qualities including creativity.
Adult- The ability to view reality objectively and make decisions based on those objective facts. "Adult data accumulates as a result of the child's ability to find out for himself what is different about life from the "taught concept" of life in his Parent and the "felt concept" of life in his Child. The Adult develops a "thought concept" of life based on data gathering and data processing" (pg. 31).
What happens when people in different psychological roles interact? What happens when a person's Child interacts with another person's Parent? Read this book to find out. Dr. Harris uses other terminology such as "strokes" (recognition or validation) and the various ways people go about attaining those strokes. A passage which caught my attention noted how Child-Child transactions rarely last very long. The author notes how the hippie movement faded because by cutting off the source of disapproval (Parent) the hippies also cut off their source of valid praise. "Boy to girl: "Of course I love you. I love everybody!" (p. 78). If everybody is special, strokes no longer mean anything.
He also elaborates on what he views as the 4 ego states a person can hold about himself and the other people:
-I'm Not OK, You're OK
-I'm OK, You're Not OK,
-I'm Not OK, You're Not OK,
-I'm OK, You're OK.
This was not necessarily a challenging read, though it caused me to think about how I interact with others, how the behavior of other people causes me to sometimes think irrationally ("hooking my Child"), and it's given me another way to view other human beings. Highly recommended.
The "I'm OK--You're OK" isn't really practical. Some days I feel great; others I am in the dumps; the OKayness ratings fluctuate from day to day and are rarely all one or the other. Our minds aren't that simple!
I read this book when it first came out, and at first I was thoroughly believing the theory. When he started subdividing his "ego states" of P/A/C, saying that within each state there is a state like "the child within the parent" or "the adult within the adult," I recognized it as BS. The theory never helped me. More useful to me was Eric Berne's Games People Play, if only for plots of novels; his "games," like Queen Bee, are easily recognized in the plots of movies and maybe in life as well. His games "Yes, but..." and "Let's you and him fight" are worth the price of the book in themselves.
Get Epstein's book! Hope this helps.
Top reviews from other countries
This book is nothing but explanation to Sankhya Philosophy (Transactional Analysis) in today's language, where how three states of EGO
Sat-Parent, Tam-Child and Raj-Adult develops in human beings.
EGO develops due to OTHERS and NEED.
EGO develops due to SEPARATION Feelings.
OTHERS = I am OK, You are not OK,
I am not OK, You are Not OK,
I am not OK, you are OK.
The 4th Program = Turiya= All are OK.
I am OK, You are OK.
Study Sankhya Philosophy, Tridoshas of Ayurveda and this book one after the other to understand exact meaning.
Also read TRUTH ETERNAL book of Shri Ramchandra of Fetegarh Heartness-Sahaj Marg to know
- HOW PARENT (SAT) was born. And
- How CHILD (TAM) was born and
- How the ADULT (RAJ - REALITY) was born by the combination of SAT and TAM.
Author's another book STAYING OK deals with TURIYA state elaborately.
Read and implement practically the FOURTH State ALL ARE OK, to experience Oneness and destroy Negativity in your life.
Thanks to the Author.
Book printing can be improved a lot, by publishers.
Reviewed in India on April 7, 2024
This book is nothing but explanation to Sankhya Philosophy (Transactional Analysis) in today's language, where how three states of EGO
Sat-Parent, Tam-Child and Raj-Adult develops in human beings.
EGO develops due to OTHERS and NEED.
EGO develops due to SEPARATION Feelings.
OTHERS = I am OK, You are not OK,
I am not OK, You are Not OK,
I am not OK, you are OK.
The 4th Program = Turiya= All are OK.
I am OK, You are OK.
Study Sankhya Philosophy, Tridoshas of Ayurveda and this book one after the other to understand exact meaning.
Also read TRUTH ETERNAL book of Shri Ramchandra of Fetegarh Heartness-Sahaj Marg to know
- HOW PARENT (SAT) was born. And
- How CHILD (TAM) was born and
- How the ADULT (RAJ - REALITY) was born by the combination of SAT and TAM.
Author's another book STAYING OK deals with TURIYA state elaborately.
Read and implement practically the FOURTH State ALL ARE OK, to experience Oneness and destroy Negativity in your life.
Thanks to the Author.
Book printing can be improved a lot, by publishers.