By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON 
Trump is now playing POOR ME in his lying brainwashing utterances.
It’s possible that Trump is the crookedest unstraightest mass media communicator in Earthian human history.
Despite having a child and grandchildren of Jewish heritage Trump attacks USians of Jewish heritage for not voting for him and causing him to lose elections in one of his standard ulterior Parent-Child ego state Game-infested transactions. It’s as if the man does not even have an Adult ego state, making him incapable of uttering a true sentence. USians of Jewish heritage are only about two percent of voting USians; therefore from an Adult ego state standpoint they could not have caused him to lose a presidential election. The comment was also a veiled psychological Persecutor Parent-Child ulterior transaction playing his usual psychological Game of IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, a threat to USians of Jewish heritage and descent that harm could come to them if he loses the 2024 election. In the same context he switched to a Victim Child Ego State playing a psychological Game of POOR ME and whined that “they treated me very badly” by not voting for him in 2020. The orange man does this over and over. Probably 80 percent of his public communication transactions are of this nature, ulterior psychological attacks on someone or something. How any USian could even dream of voting for someone like this for US president again is incomprehensible.
To learn more about the particular Trumpian lying brainwashing utterance above go here https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=trump+says+jewish+people+would+have+a+lot+ot+lose+if+he+loses.
Transactional analysts in the 1960s and 70s invented a new way to understand and communicate about complex psychological and social issues using ordinary words that anyone can use that make it easier for anyone to see what is really going on in human states of affairs.
This article focuses primarily on the pervasive and pernicious playing of psychological Games in political states of affairs. The I’m OK—You’re OK life position is one of four life positions for individuals; the other three are I’m OK—You’re Not OK, You’re OK—I’m Not OK, and You’re Not OK—I’m Not OK.
National governments since time immemorial have had a life position of We’re OK, our cronies, vassals, lackeys, and knaves are OK, but all other nations are Not OK, and we are going to make them pay. How to change this life position to We’re OK—You’re OK is what Earthian humans need to work on most if they intend to indefinitely survive as a species aboard Spaceship Earth.
This article explains a recurring Earthian human psychological and social global process that has produced authoritarian Rescuer leaders capable of murdering millions of humans in wars and other operations to destroy social, economic, political, and religious systems perceived to have been caused by Persecutor groups that would cause Victim groups to live in one-down intolerable life positions, a process that has become increasingly lethal with repeat iterations in Earthian human history, having now become capable of destroying human life on Earth in the next iteration of world war, caused by the evolution and proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of unhinged authoritarian human leaders of nations.
Politics is almost the antithesis of We’re OK—You’re OK. While politics gets some useful and necessary work done, most of the time structuring of politics is spent playing entropic and sometimes hamartic psychological Games.
Psychological Games spelled with a capital G are different from games such as football, basketball, bridge, and chess that are spelled with a lower-case g. Psychological Games are inherently dishonest and games are not. Lower-case g games have clear rules that are spelled out for everyone that are enforced by referees and players every time an infraction occurs. Psychological Games don’t have any rules. It’s basically a matter of making up your own rules as you go along, if you can get away with it.
When politicians promise to lower poverty rates by creating infrastructure spending and creating programs to fight poverty and the poor stay poor the Game is called I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU.
Why play I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU? To get elected and maintain political control in a country …
When USian government tax and funny money and military equipment are given to allies and vassals to fight wars to maintain or increase USian international hegemony and business for the USian Military-Industrial establishment the Game is called LET’S YOU AND THEM FIGHT.
Why play LET’S YOU AND THEM FIGHT? To maintain or enhance economic and political positions of a country internationally without arousing the ire of Earthian humans in the country who do not know what is going on …
When politicians promise to lower taxes so middle and lower income USians can become more productive and earn higher real incomes and their disposable incomes stay the same or go down the Game is called BUSINESS AS USUAL.
Why play BUSINESS AS USUAL? To get elected or stay in office …
When politicians significantly lower the income tax rates of the elite rich and large corporations and the rich get exponentially richer as the poor get poorer or stay the same the Game is called TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS.
Why play TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS? To increase donations from the elite rich and large corporations to get elected or stay in office, and to play PUMP AND DUMP, a major Game played by Republican politicians who cut the taxes of large corporations and the elite rich while increasing military and other expenses, building up the economy in the short run and causing the USian budget deficit and debt to explode, causing the next recession, and, one of these days, the next catastrophic depression …
When politicians spend more and more tax and funny money on the Military-Industrial Complex and the US becomes less secure and more impoverished the psychological Game is called NATIONAL SECURITY.
Why play NATIONAL SECURITY? To extract larger donations from fat cats in the military-industrial complex to buy advertising to get elected or stay in office …
When Western nations in NATO and the US unilaterally move more and more military bases and nuclear weapons closer and closer to the borders of Russia and China causing more militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation the Game is called BRINKMANSHIP.
Why play BRINKMANSHIP? To maintain and improve employment in a country by creating a need for military expenditures to employ war-making personnel and to manufacture war-making equipment and to solidify the control of a political regime over Earthian humans living in the country …
When politicians promise to build an elaborate wall at the southern border of the US and enact draconian policies to keep the poor of Spaceship Earth out of the US and little or nothing seems to happen the Game is called IMMIGRATION POLICY.
Why play IMMIGRATION POLICY? To get votes from middle and lower income Earthian humans in a country by assuaging their fears that poor immigrants entering a country might steal their insecure low-paying jobs …
When governments and their central banks decide to create funny money by punching digits into central bank computers and call the resulting numbers money and then use the funny money to buy enough government treasury bonds, bills, and notes to generate enough cash for the government to make up the difference between yearly tax money taken in and money paid out, year after year, for military and pork and non-pork government expenses, inexorably piling up more and more trillions of dollars of government debt, that can never be paid back, the Game is called FINANCIAL ENGINEERING.
Why play FINANCIAL ENGINEERING? To take in more Earthian resources in the short run and maintain employment and production levels in a country and to maintain or increase government expenditures for unnecessary products and busy-work jobs without ordinary humans knowing what is going on, magically hoping for the best …
When corrupt USian Supreme Court judges based on their political biases and prejudices rule in favor of idiosyncratic USian groups lobbying for laws to eliminate abortions and reduce the control of women over their own bodies and deny the right of LGTBQ USians to express themselves as they were naturally caused to sexually function the Game is called RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.
Why play RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? To engender emoluments by ruling for laws benefiting benefactors …
When large corporations and politicians move the erstwhile good industrial jobs of the US to low-wage countries and substitute more and more robots and artificial intelligence for human labor inside the US and more and more USians are left with insecure low-wage jobs the Game is called PROGRESS.
Why play PROGRESS? To take in more money for your organization and to keep erstwhile ordinary Earthian humans employed by your organization in the dark about what is really going on, ignoring the elephant in the room, the need to change the economic system itself into a system that works for everyone, not just large corporations and the elite rich …
When mainstream media selectively publish and broadcast factual political news but omit true analysis about what is really going on the Game is called FAIR AND BALANCED REPORTING.
Why play FAIR AND BALANCED REPORTING? To maximize money taken in by your organization and to keep ordinary Earthian humans in the dark about what is really going on …
When the most dangerous politician on the Earthian political stage running again for president of the US in the November 5, 2024 presidential election tells you over and over in mass media that his last presidential race in 2020 that he lost fair and square was rigged and stolen from him despite overwhelming irrefutable evidence to the contrary the Game is called THE BIG LIE.
Why play THE BIG LIE? Because history has shown if a fascist dictator and regime tells big lies over and over enough in mass media most ordinary Earthian humans in a country will believe them, or pretend to believe them …
When Earthian humans decide they cannot get their needs met in their societies competing in their way of life under their existing rule of law and start believing and having faith that fascist dictators will take care of them using violent unlawful means the Game is called DO ME SOMETHING.
Why play DO ME SOMETHING? To attempt to get personal needs met without assuming responsibility for taking care of yourself by enslaving yourself to authoritarian leaders who will tell you what to do, rather than do what you can to change the economic system into a system that works for everyone …
When corrupt bought and paid for USian Supreme Court judges decide based on their idiosyncratic biases and prejudices that USian presidents, even a convicted sexual offender, are immune in some or most cases from prosecution for violating the laws of the US, having the power of kings, and citizens and politicians of a country go along with it, the Game is called FASCISM.
Why play FASCISM? To get personal needs met by enslaving yourself to an authoritarian leader and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves who say they will tell you what to do and take care of you and give you a share of plunder taken by any means, violent or non-violent, to significantly raise your OKness level in your country …
Psychological Games have always been a major component of Earthian economic and political behavior, and a Game transactional analysts call NIGYSOB has been one of the most significant and pervasive psychological Games in business, economics, and politics. NIGYSOB (Now I’ve Got You, You S.O.B.) entails psychological Game players trying to reign supreme over others, to triumph over others, to become “one-up”, to be superior, to beat, to win, etc. any way they can. NIGYSOB players are motivated by anger that they feel justified in releasing because of perceived social and psychological actions and manipulations on the part of Persecutors that might cause them to become loser Victims, causing them to feel their psychological, social, economic, and political standing and security are threatened.
Eric Berne defined a psychological Game as: “An ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome. Descriptively, it is a recurring set of transactions, often repetitious, superficially plausible, with a concealed motivation; or, more colloquially, a series of moves with a snare, or “gimmick.” Games are clearly differentiated from procedures, rituals, and pastimes by two chief characteristics: (1) their ulterior quality and (2) the payoff. Procedures may be successful, rituals effective, and sometimes profitable, but all of them are by definition candid; they may involve contest, but not conflict, and the ending may be sensational, but is not dramatic. Every Game (emphasis added), on the other hand, is basically dishonest, and the outcome has a dramatic, as distinct from merely exciting quality.”
See Eric Berne, MD (1964). Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. New York: Grove Press, p. 48.
Psychological Games include two sets of transactions conducted simultaneously between Game players, a spoken overt social set, and an ulterior covert unspoken psychological set, with three basic roles, Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim acted out by the players, involving three basic ego states, Parent, Adult, and Child, with switches of transactional vectors between various combinations of the Ego States in all players, as the players switch around from Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim on a “Drama Triangle.”
See Stephen Karpman, MD (1968). “Fairy tales and script drama analysis.” Transactional Analysis Bulletin. 7(26), 39-43.
Ego States are states of being including thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, gestures, body language, and other signals determining how people come across with others in communication episodes, whether parent-like, adult-like, or child-like, in all kinds of situations. People switch Ego States depending on who they are communicating with and what sort of circumstances they are in, whether they are parenting, working, socializing, teaching, having fun, playing Games, politicking, or whatever. They transmit messages from three Ego States in themselves to three Ego States in others in pair vectors, Parent-Parent, Adult-Adult, Child-Child, Parent-Child, Child-Adult, Adult-Parent, Child-Parent, or whatever combination. These transactions are especially meaningful in situations in which there is some sort of authoritarian system involving leaders and members, such as parents parenting children in homes, teachers teaching students in schools, or bosses bossing subordinates in a business, military, or political organization, which normally entail primarily Parent-Child transactions. In general however the more Adult-Adult transactions there are the better things go in families, schools, businesses, military commands, and political organizations.
See Eric Berne, MD (1970). What do you say after you say hello? The psychology of human destiny. New York: Grove Press, and Eric Berne, MD (1963). The structure and dynamics of organizations and groups. New York: Grove Press.
Adult Ego State transactions are generally factual, honest, and overt; Parent and Child Ego State transactions are often covert dishonest ulterior lies, transmitted by body language instead of words.
Donald Trump, the most prominent, pernicious, and dangerous Game-player on the Earthian political stage at present, is a master at using body language to switch Ego States in his monologues, harangues, and diatribes at rallies and in personal conversations. He’s a psychologically Not-OK mesmerizing Pied Piper with a tall imposing 6’3″ body frame and a charismatic persona that is produced with orange facial coloring and a bizarre hair-do. Most of the time his words do not socially make sense at the Adult Ego State level but his body language at Parent and Child Ego State levels is clear: he is not only OK but superior and his psychologically Not-OK loyal cronies, lackeys, and knaves are OK and superior too, which is one of the biggest lies he tells.
Trump is not psychologically saving his cult members from their sins at his political rallies, as his analogue charismatic preachers claim to at their religious rallies; he is saving them from their psychological Not OKness.
He is adept at switching Ego States and transactions from Rescuer to Persecutor to Victim by changing his posture and gait as he struts and swaggers about on stage in his Drama Triangle, flailing his arms and fingers about, randomly producing smirks, smiles, grins, grimaces, glares, stares and bodily contortions, and by changing the speed, volume, pitch, cadence, and tone of his sing-songy voice, that ranges from guttural to prissy falsetto. He is somewhat analogous to a made-up circus clown and ring-master as he titillates, entertains, agitates, and cultivates his captivated enthralled sucker cult members at his rallies. If he didn’t put on his make-up and fix his hair as he does he would look like what he really is, a pasty pale balding almost octogenarian Earthian human male, and most likely he could not get elected to anything.
Trump’s a master of pantomime and playing Games. But don’t be fooled. Trump’s not a circus clown; he’s a dangerous angry hardened convicted criminal who shows no remorse for what he has done who intends to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship if he gets elected president of the US again. Do you really want to live day by day subject to the whims of a fascist crime boss dictator who can do you harm at any time? Think about that when you vote for Trump for president of the US November 5, 2024, if you do. You should feel sorry for him, not vote for him.
NIGYSOB Game-playing underlies conflicts, competitions, and wars among individuals, groups, and organizations, including nations and corporations domestically and internationally. You might think nations and international corporations competing among themselves do not entail real anger, but it seems to me anger is a major factor when serious fighting breaks out. Leaders try to engender fear and anger among their followers before the first outbursts of fighting to motivate followers. You might think a war is not an ego trip for leaders. You might think leaders are simply doing their perceived ethical duty to preserve the safety and security of their followers and constituents. But the unspoken psychological truth is more than that. Wars are also ego trips, with leaders trying to triumph over other leaders, wanting to become one-up top dogs.
You can build a case competitions among political parties in presidential elections more than anything else are NIGYSOB Games, with Rescuer leaders saying they want to improve the plight of Victim citizens, increase their relative share of national and international income, provide them with better and cheaper health care, and so forth; but here too the contest is probably an ego trip for leaders who are more interested in being top dog than anything else. Political contests become an ego trip for followers as well as the leaders foment fear and anger among them to beat the bad guy Persecutors and run them out of office. If their party wins followers may also feel “one-up” because their party ideology and their dear leader “won”, regardless of whether anything is done to improve economic and social conditions in the real world.
The capitalistic economic system is based on NIGYSOB-playing. It’s what makes the world go round. It makes everyone richer, the defenders of capitalism say, because it motivates people to work harder and longer and more efficiently than they would if they did not have to compete and do battle with others to make a living.
Pathological entrepreneurs may say their major motivation is to create a new business that will improve the lives of customers, but creating a successful, powerful business is also an ego trip, especially if the entrepreneur is able to take in much more money than others. The money may be important for what it can buy, but a major satisfaction a big pile of money generates is the ego satisfaction and recognition a winner gets because of being able to take in much more money than others, producing a bigger and better balance sheet to show off, proof one is superior, having won the business Game called BALANCE SHEET, and no matter how much money they take in it’s never enough.
I was a good football and basketball player back in my junior high, high school, and college years. I was the quarterback of the team and I found it satisfying and exhilarating calling plays in the huddle, doing battle at the scrimmage line, and throwing touchdown passes in a real game before cheering fans in a football stadium, especially when winning, as was the case when I was in the eighth grade, when we won eleven out of eleven football games. On the other hand, I don’t recall ever feeling anger caused by the opposing team trying to beat us as we tried to beat them.
The main payoff for an amateur athlete is getting plenty of what transactional analysts call “strokes”, or units of recognition, that can be positive or negative, depending on how well you do something. Eric Berne said positive strokes are what everyone wants and needs. He said they keep your spinal column from “shriveling up”.
There are two kinds of scripts people have to act out in organizations, to keep their jobs or get promoted: psychological life scripts and organizational social scripts.
Psychological Life Scripts are programmed into children by virtue of constantly being exposed to and dependent on their parents before the age of eight. Almost as if by osmosis parents psychologically script their children not to feel, think, and do certain things in various ways and degrees as various events happen in the environment, largely non-verbally by how parents respond to a child, by how they get mad, glad, sad, or scared, or not, when the child does something when various things happen. Psychological scripts are automatically “introjected” into the personalities of children during early childhood, and most children wind up pretty much like their parents, with the same accents, the same religions, and the same kinds of feeling, thinking, deciding, doing, and communicating patterns.
There are also some generic overt social script messages such as brush your teeth, clean those finger nails, study hard, make something of yourself, work hard, etc. that are socially overt and spoken.
Psychological life script messages are called injunctions and social script messages are called counter-injunctions. These messages wind up creating a life script that includes a life position. There are four basic TA life positions: I am OK and You are OK, I am OK and you are Not OK, I’m Not OK and You are OK, and I am Not OK and You are Not OK; and there are three generic TA life script outcomes: Winner, Loser, and Non-Winner.
There is no way under competitive capitalism for all people to be fully OK economically and politically, making the I’m OK – You’re OK life position infeasible among all humans.
Most people are what they are because of family scripts, not economic conditions, and they can respond in adult life only in certain ways because of their introjected injunctions and life scripts. Some people are more flexible and adaptable than others, but most people in order to make a living and achieve some satisfaction in life have to find a slot, niche, and level in an organization in which their life script is congruent.
Social scripts, on the other hand, include the sum total of social do’s and don’t’s required for a person to be successful dealing with others in a particular job or role. These scripts include the algorithmic physical and mental steps required to do the specific job you are paid to do and required words and phrases to say to others and how to emotionally and behaviorally respond to people around you, up, across, and down the organizational chain of command, including playing the psychological Games people around you want or need to play.
All organizations, including political organizations, require particular social scripts for participants with words and phrases that have to be memorized and used. Almost nobody can be her or his true self most of the time making a living in an organization. Most employees have to act out scripts created by the organization. Organizations such as Disney World are the most scripted of all. Employees there are called characters and are required to wear costumes and “go on stage” after they clock in for work, pretending while on the job to be characters such as Donald Duck or Mickey or Minnie Mouse dealing with customers, parroting memorized lines. While all employees in all organizations have to pretend to some extent they are something they are not to keep their jobs the scripting is not as overt and extreme as it is at Disney World.
See Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA (1978). “The chain of ego states.” Transactional Analysis Journal. 8(3), 215-219.
USians who get into politics for a living are just like all other employees under capitalism: they have to act out the right scripts to keep their jobs.
Most people who get fired in organizations are fired because of their psychological life scripts that are thought to be inappropriate in an organizational culture, or for being unwilling or unable to act out social scripts, not for being unable to perform the required mental and physical algorithmic steps of the job.
Eric Berne defined success in organizations as adaptability plus flexibility, one being able to adapt his/her group imago (the way s/he thinks the railroad should be run), and her/his personality, (how s/he presents her/himself with Ego States transacting with others). In other words, Berne believed in the old adage, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.”
There are certain things politicians have to do that might be called work in the physical algorithmic sense, but in the best of circumstances they are paid to think and make decisions, not do repetitive work. On the other hand, if they do not obey the script requirements of their political party they will be fired or sluiced out of the party organization one way or another. Therefore to get honest Game-free governments only individuals who have no intentions of being a politician for a living should be elected to office.
Psychological Games are a way of getting stimulation, recognition, and structure as one goes about one’s business of surviving and making a living. Basically they involve trying to gain satisfactions dealing with others, by making yourself feel better at someone’s else’s expense, or by making a fool of someone. Psychological Games entail people discounting problems, opportunities, and people, and the significance of someone or something. All psychological Games entail players acting out one of three roles on a Drama Triangle: Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer.
Why vote in the first place? The best Adult ego state reason in a democratic republic such as the US would be to take social satisfaction in helping select the best person for offices to help set rational goals, objectives, procedures, and laws for everyone. Lesser Parent and Child reasons would be to vote for people who will do things to benefit you and yours financially, and who will provide for you and yours satisfying psychological Game payoffs to secure psychological structure, recognition, and stimulation similar to what you experienced with your parents, friends, and others in your early life that support and reinforce the psychological, social, economic, religious, political, and moral states of affairs of organizations such as your family, community, school, or church.
Once psychologically scripted most people do not rebel. Red states stay red and blue states stay blue, regardless of the logical Adult ego state reasoning of idealistic generally-OK political candidates with script-free ideas on how to improve the functioning of the economic and political system in the real world. It’s like water running off a duck’s back.
I remember a TV interviewer in 2000 asking an attractive woman who ran a bar and grill why she intended to vote for Bush II. “Cuz he’s a good-lookin’ man” was her quick response.
There are several psychological Games people play in political races; but it seems to me based on observing presidential races on the Internet and elsewhere, listening to comments people make on my Facebook news feed timeline and elsewhere, most politicians play a first-degree psychological Game called RAPO by transactional analysts, since one of the surest ways to get votes in our narcissistic USian culture is to be considered good lookin’.
There are three degrees of psychological Games: First Degree Games entail comments, insults, discounts, jokes, and body language displays designed to build up or tear down someone’s self-esteem, or gain or lose some sort of psychological advantage; Second Degree Games entail more serious discounts and payoffs, threatening someone, firing someone, getting divorced, etc.; Third Degree Games are sometimes called tissue-tearing Games with payoffs such as getting into physical fights, getting divorced, going to war, winding up in a morgue, etc.
All Games are to some extent pathological, producing some harmful or painful effects, ranging in severity from very little pain to a lot of pain. Third degree Games are seriously pathological.
On the positive side, Games provide structure and stimulation that produce positive or negative strokes, and in some cases negative strokes are better than no strokes at all. Games are sometimes called a bridge to intimacy, meaning it’s possible to play a first degree Game or two with someone in order to develop a satisfying intimate relationship with the person. On the other hand, you can’t be intimate with someone and play Games with the person at the same time, since real intimacy requires honesty.
A RAPO Game starts by someone psychologically promising some sort of satisfaction to someone for responding to her or his sexual attractiveness. There are various social and psychological transactions that can bring this about, social transactions being spoken and overt, psychological transactions being unspoken and covert. The payoff for a first degree RAPO player is not a real sexual liaison but making a fool of a mark or sucker who will be punished or humiliated in some way if he or she responds to the psychological sexual messages. Most psychological Games do not entail sexual messaging but a lot of them do. All psychological Games involve a con of some degree taking advantage of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of a mark or suckers, promising things the Game starter has no intentions of delivering. Most of the promises of first-degree Games are insignificant and relatively inconsequential. First degree Games are ubiquitous and most people play them at various times. Sometimes they have to to survive in organizations.
Psychological Games and scripts are what make folk tales and fairy tales (such as Robin Hood, the Pied Piper, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Snow White, Goldilocks, Cinderella, Jack & Jill, Humpty-Dumpty, Hansel and Gretel, The Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk) interesting and dramatic.
Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bush II, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden won political races to some extent caused by successfully playing first degree RAPO Games, caused by having physical and psychological characteristics that enabled them to transmit non-verbal psychological messages to voters that they would deliver to them titillating psychological and social satisfactions if they voted for them, somehow providing supporters, followers, and voters with various sorts of desired or fantasied psychological stimulation, structure, and recognition. Whether these politicians produced for their voters the psychological satisfactions the voters sought would be difficult to prove, just as it would be for these voters (for sure middle and lower income voters) to prove voting for these politicians produced any economic improvements for them. Any president during the last fifty years would have a difficult time proving he produced significant tangible economic benefits for middle and lower income voters, regardless of how much psychological and social satisfaction he produced for them.
And here we are, having degenerated in the US into a situation in which a convicted sexual assaulter, Donald John Trump, a former president of the US, is now running for USian president again, and it appears about half of USian voters intend to vote for him again. What does this tell you? I don’t know what it tells you but it tells me that about half of USian voters just don’t care if the president of the US is a convicted sexual assaulter, which means they have some moral and ethical deficiencies, just like all of us. And why is this? Why don’t they care? Most likely it means they were scripted not to believe this matters. I don’t know exactly, but it seems to me most likely it does not matter to them because of what Trump has told them about he would do as president if reelected. He wants to be a fascist dictator of the US, and they surely know it, and it seems to me this unfortunately means about half of USian voters like authoritarian dictators, whether in disguise as parents, teachers, preachers, military generals, business bosses, or politicians. In other words, they like dictators who will tell them what to do using Parent-Child Ego State transactions, rather than participate using I’m OK—You’re OK transactions in democratic discussions about what to do using their Adult Ego States.
Seems to me Earthian humans are polarized intellectually between two general extreme categories that might be described as democratic idealists and authoritarian nihilists, with most successful humans being clustered near the middle of the continuum.
Democratic idealists are not necessarily members of the Democratic Party in the US; and all authoritarian nihilists are not necessarily members of the Republican Party.
A democratic idealist in my view is someone who visualizes new states of affairs that might make an unsatisfying current situation more efficient, effective, just, and satisfying through consultation, collaboration, and cooperation.
Authoritarian nihilists in my view are dissatisfied with states of affairs as they are but do not visualize changing them by creating new states of affairs, believing instead that what is needed is authoritarian dictators in positions of authority who will make existing or superseded systems and processes work for them by out-competing competitors or destroying scapegoats and enemies.
Most so-called liberals and progressives would be included in the democratic idealist category and most so-called conservatives would be included in the authoritarian nihilist category.
An extreme democratic idealist would focus primarily on ideal states to be achieved in the future and extreme authoritarian nihilists would be focused primarily on what now exists and tearing down what they do not like, not creating better systems to achieve better states of affairs.
Abraham Lincoln once remarked there are two kinds of people who never amount to much in life: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who cannot do anything but what they are told. Unrealistic idealistic builders of imaginary air castles often have a hard time making a go of things in life, and people with no goals and imagination are pretty much stuck where they are. Probably most successful people lie somewhere in between the two extremes of idealism and nihilism.
Extreme democratic idealists worry a lot. Extreme authoritarian nihilists just don’t give a rip, and some are happy savages.
I agree with most transactional analysts that Earthian humans are scripted to be what they are emotionally, intellectually, and behaviorally in early childhood by Injunctions that are psychologically transmitted from the child ego states of parents to the child ego states of their offspring.
According to Bob and Mary Goulding, quoted in my book Business Voyages, page 160, there are about fourteen generic psychological Injunctions widely transmitted in family scripting:
Don’t Be, Don’t Be You (the sex you are), Don’t Be A Child, Don’t Grow, Don’t Make It, Don’t, Don’t Be Important, Don’t Be Close, Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Well (or sane), Don’t Think About X (forbidden subject), Don’t Think What You Think, Think What I Think, Don’t Feel, Don’t Feel X, Mad, Sad, Glad, Scared, etc., Don’t Feel What You Feel, Feel What I Feel.
See Bob Goulding, MD and Mary Goulding, MSW (1976). “Injunctions, decisions, and redecisions.” Transactional Analysis Journal, 6(1), 41-48.
These script injunctions are transmitted primarily psychologically, not overtly spoken, from the Child ego state of the parent to the Child ego state of the child. Rarely would a parent socially or overtly tell a child what one of the above injunctions requires. They are primarily transmitted non-verbally by Parent and Child ego states when caregivers exhibit mad, glad, sad, or scared emotions in response to what a child naturally feels, thinks, and does as shared life events occur in early childhood. On the other hand, children are scripted by the ego states they observe parents using when parents feel, think, and do things. Children psychologically “introject” in living color the ego states of parents, including the accents, mannerisms, facial expressions, tone of voice, and behaviors of parents, as parents and children deal with life events. To introject is to take in or absorb the personality and behavioral characteristics of another. So children more or less grow up to replicate their parents, and the replications become hard-wired in their brains for life in most cases.
For good or ill, the scripting process may determine not only the personality and behavioral characteristics of a child but also his/her life position and role in life, including determining whether a child grows up to become a democratic idealist or an authoritarian nihilist.
Therefore the scripting process largely determines which political parties win in any culture; and the fate of planet Earth may depend on changing the scripting of humans, which entails a process of change that includes not only changing economic and political systems but also psychological and social systems.
An assumption of transactional analysis is that humans can learn to “see what is really going on” with themselves and others as they transact with one another socially and psychologically living their daily lives so as to increase their chances of living satisfactory lives, regardless of how not-OK their economic, social, psychological, and political worlds might be.
According to transactional analysis theory there are three naturally occurring generic life outcomes caused for humans: winner, loser, and non-winner—caused by inherited physical characteristics and script injunctions, “messages” one is exposed to throughout life—and by the early decisions offspring make about the messages that become determinants of emotional, intellectual, and behavioral responses throughout life. Inherited money can also make a difference. People like Donald Trump are trapped more than others in their family scripts by inherited money that makes them less likely to grow up psychologically and socially healthy than others.
Whether one inherits a winner, loser, or non-winner script is determined by naturally-occurring inevitable cause-effect chains one is accidentally exposed to. Some transactional analysts assume proportions of winner, loser, and non-winner scripts in the population remain relatively constant from one generation to another.
The natural scripting process is not fair; and Earthian human history does not encourage optimism about the probability of this unfairness being eradicated anytime soon.
It seems to me most of the worst human abominations of Earthian human history such as mass murders, genocides, and democides were caused by non-winners and losers of a society who were tired of being one-down living in unequal societies that had basically capitalistic economic systems who decided, since they could not win fair and square under the existing rule of law, given their inherited biological genetic abilities and their inherited psychological life scripts and social scripts, that the best way for them to get strokes and become equal or one-up in their societies was to enslave themselves to an authoritarian dictator who would tell them what to do to violently destroy the existing government and structure of their society and probably other societies.
In other words, they decided since they could not win using their inherited abilities and scripts in their society under its existing rule of law the solution for their dilemma was to destroy the existing society by becoming obedient loyal non-thinking subordinates (cronies, lackeys, knaves, warriors, slaves, etc.) doing what they were “told” by an authoritarian gang-leading lawless dictator or king or queen who would arbitrarily reward them with shares of stolen plunder from wars and other takeovers and one-up status in some sort of new society after they destroyed their old society by means of violent force.
When Earthian humans decide they cannot get their needs met in their societies competing fairly and squarely under their rules of law and start believing and having faith that fascist dictators will take care of them through violent unlawful means the Game is called DO ME SOMETHING.
Seems to me this hamartic process has happened over and over in Earthian human history, in Germany under Hitler, in Russia under Stalin, in China under Mao Tse Tung, in Cambodia under Pol Pot, and elsewhere for thousands of years; and it could happen again, in the US under Trump and in other countries around Spaceship Earth. Authoritarian undemocratic political parties are now growing stronger in countries such as Hungary, Venezuela, Israel, Germany, France, India, China, and England.
A transactional analysis colleague Jake Jacobs, a social worker in Chicago, spent a good bit of time and energy back in the 1970s and 1980s researching and studying the causes of the German holocaust under Hitler, having had family members gassed at Auschwitz. An amateur photographer, he took trips to Auschwitz for a firsthand view of the concentration camp and its gas chambers that he photographed and studied trying to get a feel for what it was like to have been there and die there. In his research he found that 150,000,000 Earthian humans were murdered by authoritarian dictators in their own and other countries by starvation, wars, and other means in genocidal and democidal operations in the 20th Century. He concluded that a major cause of mass murders by governments is a desire of authoritarian dictators to be the only one that counts.
See Alan Jacobs, MSW, CTA (1991). “Aspects of Survival: Triumph over death and onliness.” Transactional Analysis Journal. 21(1). 4-11.
A purpose of transactional analysis is to help individuals and groups insert new fair causes into unfair natural cause-effect chains so as to increase the probabilities and proportions of winner outcomes occurring in the populace by non-violent means.
Changing a non-winner or loser script into a winner script requires hard work but it can happen if a person somehow acquires new script messages powerful enough to control frustrating, debilitating, or hamartic script messages instilled in his or her sub-conscious mind by a naturally-occurring concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains before s/he was eight years old. TA can provide people basic concepts and tools for attempting such a thing, requiring learning new time structuring patterns and learning to use different ego states and transactional patterns and learning how to communicate in more effective ways psychologically and socially.
Most people seem to think if only Earthian humans could solve their economic, political, military, and religious troubles, beat their competitors and enemies, etc., then everything would be just hunky-dory swell and the bluebirds would start chirping again. Not so, many people would not be happy and successful living in paradise because of script messages instilled in their sub-conscious minds before they were eight years old. In order for everyone to live happily and successfully humans would have to solve not only economic, political, religious, and social problems, but also psychological problems.
Changing a loser or non-winner script into a winner script generally requires changing the Ego States one uses and how much time one spends daily pastiming, performing rituals, doing work, playing psychological Games, and being intimate with others. It entails changing a Not-OK life position into an OK life position.
Here is what Martin Groder, MD, a founder of transactional analysis who studied with Eric Berne, the best transactional analysis teacher and mentor I experienced at Chapel Hill, NC in the late 1970s taught about individual and group OKness that I called Groder’s People Map, in a passage I wrote and published in 2011 in Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, pp. 148-150:
Martin Groder’s People Map
“Humans generally give little thought to what kind of human they are and where they fit in the spectrum of various types of humans. Innumerable philosophers, writers, social scientists, and others have categorized humans in various ways. Following is a schema developed by Martin Groder, MD, a psychiatrist, organizational development consultant, and entrepreneur (Groder, 1977).
“Groder developed this schema while working with hardcore inmates at the maximum security federal prison at Marion, Illinois in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He was involved in a process of changing hard-core criminals into law-abiding citizens. Such a process would challenge the abilities of the most skillful and powerful of change agents.
“According to Groder, humans vary on two fundamental spatial dimensions. One dimension is Okness, which is estimated on the horizontal axis of Figure 1 (see Figure 1 in Born to Learn); the other dimension is the energy level of the individual estimated on the vertical axis.
“People vary in terms of how OK they see, feel about, and experience, (1) themselves, (2) the other individual, (3) their group, (4) other groups, and (5) the world. In Groder’s terms, they are OK or not-OK with respect to I, You, We, They, and It (the world). Groder estimates how OK they are on each of these five existential dimensions on a scale of -1 to +1, -1 being as not-OK as possible and +1 being as OK as possible.
“Thus people with extremely high self-esteem might exist at the +1 level regarding themselves; someone with extremely low self-esteem might exist at the -1 level regarding themselves. People could exist at any level in between, at -.5, 0, +.25, etc. The same would be true of the positions of specific individuals with respect to buddies on a one-to-one basis, groups with which one belongs, other groups with which your group cooperates or competes, and the world in general.
“Summing the 5 existential OKness positions for an individual, I, You, We, They, and It, the highest possible OKness rating would be +5 and the lowest possible would be -5. A +5 person would have the highest possible feelings of Okness regarding his OKness, the OKness of his buddy, the OKness of his group, the OKness of other groups, and the OKness of the world. Such an individual would have very positive feelings and thoughts for self and others. On the other end of the spectrum, a -5 person would have the lowest possible feelings and thoughts for self and others. Very negative people tend to end up in prison. Very positive people tend to end up cultural heroes.
“Probably the most profitable attitude for an entrepreneur in a capitalistic economic system would be I’m OK, my employees are OK, my company is OK, the world is OK, but my competitors aren’t worth a damn, since this attitude would motivate his or her sales employees to steal more business from competitors to increase the profits of his company.
“Entrepreneurs have higher energy levels than middle managers and normal people. It takes less energy to be a normal person than anything else. Entrepreneurs in Groder’s schema have approximately the same energy level on the vertical axis of Figure 1 as Monsters, the -3 OKness level convict leaders of other convicts. Monsters have the attitude “I’m OK, my buddy is OK, but everything else is not OK, and I am going to make the world pay.” According to Groder, it’s more difficult to change the energy level of a human than the OKness position.
“In rehabilitation work, Groder attempted to arc people across the gap of Figure 1, and make +3 OKness level entrepreneurs out of -3 monsters, +2 OKness middle managers out of -2 OKness creeps, slobs, lunch buckets, etc. Sometimes people arc across the gap the other way. Honest entrepreneurs can turn criminal. Entrepreneurs are winner-survivors; Monsters are loser-survivors. Winners achieve goals and objectives; losers do not.”
There is no doubt that Trump has a high energy level, but unfortunately he could become a -3 Monster. He is close to having a -3 OKness level rating now. Whether he is a loser-survivor remains to be seen. There is no doubt that he has been a loser as a business entrepreneur. His father gave him about seven hundred million dollars to play with when he started out, that he mostly squandered one way or another. He has started many businesses and schemes, most legal and some not. Five of them went bankrupt. Along the way he accumulated three failed marriages. He was a successful player in a survivor tv reality show. He did not win a majority popular vote but became US president anyway in 2016 because of the undemocratic USian electoral college. He lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote running for a second term as US president, having in effect been fired from the job of US president after one term. He claimed the second election in 2020 was a fraud and the election was stolen from him. He has told this lie over and over since and still says it running again for a second term as US president now in 2024. So far he has been a loser as a president. If he somehow becomes US president again and installs himself as the first US dictator as he says he will he will no doubt consider himself a winner. If only he could have encountered Martin Groder one on one in his earlier life the current Earthian human OKness level might be a little higher than it is.
See Martin Groder, MD. Business Games: How to Recognize the Players and Deal With Them (1980), Boardroom Books, New York and Graham Barnes, PhD, “Groder’s 5-OK Diagrams,” in Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne: Teachings and Practices of three TA Schools (1977), Harper’s College Press, New York.
And, by the way, the way to deal with Donald Trump now is to vow now not to vote for him November 5, 2024, if you read this before you vote in the USian presidential election dead ahead.
Trump inherited a more or less standard loser dictator script with Don’t Be Close, Don’t Belong, Don’t Think, Don’t Feel for Others, Don’t Be Intellectual, Don’t Be Moral, and Don’t Be Honest Injunction script messages at the Child-Child level, along with Be Smart, Be Superior, Be Powerful, Be Sexually Attractive, Be Right, and Be Rich counter-injunction script messages at the Parent-Parent level.
A bitter pill to swallow found embedded in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn is that everything that happens is either predetermined or accidental, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and therefore no one is to blame or praise, since everything that happens is caused by accidental or inevitable concatenations of infinite cause-effect chains.
Believing and acting otherwise will perpetuate the same sorry I’m OK–You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled humankind since time immemorial contributing to if not causing repeats of historical abominations such as genocides, wars, slavery, economic depressions, famines, mental illnesses, and social collapses.
The Prayer of Serenity goes something like this: Lord give me the intelligence and strength to change what needs changing, and the wisdom to know what I can and cannot change, knowing full well that some suffering, losing, and grieving is inevitable.
Using TA in some cases can help people become more serene, by enabling them to see more clearly what is going on to make salutary changes, or by learning to accept one’s script and focus on finding a niche in which it fits. On the other hand, a basic problem or question is whether serenity is possible in today’s world, beset by global warming and climate change and by escalating tensions and agitations among nations around planet Earth who have nuclear weapons and Game-infested Not OK leaders.
TA never promised anyone any rose gardens, or eternal bliss in heaven, but it does advertise that it can help individuals, groups, and organizations become more OK, OK not only in terms of achieving goals but more OK transacting with others so as to live with more dignity, satisfaction, peace, and tranquility, based on Adult mutually agreed-to contracts.
No one can blame you if you believe in tuning out TA and articles such as this one. Maybe the best strategy is to tune out the world as much as you can, inexorably inching through your life’s wormhole tunnel, reading no newspapers and not watching television, with no Internet. The problem however if you do that is boredom. Most humans have an innate need for stimulation, achievement, and recognition.
Regardless of what sort of cognitive structures humans might use, TA or whatever, sooner or later they have to take action, and this entails defining problems, delineating alternatives, making recommendations, choosing things, trying new things, over and over, till something works.
1 – What is the problem?
2 – What are the alternatives?
3 – What do you recommend?
We live in precarious times that probably encourage people to play more frequently AIN’T IT AWFUL, a psychological Game in which Game players collect strokes for making the world seem worse off than it is, complaining about the evils and troubles of the world, positioning themselves as Victims of obsolete economic, religious, and political policies and systems manipulated and exploited by greedy self-interested power-mad narcissistic sociopathic oligarchs and their corrupt bought and paid for cronies, lackeys, and knaves, such as lobbyists, politicians, religious leaders, and judges, however true this state of affairs might be in reality in various societies.
By the same token, it will do no good for humans to passively pretend the world is just hunky-dory and swell, better off than it really is, with everything coming up roses for everyone, living in small imaginary Candide-like best of all possible worlds, playing a psychological Game called GREENHOUSE by transactional analysts, in which players are rewarded with plastic strokes for making nonsensical positive cheerful upbeat comments about the environment and social, economic, political, and religious states of affairs, regardless of how bleak they are in reality.
It seems to me the most dangerous psychological Game played politically right now around planet Earth is IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU, involving polarized individuals, groups, and organizations who experience increasing insecurity and hopelessness causing them to blame others and find scapegoats for their plights, escalating their anger as they transmit threats from their angry and fearful Parent and Child ego states to the Parent and Child ego states of others, sometimes attacking others verbally and physically for their perceived misdeeds and beliefs. Some of the threats include the threat of international and civil war. Israel is playing a third-degree IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU Game with Palestine right now.
IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU is a Game that entails aggrieved humans psychologically acting as if opposing warring or competing parties maliciously and arbitrarily decided using free will to commit the harmful or heinous actions and deeds they are accused of committing, instead of realizing the others were caused to exist and do what they did by concatenations of infinite cause-effect chains just like you were. Getting rid of the other will not solve problems caused by poor educational systems, poor family scripts, poor religions, and hamartic economic and political policies and systems.
For more information regarding the use of Transactional Analysis https://www.itaaworld.org/ to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning. https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331
For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using TA read my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810
See my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/ for some management science ideas on how human Earthians might eventually co-construct an idealistic democratic bottom-up economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK – You’re OK life position.
This entails human Earthians never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers.
This can be done using linear programming based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form
Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj <, =, or > Bi
as explained in my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/
Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, what would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s computer system and auto-pilot or the human pilot and co-pilot, looking out their windows with their hands on their steering devices, seeing nothing but clouds and lightning below? Thanks are due to Buckminster Fuller for creating this airplane-landing metaphor, that he published in his 1964 book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.
It’s not easy to see what’s really going on, impossible some say, while being inundated and intimidated with fake news daily around Spaceship Earth, made public in mass media and the Internet and in internal communication processes of various types of organizations. To see what’s really going on, Earthian humans have to use inductive and analogical reasoning, based on probability, not deductive logic. Almost never can anyone prove with deductive logic that a general proposition about economic, social, psychological, religious, or political states affairs is absolutely true. About the best humans can hope for is to develop consensual answers that are generally acceptable and true based on probability.
It’s better to be honestly wrong, saying something is true because you really don’t know it’s not true, than to say something is true when you know damn well it’s not true.
Seems to me most lying is lying by omission (people not telling people things they know are true to gain or preserve advantages in competitive situations). Whether lying by omission is more or less harmful in overall perspective than lying by commission (telling people things you know are not true for ill-gotten gains), is debatable, as is proving whether it’s getting easier or harder for most people to see what’s really going on in economic and political states of affairs.
Political parties, governments, and mainstream media often lie by omission about what is going on, presumably to protect national security and their organizational revenues, in many cases socially presenting selective true facts but omitting true analysis about what is really going on.
For whatever it’s worth, I would rather be told what to do by a well-programmed AI robot than a demented deranged unhinged human fascist dictator. On the other hand, I am convinced the best situation would be to be told what to do by a group of randomly-selected intelligent rational humans who had fully studied the facts of the case at hand and who had fully discussed and debated about what to do in an open Game-free, Adult, I’m OK—You’re OK, democratic process.