Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis. Pdfdrive com

REFERENCES
1.
Berne, E., ‘Intuition IV: Primal Images & Primal Judgments’, Psychiatric
Quarterly, 29: 634–658, 1955.
2.
Jaensch, E. R., Eidetic Imagery, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1930.
3.
These experiments are still in the pilot stage at the San Francisco Social
Psychiatry Seminars. The effective experimental use of transactional analysis
requires special training and experience, just as the effective experimental use of
chromatography or infra-red spectrophotometry does. Distinguishing a game
from a pastime is no easier than distinguishing a star from a planet. See Berne,
E., ‘The Intimacy Experiment’, Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 3: 113, 1964;
‘More About Intimacy’, ibid., 3: 125, 1964.
4.
Some infants are corrupted or starved very early (marasmus, some colics)
and never have a chance to exercise this capacity.

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17 · The Attainment of Autonomy
P
ARENTS
, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave,
think, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since
they are deeply ingrained and are necessary during the first two or three decades
of life for biological and social survival. Indeed, such liberation is only possible
at all because the individual starts off in an autonomous state, that is, capable of
awareness, spontaneity and intimacy, and he has some discretion as to which
parts of his parents’ teachings he will accept. At certain specific moments early
in life he decides how he is going to adapt to them. It is because his adaptation is
in the nature of a series of decisions that it can be undone, since decisions are
reversible under favourable circumstances.
The attainment of autonomy, then, consists of the overthrow of all those
irrelevancies discussed in
Chapters 13
,
14
and
15
. And such overthrow is never
final: there is a continual battle against sinking back into the old ways.
First, as discussed in
Chapter 13
, the weight of a whole tribal or family
historical tradition has to be lifted, as in the case of Margaret Mead’s villagers in
New Guinea;
1
then the influence of the individual parental, social and cultural
background has to be thrown off. The same must be done with the demands of
contemporary society at large, and finally the advantages derived from one’s
immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Then all the easy
indulgences and rewards of being a Sulk or a Jerk, as described in
Chapter 14
,
have to be given up. Following this, the individual must attain personal and
social control, so that all the classes of behaviour described in the Appendix,
except perhaps dreams, become free choices subject only to his will. He is then
ready for game-free relationships such as that illustrated in the paradigm in
Chapter 15
. At this point he may be able to develop his capacities for autonomy.
In essence, this whole preparation consists of obtaining a friendly divorce from
one’s parents (and from other Parental influences) so that they may be agreeably
visited on occasion, but are no longer dominant.

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REFERENCE
1.
Mead, M., New Lives for Old, Gollancz, 1956.

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