I'm Ok, You're Ok: A Practical Approach to Human Psychology

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Many of its most thoughtful leaders are giving increasing thought to the new role which psychiatry must play during the next several decades, in not only broadening its own parochial training, but in joining with other behavioral disciplines on an equal footing in establishing training programs for the thousands upon thousands of new mental health workers we will need if we are to achieve the goals which President Kennedy proclaimed in his historic 1963 mental health message. Everyone, at one point or another, feels so overwhelmed that they believe things will never get any easier.

It can be unsettling to look our inner child or parent squarely in the face – but according to the author, all of us have these two forces within us. Central to most religious practices is a Child acceptance of authoritarian dogma as an act of faith, with limited, if not absent, involvement of the Adult.Harris applies TA to these issues and concludes his book with the hope that nations will soon gain the maturity to engage in Adult to Adult dialogue, rather than conducting diplomacy in the collective archaic ego states of Parent or Child, which he sees as causing war and disharmony. I for one believe that many children selfishly put themselves at the center of the world, are very optimist -Martin Seligman proves it-, and can also have very high self-esteem. As difficult as this task is, it must be done if psychiatry is to be heard in the civic halls of our nation. As children we see that adults are large, strong and competent and that we are little, weak and often make mistakes, so we conclude I'm Not OK, You're OK. Each person chooses one of the four positions as a toddler as a basic disposition and will most likely keep it for a lifetime.

I’m OK-You’re OK was a book written for laypeople to better understand the approaches of transactional analysis and apply those strategies in their lives. Linking motility of the child to reassurance and later the “going for a walk” of the adult as a way of regaining certainty is certainly plausible, but it seems a huge stretch to me. Though this process usually happens unconsciously, we can also take the time to dig up memories, especially when we want to analyze our emotions.

Hundreds of thousands of people have found this phenomenal breakthrough in psychotherapy a turning point in their lives. There’s a similar process of recognizing your own emotional patterns that will allow you to arrive at the feeling of “I’m okay. When the point was stimulated a fourth time, he heard the same song and explained that it was the theme song of a certain radio program. In 1973, the book continued to sell well, and ultimately remained on the Best Seller List for exactly 70 weeks.

The more we get to know the content of our Parent and Child, the more we can separate them from our Adult. Dust Jackets are not guaranteed and when still present, they will have various degrees of tear and damage. Since religious people have in the religious dogmas such a strong parent within them, they are often anxious in scorekeeping their behavior against the parent’s dogmas. Our own memories are most often triggered by everyday occurrences and impressions, such as sounds or smells. Certainly, the Adult in Burns’ book can be equated with the ‘higher self’ that forms the centerpiece of so much self-help and New Age writing.

The psychoanalysts refer to this as transference – that is, the situation provokes a transfer of feelings and related behaviour from the past, when the patient was a child, into the present, in which the Child in the patient responds as it once did to the authority of the parent.

Luckily, there are ways to recognize and control these parts of ourselves, and to set new patterns of thought and behavior.Harris continues by offering practical case studies showing applications of TA to marriage and the raising of both children and adolescents. Throughout the episode, he ends conversations with people not saying "I'm okay, you're okay," despite it often being a non sequitur. They may know that the experts have had a lot to say about human behavior, but this knowledge does not seem to have the slightest effect on their hangover, their splintering marriage, or their cranky children. But sometimes our inner Child can play some troublesome psychological games, such as asserting superiority over others. It is estimated by the publisher to have sold over 15 million copies to date [4] and to have been translated into over a dozen languages.