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Does it feel good to defeat or humiliate the bad guys and/or the
establishment? Do you enjoy putting down others? Are you more
interested in fun, music, comedy, or sex, i.e. natural child or self-
oriented, than nurturing parent or others-oriented? Do you prefer
exciting adventure, danger, and violent shows? Does controlling and
manipulating others have a special appeal?
Write out your Life Script. We have just considered your views of
others (OK or not OK) and yourself (OK or not OK), the psychological
needs driving your game playing, and the roles and pay offs that
satisfy your unconscious needs. All of these experiences and exercises
should help you get in touch with the emotions and motives that
underlie your life script. Read about scripts in chapter 9, many
examples are given.
According to Eric Berne (1973), there are three kinds of scripts:
losers, non-winners, and winners. A "loser" script has an unhappy
ending; it may have been started by parental injunctions, such as
"Don't be too cute and take attention away from me," "Don't stay
around me, you irritate me," or "Don't be smarter than I am." This is
your parents' Child ego state talking, not their conscious Adult ego
state. The person with a loser script may rationalize the failures in
his/her life by frequently saying, "If only such and such hadn't
happened," "Someday it will be better" (but someday never comes), "I
can't do that," and so on. To turn ourselves from "frogs" into
"princes/princesses," we have to recognize the injunctions, ego states,
life position, games, and scripts. Your Adult has to be in control and
develop your best selves. You have to kiss all your warts and frogs
yourself.
A non-winner was referred to as a "happy frog" who never quite
becomes a prince or princess. Berne said the toughest part of his job
as a therapist was telling people there is no Santa Claus, no magical
solutions, no free lunch. Non-winners are also rationalizers and
deniers, saying, "things will be better after...," "things aren't as bad as
they could be," "things didn't turn out well, but at least I tried," etc.
Some people have to become more unhappy and do more self-helping
before they become a prince/princess.
Winners learn to reject the destructive "witch messages" from
his/her parents' Child ego state. They use their Adult ego state to re-
write their life script, if needed, making wise decisions about life goals,
relationships, time management, values, tolerance of others, self-
acceptance and so on.
Eric Berne, like Freud, was a "winner" in his work. He worked hard
to "make something of himself" and when others opposed his theories
he became an outstanding authority by establishing his own method of
treatment, Transactional Analysis. He let his "Natural Child" devise
clever names for games, his "Little Professor" analyze the pay offs, his
"Adaptive Child" keep everything organized and so on. Berne, the
person who helped turn the psychoanalytic world towards
