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

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I’m Ok, You’re Ok (1969) is a valuable guide to understanding how our past experiences and memories affect our life in the present.

The motility which gives birth to the Adult becomes reassuring in later life when a person is in distress. He realizes there is different data from what is taught by the parent and what is felt by the child. 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. We recognize and appreciate the creative thinking which the earlier systems represented, but we do not encumber today’s work with those sometimes less effective methods. The subject feels again the emotion which the situation originally produced in him, and he is aware of the same interpretations, true or false, which he himself gave to the experience in the first place.

Psychoanalysts maintain that the patient has improved when he has succeeded in avoiding this kind of transfer of feelings from childhood.

I’m OK-You’re OK is a thought-provoking and hope-inspiring book on how transactional analysis approaches can improve life and relationships. Despite the numerous literary accomplishments of Games, Harris felt that he could simplify Berne’s theories even more and make them more accessible to a wider audience. The magazines and mental-health associations say psychiatric treatment is a good thing, but what it is or what it accomplishes has not been made clear. Thus the Adult inside us all develops over time, but it is very fragile and can be readily overwhelmed by stressful situations. But sometimes our inner Child can play some troublesome psychological games, such as asserting superiority over others.Its strength is also tested through conflict between the simplistic ideas of the Parent and reality. There are times, said Somerset Maugham, when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. The child has no way to understand what causes approval or disapproval, which frustrates him and leads him to conclude: “I’m not OK”, which is hardwired in our brains and cannot be canceled. Harris disagreed with Berne on a few concepts, but was overall a major proponent of Transactional Analysis. I kept expecting to find an approach or assertion by the author to contradict more modern approaches in therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

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. Psychiatry must face up to the fact that it cannot begin to meet the demands for psychological and social help from the poor, the underachieving in our schools, the frustrated among our blue collar workers, the claustrophobic residents in our crowded cities, and so on almost ad infinitum. If the child very early thinks “I’m not OK”, he also concludes that his parent, the big provider of all his life needs, must be OK. I’m OK – You’re OK: A Practical Guide to Transactional Analysis was published in 1969 and went on to sell over 15 million copies in nearly 25 languages.

In my private practice of psychiatry this has made possible the treatment of four times as many patients as before. 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.