RAISING KIDS O.K: Transactional Analysis in Human Growth and Development

A presentation of the orthodoxies of Transactional Analysis applied mainly to the parent/ child relationship. Setting up model family interactions on the assumption that we're all in need of ""strokes"" (warm physical or verbal contact between individuals), the authors trace seemingly infinite combinations of giving and getting, positive and negative. Within us, say the TA sages, are the Child, Adult, and Parent (roughly equivalent to Freud's id, ego, and superego), and within the child these exist in primitive states. Diagrams featuring balloons and arrows--something like directions for changing a fuse--point up varieties of exchanges throughout a child's development (in TA-ese, ""attachment,"" ""exploration,"" ""separation,"" etc.). There are discussions of ""life scripts""--how you see your life or have been taught to see it-and many demonstrations of how a member of a family can be trained to alter behavior, accept himself as ""O.K.,"" and still state what he wants 100% of the time. This is not a book for a parent who wants to know how to handle a specific problem now. Rather it supplies a theoretical framework covering not only healthy parent/child interaction but also how to handle ""stroke-loss"" in middle and old age. O.K. for the TA enthusiast; a bit fussy for most.