I'm OK - You're OK Quotes

“Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They have invested in the same slot machines without a pay-off for so long that they finally are willing either to stop playing, or to move on to others. Their migraines hurt, their ulcers bleed. They are alcoholic. They have hit the bottom. They beg for relief. They want to change.

Another thing that makes people want to change is a slow type of despair called ennui, or boredom. This is what the person has who goes through life saying, "So what?" until he finally asks the ultimate big "So What?" He is ready to change.

A third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can. This has been an observable effect of Transactional Analysis. Many people who have shown no particular desire to change have been exposed to Transactional Analysis through lectures or by hearing about it from someone else. This knowledge has produced an excitement about new possibilities, which has led to their further inquiry and a growing desire to change. There is also the type of patient who, although suffering from disabling symptoms, still does not really want to change. His treatment contract reads, "I'll promise to let you help me if I don't have to get well." This negative attitude changes, however, as the patient begins to see that there is indeed another way to live. A working knowledge of P-A-C makes it possible for the Adult to explore new and exciting frontiers of life, a desire which has been there all along but has been buried under the burden of the NOT OK.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK

“Through the Adult the little person can begin to tell the difference between life as it was taught and demonstrated to him (Parent), life as he felt it or wished it or fantasied it (Child), and life as he figures it out by himself (Adult).”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“This is the essence of all games. Games are a way of using time for people who cannot bear the stroking starvation of withdrawal and yet whose NOT OK position makes the ultimate form of relatedness, intimacy, impossible.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“The person in the I’M OK—YOU’RE NOT OK position suffers from stroking deprivation. A stroke is only as good as the stroker. And there are no OK people. Therefore there are no OK strokes. Such a person may develop a retinue of “yes men” who praise and stroke him heavily. Yet he knows they are not authentic strokes because he has had to set them up himself, in the same way he had to produce his own stroking in the first place. The more they praise him the more despicable they become, until he finally rejects them all in favor of a new group of yes men. “Come close so I can let you have it” is an old recording. That’s the way it was in the beginning.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“Would you rather be stung by a thousand wasps or sleep in the pigpen? Answer one or the other! You have to answer one or the other. Grownup versions may be more sophisticated, as, Are you a Democrat or a Republican? The”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“It is my opinion that religious experience may be a unique combination of Child (a feeling of intimacy) and Adult (a reflection on ultimacy) with the total exclusion of the Parent. I believe the total exclusion of the Parent is what happens in kenosis, or self-emptying. . . . I believe that what is emptied is the Parent. How can one experience joy, or ecstasy, in the presence of those recordings in the Parent with produced NOT OK originally? How can I feel acceptance in the presence of the earliest felt rejection? It is true that Mother was a participant in intimacy in the beginning, but it was an intimacy which did not last, was conditional, and was "never enough." I believe the Adult's function in the religious experience is to block out the Parent in order that the Natural Child may reawaken to its own worth and beauty as a part of God's creation.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK

“Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“Common to the many theories about the birth trauma is the assumption that the feelings produced by this event were recorded and reside in some form in the brain. This assumption is supported by the great number of repetitious dreams of the “drainage pipe” variety”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“ما ممکن است از بدی آنقدر نفرت داشته باشیم که دوست داشتن خوبی را فراموش کنیم.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK

“I am a person. You are a person. Without you I am not a person, for only through you is language made possible and only through language is thought made possible, and only through thought is humanness made possible. You have made me important. Therefore, I am important and you are important. If I devalue you, I devalue myself. This is the rationale of the position I’M OK – YOU’RE OK.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“Time is what we want most, but what alas! we use worst. – William Penn”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“human behaviour lie not only in the past but in man’s ability to contemplate the future, or estimate probabilities:”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“A relationship of intimacy between two people may be thought of as existing independent of the first five ways of time structuring: withdrawal, pastimes, activities, rituals, and games. It is based on the acceptance by both people of the I’M OK—YOU’RE OK position. It rests, literally, in an accepting love where defensive time structuring is made unnecessary. Giving and sharing are spontaneous expressions of joy rather than responses to socially programed rituals. Intimacy is a game-free relationship, since goals are not ulterior. Intimacy is made possible in a situation where the absence of fear makes possible the fullness of perception, where beauty can be seen apart from utility, where possessiveness is made unnecessary by the reality of possession.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“Parent is not the same as mother or father, Adult means something quite different from a grownup, and Child is not the same as a little person.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“The ritual is designed to get a group of people through the hour without having to get close to anyone. They may, but they don’t have to. It is more comfortable to go to a High Church Mass than to attend a revival service where one may be asked, “Are you saved, brother?” Sexual relations are less awkward in the dark for people for whom physical intimacy has no involvement at the level of personality. There is less chance for involvement in throwing a cocktail party than in having a dinner for six. There is little commitment, therefore little fulfillment. Rituals, like withdrawal, can keep us apart. An”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“The purpose of this book is not only the presentation of new data but also an answer to the question of why people do not live as good as they know how already.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“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 non-specialists.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“do unto others as you would have them do unto you;”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“The Parent is a huge collection of recordings in the brain of unquestioned or imposed external events perceived by a person in his early years, a period which we have designated roughly as the first five years of life.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“is realistic in that it confronts the patient with the fact that he is responsible for what happens in the future no matter what has happened in the past. Moreover, it is enabling persons to change, to establish self-control and self-direction, and to discover the reality of a freedom of choice.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“Adult data accumulates as a result of the child’s ability to find out for himself what is different about life from the “taught concept” of life in his Parent and the “felt concept” of life in his Child. The Adult develops a “thought concept” of life based on data gathering and data processing.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK

“The fact that we do not have absolute certainty in regard to any human conclusions does not mean that the task of inquiry is fruitless. We must, it is true, always proceed on the basis of probability, but to have probability is to have something. What we seek in any realm of human thought is not absolute certainty, for that is denied us as men, but rather the more modest path of those who find dependable ways of discerning different degrees of probability.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm Ok, You're Ok: A practical guide to Transactional Analysis

“There are many other intense feelings associated with pregnancy, which Gerald Caplan refers to as “a period of increased susceptibility to crisis, a period when problems of an important nature appear to be present in an increased degree.”2 In addition to the external economic and social changes there are internal changes, both metabolic and emotional. For mother there is a new role, particularly if this is her first baby; there is the aloneness of labor and the loneliness of being home with the baby, particularly if she previously had been a career woman; and there is the new responsibility of structuring time. There also is a profound realization for the woman having her first baby that she will never be a little girl again, that she has passed beyond the pale into the older”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK, You're OK