Life position

Prepared By Manu Melwin JoyResearch Scholar

School of Management StudiesCUSAT, Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114

Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com

Kindly restrict the use of slides for personal purpose. Please seek permission to reproduce the same in public

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Life position

• Berne suggested that the

young child, early in the

process of script formation

already has certain

convictions about himself

and the people around him.

• These convictions are likely

to stay with him the rest of

his life.

Life position

• The convictions can be

summarized as follows.

– I am OK or

– I am not OK.

– You are OK or

– You are not OK

Life position

• By putting together in all their

possible combinations, we get

four statements about self and

others.

– I am OK, you are OK.

– I am not OK, you are OK.

– I am OK, you are not OK.

– I am not OK, you are not OK.

Life position• These four views are knows

as life positions. Some writers call them basic positions, existential positions or just positions.

• They represent fundamental stances a person takes up about the essential value he perceives in himself and others. This means more than having an opinion about his own and other people’s behavior.

Life position

• Once the child has adopted

one of these positions, she

is likely to construct all the

rest of her script to fit in

with it.

• Berne wrote: “ Every game,

script and destiny is based

on one of these four basic

patterns”.

Life position

• The child who chooses “I am

OK, you are OK” is likely to

build a winning script.

• He views himself as lovable

and good to have around.

• He decides that his parents

are lovable and trustworthy,

and later extends this view

to people in general.

Life position

• If an infant takes up the

position of “I am not OK, you

are OK”, she is more likely to

write a banal or losing life

story.

• To fit with her basic position,

she will construct her script

round themes of being

victimized and losing out to

others.

Life position• “I am OK, you are not OK” may

form the basis for a script that seems on the face it to be winning.

• But this child will have the conviction that he needs to be one up and put others down.

• He may manage to do this for some of the time, achieving his wants but only with a continual struggle.

• At other times, the people around him will get tired of being one down and reject him.

• Then he will switch from apparent winner to heavy loser.

Life position• The position “I am not OK, you

are not OK” is the most likely foundation for a losing script.

• This child has become convinced that life is futile and full of despair. She views herself as being one down and unlovable.

• She believes no one will help her because they are not OK as well. Thus she will write her script around scenes of rejecting and being rejected.

Origin of Life position• There is some disagreement

among TA practitioners on how life positions originate and at what age.

• Berne believed that the position is taken in early childhood (3-7 years) in order to justify a decision based on early experience.

• For Berne, early decisions come first, and the life position is adopted later in childhood to make the world appear to justify what has been decided.

Origin of Life position• In the view of Claude Steiner, life

position is adopted much earlier.

He sees its origin in the early

months of nursing.

• He suggest that all children begin

in the position I+U+. The child

shifts to another position only if

something interrupts the mutual

interdependence between mother

and the child.

Origin of Life position

• Steiner agrees with Berne in

suggesting that the life

position justifies script

decision.

• But in Steiner’s version, the

life position is adopted first

in time and the decision

come later.

Life position - Definition

“Life position can be defined as one’s

basic belief about self and others, which

are used to justify decisions and

behavior.”

Life position in adulthood – the OK Corral

• Each of us arrives in adulthood having written a script based on one of the four life positions.

• But we don’t stay in that position every hour of the day.

• Minute by minute, we shift between positions.

Life position in adulthood – the OK Corral

• Franklin Ernst had developed a

way of analyzing these shifts.

• He calls it the OK Corral. Ernst

uses the phrase ‘OK with me’

instead of just ‘OK’.

• This helps emphasize that

Okness is a matter of my

conviction about me and my

conviction about you.

Life position in adulthood – the OK Corral

• The vertical axis of the Corral indicates “You are OK” in the upward direction, “You are not OK” going downwards.

• On the horizontal axis, we get ‘I am OK” on the right , ‘I am not OK’ on the left.

• Each of the four quadrants then corresponds to a life position.

Life position in adulthood – the OK Corral

• Franklin Ernst points out that each of the childhood positions is reflected in grown up life by a particular kind of social interaction. He calls this as operation.

• If we get into one of these operations without awareness, from our child ego state, we are likely to create a scripty ‘justification’ for the corresponding life position.

I am OK, you are OK : Get on with

• I have just arrived at my

workplace. In comes the

boss with a stack of papers.

• “Here is the report we have

been waiting for” she says “ I

have marked points for your

action. Will you see to these

and report back, please?”

• “Right” I say “I will do that”.

I am OK, you are OK : Get on with

• In agreeing to the boss’s

request, I have checked with

myself that I am competent

to do what she asks and feel

good about doing it.

• I see her being fair and

reasonable in asking me to

do it.

I am OK, you are OK : Get on with

• Thus I am in the position of “I am OK, you are OK”. In our social interaction, the boss and I are getting one with what we are both there to do.

• Each time I have an interaction from this position, I reinforce my belief that I and others in the world are OK.

I am not OK, you are OK : Get Away From

• I just settled down and opened the report at the first page.

• From the corner of my eye, I see one of my workmate coming to me.

• He wants to spend a lot of time moaning about his work situation, asking my advice and then not taking it.

• I have two options : get into script or respond from Adult.

I am not OK, you are OK : Get Away From

Scripty operation : If I get into script and adopt I-U+ position, I say to myself “ I just cant cope with this fellow’s complaints”. I mumble “Sorry Jim. Have to go out to the bathroom a minute” and make the door. I had to get away from Jim in a scripty way and reinforce my child conviction that I am not OK while others are OK.

I am not OK, you are OK : Get Away From

Adult operation : If I choose to stay in my Adult , I say to myself “ Right now, I am not willing to listen to Jim”. You tell him “ Hey, Jim, that sounds bad. Can’t stop now though. I have got to get down to the library and check some source on this report. Hope you manage to solve your problems”. With Adult awareness, I have chose the operation of getting away from.

I am OK, you are not OK : Get Rid Of

Ten minutes later, I am back in my office with a cup of coffee, well into the report. The door opens again. This time it is my assistant. He looks downcast. He says “ You know that printing job you gave me to set up? I was busy and forgot to get it off. We have missed the printer’s deadline. What do I do?

I am OK, you are not OK : Get Rid OfScripty Operation : I go red in face and snarl at my assistant: “what do you do? I don’t want to hear a word more from you till you have got the job done, understand?”. My heart rate sour and I feel heat under my collar. I say to myself “ Can’t trust anybody”. I have gotten rid of my assistant while creating a justification for believing that I am OK while others are not.

I am OK, you are not OK : Get Rid OfAdult Operation : I reply to my assistant: “Well, it is your job to get his sorted out. Right now I am doing something urgent. So go and find some way of getting this job finished as soon as possible. Come back at four o clock and report to me”. I have gotten rid of my assistant in a way that lets me look after myself and leaves us both OK.

I am not OK, you are not OK : Get Nowhere With

The Phone is rings. It is

my partner calling from

home. “Something awful

has happened. A water

pipe burst and the whole

carpet got soaked before I

could turn the water off!”.

I am not OK, you are not OK : Get Nowhere With

Scripty Operation: I may say to myself : “ I have had enough. I cant take this any longer. And my partner is no help here. It’s hopeless.” I sigh into the phone : “Look, I just can’t take this. It is just too much after the day I have had”. Without waiting for the answer, I hang up the phone. Internally, I have reinforced my view that I and others are not OK.

I am not OK, you are not OK : Get Nowhere With

Adult Operation: Deciding to

stay in Adult, I reply : “ Look,

the harm is done now6. Just

go on hold till I get home.

Then We will see what w6e

can do”. I have chosen the

operation of getting nowhere

with.

Personal change and the OK corral

Though we switch between

the quadrants on the Corral,

we each have one favorite

quadrant where we spend

most of our time while in

script. This will be the one we

decided on in childhood as our

basic position.

Personal change and the OK corral

I am OK, you are OK is the

healthy position, Here, I get

on with living and problem

solving. I act to achieve the

winning outcomes I desire.

This is the only position

based on reality.

Personal change and the OK corral

If my childhood position was I am not OK, you are OK, I am likely to play our my script mainly from the depressive position of feeling one down to others. Unawarely, I will choose my bad feelings and repetitive behavior to confirm that this is my rightful position in the world

Personal change and the OK corral

An early position of I am OK, you are not OK will mean that I live my script mostly from the defensive position of trying to stay one up on others. Those around me are likely to experience me as overbearing, insensitive and aggressive. This is paranoid position and corresponds to the psychiatric diagnosis of character disorder.

Personal change and the OK corral

If I look up basic position of I am not OK, you are not OK as an infant, my script will be played through principally from the futility position. Here I am believing that the world and others are no good, and neither am I . If I wrote a banal script, my pattern will be to get nowhere with most of the things I set out to do in life.

Personal change and the OK corral

The process of change often entails a movement through the Corral in a specific sequence. If the person starts off by spending most of time in I-U-, her next move is likely to be into I+U-. After some time, with that as her most important quadrant, she will shift to I-U+. The final goal is to increase the time spend in I+U+ until it becomes the favorite position.

Personal change and the OK corral

It may seem strange that people often need to shift through I-U+ in order to get from I+U- to I+U+. But the experience of therapy shows that I+U- is often a defense against I-U+. The infant who concluded I am OK and all others are not OK took up that position to defend against the painful realization of being one down and powerless in the face of her parents.

Activity

Draw the axis of OK Corral and

label the quadrants. Now draw

an enclosure on the axes to

show how much time you

spend in each quadrant during

an average day. Franklin Ernst

called this picture

Corralogram.

Activity• What are the circumstances

in which you are likely to get into each quadrant? What do you typically do and say, and how do you feel, when you are in each one?

• What ego states do you come from in each quadrant? (Use functional model). What ego states are you inviting in others?

Activity• What kind of strokes do you give

and get in each quadrant?• Now that you have drawn the

corralogram, is there anything you want to change about it?

• If you do want to make changes, think how you could choose any of the four Adult operations to use instead of getting into scripty responses.

• Decide on at least one occasion when you will test out an Adult operation in the coming week, and do it.

Thank You

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