Ah! Transactional Analysis. Yes, I grew up in an environment
where that was everywhere I went, although I didn't know its
name. I absorbed a lot of it as true and it has become part of
my... lingo I suppose, in a shortened fashion. Related, on the
back of the toilet growing up was a book, "Scripts People Play".
Elementary school kid, bored during a long sit, I read it. Over
and over, because it just sat there. Easy stuff. We're all but
players on a stage, reciting our parts and we forgot it was all
but a play. Shakespeare revisited, although I learned the pop
psych before I learned the Shakespeare it was based on. The I'm
ok/not ok, we mocked openly in school. There were posters
EVERYWHERE about it. It was THE THING that was going to cure all
the ills of society. Yet, I absorbed some of it. Oddly enough,
it softened relations with many people and turned out to be a
practical way to relate to people socially who were causing
problems. Do I believe it on a deep down level? Not really. But
it's practical. There's the American again.
