For the sadness in legitimate humour consists in the fact that honestly and without deceit it reflects in a purely human way upon what it is to be a child.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Very early in life every child concludes, 'I'm not OK.' He makes a conclusion about his parents, also: 'You're OK'. This is the first thing he figures out in his life-long attempt to make sense of himself and the world in which he lives. This position, I'm not ok - you're ok, is the most deterministic decision of his life. It is permanently recorded and will influence everything he does. Because it is a decision it can be changed by a new decision. But not until it is understood.

In order to support these contentions I wish to devote the first part of this chapter to an examination of the situations of the newborn, the young infant, and the growing child, in both the preverbal and verbal years. Many people insist they had a 'happy childhood' and concluded nothing like I'm not ok -you're ok. I believe strongly that every child concludes it. 'happy childhood' notwithstanding. First, I wish to examine the situation of his entry into life and to point to the evidence that the events of his birth and his infant life are recorded, even though they are not remembered.

In this connexion we note again Penfield's conclusions that the brain performs three functions: (1) recording, (2) recalling, and (3) reliving. Although recall from the earliest period of life is not possible, we have evidence that we can and do relive the earliest experiences in the form of returning to the feeling state of the newborn infant. Because the infant cannot use words, his reactions are limited to sensations, feelings, and perhaps vague, archaic fantasies. His feelings are expressed by crying or by various body movements that indicate either distress or comfort. His sensations and fantasies, though ineffable because of his wordlessness at the time they were recorded, do replay occasionally in dreams in later life.

To illustrate: A patient reported a dream that had recurred throughout her life. Each time she had this dream, she awoke in a state of extreme panic, with rapid heartbeat and heavy breathing. She struggled to describe the dream but she could not find words for it. In one attempt at description she said she thought she felt as if she were 'just a tiny, little, small speck, and big, huge, round, cosmic things were swirling around me, like great spirals, getting bigger and bigger, and threatening to engulf me, and I just seemed to disappear in this vast, enormous thing'. Though her report was accompanied by her observation about losing her identity, the nature of the extreme panic would seem to indicate there may have been a fear of losing her life, as a primary biological reaction to the threat of death.

Some time later she again reported the dream. It was the first time she had dreamed it for about a year. She had been traveling, and she and her husband had eaten lunch in an out of-the-way restaurant with an atmosphere of a higher quality than the food's. She did not feel well when they returned to their hotel, so she lay down for a nap. She fell asleep. It was not long before she awoke in the panic of this same dream. She also had severe stomach cramps, which 'had me all doubled up in pain'. No recent event had been particularly anxiety-provoking, and the panic dream seemed to have some direct connexion with the extreme, primordial gut pain. The dream was still indescribable; however, she did report another sensation, the feeling that she was suffocating.

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Certain information about the patient's mother helped to suggest a possible origin of this dream. The mother, a large, plump woman, had breast-fed her children and had held to the idea there was no problem that eating would not cure. Her idea of well-cared-for children was well-fed children. She also was an aggressive, domineering woman. We deduced (which is all we can do) that the dream had its origin in a time before the patient had words, since she could not describe the content. The association with the belly cramp suggested some connexion with an early eating experience. The probability is that if, as an infant, the patient had had enough, or had had a full feeling and quit nursing, the mother would insist she have more. (This was before the era of demand-feeding: 'fill up now, it will have to last you'.) Feelings of 'dream-state' sleepiness, suffocation, and stomach cramps could have been present. The content (the small thing being engulfed by huge, cosmic things) could have been a replay of the infant's perception of her situation - herself, the small speck, being engulfed by the huge, round things, mother's breasts, or the huge presence of the mother herself.

This type of dream material lends support to the assumption that our earliest experiences, though ineffable, are recorded and do replay in the present. Another indication that experiences are recorded from the time of birth is the retention of past gains. The infant's responses to external stimuli, although at first instinctual, soon reflect conditioned or learned (or recorded) experience. For instance, he learns to look in the direction of mother's footsteps. If all experiences and feelings are recorded, we can understand the extreme panic, or rage, or fear we feel in certain situations today as a reliving of the original state of panic or rage or fear that we felt as infants. We can think of this as a replay of the original tape.

To understand the implications, it is important to examine the situation of the infant. In reference to Figure 7, we see a line representing a span from the moment of conception to the age of five. The first block of time is the nine months between conception and biological birth. During these nine months there occurred a beginning of life in the most perfect environment the human individual may ever experience. This way of life is referred to as a state of symbiotic intimacy.

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Then, at biological birth, the little individual, within the brief span of a few hours, is pushed out into a state of catastrophic contrast in which he is exposed to foreign and doubtless terrifying extremes of cold, roughness, pressure, noise, nonsupport, brightness, separateness, and abandonment. The infant is, for a short time, cut off, apart, separate, unrelated. 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 which so many individuals experience following situations of extreme stress. The patient describes a dream in which he is swept from a body of water of relative calm into a sewer or drainage pipe. He experiences the feeling of increasing velocity and compression. This feeling also is experienced in the state of claustrophobia. The infant is flooded with overwhelming, unpleasant stimulations, and the feelings resulting in the child are, according to Freud, the model for all later anxiety. {1}

Within moments the infant is introduced to a rescuer, another human being who picks him up, wraps him in warm coverings, supports him, and begins the comforting act of 'stroking'. This is the point (Figure 7) of Psychological Birth. This is the first incoming data that life 'out there' isn't all bad. It is a reconciliation, a reinstatement of closeness. It turns on his will to live. Stroking, or repetitious bodily contact, is essential to his survival. Without it he will die, if not physically, then psychologically. Physical death from a condition known as marasmus once was a frequent occurrence in foundling homes where there was a deprivation of this early stroking. There was no physical cause to explain these deaths except the absence of essential stimulation.

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This painful on-again-off-again keeps the infant in a constant state of disequilibrium. During the first two years of life he does not have conceptual 'thinking' tools - words - to construct an explanation of his uncertain status in his world. He is, however, continually recording the feelings which grow from the relationship between himself and others, primarily  mother, and these feelings are directly related to stroking and non-stroking. Whoever provides stroking is ok. His estimate of himself is unsure because his ok feelings are transitory and continually being replaced by not ok feelings. Finally the uncertainty convinces him I'm not ok. At what point does the child make final his decision as to the position, I'm Not Ok-You're Ok?

Piaget, {2} on the basis of meticulous observations of infants and small children, believes that the development of causality (what follows what) begins in the early months of life and is acquired by the end of the second year. In other words, data, in the form of a jumble of impressions, begins accumulating in certain sequential patterns, to a point where a preverbal position, or conclusion, is possible. Piaget says: 'In the course of the first two years of childhood the evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, and also the correlative elaboration of the universe, seem to lead to a state of equilibrium bordering on rational thought.' I believe this state of equilibrium, evident at the end of the second year or during the third year, is the product of the child's conclusion about himself and others: his life position. Once his position is decided he has something solid to work with, some basis for predictability. Piaget says that these early mental processes are not capable of 'knowing or stating truths' but are limited to desiring success or practical adaptation: If I'm not ok and you're ok, what can I do to make you, an ok person, be good to me, a not ok person? The position may seem unfavourable, but it is a true impression, to the child, and it is better than nothing. Thus the state of equilibrium. The Adult in the little person has achieved its first mastery in 'making sense of life', in solving what Adler called 'life's central problem' - the attitude towards others -and what Sullivan called the 'self-attitudes which are carried forever by the individual'.

One of the clearest statements on the development of positions is made by Kubie:

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Kubie then raises the question as to whether or not these positions are alterable later in life. I believe they are. Although the early experiences which culminated in the position cannot be erased, I believe the early positions can be changed. What was once decided can be undecided.

Transactional Analysis constructs the following classification of the four possible life positions held with respect to oneself and others:

1. I'm Not Ok-You're Ok

2. I'm Not Ok-You're Not Ok

3. I'm Ok-You're Not Ok

4. I'm Ok - You're Ok

Before I elaborate each position I wish to state a few general observations about positions. I believe that by the end of the second year of life, or sometime during the third year, the child has decided on one of the first three positions. The I'm not ok - you're ok is the first tentative decision based on the experiences of the first year of life. By the end of the second year it is either confirmed and settled or it gives way to Position 2 or 3: I'm not ok-you're not ok or I'm ok-you're not ok. Once finalized, the child stays in his chosen position and it governs everything he does. It stays with him the rest of his life, unless he later consciously changes it to the fourth position. People do not shift back and forth. The decision as to the first three positions is based totally on stroking and non-stroking. The first three are nonverbal decisions. They are conclusions, not explanations. Yet they are more than conditioned responses. They are what Piaget calls intellectual elaborations in the construction of causality. In other words, they are a product of Adult data processing in the very little person.

This is the universal position of early childhood, being the infant's logical conclusion from the situation of birth and infancy. There is OK-ness in this position, because stroking is present. Every child is stroked in the first year of life simply by the fact that he has to be picked up to be cared for. Without at least minimal handling the infant would not survive. There is also NOT-OK-ness. That is the conclusion about himself. I believe the evidence points to the overwhelming accumulation of not ok feelings in the child, making logical (on the basis of the evidence he- has) his not ok conclusion about himself. In explaining Transactional Analysis to patients and nonpatients I have found a generally that's it! response to the explanation of the origin and existence of the not ok Child. I believe that acknowledging the not ok Child in each of us is the only sympathetic, thus curative, way games can be analysed. Considering the universality of games, the universality of the I'm not ok is a reasonable deduction. Adler's break with Freud was over this point: sex was not at the basis of man's struggle in life, but rather feelings of inferiority, or not ok, which were apparent universally. He claimed that the child, by virtue of his small size and helplessness, inevitably considered himself inferior to the adult figures in his environment. Harry Stack Sullivan was greatly influenced by Adler, and I was greatly influenced by Sullivan, with whom I studied for the five years preceding his death. Sullivan, whose central contribution to psychoanalytic thought was the concept of 'interpersonal relationships', or transactions, claimed that the child built his self-estimate totally on the appraisal of others, what he called 'reflected appraisals'. He said:

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The child lacks the equipment and experience necessary to form an accurate picture of himself, so his only guide is the reactions of others to him. There is very little cause for him to question these appraisals, and in any case he is far too helpless to challenge them or to rebel against them. He passively accepts the judgments, which are communicated empathetically at first, and by words, gestures, and deeds in this period ... thus the self attitudes learned early in life are carried forever by the individual, with some allowance for the influence of extraordinary environmental circumstances and modification through later experiences. {4}

In the first position the person feels at the mercy of others. He feels a great need for stroking, or recognition, which is the psychological version of the early physical stroking. In this  position there is hope because there is a source of stroking -you're ok - even if the stroking is not constant. The Adult has something to work on: what must I do to gain their strokes, or their approval? There are two ways in which people may attempt to live out this position.

The first is to live out a life script {*} that confirms the not ok. It is written unconsciously by the Child. The script may call for a life of withdrawal, since it is too painful to be around ok people. Thus a person may seek stroking through make-believe and engage in an elaborate wish-life of if 1 and when I. Another person's script may call for behaviour which is provoking to the point where others turn on him (negative stroking), thus proving once again, I'm not ok. This is the case of the 'bad little boy'. You say I'm bad so I'll be bad! He may kick and spit and claw his way through life and thus achieve a fraudulent integrity with at least one constant he can count on: I'm not ok - you're ok. There is a kind of miserable sense in this, in that the integrity of the position is maintained, but it leads to despair. The ultimate resolution of this position is giving up (leading to institutionalization) or suicide.

A more common way to live out this position is by a counter-script (also unconscious) with borrowed lines from the Parent: you can be ok, if. Such a person seeks friends and associates who have a big Parent because he needs big strokes, and the bigger the Parent, the better the strokes, (ok strokes can only come from ok people, and the Parent is ok, as it was in the beginning.) This person is eager, willing, and compliant to the demands of others. 'Some of our best people' are where they are because of these efforts to gain approval. However, they are committed to a lifetime of mountain climbing, and when they reach the top of one mountain they are confronted by still another mountain. The not ok writes the script; the you're ok (and I want to be like you) writes the counter script. Neither works in producing happiness or a sense of lasting worth, however, because the position has not changed. 'No matter what I do, I'm still not ok.'

Once the position is uncovered and changed, the achievements and skills that have resulted from the counter script can serve the person well when he builds a new and conscious life plan with the Adult.

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If all children who survive infancy initially conclude I'm not ok-you're ok, what happens to produce the second position, I'm not ok and neither are you? What happened to the you're ok? What happened to the source of stroking?

By the end of the first year something significant has happened to the child. He is walking. He no longer has to be picked up. If his mother is cold and nonstroking, if she only put up with him during the first year because she had to, then his learning to walk means that his 'babying' days are over. The stroking ceases entirely. In addition punishments come harder and more often as he is able to climb out of his crib, as he gets into everything, and won't stay put. Even self-inflicted hurts come more frequently as his mobility sends him tripping over. obstacles and tumbling down stairs.

Life, which in the first year had some comforts, now has none. The stroking has disappeared. If this state of abandonment and difficulty continues without relief through the second year of life, the child concludes I'm not ok - you're not ok. In this position the Adult stops developing since one of its primary functions - getting strokes - is thwarted in that there is no source of stroking. A person in this position gives up. There is no hope. He simply gets through life and ultimately may end up in a mental institution in a state of extreme withdrawal, with regressive behaviour which reflects a vague, archaic longing to get back to life as it was in the first year during which he received the only stroking he ever knew - as an infant who was held and fed.

It is hard to imagine anyone going through life without any stroking. Even with a nonstroking mother there most certainly appeared persons who were capable of caring for a person in this position and who, in fact, did stroke. However, once a position is decided, all experience is selectively interpreted to support it. If a person concludes you're not ok, it applies to all other people, and he rejects their stroking, genuine though it may be. He originally found some measure of integrity or sense in his early conclusion; therefore new experiences do not readily break it down. This is the deterministic nature of positions. Also, the individual in this position stops using his Adult with regard to his relationships with others. Therefore, even in treatment, it is difficult to reach his Adult, particularly in view of the fact that the therapist also occupies the category you're not ok.

There is one condition in which I'm not ok-you're not ok may be the initial position, rather than secondary to the first. This is the condition of the autistic child. The autistic child remains psychologically unborn. Infantile autism appears to be the response of the immature organism to catastrophic stress in an external world in which there is no stroking which gets through to him. The autistic child is one, who in the critical early weeks of life, did not feel himself to be rescued. It is as if he found 'nobody out there' after his catastrophic expulsion into life.

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Schopler {5} concludes there is a physiological factor which combines with insufficient stroking to produce the autistic child. The factor is thought to be a high stimulus barrier so that the stroking which is given does not register. He may not be totally deprived of stroking, but he may be deprived of his sensation of it, or an 'accumulation' of his sensations of it. The infant is then seen by the parents as a nonresponsive child (he doesn't like to be held, he just lies there, he's different), and then even the stroking which has been given is withheld because 'he doesn't like to be held'. It is possible that vigorous stroking (more than is given ordinarily) may have overcome the barrier. Once I observed an eleven-year-old, nonverbal, autistic boy evidence the seeming perception of the I' M NOT OK-YOU'RE not ok position by an intense, repeated hitting with his fist, first his counsellor, and then his own head. It was as if he were acting out his view of life: You're not ok and I'm not ok. Let's smash both of us.

A child who is brutalized long enough by the parents he initially felt were ok will switch positions to the third, or criminal, position: I'm ok - you're not ok. There is OK-ness here, but  where does it come from? Where is the source of stroking if you're not ok? This is a difficult question considering that the position is decided in the second or third year of life. If a two-year-old concludes I'm ok, does this mean his ok is the product of 'self-stroking', and, if so, how does a small child stroke himself?

I believe this self-stroking does in fact occur during the time that a little person is healing from major, painful injuries such as are inflicted on a youngster who has come to be known as 'the battered child'. This is the child who has been beaten so severely that bones and skin are broken. Anyone who has had a broken bone or massive bruises knows the pain. Common in battered children are extremely painful injuries such as broken ribs, smashed kidneys, and fractured skulls. How does the every-breath agony of broken ribs or the excruciating headache from blood in the spinal fluid feel to a toddler? Every hour five infants in this country receive injuries of this kind at the hands of their parents.

I believe that it is while this little individual is healing, in a sense 'lying there licking his wounds', that he experiences a sense of comfort alone and by himself, if for no other reason than that his improvement is in such contrast to the gross pain he has just experienced. It is as if he senses, I'll be all right if you leave me alone. I'm ok by myself. As the brutal parents reappear, he may shrink in horror that it will happen again. You hurt me! You are not ok. I'm ok - you're not ok. The early history of many criminal psychopaths, who occupy this position, reveal this kind of gross physical abuse.

Such a little person has experienced brutality, but he has also experienced survival. What has happened can happen again. I did survive. I will survive. He refuses to give up. As he grows older he begins to strike back. He has seen toughness and knows how to be tough. He also has permission (in his Parent) to be tough and to be cruel. Hatred sustains him although he may learn to conceal it with a mask of measured politeness. Caryl Chessman said, 'There is nothing that sustains you like hate; it is better to be anything than afraid.'

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For this child the I'm ok - you're not ok position is a life-saving decision. The tragedy, for himself and for society, is that he goes through life refusing to look inward. He is unable to be objective about his own complicity in what happens to him. It is always 'their fault'. It's 'all them'. Incorrigible criminals occupy this position. They are the persons 'without a conscience' who are convinced that they are ok no matter what they do and that the total fault in every situation lies in others. This condition, which at one time was referred to as 'moral imbecility', is actually a condition in which the person has shut out any incoming data that anyone is ok. For this reason treatment is difficult, since the therapist is not ok along with everyone else. The ultimate expression of this position is homicide, felt by the killer to be justifiable (in the same way that he felt justified in taking the position in the first place).

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 favour 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.

The fourth position, I'm ok-you're ok, because it is a conscious and verbal decision, can include not only an infinitely greater amount of information about the individual and others, but also the incorporation of not-yet-experienced possibilities which exist in the abstractions of philosophy and religion. The first three positions are based on feelings. The fourth is based on thought, faith, and the wager of action. The first three have to do with why. The fourth has to do with why not} Our understanding of ok is not bound to our own personal experiences, because we can transcend them into an abstraction of ultimate purpose for all men.

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We do not drift into a new position. It is a decision we make. In this respect it is like a conversion experience. We cannot decide on the fourth position without a great deal more information than most persons have available to them about the circumstances surrounding the original positions decided on so early in life. Fortunate are the children who are helped early in life to find they are ok by repeated exposure to situations in which they can prove, to themselves, their own worth and the worth of others. Unfortunately, the most common position, shared by 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' persons alike, is the I'm not ok - you're ok position. The most common way of dealing with this position is by the playing of games.

I believe all games have their origin in the simple childhood game, easily observed in any group of three-year-olds: 'Mine Is Better Than Yours'. This game is played to bring a little momentary relief from the awful burden of the not ok. It is essential to keep in mind what the I'm not ok - you're ok position means to the three-year-old. I'm not ok means: I'm two feet tall, I'm helpless, I'm defenceless, I'm dirty, nothing I do is right, I'm clumsy, and I have no words with which to try to make you understand how it feels. You're ok means: You are six feet tall, you are powerful, you are always right, you have all the answers, you are smart, you have life or death control over me, and you can hit me and hurt me, and it's still OK.

Any relief to this unjust state of affairs is welcome to the child. A bigger dish of ice cream, pushing to get first in line, laughing at sister's mistakes, beating up little brother, kicking the cat, having more toys, all give momentary relief even though down the road is another disaster like a spanking, getting hit by little brother, being clawed by the cat, or finding someone who has more toys.

The aim of this book is to establish that the only way people get well or become ok is to expose the childhood predicament underlying the first three positions and prove how current behaviour perpetuates the positions.

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Finally, it is essential to understand that I'm ok-you're ok is a position and not a feeling. The not ok recordings in the Child are not erased by a decision in the present. The task at hand is how to start a collection of recordings which play ok outcomes to transactions, successes in terms of correct probability estimating, successes in terms of integrated actions which make sense, which are programmed by the Adult, and not by the Parent or Child, successes based on an ethic which can be supported rationally. A man who has lived for many years by the decisions of an emancipated Adult has a great collection of such past experiences and can say with assurance, 'I know this works'. The reason I'm ok -you're ok works is that instant joy or tranquility is not expected.

One day a young divorcee in one of my groups complained angrily, 'You and your damned ok bit! I went to a party last night and I decided to be just as nice as could be, and I decided everyone else there was ok. And I went up to this woman I know, and I said, "Why don't you come over and have coffee with me sometime?" and she cut me down to two feet tall with "Well, I would like to, but you know everybody doesn't have the time to sit around and gas all day the way you do." It's for the birds ... won't work!'

Personal or social storms are not going to subside immediately when we assume a new position. The Child wants immediate results - like instant coffee, and immediate relief from acid indigestion. The Adult can comprehend that patience and faith are required. We cannot guarantee instant ok feelings by the assuming of the I'm-ok-you're-ok position. We have to be sensitive to the presence of the old recordings; but we can choose to turn them off when they replay in a way that undermines the faith we have in a new way to live, which, in time, will bring forth new results and new happiness in our living. The Adult also can recognize the Child responses in others and can choose not to respond in kind.