I started writing about Transactional Analysis (TA) last August 11, 2023 (https://wordpress.com/post/jaylazzo.home.blog/2983). In a general sense, I find this approach to be a fairly consistent model with applications in improving mental health, communications, and relationships. In that blog, I specifically used TA to explain the tendency of people to wear masks.

This next series of blogs will focus more on my reflections about Transactional Analysis itself. These will not so much be about the approach — a Google search will easily bring out many sites that are dedicated to explaining the science — but rather about my personal experiences and reflections.

In this blog I try to answer the question: In real terms, is it possible for an individual to conclude I+U+ by the end of their childhood.

The answer introduces the central concept of OKness.

What does it mean in Transactional Analysis for a person to conclude “I’m OK, You’re OK“?

First of all, OKness, the state of being OK, doesn’t mean feelings. Nor is it simple self-esteem. OKness is an “existential” judgment about one’s worth. Am I worthy as a person? That’s pretty loaded stuff, hard to define. It suffices at this point to say that if you’re OK, you have high self-esteem. This is not the same as self-confidence, which is worthiness on the basis of some status, knowledge, special skill, academic degree. Self esteem is simply the sense that one is worthy to even be, unconditionally.

Before the age of reason a child only feels in response to actual stimuli. And most of what it feels gives it a SENSE of itself as not being OK. The child is small, defenseless, doesn’t know how to operate the electric fan, doesn’t know when to share or not to share, etc. It takes an adult, an all-knowing, all-powerful, 6-foot tall adult to put things in order. That adult is OK; the child is the very opposite of that. And the child feels it. I said “feels”, because the child is unable to articulate or explain its NotOKness outside of crying or whimpering.

Then comes the age of reason. The “age of reason” is considered to be around the age of 7, maybe less. Prior to this age, a child is a “feeling” creature. The most advanced thinking skill it has is intuition, a kind of felt thought.

These feelings are responses to how the child is treated. The child doesn’t explain why it feels terrible about itself when it is violently abused by its parents, nor good about itself when it is showered with love. It’s sense of OKness depends on strokes.

All humans have a need for recognition, called strokes in TA. Children, particularly so. In fact, if an infant doesn’t receive enough physical contact in its first few hours or days it will die. Based on the strokes it receives, the child makes a judgment that grown ups are OK. Also, the child concludes that it is OK “IF”. IF I eat my cereals, mommy gives me a kiss and I feel good; otherwise she gets angry and I feel bad. It’s OKness is conditional.

This conditional feeling of worth may be based on positive strokes, but it is still conditional. An adult who retains a conditional OKness depends on what people say or do to him in order to feel good about himself. A child is like this by nature.

When the child reaches the age of reason, it may realize that it has worth regardless of how others treat it. The child makes an abstraction; that is what makes it a creature of reason. Mom is not here right now, but I KNOW she loves me. Another way of saying it is that the child’s OKness is no longer conditional on some actual condition. Detached from specifics, the child truly senses it is OK, unconditionally. It is an existential conclusion. That is, for a child that grows up without abuse and with the right stroking.

And what it has is a sense of OKness that, like the conditional one, can improve, become more rich, more stable. Its interactions with adults and other kids expose the child to information in the form of words, behaviors, and its own thoughts. Not only does mom NOT have to be present for me to feel good. I don’t need money, fame, good looks, millions of friends, to feel good. The child also makes moral conclusions, that lying is essentially wrong even when I don’t need to refer to a specific case of lying.

But things don’t always work this way.

Some children who have been deprived of strokes before the age of reason “feel” they are not OK and continue to feel this way, even think that way until adulthood, even for the rest of their life. The child may continue to see the grown ups and everyone else as OK or Not OK, particularly if the child has experienced only neglect and the bad feelings that went with it. Many mental health problems such as depression, psychosis, suicidal tendencies, actual suicides, and many others may have their roots in adults who continue to see themselves as NotOK.

Criminality may also arise in this manner. Some children, especially those who have been victims of the most violent abuse, will carry with them the experience of healing their wounds by themselves, and exit the childhood phase convinced that they can stand on their own while everyone is evil. The child has concluded, “I’m OK, You’re Not OK.” I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m human, you’re subhuman. The manifestation in an adult includes antisocial behavior, the extreme of which is murder and genocide.

Hence, although a precocious child might start to reason at a very early age, it doesn’t seem possible prior to the age of reason to conclude that it is OK (in the unconditional sense) and others are OK.

(Q.C. 230830)