Keeping the Adult in Control

By John Leo

Despite its fluffy title, I'm OK -- You're OK was one of the more persuasive pop psychology works to come out of California during the 1960s. Author Thomas A. Harris managed the intellectual feat of combining the conventional sunlit optimism of the period with a few of the darker strains of Freudian and Christian thinking. The result: a surprising, 15 million-copy best seller.

A publishing success of that scope calls for a sequel, and after 16 years, Harris, 75, and his wife of 28 years, Journalist and Lecturer Amy Bjork Harris, 56, are now out with OK II under the slightly cautious title Staying OK (Harper & Row; $15.95). The effort is partly a restatement of the first book's discussion of the therapy known as transactional analysis and partly a collection of homey tips on how to apply transactional insights to daily life. Says Amy Harris: "This might be thought of as a recipe book, as opposed to a book on the theory of cooking."

The basic preaching of TA is that the mind has three "ego states": Parent, Adult and Child, which parallel the Freudian categories of superego, ego and id. The Adult is the rational problem solver; in the healthy personality, the Adult controls both the Parent, who keeps trying to enforce ancient injunctions, and the fun-loving Child, who is the victim of the stern Parent. The man who says to himself "Now you've done it!" after making a mistake is using his Parent to reprimand his Child, who usually feels powerless and in the wrong.

The founder of TA, Psychiatrist Eric Berne, presented the Parent-Adult-Child in Games People Play (1964), an urbane and witty analysis of how these three divisions of the ego can produce self-defeating scripts or "games." Thomas Harris added Psychiatrist Alfred Adler's concept of a universal "inferiority feeling." In Harris' view, many people go through life thinking of themselves as helpless children overwhelmed by adults. This stance, which he calls "I'm not OK -- You're OK," is often no one's fault. Even good parents who warn their children not to run into a busy street can build a feeling of worthlessness in their offspring. Children often lack the capacity to see the wisdom of a parental order. The child knows only that he or she is in the wrong; this develops into a permanent "recording" in the brain that will be played over and over through life.

Harris' emphasis on the universality of early psychic damage veers close to the traditional Christian concept of original sin. As a result, other transactional analysts have regularly accused the Harrises of determinism, a charge that their new book attempts to deflect. "At each juncture of life," they write, "we have had choices to make regardless of what our parents told us or showed us. We have said both yes and no."

Though the internal Parent recording can never be erased, the Harrises say it can be understood in context and then tuned out. The couple have evolved a version of psychic salvation, stemming in part from Christian theology, that has made their system attractive for use in many churches: in a leap of faith and act of will, each person must see and love the Child in others. The healthy stance, "I'm OK -- You're OK," turns out to be Jesus' dictum played sideways: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Like Freudians, the Harrises think the most important application of their ideas is to child rearing. The child who is not constantly stroked may grow into an adult who constantly belittles other people to gain some temporary relief from feelings of worthlessness. Early childhood years are so crucial, say the Harrises, that one parent should stay home with a child full time until he or she is able to read. Says their book: "We believe six years off to have a baby is minimal. Six weeks off is tragically short of the ideal."

The news that one working spouse, presumably the wife, must take six years off to raise a child is likely to ruffle feminist feathers. Anticipating criticism, Amy Harris says she and her husband will be devoting more thought in the future to current women's issues.