things are not what they seem

I have this desire for the last couple of weeks to resurrect this blog. So here goes. I don't know why I don't write here more frequently. I guess in general I am trapped in a state of inaction. But other than that, I think I'd feel incredibly guilty writing here when I can use my time online to catch up with my emails and facebook messages. But I think the emails are never going to disappear and if I keep putting up the fight, I'll just go insane. So well, I think I need a break from email (not)writing for now.

I've been reading a couple of books in transactional analysis, a concept I have never encountered before. The two books are:

Games People Play by Eric Berne
I'm OK - You're OK by Thomas A. Harris.

I thought it was odd I had never heard of transactional analysis before given that I tried to familiarize myself with psychoanalytic literature in college. Okay, I am not particularly well read in that field, but still... I wouldn't have salvaged those books from a box at the Hyde Park book fair if it weren't for my high school psychology teacher mentioning those books.

And they are great! Of course given that psychoanalysis is not the hippest thing anymore in psychiatry, those books are a bit dated. The situations elucidated by Eric Berne seem a bit archaic. But the books are nonetheless irresistible. You read about each game and immediately recognize it.

I think we must be careful though. The worse thing that a reader can do is to look for the pathological game play in every social transaction, especially in the loved ones. That's why I fear recommending these books to certain people who are prone to victimize themselves in every relationship. After all, Berne clearly states not all relationships are games.

The frustrating thing about psychoanalytic literature always is that you can't prove the validity of its claims. So it's hard to know for sure if the brain before the age of 5 has recorded every parental action, words, and attitudes to create a "parent" personality in each of us. But all of the claims are so completely feasible.

Well, I don't think we should fret too much about the validity of these claims though. The take home message really is that we often play these games, which are most of the time innocuous, to fill up social time. I find that very compelling. We don't have the time and the energy to create an intimate relationship with everyone we meet. We also can't ignore the other human being who come into our social space. Hence the games. Some of the more serious and pathological games, I think, are not lost to history--a lot of the underlying issues are easily recognized, I think, by mental health professionals today. But even the pathological games end up not causing too much mess in a person's life. They more often than not get weaved into the fabric of someone's life because we are so good at finding others who will play the games we prefer.

The other take home message is of course that things are not always what they seem. Our words and deeds may have ulterior motives, which aren't always sinister. It's just that we are not always totally self-aware. So correct interpretation of intentions are always elusive.

The copies I have of these books are incredibly old. And as I read them, I often think about the previous owner. I wonder if that person also thought what I was thinking. I wonder if that person gained insight from these books. I wonder if that person ever finished these books or bought them because they were really popular in the 70s and wanted to sound smart. I like the yellowed used books. I like the history that comes with it. But it's also a bit gruesome, like digging up a grave.

I wonder if I never came across these books because they are not academic. Eric Berne and his students would be very upset, but I do think they are derivatives of Freud. I think in that I'm Ok- you're ok book, it specifically says the parent-adult-child is not a watered down version of the superego-ego-id model. But the similarities are hard to ignore. And the explicit goal in these books was to make psychoanalysis popular and easy to understand for the layman. I am not saying the books aren't profound because they aren't academic. I actually really appreciate reading these self-help books from the 70s that aren't so watered down, cheesy and flashy like the ones that are published today.

And I find it fascinating that people in the 70s read these books for fun. It's like time travel. Today, the popular sellers are the approachable cognitive neuroscience books like Stumbling on Happiness and The Tipping Point. Back then, I suppose the people were just as fascinated with the mind, but the best sellers were the approachable psychanalysis books. A couple of decades from today, people would find the experiment based cognitive psychology best sellers dated. I hope we have made some real breakthroughs about the brain and the mind by then.