Transactional Analysis (TA), founded by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, offers shamanic work a set of clear, practical maps of how people get caught in unhealthy patterns with each other: the drama triangleDrama triangle. The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this of victim, persecutor and rescuer, the games people play, and the life scripts they act out without knowing. Therapeutic Shamanism uses the drama triangle in particular, seeing it as a game played by children, not by Adults, and one we can always choose to walk away from.
What is Transactional Analysis? #
A psychotherapy created by Eric Berne in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Berne trained as a psychoanalyst but broke away from Freud’s model, and wanted to demystify therapy so that clients could work on themselves, guided by the therapist, rather than hand themselves over to an all-knowing expert to be cured.1 His Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961) set out the approach, and Games People Play (1964) made it famous.
TA is full of simple models. Its best known is that each of us has three ego states, Parent, Adult and Child, and that every exchange between two people, a transaction, passes between particular ego states in each of them. Others describe the games people play, the life scripts they act out, and the strokes, or units of recognition, everyone needs. TA is one of the psychotherapies, with Internal Family Systems and Voice Dialogue, that work with parts of the selfParts of the self. There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. Read the full answer. See What are Parent, Adult and Child, and how do they compare with the parts of the self?
What is the drama triangle? #
A pattern first described by the psychiatrist Stephen Karpman, one of Berne’s students, in 1968.2 Somebody feels they are the victim and that somebody else is persecuting them. A third person steps in to rescue the victim, often by turning on the persecutor, who now feels like the victim, with the rescuer as their persecutor. More people get sucked in and the whole thing escalates. Everyone ends up feeling aggrieved, and everyone believes it is the other side who should apologise. The drama triangle destroys communities, rips families apart and can be passed down for generations, even centuries; it can operate on a mass scale too, in conflicts around the world.3
The writer Chris West, in a guide to the model, stresses that Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer are roles that people play, not identities that people are, and that even the most eager players are more than the roles they act out.4
How does a drama triangle end? #
Only when somebody stops playing. Believing that the others must apologise first is exactly what keeps a drama triangle going. It ends when people have the courage to put their grievances down and stop looking for apologies, justice or retribution, as Nelson Mandela did on his release from prison, and as people did in the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa and in ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland. If one person stops playing the blame-game and others follow, the cycle can come to an end. And even when others carry on, each of us always has the option of walking away.5
This is where the drama triangle meets the shamanic teaching on adulthood. A true Adult sees things as they are, accepts responsibility for their own choices, feelings and behaviour, does not hand their power over to others or expect others to make things right for them, keeps healthy boundaries and works for the good of the community. None of these is compatible with playing the drama triangle: it is a game played by children, not by Adults.6 So TA’s model gives shamanic practitioners and their clients a quick, clear way of spotting when they have slipped out of their Adult and into the game. See What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?
What are games and life scripts? #
Two more of TA’s maps of the hidden patterns in our lives. For Berne, a game is a repeated exchange that runs to a set formula, with an invitation, a hook, a switch of roles and a payoff for both players, each getting to play the role they unconsciously wanted.7 A life script is a plan for life that, on Berne’s account, we write as small children, around the age of five, to answer questions such as who we are, how to find love and how the world works. Stored out of awareness, it shapes what we do as adults. Berne made script cure the aim of therapy. West thinks that claim excessive, since most people’s lives are not driven by a fate they cannot escape, whilst noting that Berne answered the objection by describing winning and ordinary scripts as well as tragic ones.8
The idea of a script is close to the shamanic picture of the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer. The persona is a middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer construct made up of the stories we tell ourselves, wonky-thoughts, beliefs and scripts, policed by introjectsIntroject. A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this, and the greater the gap between it and our real self, our Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer Soul, the more that real self is forgotten.9 TA’s maps can help a person notice the script they are running; shamanism adds the question of who they really are underneath it. See What can shamanism offer Transactional Analysis?
Why does a shamanic practitioner need maps like these? #
Because the middle-world is where most of our wounds play out, and good maps help us see them. The drama triangle is a middle-world game: it is played all around us in this world, and it is one of the things people carry with them that can discolour and distort what they experience in the Lower-World, especially in meeting their Lower-World Tribe.10 Knowing the pattern makes it easier to notice it and, as far as possible, to leave it behind before journeying. See What is the Lower-World Tribe? and What makes a healthy group or tribe?
