Strokes — Transactional Analysis 5 (C1)

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS · LESSON 5

Strokes

C1 (B2–C2) · 90 minutes

Which would you rather?

Task For each pair, choose A or B. Write your four letters in the chat. Be ready to defend one choice.

1. Your manager reads your report. A: sharp criticism · B: no comment at all, ever.

2. After a weak presentation, a colleague says: A: "Great job!" · B: nothing.

3. On your birthday at work: A: the whole team sings to you in public · B: one colleague sends a quiet private message.

4. Your teacher says: A: "You're so clever." · B: "Your argument in the second paragraph was excellent."

READING

The hunger for recognition

Why do people talk to each other at all? Eric Berne's answer began with babies. In the opening pages of Games People Play (1964), he argued that humans have a biological need for stimulation, which he called stimulus-hunger. Part of his evidence came from the psychoanalyst René Spitz, who in the 1940s studied infants raised in institutions. The babies were fed and kept clean, but were rarely held or played with. Spitz reported that many fell behind in their development, became withdrawn and

grew unusually vulnerable to illness.

Berne's next step was his own. Adults, he suggested, still need contact, but they learn to accept a symbolic substitute for being held: being noticed. He called this recognition-hunger, and named its basic unit the stroke, a word chosen to recall the touch an infant needs. In TA, any act of recognition is a stroke: a greeting, a frown, a nod, a pay rise, a slammed door. When two people exchange strokes, they make a transaction.

READING · CONTINUED

The hunger for recognition

Strokes come in several kinds. They can be verbal or non-verbal. They can be positive, pleasant to receive, or negative, painful. And they can be conditional, about what you do ("That was a clear report"), or unconditional, about what you are ("I like you", "You're hopeless").

The most striking claim follows. In the words of the textbook TA Today, "any kind of stroke is better than no stroke at all." A child starved of praise may misbehave, because a telling-off is at least attention. Each of us, TA

argues, comes to prefer a particular mix of strokes, and holds up a stroke filter: we let in the strokes that fit our picture of ourselves and discount the rest. Someone who believes they are no good may wave away every compliment, yet remember every criticism.

How strong is the evidence? Spitz's observations were influential, but historians have criticised his methods. And the leap from neglected infants to adults in offices is TA's own; it has been little tested directly.

Four kinds of stroke

Positive

Negative

Verbal

Conditional:

what you do

Unconditional:

what you are

Non-verbal

1. Which box is most common in workplaces where you live?

2. Does a positive unconditional stroke belong at work at all?

3. Is silence a negative stroke, or no stroke?

My stroke log

Task Privately, copy this grid onto paper and log five strokes from the last 24 hours, at least two that you gave. Don't show anyone. Then, in pairs, discuss the questions below.

When

The stroke: what was said or done

G / R

+ / −

C / U

e.g. Mon 9:10

A colleague thanked me for covering her shift

R

+

C

G given · R received · + positive · − negative · C conditional · U unconditional

My stroke log

Task Privately, copy this grid onto paper and log five strokes from the last 24 hours, at least two that you gave. Don't show anyone. Then, in pairs, discuss the questions below.

1. Can recognition be measured by counting it? What would a log miss?

2. Would keeping this log change how people behave? For better?

3. Would a stroke log be useful in a team or a classroom, or intrusive?

STORY

A Warm Fuzzy Tale

A retelling in our own words. Claude Steiner, one of Berne's early collaborators, wrote the original fable in 1969. This is a summary, not his text.

Once, in a faraway land, every baby was born with a small soft bag. Reach into it, and out came a Warm Fuzzy, which made whoever received it feel warm all over. The bags never ran out, so people asked for Fuzzies and gave them freely, and everyone was content.

Everyone except a witch, who sold potions and ointments and now had no customers. So the witch whispered to a man called Tim that his partner, Maggie, was giving too many Fuzzies to their children. Soon, the witch warned, the bag would be empty, and none would be left for him.

Tim began to sulk whenever Maggie gave a Fuzzy away, and Maggie, who loved him, started saving them for him.

STORY · CONTINUED

A Warm Fuzzy Tale

The children noticed and learned that giving was risky. People paired off and kept their Fuzzies for one partner only. Some shrivelled; a few even died. The witch's trade boomed.

Dead people buy nothing, so the witch handed out free bags of Cold Pricklies: unpleasant, but better than nothing. Fuzzies became precious. People worked long hours to buy them, and the popular sold theirs to the lonely. Some coated Pricklies to

look like Fuzzies. These Plastic Fuzzies left everyone confused and cold.

Then a young woman arrived who had never heard the witch's warning, and gave Fuzzies to anyone. The children copied her. Alarmed, the grown-ups passed a law: no giving Fuzzies without a licence. The tale ends with the struggle still going on.

What is the tale really about?

Task In pairs, decide what the tale is really about: scarcity, money, power or love. Choose one and find two details in the story that support it. Then discuss the questions.

1. Is the witch a person, a system or an idea? Who plays the witch today?

2. Steiner called it a fairy tale. Is it really a lesson in economics?

3. Are "likes" on social media Warm Fuzzies, Cold Pricklies or Plastic Fuzzies?

4. Is keeping your warmth for one partner wise, or a loss?

5. Is the tale naïve? Can recognition really never run out?

READING

The stroke economy

If strokes are so vital, why do so many people feel short of them? Claude Steiner gave a provocative answer in his 1971 article "The Stroke Economy", developed with his colleague Hogie Wyckoff. Strokes, he argued, are not naturally scarce: anyone can give one at almost no cost. They become scarce because, as children, we learn rules that restrict their flow:

1. "Don't give strokes when you have them to give."

2. "Don't ask for strokes when you need them."

3. "Don't accept strokes if you want them."

4. "Don't reject strokes when you don't want them."

5. "Don't give yourself strokes."

Why would anyone teach such rules? Steiner's answer was political. Whoever controls a scarce supply has power. Parents who ration affection can use it to win obedience; later, Steiner suggested, other stroke monopolists can take over the role, such as governments, corporations, advertisers and entertainers.

READING · CONTINUED

The stroke economy

The idea came out of the radical psychiatry movement Steiner helped to start in Berkeley at the end of the 1960s, which placed many personal troubles in social conditions rather than in individual minds.

The remedy is to break the rules: give strokes freely, ask for the ones you want, accept the ones you want, turn down the ones you don't, and learn to stroke yourself. TA writers add that each of us keeps a stroke bank: memories of past strokes that we can draw on later, though their

effect fades unless new strokes arrive.

TA Today notes that not all TA writers accept Steiner's strong view. Two questions are worth asking. Is recognition really unlimited, if praise given to everyone soon means little? And are all five rules simply learned restrictions, or do some reflect values, such as modesty, that a culture prizes? The stroke economy is best read as an argument about society, not a laboratory finding.

The stroke economy

1

2

3

4

5

1. "Don't give strokes when you have them to give."

2. "Don't ask for strokes when you need them."

3. "Don't accept strokes if you want them."

4. "Don't reject strokes when you don't want them."

5. "Don't give yourself strokes."

Praise and blame around the world

Task Each person names the one rule of Steiner's five (see "The stroke economy") that feels strongest where they grew up or live now. Compare your rules, then discuss the questions.

1. Where you live, is public praise a gift or an embarrassment?

2. Is blunt criticism a sign of respect, or of rudeness?

3. Is "don't give yourself strokes" healthy modesty, or quiet harm?

4. Do people where you live praise children more than adults? Should they?

5. Is a stroke from a stranger worth more or less than one from family?

6. Can a whole society run a stroke economy? Who would be the monopolist?

The recognition problem

Task You are advising Leila. Write a recognition policy of no more than five rules. Each rule says who gives recognition, how, and whether it is public or private. Your policy must break at least one of Steiner's five rules on purpose: say which.

The brief. Leila Haddad manages a 14-person customer-support team for a software company. Five work in the office in Lisbon; nine work remotely from Manila, Nairobi, Warsaw and São Paulo. In a staff survey, most said they feel "invisible". Leila's director wants a recognition scheme running by next quarter.

The constraints

Budget

Time zones

Privacy

€1,400 a year for the whole team, about €100 per person.

the Manila night shift barely overlaps with Leila's working day.

two team members have said public praise embarrasses them.

Fairness

Metrics

Expectations

the old "Employee of the Month" award always went to the same three people, all in the office.

tickets closed are easy to count; quality and helping colleagues are not.

some staff value praise from the manager most; others value praise from colleagues.

Defend your policy

Task Present your rules in one minute. Then answer one challenge from another group.

1. Who on Leila's team gets the fewest strokes under your policy?

2. Does your budget buy Warm Fuzzies, or Plastic ones?

3. Does your policy still work in a month when ticket numbers fall?

4. Which of Steiner's rules did you break, and is that wise at work?

5. Can recognition written into a policy ever feel sincere?

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

Which of Steiner's five rules did you, or someone you know, learn early? Is it still useful?

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Think of a stroke in your stroke bank that still makes you smile. Why has it lasted?

Back to your choices

Task Choose A or B again for the four pairs on "Which would you rather?". Has any of your answers changed?

1. Manager: A sharp criticism · B no comment, ever

2. Weak presentation: A "Great job!" · B nothing

3. Birthday: A public singing · B a quiet private message

4. Teacher: A "You're so clever." · B "Your argument in the second paragraph was excellent."

Before Lesson 6

Keep your stroke log going all week. It stays private.

P

Notice which column fills fastest. And notice this: when people meet, how much of the talk is ritual? ("How are you?" "Fine, thanks.")

A

Next lesson: How We Spend Time. After stimulus-hunger and recognition-hunger, Berne named a third hunger, structure-hunger: the need to fill our time. Next lesson looks at how we do it, from rituals and pastimes to the way into games.

C

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

FOUR KINDS OF STROKE placing the options from "Which would you rather?"

Pair 1 A: negative conditional (about the report) · B: no stroke at all. TA predicts many people will choose A: "any kind of stroke is better than no stroke at all."

Pair 2 A: positive conditional on the surface, but insincere, so close to the tale's Plastic Fuzzy · B: no stroke.

Pair 3 A and B: both positive and unconditional (a birthday is about who you are, not what you did); A is public, B is private. Both are verbal; the singing is also non-verbal.

Pair 4 A: positive unconditional (about what you are) · B: positive conditional (about what you did).