I'm Ok, You're Ok

The Classic Bestseller that has Changed the Lives of Millions

"Extraordinary. Harris has helped millions find the freedom to change, liberate their adult effectiveness, and achieve joyful intimacy with others." —Los Angeles Times

Transactional analysis delineates three ego-states (Parent, Adult and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. “Happy childhood” notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the not OK feelings of a defenseless child wholly dependent on others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a “position” about ourselves and others that determines how we feel about everything we do. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is "I’m Not OK-You’re OK." This negative "life position," shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational adult capabilities, leaving us vulnerable to inappropriate, emotional reactions of our child and uncritically learned behavior programmed into our parent. By exploring the structure of our personalities and understanding old decisions, Harris believes we can find the freedom to change our lives.

"Happy childhood" notwithstanding, most of us are living out the NOT OK feelings of a defenseless CHILD wholly dependent on OK others for stroking and care. By the third year of life, says Dr. Harris, most of us have made the unconscious decision I'M NOT OK-YOU'RE OK. This negative Life Position, shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational ADULT potential -- leaving us vulnerable to the inappropriate, emotional reactions of our CHILD and the uncritically learned behavior programmed into our PARENT.

In personal Transactions, NOT OK people resort to harmful withdrawal, rituals, activities, pastimes, and games for getting needed strokes while avoiding painful intimacy with people they see as OK.

Dr. Thomas A. Harris's pioneering work in Transactional Analysis has had a fundamental impact on our understanding of interpersonal behavior. In showing us how to make the conscious decision I'M OK-YOU'RE OK, he has helped millions of despairing people find the freedom to change, to liberate their ADULT effectiveness, and to achieve joyful intimacy with the people in their lives.

“Harris has stripped away the technical language of psychoanalysis and presented with lucid logic a way to self-understanding and change.” - Los Angeles Times

“It’s easy to relate to I’m OK-You’re OK. Again and again the reader will find his own predicament staring up at him from the page, along with its message, “If you don’t like the trap, you can change it.” - Cleveland Press

“The book reads easily and interestingly for the unlettered in behavior science…. The practicing therapist cannot help but benefit immeasurably, especially if his inclinations are toward family or group therapy.” - Choice

“[Readers] who roam these optimistic pages with their allusions to and discussions of Freud, Wilder Penfield, Elton Trueblood, Eric Berne, Bishop Pike, Teilhard de Chardin, and many other great and not-so-great experts may well make the book a bestseller.” - Library Journal