Help me find book on interpersonal dynamics?
August 12, 2013 7:26 AM   Subscribe

I remember vaguely that it had a purple cover, but cannot remember the title or author. I know within the first few pages was a chart explaining the dynamics with a few intertwined circles. It was not a textbook, but a paperback of about 200 pages. Sadly, that's all I remember. At the time I was a sophomore in high school and the book caught my eye on a bookshelf. However, I could only read a few pages because it was more challenging than any book I had encountered. Now, I keep thinking about this book and have a strong impression that if I were to find it, it could finally be comprehensible to me. Help?
posted by lunastellasol to Grab Bag (7 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Sounds like something by Eric Berne, or Thomas A. Harris. Or possibly even Erving Goffman.
posted by Grunyon at 7:43 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Erving Goffman or Wilfred Bion. In fact if you are interested in group dynamics, Wilfred Bion's work was "The Matrix"-level eye opening for me. You may also wish to google about T-groups.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:47 AM on August 12, 2013


A lurker wrote to suggest that it might be Social Network Analysis: A Handbook by John Scott.
posted by cortex at 8:13 AM on August 12, 2013


Best answer: Eric Berne's Games People Play is the first thing that comes to mind.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 8:40 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: liketitanic it was about 10 years ago and these are great suggestions and I'm definitely going to check those out. I wish I had more to go on, I've googled and nothing seems close. its the proverbial needle in a haystack
posted by lunastellasol at 9:20 AM on August 12, 2013


Response by poster: I'm so ecstatic, Grunyon and Existenz is Paused, thank you so much! I'm not sure if it was Games People Play or Transnational Analysis in Psychotherapy but it was definitely Eric Berne's work. I cannot express my gratitude and pleasant amazement that my search is over enough.


These are all great suggestions for further reading material so I will keep the thread open for now, as all recommendations are welcome.
posted by lunastellasol at 10:07 AM on August 12, 2013


lunastellasol, the diagrams you are referring to are the basics of what is called transactional analysis, which is a type of practical psychology, thought up by Eric Berne.

I have found transactional analysis to be a really helpful tool in understanding myself and others, how emotional and social transactions work, what authentic intimacy is and what is just game playing. It's not The Big Picture psychologically, but it's definitely part of the big picture, very worth reading.

The first book that came out on this topic was Games People Play. The circles represent a person's inner child, their inner adult and inner parent, which are aspects of a person's self. Each of those aspects can have a number of other facets, including unhealthy or healthy.

One of Eric Berne's students, who went on to be an author as well, is named Claude Steiner. I really love his book, Scripts People Live, it was life changing and healing for me, I highly recommend it among the transactional analysis books. He also uses the transactional analysis diagrams with circles. One of his books has a partly purple cover, Achieving Emotional Literacy.
posted by nickyskye at 11:55 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


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