Transactional Analysis Theory and Practice: Rackets Introduction

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, BSc, BTA, a Transformational TA Coach

+919822024037; ajitpkarve@gmail.com

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Rackets Introduction

The term racket has possibly been taken from one of its dictionary meanings: a dishonest or fraudulent line of business; or a method of swindling for financial gain. Protection rackets, extortion rackets are two other.

Therefore rackets are patterns of thinking, feeling, behaviour and transacting that are:

     Inauthentic;

     Repetitive;

     Maladaptive; 

     Manipulative;

Some of the definitions are:

Racket Feeling (Berne): Racket is a feeling, out of all the possible feelings, that is habitually turned on by a given person as his payoff in the games he plays.

Racket Feeling (Stewart and Joines): A familiar emotion, learned and encouraged in childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem-solving.

Racket Feeling (English): Feelings that a child is allowed to have which cover up feelings the Child is not allowed to have. Behind each racket is a real feeling which cannot be felt in the current situation, and was not allowed to be felt as a child.  

Racket Feeling / Emotion: A familiar feeling / emotion a person feels (and is unable to discard) as a payoff in the game he plays. 

Racket (Berne): The sexualisation and transactional seeking and exploitation of unpleasant feelings.

Racket (Stewart and Joines): Racket is a set of scripty behaviours outside awareness. They are a means of manipulating the environment, and entailing the person experiencing a racket feeling.

Racket (Steiner): Racket is a person's (unaware) reason for collecting trading stamps. 

Racket: An act, action, statement, expression, behaviour or even silence that serves as a con in a game. It initiates a game.

Racket: Actions, expressions and behaviours unawarely used by people to manipulate others for obtaining strokes.

Racket: Mind engagements that people use (unawarely) to intensify feelings, emotions, opinions and conclusions. They are used to manufacture stamps.

Racket: Any type of psychological time engagement.

Racket: Mind occupations distanced from the activity in which a person is engaged.

Racket: Mind engagements that are difficult ot discard. 

Racket: Engagements in fantasising and / or autistic thinking.

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We are called upon to end reality situations sanely, safely, effectively and to the extent possible conclusively. We need to do this by using the reality principle and our age appropriate Adult capacities. An Adult, free of pathology has these capacities. In a healthy person Parent and Child cooperate and support the Adult in this regard. 

Figure

The response is not healthy if these conditions are not met. The person will then be perceiving, evaluating, assessing and responding to reality in an unhealthy manner. In such cases the associated thinking, feeling, behaviour and response will be scripty. These scripty thinking, feeling, behaviour and response patterns are rackets. Therefore racket may be described as any process or activity that is scripty. These processes may be intra-psychic (the denial of permissions and allowers; confusion, indecision, struggle and conflicts are some examples), or intra-personal (mind-talk, regurgitating of feelings and emotions, mind lock-ups with past and future matters).

Berne says that we are mostly spending time dealing with trash. Doing so denies us the capacity for awareness, autonomy and spending time being happy and joyful in a child like way.

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Berne uses the metaphor of a roulette wheel to explain that rackets are programmed ways of feeling and lock-up in emotions in response to stimuli. The ones he lists are: angers, hurts, guilts, fears and inadequate feelings. He says that these are used to collect stamps to turn them into script payoff. That they are rackets is evident because their intensity increases when they are questioned. 

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