Transactional Analysis Theory - Rackets

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, a Transformational TA Coach
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Rackets

Authentic Feelings and Racket Feelings

The word feeling has many meanings. The meaning differs per context. Feelings are sensations. In psychology the word feeling is used to represent conscious subjective experience of emotion. TA literature recognises four feelings. They are feeling sad, feeling angry, feeling fear and feeling joy. They all have a time epoch. Feeling sad is for events and occurrences of the past, anger for the present, fear for the future or for the times yet to come and joy generally.  When so expressed they are authentic feelings. Authentic feelings when expressed, end the situation or solve the problem. Inauthentic feelings when expressed, do not end the situation nor do they solve the problem. Inauthentic feelings are substitutes for authentic feelings. Racket feelings are also those that are not relevant to events or in case they are relevant, they are experienced or expressed in an escalated form.

Berne defines a racket as a feeling, out of all the possible feelings, that is turned on by a person as his payoff in the games he plays. They are characterised by the feeling getting escalated when they are questioned. The more common among them are feelings of anger, hurt, guilt, fear, inadequacy, righteousness and triumph.

Berne cites the example of the roulette wheel. A stimulus sets the wheel in motion. The internal programming gets it to stop at a particular number. The number represents the favoured racket feeling. It is the one that the person chooses to express in preference to another feeling that is appropriate. It is ineffective in ending situations or solving problems. The person keeps smarting in it and then stores it for future use in the form of a trading stamps. Racket feelings are the products of legitimate but dysfunctional interactions, namely pastimes and games.  The common attributions justifying the expressions are "he made me" or "I got (became)" or "I had to" or "they will understand this way" or "I had no other way" or "I don't know". They are justified, protected and professed.

Racket feelings are planted due to parental programming. This happnes because parent(s) discourage or impose restrictions or ban on use of feeling a feeling or expressive a feeling while encouraging or appreciating the use of another feeling in its place.

They are called 'Rackets' because they have a manipulative quality and are used (unawarely) to exract attention of others, though they are ineffective. The same feeling shows up the same way in a variety of situations.  

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