Answer each corner the winner's triangle way

Meet the pull to blame, fix or collapse with its direct counterpart: Assertive, Caring or Vulnerable.

Warum es wirkt

In 1990 Acey Choy proposed the winner's triangle, whose corners Karpman summarises as Assertive, Caring and Vulnerable, each the counterpart of a drama corner. Karpman himself held that every corner carries a usable, OK energy as well as a negative one. On that view, the pull toward Persecutor can hold a real limit or request, the pull toward Rescuer a wish to help, and the pull toward Victim a real need, and the winner's corner meets that need directly instead of through the game. David Emerald's book The Power of TED offers a similar reframe with roles named Challenger, Coach and Creator.

So gehst du vor

1. Notice which drama corner you are being pulled toward right now. The steps that follow are a plain-language reading of each winner's-triangle name, as the model is commonly taught; they are not instructions taken from Choy's article.
2. If the pull is toward Persecutor, try the everyday sense of Assertive: find the limit or request underneath the blame and state it plainly, without punishing.
3. If the pull is toward Rescuer, try the everyday sense of Caring: offer help only if it is wanted and leave the problem with the person whose problem it is.
4. If the pull is toward Victim, try the everyday sense of Vulnerable: say what you feel and what you need, and ask for it directly.

Evidenz

The winner's triangle was published by Choy in the Transactional Analysis Journal; Karpman's own summary confirms the corner names and records that Choy related them to a problem-solving model. It has been taught in professional settings, for example as a supervision tool for doctors. In one qualitative study, 22 health professionals who had taken an empowerment-based counselling course answered a questionnaire and 10 were interviewed; they described changing from "fixers" to "facilitators", which the authors read as a move from the Rescuer role to the Caring role. (anecdotal)

Choy's full article could not be read for this page; the corner names are confirmed from Karpman's summary, and the descriptions follow the plain meaning of those names as the model is commonly taught. The qualitative study is small, studied a counselling course rather than this practice, and used the triangles only to interpret its findings.

Quellen

• Choy, A. (1990). The winner's triangle. Transactional Analysis Journal, 20(1), 40-46.
• Karpman, S. B. (2007). The New Drama Triangles. USATAA/ITAA conference lecture, August 11, 2007 (worksheet published on the author's site).
• Karpman, S. B. (2019). Script drama analysis II. International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research & Practice, 10(1), 21-39.
• McKimm, J., & Forrest, K. (2010). Using transactional analysis to improve clinical and educational supervision: the Drama and Winner's triangles. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 86(1015), 261-265.
• Findlay-White, F., Dornan, T., Davies, M., Archer, A., Kilvert, A., & Fox, C. (2023). From fixer to facilitator: an interpretative phenomenological study of diabetes person-centred counselling and empowerment-based education. F1000Research, 11, 78.
• Emerald, D. (2005). The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic). Polaris Publishing. 10th anniversary edition 2015.

Häufiger Fehler

Swapping one corner for another and calling it change. Karpman warns that a decision to be positive can be used as a weapon, holding a superior attitude over others, which is only a move to the Persecutor corner.