Find your corner of the OK Corral
Place an encounter on Ernst's grid of I'm OK / You're OK to see how it ended and where it came from.
Why it works
TA describes four life positions: I'm OK and you're OK; I'm OK and you're not; I'm not OK and you are; neither of us is OK. Franklin Ernst, a psychiatrist, laid them out as a grid he called the OK Corral and tied each corner to how an encounter turns out: from "I'm OK, you're OK" a person gets on with the other; from "I'm OK, you're not OK" they get rid of them; from "I'm not OK, you're OK" they get away from them; from neither being OK they get nowhere with them. Reading an outcome backwards to the position behind it shows a habitual stance that might otherwise feel like plain fact.
How to do it
- Draw a two-by-two grid: "I'm OK / I'm not OK" across, "You're OK / You're not OK" up and down.
- Take three recent encounters that ended badly. For each, ask: did I get rid of them, get away from them, or get nowhere with them?
- Place each in its corner and read the position it came from: what was I telling myself about me, and about them?
- Notice which corner you return to under stress, and with whom. Then ask what you would have needed to believe to get on with that person.
Evidence
Ernst set out the OK Corral in a 1971 Transactional Analysis Journal paper and later spelled out the four outcomes in his own guide, which says that none of the outcomes is good or bad and that a healthy person uses each of them at least once a day. Thomas Harris's 1969 bestseller I'm OK, You're OK carried the four positions to a mass readership. These are clinical models, not tested measures. (clinical)
Life positions are a clinical way of describing stance, not a measured personality type. Sometimes "you're not OK" is an accurate reading of someone who is behaving badly, and getting away from them is the right outcome.
Sources
- Ernst, F. H., Jr. (1971). The OK Corral: The grid for get-on-with. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1(4), 33-42.
- Ernst, F. H., Jr. Guide to the User Friendly OK Corral: Grid for What's Happening (author's monograph).
- Harris, T. A. (1969). I'm OK, You're OK: A Practical Guide to Transactional Analysis. Harper & Row.
Common mistake
Treating "I'm OK, you're OK" as a rule to feel fine about everyone. Ernst's own guide says each outcome has its place; the point is to know which corner you are in and why.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Transactional Analysis: The Parent, Adult and Child in Every Conversation
- Recognise which ego state is speaking
Catch whether your words, tone and posture are coming from your Parent, your Adult or your Child.
- Draw your egogram
Sketch a bar chart of how much time you spend in each ego state, and see which one to grow.
- Diagram a complementary or crossed transaction
Draw the ego states behind each line of an exchange to see why it flowed or why it broke down.
- Cross a stuck exchange from the Adult
When the same parent-and-child exchange keeps going, answer from your Adult on purpose to change its course.
- Read the ulterior message and name the game
Notice when what is said and what is meant differ, and spot the familiar exchange that ends in the same bad feeling.
- Break one rule of the stroke economy
Ask for, accept or give the recognition you usually hold back, one rule at a time.
- Trace a script decision back to childhood
Find the early conclusion about yourself that a repeating pattern keeps obeying, and see that it was a decision.
Related concepts
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- The Karpman Drama Triangle: Persecutor, Rescuer, Victim and the Way Out
Seeing the blamer, the fixer and the helpless one in a conflict, and how each corner can be answered another way
- Internal Family Systems (IFS), Made Practical
The parts model, the mechanisms behind it, and an honest read on an emerging evidence base
- Schema Therapy: Healing Early Maladaptive Beliefs
Early maladaptive schemas, schema modes, and the practices that gradually heal them
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: cite or embed this practice · more practices graded Established clinical practice