 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. So welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show, behind closed doors with myself, Jackie Jones and the wonderful, the always wonderful Mr. Bob Cook. And this is episode 128. And we're going to be doing part three and then part four of the best books that you think. Book recommendations. Book recommendations. That's the, and of course, you know, I always think about this, Jackie, that people could always text in books they'd like us to review and what they think is their most important psychotherapy book or even just a psychotherapy book they like or even a counseling book they like. I've read quite a lot. So I probably, once I've got them, but I'd certainly like to hear from the viewers, views the wrong word, the people who are listening or on my YouTube, you know, the YouTube channel and what books influence them in their lives and their practice. And certainly, I'm more than happy to do a review of it. Absolutely. Yeah. It doesn't have to be TA. It could be anything, any of the different disciplines. Yeah. And of course, we can do that, can't we? I mean, I quite like that idea because it would include, you know, what people like themselves. That's it. Because you know me, Bob, I'm not very academic and I don't like really deep and heavy books. So a lot of the books that I have are either like, you know, information books like TA Today that I use for when I was training or the more from the person's perspective of something. Okay. Okay. And people are watching me on YouTube. That's not people in podcast. I've just come back from a three mile walk and it's, you know, I've got a bit hot. So hopefully I'm not perspiring too much. But please pardon me. Okay. What a lovely vision you are. You're glowing. Let's put it that way. That's what women are. We don't, we don't sweat. We just glow. So the first book that we're doing is about live scripts, Scripps People Live. Oh, you've got it there. Claude Steiner. Yes. The one thing that comes to mind when I think about Claude Steiner is that he did the warm fuzzy, the story around warm fuzzy, which is actually in this book. Oh, yeah. So for the people who perhaps aren't TA therapists and don't know the story of warm fuzzers and cold pricklies, do you want to just say what you mean by a warm fuzzy? For me and the way that I took it, it was lovely. It's like a fairy tale and it's all around positive and negative strokes. And there's a witch that comes into the village and she kind of talks people into not giving warm fuzzies, but to give them cold pricklies instead. But it's all, I think the metaphor behind it is that we should all give positivity to other people and positive recognitions because we don't run out of them and it impacts on the other person and it impacts on us when we give them as well. It's just a nice story, I thought. Yeah, no, I think it's a really good story. And one of my favourite shops of all time when I was growing up was Woolworths. Oh, yes. Taking me back to the youth now. And Woolworths in the 1970s created warm fuzzies. I feel it. Yeah, yeah. And I remember in the 80s going to Woolworths and buying lots of warm fuzzies. They were like little like velvet, I don't know if they come teddy bears, but they're like balls really. But they're very smooth to touch. And I used to give them to my clients. Bob, we need to revamp that. We need to come up with warm fuzzies. I just love the concept of it. I really do. Yeah. I used to buy them and give them to my clients in 86, 87, 88. Woolworths went bust, I think, in the 90s. But I was so pleased to find these warm fuzzies, a unit of positive social recognition. What a wonderful thing for you to do. I envisaged them to be like a pom-pom. Yeah, a little pom-pom. Yeah. So I forget what the story came up. We don't rest from the book. Well, yeah, in a way. Thorns Steiner, who wrote that book in 1974, which you've just gotten your hands there, Jackie. He was a very interesting man. He was what is called in the TA sort of circles, the prodigal son of Eric Byrne. And Eric Byrne was the originator of transaction analysis. Yeah. Now, Claude Steiner, I'm not sure where they met, but Eric Byrne took Claude Steiner. And I don't know how I think Eric Byrne would be in his 50s, 60s, and Steiner much younger, of course. And he said to Claude Steiner, finish off your university studies, do your PhD, become a doctor before you actually start being a TA, you know, TA therapist and trainer. So Claude Steiner went off and did that. And he was very, very influenced by Eric Byrne. Eric Byrne died in 1970. He was the originator of transaction analysis. And he sort of, he was, Claude Steiner wrote this book anyway, Scripps People Live, 1974. I want to say it's a homage to Eric Byrne, but certainly it was dedicated to Eric Byrne. Yeah. And it covers lots and lots of things about the script, which is one of the basics of transactional analysis that we have a life script and it's formed before the age seven. Yeah. I just find it good to dip in and out of again. It's not a book that I've read from cover to cover. No, but that book particularly is famous, not just because Claude Steiner wrote it, but he talked about different types of Scripps. So the idea of script, as you mentioned, Eric Byrne's idea of script anyway, is that it's an unconscious life plan, which you create in childhood with the beginning, middle and end. So it's like a life plan. Now Eric Byrne did, you're quite right. Eric Byrne, like Freud, talked about that we developed these unconscious life plans at a really basic level, like, I'm okay, you're okay, I'm not okay, other people are okay, at a very, very rudimentary level before the age of five and six. Now Steiner in his book carries on that same thing. And he also talks about different types of Scripps, mindful Scripps, banal Scripps, our Matic Scripps that we actually start developing in life. He also talks about script questionnaire. It's a very good for people who want to know or have an introductory idea of what Scripps are, and also very good for the students of TA to look a little bit more in depth of the idea of Scripps. It still is probably, I think, I don't know if you disagree with me or not, but I think it's still probably the most accessible book in terms of reading and introduction into Scripps that we still have in the literature of the TA world. Yeah, and it's extensive, the stuff that's in here, I'm just looking at the contents now. It's extensive, do you know what I mean, the information that's in here. It goes right into people's Scripps, Matic Scripps, mindless Scripps, how they are created, you know, how they're played out in life. Yes, it's a very extended book, isn't it? Scripps questionnaire is that Scripps Matrix is in there as well, so it's very good on two parts. For people wanting to understand the concept of Scripps for the first time, because it's a very accessible, easy book that's written, and also I think it's a very interesting book for people who want to take the idea of Scripps and the idea of Scripps Matrix further. Yeah, and again it's just a basic, it's the basis to build on and to use in therapy. Oh, you're right, and I think, like, yeah, I think probably true, that if you look at or ask most people who are TA therapists, what books they have, the two or three, probably they will have bought before others, is games people play, which is a very famous Eric Byrne book, and they'll probably have Scripps people live on their bookshelf as well, and that's because not only has it been very straightforward for people to understand, but if we look at the four cornerstones of transaction analysis model as a whole, you've got ego states, you've got transaction analysis proper, you've got games, and you've got Scripps. Yeah. So people want to really understand that one of those cornerstones of transaction analysis, this probably is the book for them with regards to Scripps. Yeah. I mean, you've got it, haven't you on your bookshelf? Absolutely, yeah, and it's something I was, I was talking to some people over the weekend on a course that I was running, and I was talking about Scripps, and it's something that they'd never heard of before. No. Yeah. What sort of work, what sort of workshop were you doing? It was the Equine Guided Therapy that we do, so it was just like the general public that were coming in, that obviously I was introducing to some transactional analysis stuff, and I spoke about, you know, the PAX system, parent ego, parent, adult and child, but then went on to look at, you know, I was Scripps-y stuff, but they'd never heard of it. Wow. Yeah, what I was doing was talking about, you know, our life story and called it that rather than our script, and that, you know, we, we come up with this, we make these decisions that are really young age, and yet we're still living our life by them as adults. Yeah, there are, another way of looking at it is, it's like a frame of reference. Yeah. In another language I was thinking, we create a frame of reference, often as in terms of survival, if you like, or as a way of making sense of the world about ourselves and other people, and we tend to follow that frame of reference, that life story, that life script, and enacted out in the people we have around ourselves, relationships, our professional life, and if it serves us well, that's absolutely fine. And sometimes that life story, frame of reference is, needs updating. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what I was saying to them, you know, parts of my life script are absolutely fine, other parts of mine, I want to change. And I think the reason why it came up and why I started talking about it, was because you know, the ladies on this particular course were pushing themselves out with their comfort zone by being around horses, you know, some of them had bad experiences. So I was saying about, you know, one of the things that we can do when we're stepping out of our script, we feel like we're coming out of our comfort zone, we know what goes on in our script. But when we step out of it, that's sometimes when we can start to feel anxious or have a bit of a wobble. But for me, that's a good thing. As a psychotherapist, when my clients are having a wobble, as I call it, for me, they're stepping out of the script. I'm going to agree with me more. And it's, it's many additions to this book, by the way. But the first edition of 1974, Claude Steiner, Scripts, People Live. If people don't know much about TA, Wanted Introduction to the Idea of what we're talking about here, Live Story, or Script is a good book to read. And for students of TA, it's a good book to take further detail of script and take the idea of script further. So it's one I would really endorse. And it's a book I've had for many, many years on my shelf and dipped into, because it's a bit like a textbook. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's very thorough in how it breaks it down and how it looks at the different scripts. And like you said, there's a relationship script, there's a script for pretty much everything. Yeah. And there's core ones, but he goes into, I like his chapter on hermatic scripts. I like his chapter on mindless scripts. And it certainly is a book I would endorse for anybody interested in psychotherapy in general, and particularly TA. Absolutely. I agree. So it's going to go back up on my bookshelf though. Yeah. And what we're going to be talking about in the next episode is the art and science of relationships. Yeah. Just before, yeah, we are, which is another one of my favourite books. Just on this though, the book about script. What I said was that earlier on in the podcast was that Thord Steiner was what we call in the TA community, Podiglistan of Eric Byrne, and Eric Byrne was the, you know, the creative transactional analyst. And when I was thinking with you, and I probably didn't say to you this either online or offline, I was thinking, what books do we review? And I sent you a lot of books. Now, Eric Byrne himself wrote six central books, but only six, which are the first major book, which is called Transaction Analysis Psychotherapy, Eric Byrne, 1961. Then the book that took TA to Stardom really, which was in 19, which was in, it was in, so in 1964, Games People Play, that really took TA up to Stardom, I think. And a book I really like, his third book, which is Principles of Group Treatment, which talks about how you use TA practically in the clinical sense, which I recommend for anyone who is interested in working practically with TA in a clinical world. Principles of Group Treatment, 1967 by Eric Byrne. These are the lexicon of Eric Byrne's books that makes up the TA theories, if you like. I mean, there's many other books after he died, which have written on TA, but these are the Eric Byrne books. That book, which I've just said, Principles of Group Treatment is a fantastic book, because in that book he starts talking about how to use the method, the practicalities of TA for the first time in a clinical room. Before that was Games People Play, and then there's the major theories of TA in his first book in 1961. But after Principles of Group Treatment, two other books came along, just before he died. He died in 1970 on Carmel Beach, if I had double heart attack. Just before he died, he'd finished off a book on script, actually, which was called What Do You Say After You Say Hello? It's a very easy book to read, and it's about script. It's all about script theory, very different from, of course, Stanley's book I've just talked about. Then he wrote another book, which had finished off posthumously, if that's the word, called Sex and Human Loving. That came out in 1970. Three quarters of it was written. When he died, he just finished What Do You Say After You Say Hello, but he was writing simultaneously this book on relationships, which he calls Sex and Human Loving. Then he died, I think it was three quarters away, and then it was finished off by other people. Those are the major Eric Byrne five books, and then there was another book, I think it was 1963, but I never actually, I've opened the first few pages, but as I'm not into TA and organizations particularly, I didn't read it. It was called Power Dynamics of Organizations. I've not read that particularly. All those books were written. Steiner, when he wrote this major book on script, he pays homage. I don't know if it's in that book, but certainly an article I've written of how these lexicon of books that Eric Byrne wrote influenced his life, but I would say the best script book, isn't the book What Do You Say After You Say Hello written by Eric Byrne, is this book. I think even the, it's dedicated to Eric Byrne. Oh, Eric Byrne, watching down will be so proud of course, Steiner. Yeah, it says, I dedicate this book to Eric Byrne, Teacher, Friend, Father, Brother. That says it all. Yeah, so please think about buying it, or at least looking it up on Google, it's a fabulous book. Okay, so the next one we're doing is the Art and Science of Relationships in the next podcast, Bob. Yeah, now this book. Don't talk about this book. I will wait till the next podcast. Okay, excuse me, off. You'll have to wait for the next time. Yes, listening for the next one. Until next time, Bob. Speak soon. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. 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