Transactional Analysis Journal

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Eliciting and Defining the Nature of Rackets

Mavis Klein
Transactional Analysis Journal 1981 11: 315
DOI: 10.1177/036215378101100409

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 Eliciting and Defining the
Nature of Rackets
Mavis Klein
Abstract
Describes a technique to assist the Child
as well as the Adult of the client to recog-
nize that racket responses are chosen by
the individual rather than being natural,
necessary, or universal. Responses of
group members are elicited to a situation
in which one member reports a racket
feeling (R. Erskine and M. Zalcman).
Alternatively, a situation may be des-
cribed and individual responses identified.
A racket is a central feature of each per-
son's maladaptive script repertoire. Under-
standing the nature of rackets, accepting
responsibility for one's own, and thereby
gaining conscious control over them is, I
believe, a great insightful advantage dis-
tinctively offered by TA. And yet the TA
teacher or therapist is often hampered by
the resistance of the Adapted Child to this
insight; each person tends to contaminate
the Adult definition with her Adapted
Child's need to experience her own racket
feelings as 'natural' and/or 'appropriate'
to situations in which she experiences them.
While paying lip service to the definition of
a racket as an habitually and compulsively
experienced bad feeling, she continues to
rationalize her own racket responses with,
"You weren't there. It didn't happen to
you, but if it had you would naturally have
felt just like I did."
A way round this difficulty emerged in
Vol. 11, No.4, October 1981
Downloaded from tax.sagepub.com by Ana Farcas on May 22, 2014
one of my therapy groups. One evening in
December I walked into my living room to
conduct a group therapy session and, as I
entered the room, I heard one group
member saying to another, "Thank you for
your Christmas card. I'm sorry I haven't
sent you one yet. I know I must seem very
ungrateful. " I took this up and asked the
rest of the group how each of them would
feel on meeting someone who had sent
them an unreciprocated Christmas card.
The responses were "triumphant,"
"embarassed," "angry," "guilty," and
"Worried." As each person named his or
her own racket the rest of the group looked
on in amazed disbelief. The "guilty" one
then turned to the "ungrateful" one and
said, "But you would feel guilty for being
ungrateful wouldn't you?" The
"ungrateful" one replied, "No."
Thus, by standardizing the situation, I
had closed the escape hatches of those who
sought to evade responsibility for their
rackets by appeal to the uniqueness of their
experiences as justification for their
responses. Ever since, I have successfully
communicated the nature of rackets
simultaneously to the Adult and Child of
each of my patients by asking, "It is
December 23rd and you bump into a friend
who has sent you a Christmas card, but you
have not sent one to her. How do you
feel?"
Mavis Klein, BA, eM, lives and works
in London, England.
315