TA :: The Games People Play :: Introduction

Berne notes that Spitz (1945) discovered that infants deprived of physical touch will over a prolonged period experience irreversible decline and even death. Berne notes that from this came the idea of "stimulus-hunger" the preferred form of stimuli being physical intimacy [see also Psychogenic Disease in Infancy (1952)]. Berne notes that within adults sensory deprivation can have similar results and solitary confinement is a particularly brutal form of punishment that can have significant psychological impact. Sensory deprivation in adults it can induce political compliance (and conversely social organization is the most effective weapon against political compliance).

Berne notes that there is evidence to suggestion that organic changes take place as a result of emotional or sensory deprivation which may because either by lack of stimulation or poor nutrition. Berne suggests a biological chain reaction may occur from emotional and sensory deprivation through apathy to degeneration and death. In this way he advocates stimulus-hunger is similar to food-hunger; both are essential to survival. Berne notes the parallels between over stimulation and overeating and the problems of choice.

Berne summarises these findings with the statement "If you are not stroked, your spinal cord will shrivel up". Therefore a key aspect of childhood development is identifying how to make do with alternative forms of stroking. As part of the transition toward adulthood children learn to modify behaviors whereby socially unacceptable impulses are transformed into acceptable actions or behaviors. This is the process known in psychology as sublimation. This is the transition from stimulus-hunger to something else namely "recognition-hunger". Stroking in adults is not about physical stimulation but the recognition of another presence. For the purpose of transactional analysis the exchange of strokes constitutes a transaction; this is the fundamental unit of social intercourse.

Levine (1960) notes that both gentle handling and painful electric shocks enhanced the development if infant animals; furthermore extreme or severe forms of stimulation had indistinguishable effects from routine handling. As such the principle that Berne draws from what has been described above is that any social intercourse has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all.

References
Levine, S (1960) 'Stimulation in Infancy'. Scientific American. 202(5), pp(80-87);
Spitz, R (1945) 'Hospitalism: Genesis of Psychiatric conditions in Early Childhood'. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. 1(1). pp53-74;