This article, first published in 1966, is one of the founding articles of transactional analysis. It, along with many other articles and books, established Dr. Steiner as a major transactional analysis theoretician. A close associate of Eric Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, Dr. Steiner made major contributions in a number of TA areas.

This article proposes the idea that we develop an apparently positive set of goals that are supposed to offset the negative aspects of the script, or life plan. For example, a person who has a "don't be successful" injunction in his or her script, might also have a "be a financial tycoon" in his counterscript. Thus messages, conclusions, and decisions exist, in my experience, in a complementary way that are somehow attached or connected. This idea of a counter to negative messages was part of the reason Dr. Steiner was the first recipient of the Eric Berne Award in 1971. The other is that he began laying the foundation for the analytical school of transactional analysis, the other two, as TAJ editor Tony Tilney says, are the operational and the narrative.

Regarding possible implications in Dr. Steiner's article, the editor's of TAJnet advise anyone working with alcoholics to be extremely cautious. Although Dr. Steiner does not, in this particular article, directly state that once "script cure" is achieved, some alcoholics can resume drinking in moderate ways, the editors feel that no such implication should be drawn by readers. Dr. Steiner's later works, and his present positions do indeed support the idea that alcoholics, once cured, can drink socially.

Dr. James Callahan the Executive V.P. of the American Association of Addictive Medicine asserts that alcoholics cured in a script sense, and then they being able to drink socially and in moderation, "is a contradiction in terms". In today's scientific and medical community, an alcoholic is defined as someone who is so severely addicted to alcohol that when taking a drink he or she will not be able to control the desire for more. As the AA slogan states: "One is too many, and a thousand isn't enough" That is to say unequivocally, that the alcoholic is afflicted with a disease to which the only known cure is complete and total abstinence. Dr. Callahan distinguishes alcoholics from problem drinkers, people who drink too much but who do not exhibit most of the physical symptoms that alcoholics do. Dr. Callahan says he has no disagreement with Dr. Steiner's ideas if they are directed toward the category of problem drinkers.

Therefore, given this single reservation and editor's caution, Dr. Steiner's early contribution to transactional analysis script theory should be read and digested by every serious student of transactional analysis. It forms a significant part of the platform for much advanced script theory that followed.

Alan Jacobs, Editor

TAJnet reprint of the 1966 article Script and Counterscript by Claude Steiner...