A ritual is a socially programmed use of time where everybody agrees to do the same thing. It is safe, there is no commitment to or involvement with another person, the outcome is predictable, and it can be pleasant insofar as you are ‘in step’ or doing the right thing. There are worship rituals, greeting rituals, cocktail party rituals, bedroom rituals. The ritual is designed to get a group of people through the hour without having to get close to anyone. They may, but they don’t have to.
An activity, according to Eric Berne, is a ‘common, convenient, comfortable and utilitarian method of structuring time by a project designed to deal with the material of external reality.’ Common activities are keeping business appointments, doing the dishes, building a house, writing a book, shoveling snow, and studying for exams. These activities, in that they are productive or creative, may be highly satisfying in and of themselves, or they may lead to satisfactions in the future in the nature of stroking for a job well done.
Pastimes are a way of passing time. Berne defines a pastime an engagement in which the transactions(interactions between people) are straightforward. With happy or well-organized people whose capacity for enjoyment is unimpaired, a social pastime may be indulged in for its own sake and bring its own satisfactions. With others, particularly neurotics, it is just what the name implies, a way of passing (ie, structuring) the time: until one gets to know people better, until this hour has been sweated out, and on a larger scale, until bed-time, until vacation time, until school starts, until the cure is forthcoming, until some form of charism, rescue, or death arrives. Existentially a pastime is a way of warding off guilt, despair, or intimacy, a device provided by nature or culture to ease the quiet desperation.
People who cannot engage in pastimes at will are not socially facile. Pastimes can be thought of as being a type of social probing where one seeks information about new acquaintances in an unthreatening, noncommittal way. Berne’s observation is that pastimes form the basis for the selection of acquaintances and may lead to friendship’ and further that they have as an advantage the ‘confirmation of role and the stabilizing of position’.
For many thousands of years man’s existence has been structured preponderantly by withdrawal, ritual, pastimes, activi-ties, and games. Scepticism about this assertion could perhaps best be met by a reminder of the persistent recurrence throughout history of war, the grimmest game of all. The majority of men have helplessly accepted these patterns as human nature, the inevitable course of events, the symptoms of history repeating itself. There has been a certain peace in a resignation of this sort.
Giving and sharing are spontaneous expressions of joy rather than responses to socially programmed rituals. Intimacy is a game-free relationship, since goals are not ulterior. Intimacy is made possible in a situation where the absence of fear makes possible the fullness of perception, where beauty can be seen apart from utility, where possessiveness is made unnecessary by the reality of possessor.
Marriage is the most complicated of all human relationships. Few alliances can produce such extremes of emotion or can so quickly travel from professions of the utmost bliss to that cold, terminal legal write-off, mental cruelty.
Everyone recognizes the increasing complexities of the culture and social structure in which we live today, with the many pressures that tend to weaken and even destroy the family as the primary social structure for meeting the emotional needs of children. Under the impact of uncertainties, the outpourings of news and entertainment media, and a flood of demands, the modern mother feels embattled and frequently on the verge of disintegration in her struggle with frustration. Everything around her is in conflict. Her sensitivity is dulled, as it has to be, as within seconds her television set moves from the ghastly reports of war.
Summarily, we may say that the solution to the problems of all children, regardless of their situation, is the same solution that applies to the problems of grownups. We must begin with the realization that we cannot change the past. We must start where we are. We can only separate the past from the present by using the Adult, which can learn to identify the recordings of the Child with its archaic fears and the recordings of the Parent with its disturbing replay of a past reality.
Many parents are afraid to trust the Adult in their youngsters with hard decisions. One father of a teenage daughter said, ‘When she was five and played with a razor I had to take it away from her. Now you see her playing with another kind of razor and what do you say – go ahead and play with it?’ The difference is that at five she did not have enough data to comprehend fully the possible fatal consequence of cutting herself with the razor. But at fourteen the teenager has, or can have, sufficient data to understand all kinds of consequences – that is, if the parents have been busy through the years acquainting him with values, realities, the importance of people, and his own worth.
Trust in the Adult is the only constructive way to confront the many anxiety-provoking pronouncements the teenager can bring home. If the teenage daughter comes home and announces woefully. I’m pregnant, it probably will knock the needle off the Parent – Adult – Child seismograph. The Parent in the parents will rise up in great indignation and judgement; their Child will be tearful and sad (another failure) and angry (how could you do this to us?) and guilty (as the internal Parent whips the Child with its disapproval). What in the parents will meet daughter’s announcement? If the Parent and Child stand wringing their hands, one might say the Adult is out boiling water or figuring out what to do. The Adult can determine what part of the Parent and Child can be externalized as constructive data and still contribute something to the daughter’s resources for handling this difficult situation. One of the most powerful contributions to inner strength is for the daughter to see her parents struggle with their own desperate feelings and still keep the Adult in control, planning its course on the basis of what is real and what is loving.
Source : I am OK-you are OK by Thomas A. Harris
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150265240-i-am-ok-you-are-ok
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