Life positions

Life Positions are basic beliefs about self and others, which are used to justify other decisions about ourselves and others and to justify our behaviour.
There are a number of ways of diagramming the life positions. Franklyn Ernst (1971) the originator of the OK Corral drew the four positions in a grid, as can be seen from the diagram on the right. We have put these into red and green to show the effective and ineffective quadrants for communication and healthy relationships.

By shading in the quadrants according to the amount of time we think we spend in each we can get an idea of the themes to our experience.

Berne talked about the Life Positions as existential positions - one of which we are more likely to go to under stress, with perhaps another position underneath this one. Our Life Position can change as we develop and grow, but is a theme that runs through our life.
This is significantly different to what Ernst is talking about. He is referring to the way we move around all the positions during a typical day.

Three Dimensional OKness >