Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts—Uncovering the Hidden Psychological Programs That Shape Power, Status, and Social Control
Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner is a deep exploration of how unconscious life scripts—formed in childhood—shape behavior, social roles, and power dynamics in adulthood. Rooted in Transactional Analysis (TA), this book reveals how individuals follow preconditioned psychological patterns that dictate their interactions, self-worth, and ability to navigate professional and personal hierarchies. At the Center for Integrative Neuroscience, this book aligns with our research into power structures, workplace mobbing, systemic oppression, and the ways in which early programming influences adult susceptibility to manipulation, exclusion, and retaliation.
 
How This Book Connects to Our Work
✔ Life Scripts as Social Conditioning & Power Entrainment—The book explains how society, family structures, and institutions reinforce rigid life scripts, often without conscious awareness. This mirrors our Status Marble Game model, which explores how power, influence, and credibility are stolen, hoarded, or manipulated through social conditioning.
✔ Why Some People Become Targets in Hierarchical Structures – Certain life scripts predispose individuals to being scapegoated, gaslighted, or excluded within professional and institutional settings. High performers, ethical disruptors, and whistleblowers who reject their assigned roles often trigger retaliation from those invested in maintaining control.
✔ Psychological Warfare & Status Enforcement—Scripts People Live explains how dominant individuals and institutions weaponize psychological narratives to suppress dissent, manufacture compliance, and maintain hierarchical order. This aligns with our research into corporate corruption, institutional betrayal, and how social exclusion reinforces groupthink.
✔ The Neuroscience of Scripts: How Trauma & Conditioning Shape Belief Systems – The book reveals how early psychological programming creates neural pathways that shape self-perception and decision-making. This supports our research into how trauma, stress responses, and metabolic health impact resilience, making individuals either resistant to or vulnerable to social control.
✔ Rewriting the Script: How to Break Free from Conditioned Roles & Reclaim Power – The book provides strategies for identifying destructive life scripts, resisting coercive social conditioning, and rewriting self-narratives for empowerment. This aligns with our focus on cognitive resilience, psychological sovereignty, and professional survival in hostile environments.
 
Essential Reading for Those Navigating Workplace Power Struggles, Social Conditioning, and Institutional Retaliation
For individuals who have experienced workplace sabotage, systemic gaslighting, or exclusion from professional and social structures, Scripts People Live provides a critical framework for understanding the subconscious forces at play and developing strategies for autonomy and empowerment. It reinforces the mission of the Center for Integrative Neuroscience to help individuals recognize, resist, and dismantle manipulative power structures using neuroscience-backed strategies for resilience, empowerment, and long-term success.
 
When Claude Steiner and the late Eric Berne developed the theory of Transactional Analysis, their basic belief that people were “born princes and princess, until their parents turned them into frogs” countered the fundamental principle of psychiatry which asserts that emotional and mental distress comes from within. This theory was further developed in Steiner’s book Games Alcoholics Play. Dr. Berne, in What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, acknowledged Steiner’s important role in the analysis of “life scripts” which we choose at an early age and which rule every detail of our lives until our death.

In Scripts People Live, Steiner expands upon this belief to show that people are innately healthy but develop a pattern early in life based upon negative or positive influences of those around them. Thus children decide, however unconsciously, whether they will be happy or depressed, winners or failures, strong or dependent, and having decided, they spend the rest of their lives making the decision come true. For those who choose a negative script, the consequences can be disastrous unless they make a conscious decision to change.

Steiner’s classic in psychological theory, with a new foreword by the author, offers a hopeful and practical analysis so that we all may rewrite our life scripts and lead more meaningful and fulfilling lives.