What do you say after you say hello? : the psychology of human destiny / Eric Berne.

Includes bibliographical references.

Principles of transactional analysis -- Parental programming. Human destiny ; Prenatal influences ; Early developments ; The plastic years ; The script apparatus ; Later childhood ; Adolescence ; Maturity and death -- The script in action. Types of scripts ; Some typical scripts ; Cinderella ; How is the script possible? ; Transmission of the script -- The script in clinical practice. The preliminary phases ; The script signs ; The script in treatment ; The decisive intervention ; Three case histories -- A scientific approach to script theory. Objections to the theory of scripts ; Methodological problems ; The script check list.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Berne found that each person, in early childhood--under the powerful influence of his parents--writes his own script that will determine the general course of his life. That script dictates what kind of person he will marry, how many children he will have, even what kind of bed he will die in. Most of all, it determines whether he will be a winner or a loser, a spendthrift or a skinflint, a tower of strength or a doomed alcoholic. Some people, says Berne, have scripts that call for them to fail in their professions, or to be repeatedly disappointed in love, or to be chronic invalids. Here, he demonstrates how each life script gets written, how it works, and how each of us can break free of it to help us attain real autonomy and true fulfillment.--From publisher description.