Page 220 - Make Work Great

You . . . as the Defi ner

level with any title can be a culture builder, anyone at any level with
any title can take on the role of rescuer, victim, or persecutor and
unwittingly bring their culture-changing efforts to a grinding halt.
Actually, there’s a good chance you or someone you know has
taken on one or more of these roles, accidentally or on purpose, in
the last few days.

The Drama Triangle
In 1968, a psychologist named Stephen B. Karpman introduced a
model for analyzing interpersonal relationships, which he labeled
“the drama triangle.” He identifi ed three interrelated positions—
the rescuer, the persecutor, and the victim—and explained that they
comprise a transactional relationship, or a relationship that is char-
acterized by a “game” between preestablished roles rather than by
the actual interchange of factual and emotional information. In this
game, each role prescribes how the player acts and reacts: the victim
is saved by the rescuer from being taking advantage of by the persecu-
tor. It’s a basic pattern we all know well. 1
Therein lies the problem. When we take on these roles, the chal-
lenge and reward of real information exchange is eliminated and
replaced—fi rst with the challenge and reward of scripted interaction,
then with the challenge and reward of frequent role exchange. The
roles play out, and then they switch. In the switch, the victim can
become the persecutor, the rescuer can become the victim, and so on,
so the game can continue, often at a higher level of intensity.
As a simple illustration of this game, consider one of Karpman’s
original examples, the children’s fairy tale about Little Red Riding
Hood. In this story, the dramatic interest is provided not by character
development, but by the scripted interchange and surprise swapping
between the three roles: Little Red Riding Hood begins as the rescuer
of her grandmother and becomes the victim of the wolf; the wolf
begins as Red’s persecutor and becomes the victim of the woodsman.
The story provides few real reasons for the players’ actions, and that
question somehow never comes up. Instead, the main characters play

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