{"id":1365,"date":"2013-08-29T12:40:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T20:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:40:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T20:40:38","slug":"a-fuzzy-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1365","title":{"rendered":"A Fuzzy Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite anecdotes is \u201cA Fuzzy Tale<\/a>,\u201d written by Dr. Claude Steiner, an advocate for Eric Berne\u2019s Transactional Analysis<\/a> (in the 1970s). Part of that theory overlaps with how I think about things and vivifies Berne\u2019s theory of giving and getting \u201cstrokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a wonderful story, first written in the 1970s, about giving and accepting appreciations or well-wishing sentiments. The original story had the nice woman giving out \u201cwarm fuzzies\u201d—positive strokes—big hips. It was a play on the idea that the woman was a hippie, and the original story has a line that was left out on his website version: \u201cShe was born under the sign of Aquarius.\u201d (I suspect that this was a now-outdated literary allusion to the then-popular musical theatre play, \u201cHair\u201d—especially the song, Aquarius. There was at the time some mild sense of optimism about the better sentiments of the hippie movement, ignoring the news of the more decadent elements of that cultural turn. I confess that I still resonate with those positive sentiments\u2014it was a powerful era in my life, a defining era.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the point of the story is that people really need psychologically positive expressions of recognition, enjoyment, approval, and appreciation—i.e., warm fuzzies, positive strokes. It also notes that people are so hungry for social connection that they\u2019ll even accept tainted communications, \u201ccold pricklies,\u201d because even negative attention is better than being ignored and feeling cut off from humanity.<\/p>\n

I am impressed with the intensely social nature of human beings, their need to belong, feel connected. This, though, has masked the way people try to stay connected and yet also keep up their defensiveness. Thus, sadly, many people I encounter interact with other by keeping up a fa\u00e7ade of smiling teasing, as if they felt too vulnerable to express in their manner of speaking a simple \u201cI like you.\u201d Steiner\u2019s story hints at that, too. So check it out! It\u2019s worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite anecdotes is \u201cA Fuzzy Tale,\u201d written by Dr. Claude Steiner, an advocate for Eric Berne\u2019s Transactional Analysis (in the 1970s). Part of that theory overlaps with how I think about things and vivifies Berne\u2019s theory of giving and getting \u201cstrokes.\u201d This is a wonderful story, first written in the 1970s, about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literacy","category-social-depth-psychology-sociometry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}