Chapter 8 – What Is the Drama Triangle?

The best way to really “get” someone, to understand them on a deeper level, is to notice their interactions with other people.

For example, if you notice an intense argument between two people try to study how they act with each other. You will notice some hints of how each participant sees themselves in relation to “the other.”

From that, you can gather how they might act in the same scenario, but with other dialogue participants.

That is what the drama triangle is. It’s basically a way to understand these social interactions and why they happen.

How the Concept Came to Be

If you’ve heard about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) this will be easier to understand. After World War 2, many veterans had to manage their post-war trauma.

As such, they went to therapy sessions before they even got back to their families. Now, some of those therapy sessions were successful and they adjusted back to family life. Others weren’t as lucky, unfortunately.

Thus, family therapy was created. Therapists felt that treating people in a social setting would yield much better results than dealing with them by themselves, as individuals

They felt that focusing on communication as a therapeutic method would be more in line with the true human psyche.

Eric Berne elaborated on the findings of those therapists 10 years or so later. He furthered the understanding of inter-relational psychology to his contemporaries and brought more complex explanations to existing data.

Stephen Karpman was the one who came up with the “Karpman Triangle” in 1968. He was one of Berne’s students and managed to use his teacher’s information and help to publish his own article.

The Karpman Triangle is a template in which one could define what role a certain person plays in social interactions. Especially in intensely emotional ones (as it was explained before).