TA and popular culture

Eric Berne's ability to express the ideas of TA in common language and his popularisation of the concepts in mass-market books inspired a boom of popular TA texts, some of which simplify TA concepts to a deleterious degree[citation needed].
One example is a caricature of the structural model, where it is made out that the Parent judges, the Adult thinks and the Child feels. Most serious TA texts, including those aimed at the mass market rather than professionals, avoid this degree of oversimplification.
Thomas Harris's highly successful popular work from the late 1960s, I'm OK, You're OK is largely based on Transactional Analysis. A fundamental divergence, however, between Harris and Berne is that Berne postulates that everyone starts life in the "I'm OK" position, whereas Harris believes that life starts out "I'm not OK, you're OK". Many transactional analysts[citation needed] have regarded Harris as too far removed from core TA beliefs to be considered a transactional analyst.
New Age author James Redfield has acknowledged[20] Harris and Berne as important influences in his best-seller The Celestine Prophecy. The protagonists in the novel survive by striving (and succeeding) in escaping from "control dramas" that resemble the games of TA.