ABSTRACT
The drama triangle (Karpman, 1968) is a widely used piece of TA theory that is easily grasped and readily applied in understanding and analysing games. The drama triangle describes three psychological roles that people adopt in the course of their games. The roles are: Persecutor, Rescuer and Victim. The words are capitalized to draw a distinction between a `real life' rescuer, persecutor and victim, for example in the case of a person who has slipped into the water and is drowning and who gets pulled from the water; the person who was drowning would be a `reallife victim' and their saviour would be a `real-life rescuer'. Similarly, a mugger would be a real-life persecutor (although they would probably also be a psychological Persecutor!).
