When we are born we're not immediately given a full instinctive, emotional make-up. Instead we have to develop our inner animal by interacting with other people. The animal within always begins at birth with friendly weakness. This is the first thing the new-born figures out in its attempt to make sense of its self and its surroundings. The parent lets the baby know that although it is small and vulnerable (not OK), they'll play the role of the OK adult. The baby has absolutely no choice in playing with other moods. It is completely defenceless and depends on plenty of stroking, assurance and cuddling to develop its first mood of friendly weakness in a balanced way.
As the baby moves into toddler-hood, it integrates the ability to be actively hostile as well as friendly. Instinct compels us to evolve. Because the baby toddler lacks any strength it can only latch onto hostile weakness. This can sometimes take the extreme form of petulance, overt complaining, jumping up and down or potty throwing: it shouldn't be confused with earlier passive screaming. By now the tiny toddler has two moods to play with, both based on emotional weakness.
As the infant develops it grows stronger and integrates friendly strength into its behaviour. At this point the infant will attempt to play out supportive roles in relationships, usually with younger siblings or lacking this, with older members of the family when they are cooking a meal or suffering from minor ailments.
Hostile strength comes last in the infant's development due to the fact that very small toddlers don't make successful tyrants or leaders. Hostile strength behaviour begins around the later months of four year and makes itself felt around the age of five.

Artistic and literary guides to the inner animal play out this same sequential description of the transactional analysis grid. It seems that when a writer or artist becomes a little trance-like, they tend to play out a story which represents the description of the inner animal from their own infancy. To give an example, James Joyce makes mention in Finnegans Wake of the four old 'timeless' men (who are linked to the four apostles of the Christian Bible). We find that Matt Gregory corresponds to Matthew and the Gentle Angel; Luke Tarpey corresponds to Luke and the Bull (Taurus); Marcus Lyons corresponds to Mark and the Noble Lion (Lyon); Johnny MacDougal corresponds to John and the Eagle (Ougal). [Source: Robert Anton Wilson]
The sequential side of the four guides comes through at the end of part two of the book where Joyce says of Johnny MacDougal, 'Its pith is full. The way is free. Their lot is cast. So, to john for a john, johnajeams, led it be !'.
Joyce doesn't set free the first three archetypes without putting 'john', the eagle at the front as the leader: 'led it be'.
Many successful fables and comedies follow this same pattern of describing the sequence of the growth of the inner animal. This isn't done in a deliberate manner. Successful writers just have a knack of tapping into life-scripts we can identify with which describe our own patterns in life. Most of these life-scripts make a point of putting a babylike friendly weakling at the start of a story and placing an archetype representing leadership and hostile strength at the end. While the middle quadrants of hostile weakness and friendly strength are prone to being mixed up, the first and last quadrants almost always appear in their proper sequence. This occurs in the Christian Bible with the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; in Finnegans Wake with the four 'timeless' men; most comedy scripts of an atavistic nature; the characters in Wind in the Willows and countless other guides to the inner animal in literature and film.

The transactional analysis grid will sequentially replicate itself whenever we find the beginning of a social animal, whether it be the politics played out between two neighbours over the breakage of a lawnmower or the wars waged between large national beasts. It's not just a coincidence that a recent near skirmish in the Gulf had both 'leaders' from the United States government and the Iraqi government coming out with public speeches on television whilst sitting in front of the symbol of the imperial eagle. Both were weakly appealing to the symbol of the eagle in an attempt to boost their image of being The Boss within their own countries.
Wholistic and observant readers will by now be seeing the correlation between the sequential description of the four life scripts and the description of the atavistic youth currents. As to be expected they follow the very same sequence. Other social commentators have commented on some aspects of this pattern in the past.
When analysing the main mood of the Hippie generation, Timothy Leary once referred to them as being 'passive babies' of the 'new neurological-info society'. In the 1980s, Jon Savage suggested the 1977 Punk fashion of leather nappy flaps and safety pins was a social subconscious recapitulation of infancy. More recently, Judge Jules compared a sea of ravers in front of him to a group of wild, hyperactive toddlers in a supermarket. Nappies now gone, the toddlers are running amok.

Early, flawed attempts to understand the sequential description of the life scripts were first made by the psychologist, Thomas Harris in the 1960s. Thomas unfortunately claimed that the 'I'm OK, you're OK' life-script was the most mature quadrant of the transactional analysis grid and so he went on to promote the idea in popular culture with missionary zeal. The end result of this was a best selling book named predictably, 'I'm OK, You're OK'. Although it introduced millions of lay people to transactional analysis it also spread the myth which suggests there is a 'mature' quadrant of the transactional analysis grid compared to three 'inferior' quadrants. But when we think about it, there are plenty of friendly strengths we meet in life who are of an insincere or imbalanced nature. Thomas Harris either wasn't aware of Timothy Leary's work on a more balanced guide to the subject or if he was, perhaps he rejected such ideas. As well as promoting 'friendly strength' as being a goal to achieve in life, Thomas also spread the damaging idea that hostile strengths were 'criminal' in nature and of a selfish and corrupt nature.
Despite these mistakes Thomas did make an attempt to understand the sequential description of the inner animal in human infancy. This side of his work has been taken and refined for the Hare hypothesis along with Timothy Leary's idea that maturity can be found by finding a central balanced approach to the transactional analysis grid.

The Downward Spiral - there is another sequential description of the four life scripts, which goes backwards. When looking after the aged it can come as a surprise to see a fully developed person regress, first losing their leadership qualities, then their hearty supportive nature...Until they are reduced to the doddering, 'Victor Meldrew' routine of old age hostile weakness, followed by lying in bed for months with diapers, like a listless baby. It's a such a familiar routine and one which can only lead back to where we started, as dust blowing in the wind.
Other parallels can be drawn too, such as the similarity to the toddler tentatively walking about with their push-buggy to the old dodderer walking about with their walker-trolley. Both will often sport a face radiant with joy for the beauty and sheer wonder of life.
In times gone by, seasonal flu, freezing wind, bad hygiene, poor diet and poverty would cull off old people thus depriving us of the 'Western' affliction of extended old age. (I don't say 'affliction' unkindly; cleaning up diarrhoea off the carpet is as much a task for the carer as it is for the ageing patient's dignity - unless they have late stage dementia.) But perhaps there's a connection here between the retro-spiral of the four life-scripts on mass in old folk to the progressive spiral in our teens/twenties as cultural play: both are produced by an affluent oil-rich society.
If you've not had the experience of looking after your parent/s, or old folks' homes, try reading Alan Bennet's guide in his recent Diaries (2005). To quote from his thoughts on his mother's eventide:

'When she does speak it makes less sense with her words eventually becoming a babble. Second childhood is not just phrase, but a proper description of how skills learnt in the first years of her life are gradually unlearnt at its end, and in reverse order - speech has come out of babble and now reversed to it.'

The slow loss of one's parent along with our measured (more manageable) grief, in equal balance to their previous joy of watching us grow: is this not another perk of 'Western' living?

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