How to Use Karpman’s Drama Triangle in Counselling and Supervision

I use Karpman’s Drama Triangle regularly in counselling, particularly in brief work. It is one of those models that can help a client make sense of a complicated interpersonal pattern, and quickly.

A client may describe repeatedly stepping in to fix problems for another person, taking responsibility for their wellbeing, offering advice and trying to prevent things from going wrong. Over time, they become exhausted and resentful. They may then become critical of the person they have been helping, feel guilty about becoming critical, and return to helping again.

We could spend quite a lot of time describing that pattern. Sometimes I draw three points on a piece of paper instead.

The Drama Triangle gives us three positions to work with: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor. Once the client can see the movement between them, a complicated sequence can become much easier to examine.

I have seen clients recognise patterns they have repeated for years within a few minutes of seeing the triangle. That experience makes the model clinically useful to me. It does not establish that Karpman’s theory is correct, or that teaching the Drama Triangle improves therapeutic outcomes.

What did Karpman actually propose?

Stephen Karpman introduced the Drama Triangle in 1968 in an article called Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis, written within the transactional analysis tradition (Karpman, 1968).

The familiar triangle identifies three interpersonal positions: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.

The Victim position involves powerlessness and reduced agency. The Rescuer moves towards solving, managing or taking responsibility for another person’s problem, often beyond what has been requested or what properly belongs to them. The Persecutor moves towards blame, criticism, punishment or control (Karpman, 1968).

Importantly, Karpman was not simply describing three kinds of people. His model was concerned with movement between positions.

Someone might begin by rescuing, become increasingly frustrated when their help does not produce the result they wanted, move into criticism, and then experience themselves as badly treated when the other person responds angrily. They may have occupied all three positions within the same interaction.

Karpman considered these switches central to the drama itself (Karpman, 1968). In the counselling room, I think the switches are also where much of the useful material is.

What evidence is there for the Drama Triangle?

For a model that has been discussed in psychotherapy, counselling, social work and organisational settings for decades, the direct empirical literature is thin.

The most substantial empirical study I could locate was conducted by Lac and Donaldson (2022), who developed the Drama Triangle Scale. Across three samples involving 969 adults, their analyses supported three distinguishable dimensions corresponding to Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor roles. These dimensions were also associated in theoretically plausible ways with attachment and psychological distress.

That is meaningful evidence for the constructs, but it is important not to overstate what the study established.

Lac and Donaldson validated a measure of Drama Triangle roles. They did not test whether teaching clients the Drama Triangle changes behaviour, improves relationships or produces better counselling outcomes.

There is therefore some empirical support for the constructs, but not an established evidence base for the Drama Triangle as a therapeutic intervention.

So why use something that is not an empirically supported treatment?

Because counselling is full of clinical decisions that are not themselves standalone treatment packages.

We might deliver an evidence-supported intervention while also drawing a diagram, offering a metaphor, reflecting a relational pattern or suggesting a way of understanding something that happened between sessions.

Evidence-based practice does not require independent randomised controlled trial evidence for every formulation, question or explanatory tool. The APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice (2006) defined evidence-based psychological practice as integrating the best available research with clinical expertise and the individual client’s characteristics, culture and preferences.

What matters is being accurate about the claims we make.

I would not tell a client that research has established that the Drama Triangle explains their relationship. I am comfortable saying:

“There is a model I sometimes use to look at interactions like this. I wonder if it might help us map what is happening here.”

Then we examine whether it does.

How I actually use the Drama Triangle in counselling

I rarely begin by explaining the entire model. Usually, the client has already described something that makes me think the triangle might be useful.

I introduce it in relation to a specific interaction, particularly where it seems to reflect a recurring pattern. This keeps the model tentative and gives us something observable to work with.

Start with one event

Suppose a client repeatedly helps a sibling who is struggling financially. The sibling cannot pay a bill, so the client lends them money and helps with a budget. A few weeks later, another bill appears and the client helps again. Eventually they become angry and tell the sibling that they are irresponsible. The sibling responds that the client is judgemental and controlling.

The client finishes with: “I can’t believe they speak to me like that after everything I’ve done for them.”

Rather than immediately explaining the pattern, I might draw the triangle and ask:

• Where did you begin?

• At what point did helping become frustration?

• What happened next?

• Where were you by the end?

The useful observation is often not simply, “I rescue people.”

It might be: “I rescue people until I become angry with them, and then when they react, I feel hurt.”

That gives us something much more specific to work with.

Look for the switch

One of the questions I use most often is:

“Did you notice where you changed positions?”

A client may believe that other people continually take advantage of them. When we slow the interaction down, we might find that they agree to things they do not want to do, say very little about their growing frustration, and eventually become angry.

The question then changes from:

“Why does everyone take advantage of me?”

to:

“What makes it so difficult to say no before becoming overwhelmed?”

The triangle gives us somewhere to look but the therapeutic work comes from what we discover when we look there.

Look at what is happening to responsibility

The Drama Triangle is also useful for examining where responsibility has moved.

In the Rescuer position, someone may take responsibility that belongs primarily to another person. In the Victim position, they may experience little sense of their own influence or choice. In the Persecutor position, they may attempt to make another person responsible through blame, pressure or control.

With someone who frequently rescues, I might ask:

• What part of this problem is actually yours?

• What part belongs to the other person?

• What do you imagine would happen if you did less?

• What feelings come up when somebody you care about makes a poor decision?

Rescuing rarely feels unreasonable while someone is doing it. It may feel caring, competent or necessary. Sometimes frustration or resentment is the first sign that the arrangement has become unsustainable. Rather than treating those feelings as the problem, we can examine what happened before them.

Working with the Victim position without blaming the client

The Victim corner requires particular care because the language can become shaming very quickly.

I would never tell somebody, “You are putting yourself in the Victim role.”

Instead, I am interested in agency.

I might ask:

• What parts of this situation can you influence?

• What have you already tried?

• What are you waiting for the other person to do?

• If they do not change, what choices remain available to you?

The aim is not to convince clients that they have unlimited control because they do not.

Sometimes the client genuinely has very few options, perhaps their choices are constrained by money, caring responsibilities, disability, discrimination, workplace hierarchy or another person's behaviour. The work is to locate whatever agency actually exists.

This can be particularly important when a client is waiting for somebody else to apologise, understand or change. There may be grief in recognising that this may never happen. Therapy can then turn towards what the client wants to do if the other person remains exactly as they are.

Working with the Rescuer position

When I am working with rescuing, I am usually less interested in persuading the person to “stop helping” than in understanding what the helping is doing.

Sometimes helping is simply helping. Other times it is a way of managing anxiety, preventing conflict, maintaining closeness, avoiding guilt or making sure an outcome occurs in the way the client thinks it should.

Questions I might use include:

• What is difficult about watching them struggle?

• What are you afraid might happen if you do not intervene?

• What are you giving up in order to keep doing it?

• If you continue at this level for another six months, how do you imagine you will feel towards them?

The aim is to help the client distinguish caring from rescuing.

Working with the Persecutor position

The Persecutor position can involve criticism, blame, punishment or attempts to force the other person to behave differently.

Simply telling somebody to communicate better is not really useful. I want to know what sits underneath.

“What did you need from them at that moment?”

“What had you wanted to say before you became frustrated?”

“Was there a limit you needed to set earlier?”

There is often a legitimate concern underneath an ineffective way of expressing it.

“You are completely irresponsible” might contain a legitimate limit such as, “I am not lending you money again.”

“You don't care about anybody but yourself” might contain a request such as, “I need you to tell me if you are going to be late.”

“You never help me” might become, “I want us to agree on who is responsible for these jobs.”

The work is to help the client identify what they need to communicate or do, or perhaps what boundary needs to be set, rather than relying on unhelpful ways of communicating.

Getting off the triangle

Recognising the pattern is not enough. Eventually I want to ask:

“What could you do differently instead of entering the triangle?”

Choy's (1990) Winner's Triangle offers one useful extension of Karpman's model. Choy proposed replacing the three Drama Triangle positions with Vulnerable, Caring and Assertive positions.

The shift from Rescuer to Caring involves remaining concerned about another person without taking over their thinking or responsibility.

Instead of immediately fixing the problem, the client might ask:

“What do you think you are going to do?”

Or:

“I can help you think through the options if that would be useful.”

The shift from Persecutor to Assertive involves stating a need or setting a limit without punishing the other person:

“I won’t be able to lend you money again.”

“I am willing to talk about this, but not while we are shouting at each other.”

The shift from Victim to Vulnerable allows somebody to acknowledge genuine distress while retaining whatever agency remains.

“I cannot make them change” can be followed by, “What will I do if they don’t?”

The point is not to memorise another three labels. It is to translate recognition into behaviour.

Rehearse the next interaction

Once we have mapped the triangle, I often find it useful to return to the exact point where the client usually gets pulled into it and rehearse an alternative response.

If rescuing usually begins when an adult child calls with another problem, we can practise what the client might say without immediately solving it. If criticism begins after the client has agreed to too much, we can work on the conversation that needs to happen earlier. \

That might sound quite ordinary:

“I can't do that this weekend.”

“What do you think you want to do about it?”

“I am happy to listen, but I don't have the capacity to sort this out for you.”

This is where I think a simple model earns its usefulness because it gives the client a way to recognise the pattern in real time and make a different choice before the familiar pattern takes over.

When the Drama Triangle can get power badly wrong

This model needs to be used carefully.

The word Victim has a meaning outside Karpman’s framework. People can actually be victimised. A person experiencing coercive control, sexual violence, workplace abuse, exploitation or another substantial power imbalance is not simply occupying an interpersonal “Victim role”.

Treating an abusive relationship as a triangle in which everybody contributes to a reciprocal pattern can dangerously distort what is occurring.

Research on coercive control demonstrates why context matters. Myhill’s (2015) analysis of nationally representative data distinguished coercive controlling abuse from more situational forms of relationship conflict and highlighted patterned domination and asymmetry of power.

Someone responding angrily to prolonged coercion has not necessarily “switched into Persecutor”. Someone seeking help because another person controls their money, movements or relationships is not displaying problematic dependency simply because they need assistance.

Before using the triangle, I want to understand the power context. Is this a relatively reciprocal pattern in which both people have meaningful freedom to act? Is somebody afraid of what will happen if they disagree? Is there intimidation, retaliation or coercion?

The Drama Triangle can be useful for examining responsibility and agency. It becomes dangerous when it creates symmetry where symmetry does not exist.

Using the Drama Triangle in supervision

The model can also be useful when the person we need to examine is the counsellor.

Counsellors can rescue too. We can work harder than the client, become overly invested in whether they follow through, offer solution after solution or take responsibility for decisions that properly belong to them.

Then, when all that effort fails, we may become frustrated, more directive or start thinking of the client as resistant or unmotivated. We may have moved from Rescuer towards Persecutor without noticing.

McKimm and Forrest (2010) applied the Drama and Winner’s Triangles specifically to clinical and educational supervision.

In counselling supervision, I might ask:

• What are you currently taking responsibility for?

• Is that actually your responsibility?

• What does the client appear to expect from you?

• Have you agreed to that expectation?

• What happens in you when the client does not follow through?

• Are you offering more and more interventions because they need them, or because you are becoming anxious about the lack of movement?

• Have you become frustrated after trying very hard to help?

• What would caring without rescuing look like here?

• Is there something you need to say directly rather than hoping the client will infer it?

• Is there a genuine safety or power issue that means the Drama Triangle is not an appropriate formulation?

Again, the point is not to decide that the counsellor “is a Rescuer”.

The model gives us a way to examine what is happening to responsibility, agency and frustration within the therapeutic relationship.

A useful model does not have to be a proven theory

I continue to use the Drama Triangle because I find it useful. I have seen it help clients recognise interpersonal sequences that had previously been difficult to describe, particularly when time is limited and a complicated pattern needs to become visible fairly quickly.

I also think we should be accurate about what we know.

The Drama Triangle originated as a theoretical model but direct evidence for its effectiveness as a counselling intervention remains very limited however that does not make its usefulness irrelevant (Karpman, 1968; Lac & Donaldson, 2022). 

For now, I use the Drama Triangle as a working map rather than a statement of fact. We can draw it, map one interaction, identify where responsibility shifted, notice when somebody changed corners and work out what another response might look like then we watch what happens.

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References

APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice. (2006). Evidence-based practice in psychology. American Psychologist, 61(4), 271–285. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.4.271

Choy, A. (1990). The Winner's Triangle. Transactional Analysis Journal, 20(1), 40–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/036215379002000105

Karpman, S. B. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), 39–43.

Lac, A., & Donaldson, C. D. (2022). Development and validation of the Drama Triangle Scale: Are you a Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(7–8), NP4057–NP4081. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520957696

McKimm, J., & Forrest, K. (2010). Using transactional analysis to improve clinical and educational supervision: The Drama and Winner's triangles. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 86(1015), 261–265. https://doi.org/10.1136/pgmj.2009.093310

Myhill, A. (2015). Measuring coercive control: What can we learn from national population surveys? Violence Against Women, 21(3), 355–375. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801214568032