...are grown-up children, utterly irresponsible; not immoral but unmoral; they “please to live and live to please” themselves. They do not realise that their actions may prove costly to others and therefore do not count the cost. They are children of impulse not of calculation. [1]
then TA would be completely dandy, but I kind of thought the initial ideal, at least, was that people would attempt to stay in A<->A Straight Talk modes. Should we judge Transactional Analysis by what Berne wrote (TA as antimeme), or by what everyone read or claimed to have read (TA as meme)?
"...your real dandy is not an ordinary man and must not be judged by common standards. He stands outside and above the ordinary rules of life and conduct; he has not any conscience, and questions of morality do not affect him. All that is for us to do in viewing such a one as D’Orsay is to weigh his physical and mental gifts, and to examine the uses to which he put them, to look to the opportunities which were given to him and the advantage which he took of them." [1]
Dandyism as sociopathy? It certainly has a pocketbook-dependent valence: poor dandies are trashy; rich ones, classy.
> I don't play accurately —any one can play accurately— but I play with wonderful expression. —AM
[0] cf the Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans, which claims this behaviour wasn't just the 1970s, it's the national character.
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56581/56581-h/56581-h.htm
EDIT: I prefer https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56581/56581-h/images/illus5.... (who needs a marshall's baton when you have a hunting crop?), but have to admit D'O---y may even have inspired a predecessor of our age's bobbleheads: https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1221047