TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. Development of Transactional Analysis
3. Key ideas of TA
a) The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model
4. Methods of understanding & predicting human behavior
a) Transactional analysis (Kinds of transactions)
1. Reciprocal/Complementary (the simplest)
2. Crossed
3. Duplex/Covert (the most complex
b) Game analysis
c) Script analysis
5. Limitations of TA
6. CONCLUTION
7. REFERANCE
INTRODUCTION
Transactional analysis, commonly known as TA to its adherents, is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. Integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches. It was developed by Canadian-born US psychiatrist Eric Berne during the late 1950s
According to the International Transactional Analysis Association TA 'is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change'. As a theory of personality, TA describes how people are structured psychologically. It uses what is perhaps its best known model, the ego-state (Parent-Adult-Child) model to do this. This same model helps explain how people function and express their personality in their behavior.
In practical application, it can be used in the diagnosis and treatment of many types of psychological disorders, and provides a method of therapy for individuals, couples, families and groups. Outside the therapeutic field, it has been used in education, to help teachers remain in clear communication at an appropriate level, in counselling and consultancy, in management and communications training, and by other bodies.
About Eric Berne
• Berne was born in 1910 in Montreal , Canada
• His father died at age 38, when Eric was 9
• Earned an MD in 1935 from McGill Univ
• Became a US citizen and served in Utah
• Was denied membership in the Psychoanalytic Institute in 1956
• This brought about his rejection of psychoanalysis and was a turning point in his life
• Wrote the book Games People Play
• Died of a heart attack in 1970 at the age of 60
Development of Transactional Analysis
Leaving psychoanalysis half a century ago, Eric Berne presented transactional analysis to the world as a phenomenological approach replacing Freud's philosophical construct with observable data. His theory built on the science of Penfield and Spitz along with the neo-psychoanalytic thought of people such as Paul Federn, Weiss, and Erikson. From Berne , transactional analysts have inherited a determination to create an accessible and user-friendly system, an understanding of script or life-plan, ego states, transactions, and a theory of groups.
They also inherited troubled aspects of his thinking and personality, especially his rebelliousness and antagonism toward the psychoanalysis of his day. They have inherited misunderstandings arising from the ill-informed equation of the ego states of transactional analysis with the psychoanalytic constructs of id, ego, and superego, and from the consequences of the popularity of his book Games People Play which resulted in the vulgarization of some of its concepts.
Within the overarching framework of transactional analysis, more recent transactional analysts have elaborated several different, if overlapping, “flavors:” cognitive, behavioral, relational, integrative, constructivist, narrative, body-work, positive psychological, personality adaptational, psychodynamic, and neuroconstructivist etc..
Key ideas of TA
The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model
At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviours, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:
§ Parent ("exteropsyche"): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent's actions. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a way of relating that worked.
§ Adult ("neopsyche"): a state of the ego which is most like a computer processing information and making predictions absent of major emotions that cloud its operation. Learning to strengthen the Adult is a goal of TA. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.
§ Child ("archaeopsyche"): a state in which people behave, feel and think similarly to how they did in childhood. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond by looking at the floor, and crying or pouting, as they used to when scolded as a child. Conversely, a person who receives a good evaluation may respond with a broad smile and a joyful gesture of thanks. The Child is the source of emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy.
§ Transactions are the flow of communication, and more specifically the unspoken psychological flow of communication that runs in parallel. Transactions occur simultaneously at both explicit and psychological levels. Example: sweet caring voice with sarcastic intent. To read the real communication requires both surface and non-verbal reading.
§ Strokes are the recognition, attention or responsiveness that one person gives another. Strokes can be positive (nicknamed "warm fuzzies"[14]) or negative ("cold pricklies"). A key idea is that people hunger for recognition, and that lacking positive strokes, will seek whatever kind they can, even if it is recognition of a negative kind. We test out as children what strategies and behaviours seem to get us strokes, of whatever kind we can get.
People often create pressure in (or experience pressure from) others to communicate in a way that matches their style, so that a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling parent will often engender self-abasement or other childlike responses. Those employees who resist may get removed or labeled as "trouble".
Transactions can be experienced as positive or negative depending on the nature of the strokes within them. However, a negative transaction is preferred to no transaction at all, because of a fundamental hunger for strokes.
methods of understanding & predicting human behavior
• Transactional analysis – 2 or more people
• Game analysis – understanding transactions that lead to bad feelings
• Script analysis – understand a person’s life plan
1. Transactional analysis
Kinds of transactions
3. Reciprocal/Complementary (the simplest)
4. Crossed
5. Duplex/Covert (the most complex)
Reciprocal or Complementary Transactions
A simple, reciprocal transaction occurs when both partners are addressing the ego state the other is in. These are also called complementary transactions.
Example 1
A: "Have you been able to write the report?"
B: "Yes - I'm about to email it to you." ----(This exchange was Adult to Adult)
Example 2
A: "Would you like to skip this meeting and go watch a film with me instead?"
B: "I'd love to - I don't want to work anymore, what should we go and see?" (Child to Child)
Crossed Transactions
Communication failures are typically caused by a 'crossed transaction' where partners address ego states other than that their partner is in. Consider the above examples jumbled up a bit.
Example 1a:
A: "Have you been able to write that report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
is a crossed transaction likely to produce problems in the workplace. "A" may respond with a Parent to Child transaction. For instance:
A: "If you don't change your attitude, you'll get fired."
Example 2a:
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "I'm just going to do it, actually." (Adult to Adult)
is a more positive crossed transaction. However there is the risk that "A" will feel aggrieved that "B" is acting responsibly and not playing their role, and the conversation will develop into:
A: "I can never trust you to do things!" (Parent to Child)
B: "Why don't you believe anything I say?" (Adult to Adult)
which can continue indefinitely.
Duplex or Covert transactions
Another class of transaction is the 'duplex' or 'covert' transactions, where the explicit social conversation occurs in parallel with an implicit psychological transaction. For instance,
A: "I need you to stay late at the office with me." (Adult words)
body language indicates sexual intent (flirtatious Child)
B: "Of course." (Adult response to Adult statement).
winking or grinning (Child accepts the hidden motive).
2. Analysis of a game
One important aspect of a game is its number of players. Games may be two handed (that is, played by two players), three handed (that is, played by three players), or many handed. Three other quantitative variables are often useful to consider for games:
§ Flexibility: The ability of the players to change the currency of the game (that is, the tools they use to play it). In a flexible game, players may shift from words, to money, to parts of the body.
§ Tenacity: The persistence with which people play and stick to their games and their resistance to breaking it.
§ Intensity: Easy games are games played in a relaxed way. Hard games are games played in a tense and aggressive way.
Based on the degree of acceptability and potential harm, games are classified as:
§ First Degree Games are socially acceptable in the players' social circle.
§ Second Degree Games are games that the players would like to conceal, though they may not cause irreversible damage.
§ Third Degree Games are games that could lead to drastic harm to one or more of the parties concerned.
Games are also studied based on their:
§ Aim
§ Roles
§ Social and Psychological Paradigms
§ Dynamics
§ Advantages to players (Payoffs)
3. Life positions(script analysis)
In TA theory,"Life Position" refers to the general feeling about life (specifically, the unconscious feeling, as opposed to a conscious philosophical position) that colours every dyadic (i.e. person-to-person) transaction. Initially four such Life Positions were proposed:
1. "I'm Not OK, You're OK" (I-U+)
2. "I'm Not OK, You're Not OK" (I-U-)
3. "I'm OK, You're Not OK" (I+U-)
4. "I'm OK, You're OK" (I+U+)
However, lately, an Australian TA analyst has claimed that in order to better represent the Life Position behind disorders that were not, allegedly, as widespread and/or recognized at the time when TA was conceptualized as they are now (such as borderline personality disorderand narcissistic personality disorder) the above list requires alteration. Also, two additional Life Positions are proposed [15]:
1. "I'm not-OK, You're OK" (I-U+)
2. "I'm not-OK, You're not-OK" (I-U-)
3. "I'm not-OK, But You're Worse" (I-U--)
4. "I'm not-OK, You're Irrelevant" (I-U?)
5. "I'm a Bit More OK Than You Are" (I++U+)
6. "I'm OK, You're OK" (I+U+)
7. "I'm OK, You're Irrelevant" (I+U?)
The difference between one's own OK-ness and other's OK-ness captured by description "I'm OK, You're not-OK" is proposed to be substituted by description that more accurately captures one's own feeling (not jumping to conclusions based only on one's perceived behavior), therefore stating the difference in a new way: "I'm not-OK, but You're worse" (I-,U--), instead.
Life (or Childhood) Script
§ Script is a life plan, directed to a reward
§ Script is decisional and responsive; i.e., decided upon in childhood in response to perceptions of the world and as a means of living with and making sense of the world. It is not just thrust upon a person by external forces.
§ Script is reinforced by parents (or other influential figures and experiences).
§ Script is for the most part outside awareness.
§ Script is how we navigate and what we look for, the rest of reality is redefined (distorted) to match our filters.
Each culture, country and people in the world has a Mythos, that is, a legend explaining its origins, core beliefs and purpose. According to TA, so do individual people. A person begins writing his/her own life story (script) at a young age, as he/she tries to make sense of the world and his place within it. Although it is revised throughout life, the core story is selected and decided upon typically by age 7. As adults it passes out of awareness. A life script might be "to be hurt many times, and suffer and make others feel bad when I die", and could result in a person indeed setting himself up for this, by adopting behaviours in childhood that produce exactly this effect. Though Berne identified several dozen common scripts, there are a practically infinite number of them. Though often largely destructive, scripts could as easily be mostly positive or beneficial.
Criticism against TA
· There have been only few studies conducted on the outcome of the TA. Whether TA is effective is an unknown thing.
· TA is not explained all aspects of human behavior. Example, it failed to explain the cause of depression, anger, love, etc…
Conclusion
TA is a neo-Freudian theory of personality. Berne 's ego states are heavily influenced by Freud's id, ego and superego, although they do not precisely correspond with them. A primary difference between Berne and Freud is the former's treatment of the observable transactions known as "games". A number of books popularized TA in the general public but did little to gain acceptance in the conventional psychoanalytic community. TA is considered by its adherents to be a more user-friendly and accessible model than the conventional psychoanalytic model. A number of modern-day TA practitioners emphasize the similarities with cognitive-behaviorist models while others emphasize different model
TA's popularity in the U.S. Berne to form a research and professional accrediting body, the International Transactional Analysis Association, or ITAA. This organization is still active as of 2009.
Reference
Books by Eric Berne
(1964) Games People Play. New York
(1996) (Paperback reissue ed.) New York
(1975) A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Paperback); 1975, Grover Press (1975) What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy.
The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups.
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