Transactional Analysis

Transactional analysis, commonly known as TA to its adherents, is a psychoanalytic theory of psychology developed by American psychiatrist Eric Berne during the late 1950s.

Revising Freud’s concept of the human psyche as composed of the id, ego, and super-ego, Berne postulated instead three “ego states”—the Parent, Adult and Child states—which were largely shaped through childhood experiences.

Unhealthy childhood experiences could damage the Child or Parent ego states, which would bring discomfort to an individual and/or others in a variety of forms, including many types of mental illness.

Berne considered how individuals interact with one another, and how the ego states affected each set of transactions. Unproductive or counterproductive transactions were considered to be signs of ego state problems. Analyzing these transactions, according to the person’s individual developmental history, would enable the person to “get better”. Berne thought that virtually everyone has something problematic about their ego states and that negative behavior would not be addressed by “treating” only the problematic individual.

Berne identified a typology of common counterproductive social interactions, identifying these as “games”.

Berne presented his theories in two popular books on transactional analysis: Games People Play (1964) and What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1975). As a result, TA came to be disdained in many mainstream mental health circles as an example of “pop psychology”. I’m OK, You’re OK (1969), written by Berne’s longtime friend Thomas Anthony Harris, is probably the most popular TA book.

TA was also dismissed by the conventional psychoanalytic community because of its radical departures from Freudian theory. However, by the 1970s, because of its non-technical and non-threatening jargon and model of the human psyche, many of its terms and concepts were adopted by eclectic therapists as part of their individual approaches to psychotherapy. It also served well as a therapy model for groups of patients, or marital/family counselees, where interpersonal (rather than intrapersonal) disturbances were the focus of treatment. Critics have charged that TA — especially as loosely interpreted by those outside the more formal TA community — is a pseudoscience.

TA’s popularity in the U.S. waned in the 1970s, but it retains some popularity elsewhere in the world. The more dedicated TA purists banded together in 1964 with Berne to form a research and professional accrediting body, the International Transactional Analysis Association, or ITAA. The organization is still active as of 2007.

TA outline

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 understand how people function and express themselves in their behavior.
* As a theory of communication it extends to a method of analyzing systems and organizations.
* It offers a theory for child development.
* It introduces the idea of a “Life (or Childhood) Script”, that is, a story one perceives about ones own life, to answer questions such as “What matters”, “How do I get along in life” and “What kind of person am I”. This story, TA says, is often stuck to no matter the consequences, to “prove” one is right, even at the cost of pain, compulsion, self-defeating behavior and other dysfunction. Thus TA offers a theory of a broad range of psychopathology.
* 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 counseling and consultancy, in management and communications training, and by other bodies.

Key ideas of TA

TA emphasizes a pragmatic approach, that is, it seeks to find “what works” in treating patients, and, where applicable, develop models to assist understanding of why certain treatments work. Thus, TA continually evolves. However some core models and concepts are part of TA as follows:

The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model

At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviors, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:

* Parent (”exteropsychic”): 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 (”neopsychic”): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to what is going on in the “here-and-now,” using all of their resources as an adult human being with many years of life experience to guide them. This is the ideal ego state, and learning to strengthen the Parent 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 (”archaeopsychic”): a state in which people revert to behaving, feeling and thinking similarly to how they did in childhood. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond as they did in their childhood, by looking at the floor, and feeling shame or anger, as they used to when scolded as a child.

Berne differentiated between the Parent, Adult and Child ego states by using capital letters when describing them; and actual adults, parents and children. The ego states may or may not represent the relationships that they act out: In the workplace, an adult supervisor may take on the Parent role, and scold an an adult employee as though they were a Child. Or a child, using his Parent ego state, could scold his actual parent as though the parent were a Child.

Within each of these ego states are subdivisions. Thus Parental figures are often either nurturing (permission-giving, security-giving) or criticizing (comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways), Childhood behaviors are either natural (free) or adapted to others. Each of these tends to draw an individual to certain patterns of behavior, feelings and ways of thinking, which may be beneficial (positive) or dysfunctional/counterproductive (negative).

Ego states are not intended to correspond to Sigmund Freud’s Ego, Superego and Id, though some have compared the two theories. Rather, ego states are consistent for each person and are argued by TA practitioners as more readily observable than the hypothetical Freudian model. In other words, the particular ego state that a given person is communicating from is determinable by external observation and experience.

There is no “universal” ego state; each state is individually and visibly manifested for each person. For example, each Child ego state is unique to the childhood experiences, mentality, intellect, and family of each individual; it is not a generalized childlike state.

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