1. Introduction
Definitions of Transactional Analysis (TA)
Transactional analysis is defined contextually in many ways.
1. Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality and systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change. TA theory of personality explains how we are structured as persons psychologically. The structural components of personality are called ego states. A Parent-Adult-Child model (PAC model) is used represent personality.
2. Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality. It offers systematic methods for personal growth and professional development.
3. Transactional Analysis is a school of social psychology. In this context it helps us to understand and interpret what goes on within people (intra-psychically and intra-personally), between people, and between sets / groups of people.
4. Transactional Analysis is a social psychiatry. Transactional analysis helps to study the psychiatric aspects of specific interactions or sets of interactions (transactions) which occur between two or more individuals at a given time and place. Psychiatry is the study and treatment of mental illnesses. Psychiatrists treat patients having mental, psychological, emotional, behavioural and thinking disorders. They also treat people, to relieve them of addictions, mood disorders, marital and other broken relationships.
About origin of Transactional Analysis
Eric Berne (1910-1970), is the founder of Transactional Analysis. Its launch is marked by the publication of his article on TA, in the American Psychiatric Journal. He developed this theory in collaboration with many contributors. They all participated in the weekly San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars during the years 1957 to 1964. They helped to test and develop TA when it was new. Eric Berne was a psychiatrist. He trained to practice psychoanalysis under eminent psychoanalysts Erik Erickson and Paul Federn. Berne founded transactional analysis to provide cure to his patients and also to make treatment economical - this in terms of affordability, duration of treatment and relief from pain. Berne’s major contribution was to demonstrate that mental, emotional, behavioural and addiction related problems are not problems of the mind. but occur due to anomalies in personality structure and function.
Transactional Analysis training in India
The Institute of Counselling and Transactional Analysis (ICTA), Kochi is a premium TA training institute in India. It was founded by Fr. George Kandathil (1910-2011) in 1973. Over a dozen internationally famous Transactional Analysts have received their formal training under him. He is fondly called the father of transactional analysis in India. Certified trainers of ICTA provide training in Transactional Analysis, from locations in all principal cities in India.
Areas of specialisation
The application of transactional analysis spans all areas of human activity and association. Trainees qualify to use TA in one of four areas of specialisation. They are, psychotherapy, counselling, organisational and educational fields.
Training format
Training commences by attending a certified two-day Basic Course in Transactional Analysis. Most people opt to train in Bernian Transactional Analysis (BTA). The duration of this course is of three years, one year for Diploma Level Training, followed by two years of BTA Level Training. One can then proceed to qualify for Masters in Transactional Analysis (MTA). This course is also of two years duration. Persons who have secured MTA qualification are entitled to train others independently. Short duration trainings / workshops are offered at the ICTA in Kochi.
Goals and Objectives of learning Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis training is contractual. Trainees choose and decide their own short term and long-term goals. These goals span as many as ten life areas. Four of them are most common. They are personal, financial, relationships with significant others, and becoming effective and successful in one's occupation.
Areas in which TA practice promises significant change are: self-management, other person management, relationship management, financial management, goal orientation and achievement, being in control of life, work-life integration and stress management, and personal, professional and spiritual growth and development.
The goals of TA are gaining autonomy; gaining capacity for generating options and making sane and safe choices; capacity for level, open, honest game free interactions; gaining capacity for decision making and problem solving; and script free living. The attributes of a script free person are mentioned in Chapter 8 of this book.
An overview of benefits
TA practice helps us in dealing with events, incidents, occurrences and happenings in our day-to-day life; It empowers us to deal with emerging situations, problems, difficulties, conditions of life, challenges and conflicts; It helps us in resolving issues arising from relationships and associations; We are able to achieve better work-life integration and control stress; Home-makers gain proficiency in leading a multi-role life;
TA also helps in managing urges, drives and impulses; managing thinking, feeling and emotional logjams; dealing with broken, stressed, or challenging relationships; dealing with pulls pushes of life; overcoming inhibitions and compulsive behaviours; dealing with habits and addictions. Lastly all of us have expectations of ourselves and of others. These relate to being recognised, accepted, acknowledged and rewarded. TA helps in this area too.
Transactional analysis helps in improving self-motivation, goal orientation, resolving problems and situations; becoming assertive instead of being reactive; decreased expecting and increased asking for needs to be met; improvement in capacity to express thoughts, feelings, emotions, opinions and ideas openly, candidly, honestly without shying or becoming aggressive; improved capacity to say 'no' safely; constructive structuring of time; improvement in freedom from frustration; drop in remaining logjammed in feelings of anger, sadness, fear, anxiety and distress; improved social associations;
Professionals benefit by using TA in training, coaching, mentoring, counselling, team-building, parenting, child-upbringing, teaching, as also in management, leadership and pastoral fields.
TA Beliefs and Values
Principal Beliefs and Values
TA beliefs and values are summarised under the title 'Philosophical Assumptions of TA'.
1. People have capacity to be OK and interact with others OK-OK. What this means is that people have an inborn capacity to possess and enjoy value, worth, dignity, esteem and respect as persons. There may be moments when they experience their lack or absence. However, the phase is temporary. The capacities can be recovered.
2. People can think. The capacity to think, and make sane choices is an inborn endowment. The loss of this capacity shows up when we are confused, indecisive, face dilemmas, feel challenged, are at loss for words to express ourselves, or feel incapable to respond appropriately. This capacity is activated and enhanced through self-empowerment using TA.
3. Life is decisional. We face challenging situations and experience being cornered, in our early life and teenage years. We made decisions, and adapted to protect our survival. These decisions structured our adult life. TA asserts that we can visit our past, make new decisions, improve the quality of our life, and safely walk out of threatening or challenging situations.
Auxiliary Beliefs and Values
1. Do no harm. This slogan is applicable in clinical, professional and individual practice, as well as in lives of those who are using TA to achieve change and development.
2. End situations sanely, safely, effectively, appropriately and by generating win-wins.
3. Therapist treats, God cures. TA practitioners implement facilitation enabling their clients make new choices in service of personal growth and personal change.
4. TA believes in affording cure, as opposed to getting better. Cure is explained by using the following three metaphors: "bringing down the curtain and putting up a new show on the road"; "turning a well frog into a sea frog": and "getting the prince to cast away his frog-hood." Cure means getting the person to be reborn, to live life in new ways, free of being trapped in unhealthy modes of thinking, feeling, emoting, behaving and relating.
TA concepts and ideas
TA theory is largely free of jargon. It generally uses terms that convey their dictionary meaning. Six words / terms carry technical meaning, and require to be defined. They are explained here:
1. Ego State: Ego states are states of the mind, or states of the self. Ego States are defined as consistent patterns of thinking and feeling that manifest as corresponding patterns of behaviour. Active ego states also have a bodily component. For example, flexing of muscles may occur when recalling a particularly disturbing event or when experiencing agitation, fear or anxiousness, or when feeling distressed or worried.
2. Stroke: Stroke is a unit of recognition. Stroke represents the basic human need for touch. This may be in the form of physical touch or its symbolic forms of looking, listening, paying attention and acknowledging.
3. Transaction: Transactions are units of social intercourse. A transactional stimulus and transactional response together constitute a transaction. Transactions not only communicate information, views and ideas, they are carriers of strokes as well. Transactions are vectors and occur between pairs of ego states.
4. Game: Game is one of many ways of structuring time. They are sets of interactions that have gone awry. A lull in interaction follows. This lull in communication surprises both parties. Games are unhealthy ways of generating 'hyped over charge of feelings', called payoffs. They help in stoking the fire of emotions like anger, sadness, disgust, embarrassment, hurt, pain, injury, insult, anxiety, distress, guilt and shame. A game by definition is a series of complementary ulterior transactions, with a switch and a cross-up, ending in generation of emotional upsurges called payoffs.
5. Racket: Rackets are patterns of thinking, feeling, activity, behaviour and transacting that are: inauthentic, repetitive, maladaptive, manipulative used unawarely for attention seeking and for generating a harvest of unhealthy feelings.
6. Script: Script is short for Life Script. Script is a life plan. It directs the person's behaviour in the most significant aspects of his or her life, in service of achieving the person's destiny goal. Script is generated by childhood decisions, made under parental influence.
7. Social Action: Social Action is any activity such as looking, speaking or paying attention, that results in acknowledging the presence of another. The activity benefits each of the participants in some way.
TA Books
The books recommended for beginners are Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy and Games People Play by Eric Berne; Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner; and TA Today by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines.
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