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 the study of 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 and 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 problems are not problems of the mind but 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 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. It is not without reason that he has been fondly called the father of transactional analysis in India. Certified trainers of ICTA provide training from nodal centres in principal state capitals of India.
Areas of specialisation
The application of transactional analysis spans all areas of human activity and associations. Trainees qualify to use TA in one of four areas of specialisation. They are psychotherapy, counselling, organisational and educational.
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 two years. 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. Other short duration trainings / workshops are offered at ICTA.
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, 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.
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 benefit by becoming proficient in becoming efficient in leading a multi-role life well;
TA also helps in managing urges, drives and impulses; managing thinking, feeling and emotional logjams; dealing with broken, stressed, or challenging relationships; dealing with pushes and pulls of life; overcoming inhibitions, compulsiveness 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 that area too.
Transactional analysis helps in improving self motivation, goal orientation, objective approach to problems and situations; becoming assertive instead of 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;
Practitioners benefit from using TA in training, coaching, mentoring, counselling, team-building, parenting, child upbringing, teaching, and in management, leadership and pastoral areas.
TA Beliefs and Values
Principal Beliefs and Values
TA beliefs and values are summarised under the title 'Philosophical Assumptions of Transactional Analysis'.
1. People have capacity to be OK and interact with others OK-OK. What this means is that people have an inborn capacity to enjoy value, worth, esteem and dignity as persons. There may be moments when they experience their lack or absence. However, the phase is temporary and can be recovered.
2. People can think. The capacity to think and make sane choices is also 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 by consistent use.
3. Life is decisional. We faced challenging situations and experienced 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 and make new decisions so that we can improve upon the quality of our life and safely walk out of threatening or failure causing situations.
Auxiliary Beliefs and Values
1. Do no harm. This dictum is applicable to clinical, professional and individual practice.
2. Persevere to end situations sanely, safely, effectively and appropriately.
3. Therapist treats, God cures. TA therapists, clinicians and practitioners enable their clients to make new choices in service of personal growth and personal change.
4. TA believes in cure as against getting better. Cure in TA is explained by using metaphors of "bringing down the curtain and putting up a new show on the road", "turning a well frog into a sea frog" "getting the prince to cast away his frog-hood" and such other. Cure means that the person is reborn to live life in new ways, free of being trapped in unhealthy modes of thinking, feeling, emoting and behaviour.
TA concepts and ideas
TA theory is largely free of jargon. It 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: Ordinarily an ego state is the ‘state of mind’ at the moment prevailing. Ego States are defined as consistent patterns of thinking and feeling which show up in response to stimuli generated by people, interactions, situations and occurrences and memory recalls. They manifest as corresponding consistent patterns of behaviour. Activated ego states also have a bodily component. For example on recalling a particular event a person may experience agitation, feeling cold or numb, sweating, becoming nervous, feeling fearful, anxious, distressed or worried accompanied by flexing of related muscles.
2. Stroke: Stroke is a unit of recognition. Stroke represents human need for touch. This need for touch may be in the form if physical touch or its symbolic forms of looking, listening, paying attention, acknowledging and such like other.
3. Transaction: Transaction is a unit of social intercourse. A transactional stimulus and transactional response together constitute a transaction. Transactions not only communicate information, views and ideas, they are also carriers of strokes.
4. Game: Game is one of many ways of structuring time. They are sets of interactions that have gone awry. A lull in interaction takes place. This lull in communication surprises both parties. Games are unhealthy ways of generating hyped over charge of feelings which are called payoffs. They help in stoking the fire of a variety of emotions some of which are: anger, sadness, disgust, embarrassment, guilt, pain, hurt, insult, anxiety and distress. By definition a game is a series of complementary ulterior transactions, with switch and a cross-up ending in generation of intense emotions 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 Scripts. Script is a life plan which directs a person's behaviour in the most significant aspects of his or her life. Script is generated by childhood decisions made under parental influence.
TA Books
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 are some books recommended for beginners.
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Links to Blogs by Ajit Karve on Transactional Analysis
This Blog : TA for Beginners
TA Theory and Practice : TA Theory and Practice
Daily Dose of TA : Daily Dose of TA
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