Transactional analysis Totally Explained

Everything about Transactional Analysis totally explained

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.

History

TA isn't only post-Freudian but according to its founder's wishes consciously extra-Freudian. That is to say that while it has its roots in psychoanalysis - since Berne was a psychoanalytic-trained psychiatrist - it was designed as a dissenting branch of psychoanalysis in that it put its emphasis on transactional, rather than "psycho-", analysis.
   With its focus on transactions, TA shifted its attention from internal psychological dynamics to the dynamics contained in people's interactions. Rather than believing that increasing awareness of the contents of unconsciously held ideas was the therapeutic path, TA concentrated on the content of people's interactions with each other. Changing these interactions was TA's path to solving emotional problems.
   In addition Berne believed in making a commitment to "curing" his patients rather than just understanding them. To that end he introduced one of the most important aspects of TA: the contract - an agreement entered into by both client and therapist to pursue specific changes that the client desires.
   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. These three are all part of Freud's ego; neither represented the id nor the superego.
   Unhealthy childhood experiences could damage the Adult 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. Analysing 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 behaviour wouldn't 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 of this popularity, 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. Many TA therapists regard I'm OK, You're OK as an oversimplification or worse.
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; when it's in fact better understood as a belief system.
   TA's popularity in the U.S. waned in the 1970s, but it retains some popularity elsewhere in the world.

Transactions and Strokes

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 "") 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's 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.
The nature of transactions is important to understanding communication.

Kinds of transaction

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 ť A: "Have you been able to write the report?" (Adult to Adult)

   B: "Yes - I'm about to email it to you." (Adult to Adult) Example 2 ť A: "Would you like to come and watch a film with me?" (Child to Child)

   B: "I'd love to - what shall we go and see?" (Child to Child) Example 3 ť A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)

   B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
   Communication like this can continue indefinitely. (Clearly it'll stop at some stage - but this psychologically balanced exchange of strokes can continue for some time).

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: ť 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:
ť A: "If you don't change your attitude, you'll get fired."

Example 2a: ť 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's the risk that "A" will feel aggrieved that "B" is acting responsibly and not playing his role, and the conversation will develop into:
ť 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, ť A: "I need you to stay late at the office with me." (adult words)

body language indicates sexual intent (flirtatious child) ť B: "Of course." (adult response to adult statement).

winking or grinning (child accepts the hidden motive).

Phenomena behind the transactions

Life (or Childhood) Script

Script is a life plan, directed to a pay-off.

Script is decisional and responsive; for example, 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 isn't 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 own life story (script) at a young age, as he tries to make sense of the world and his place within it. Although it's 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.

Redefining and Discounting

Redefining means the distortion of reality when we deliberately (but unconsciously) distort things to match our preferred way of seeing the world. Thus a person whose script involves "struggling alone against a cold hard world" may redefine others' kindness, concluding that others are trying to get something by manipulation.

Discounting means to take something as worth less than it is. Thus to give a substitute reaction which doesn't originate as a here-and-now Adult attempt to solve the actual problem, or to choose not to see evidence that would contradict one's script. Types of discount can also include: passivity (doing nothing), over-adaptation, agitation, incapacitation, anger and violence.

Injunctions and Drivers

TA identifies twelve key injunctions which people commonly build into their scripts. These are injunctions in the sense of being powerful "I can't/mustn't ..." messages that embed into a child's belief and life-script:
ť Don't be (don't exist), Don't be who you are, Don't be a child, Don't grow up, Don't make it in your life, Don't do anything!, Don't be important, Don't belong, Don't be close, Don't be well (don't be sane!), Don't think, Don't feel.

   :In addition there's the so-called episcript, "You should (or deserve to) have this happen in your life, so it doesn't have to happen to me." (Magical thinking on the part of the parent(s).)
   Against these, a child is often told other things he or she must do. There is debate as to whether there are five or six of these 'drivers':
ť Please (me/others)! Be perfect! Be Strong! Try Hard! Hurry Up! (Be Careful! is disputed)

Thus in creating his script, a child will often attempt to juggle these, example: "It's okay for me to go on living (ignore don't exist) so long as I try hard".
   This explains why some change is inordinately difficult. To continue the above example: When a person stops trying hard and relaxes to be with his family, the injunction You don't have the right to exist which was being suppressed by their script now becomes exposed and a vivid threat. Such an individual may feel a massive psychological pressure which he himself doesn't understand, to return to trying hard, in order to feel safe and justified (in a childlike way) in existing.
   Driver behaviour is also detectable at a very small scale, for instance in instinctive responses to certain situations where driver behaviour is played out over five to twenty seconds.
   Broadly, scripts can fall into Tragic, Heroic or Banal (or Non-Winner) varieties, depending on their rules.

Ways of Time Structuring

There are six ways of structuring time by giving and receiving strokes:

Withdrawal

Ritual

Pastimes

Activity

Games

Intimacy This is sorted in accordance to stroke strength, Intimacy and Games allow for the most intensive strokes, in general.

Withdrawal

This means no strokes are being exchanged

Rituals

A ritual is a series of transactions that are complementary (reciprocal), stereotyped and based on social programming. Rituals usually comprise a series of strokes exchanged between two parties.
   For instance, two people may have a daily two stroke ritual, where, the first time they meet each day, each one greets the other with a "Hi". Others may have a four stroke ritual, such as:
A: Hi!
   B: Hi! How do you do?
   A: Getting along. What about you?
   B: Fine. See you around.
   The next time they meet in the day, they may not exchange any strokes at all, or may just acknowledge each other's presence with a curt nod.
   Some phenomena associated with daily rituals:

If a person exchanges fewer strokes than expected, the other person may feel that he's either preoccupied or acting high and mighty.

If a person exchanges more strokes than expected, the other person might wonder whether he's trying to butter him up or get on good terms for some vested interests.

If two people don't meet for a long time, a backlog of strokes gets built up, so that the next time they meet, they may exchange a large number of strokes to catch up.

Pastimes

A pastime is a series of transactions that's complementary (reciprocal), semi-ritualistic, and is mainly intended as a time-structuring activity. Pastimes have no covert purpose and can usually be carried out only between people on the same wavelength. They are usually shallow and harmless. Pastimes are a type of smalltalk.
Individuals often partake in similar pastimes throughout their entire life, as pastimes are generally very much linked to ones life script and the games that one often plays. Some pastimes can even be understood as a reward for playing a certain game. For example, Eric Berne in Games People Play discusses how those who play the "Alcoholic" game (which Berne differentiated from alcoholism and alcoholics) often enjoy the "Morning After" pastime in which participants share their most amusing or harrowing hangover stories.

Activities (Work)

Activities in this context mean the individuals work together for a common goal. This may be work, sports or something similar. In contrast to Pastimes, there's a meaningful purpose guiding the interactions, while Pastimes are just about exchanging strokes. Strokes can then given in the context of the cooperation. Thus the strokes are generally not personal, but related to the activity.

Games

Games are discussed below.

Intimacy

Intimacy as a way of structuring time allows to exchange the strongest strokes without playing a Game. Intimacy differs from Games as there's no covert purpose, and differs from Activities as there's no other process going on which defines a context of cooperation. Strokes are personal, relating to the other person, and often unconditional.

Games and their analysis

Definition of game

A game is a series of transactions that's complementary (reciprocal), ulterior, and proceeds towards a predictable outcome. Games are often characterized by a switch in roles of players towards the end. Games are usually played by Parent, Adult and Child ego states, and games usually have a fixed number of players; however, an individual's role can shift, and people can play multiple roles.
   Berne identified dozens of games, noting that, regardless of when, where or by whom they were played, each game tended towards very similar structures in how many players or roles were involved, the rules of the game, and the game's goals.
   Each game has a payoff for those playing it, such as the aim of earning sympathy, satisfaction, vindication, or some other emotion that usually reinforces the life script. The antithesis of a game, that is, the way to break it, lies in discovering how to deprive the actors of their payoff.
   Students of transactional analysis have discovered that people who are accustomed to a game are willing to play it, even if as a different "actor" from what they originally were.

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)

Contrast with rational (mathematical) games

Transactional game analysis is fundamentally different from rational or mathematical game analysis in the following senses:

The players don't always behave rationally in transactional analysis, but behave more like real people.

Their motives are often ulterior

Some commonly found games

Here are some of the most commonly found themes of games described in Games People Play by Eric Berne:

YDYB: Why Don't You, Yes But. Historically, the first game discovered.

IFWY: If It Weren't For You

WAHM: Why does this Always Happen to Me? (setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy)

SWYMD: See What You Made Me Do

UGMIT: You Got Me Into This

LHIT: Look How Hard I've Tried

ITHY: I'm Only Trying to Help You

LYAHF: Let's You and Him Fight (staging a love triangle)

NIGYYSOB: Now I've got you, you son of a bitch

RAPO: A woman falsely cries 'rape' or threatens to Berne argued that games are not played logically; rather, one person's Parent state might interact with another's Child, rather than as Adult to Adult.
Games can also be analysed according to the Karpman drama triangle, that is, by the roles of Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer. The 'switch' is then when one of these having allowed stable roles to become established, suddenly switches role. The Victim becomes a Persecutor, and throws the previous Persecutor into the Victim role, or the Rescuer suddenly switches to become a Persecutor ("You never appreciate me helping you!").

Why Don't You/Yes But

The first such game theorized was Why don't you/Yes, but in which one player (White) would pose a problem as if seeking help, and the other player(s) (Black) would offer solutions (the "Why don't you?" suggestion). This game was noticed as many patients played it in therapy and psychiatry sessions, and inspired Berne to identify other interpersonal "games".
   White would point out a flaw in every Black player's solution (the "Yes, but" response), until they all gave up in frustration. For example, if someone's life script was "to be hurt many times, and suffer and make others feel bad when I die" a game of "Why Don't You, Yes But" might proceed as follows:
ť White: I wish I could lose some weight.

   Black: Why don't you join a gym? ť W: Yes but, I can't afford the payments for a gym.

   B: Why don't you speed walk around your block after you get home from work? ť W: Yes but, I don't dare walk alone in my neighborhood after dark.

   B: Why don't you take the stairs at work instead of the elevator? ť W: Yes but, after my knee surgery, it hurts too much to walk that many flights of stairs.

   B: Why don't you change your diet? ť W: Yes but, my stomach is sensitive and I can tolerate only certain foods.

"Why Don't You, Yes But" can proceed indefinitely, with any number of players in the Black role, until Black's imagination is exhausted, and she can think of no other solutions. At this point, White "wins" by having stumped Black. After a silent pause following Black's final suggestion, the game is often brought to a formal end by a third role, Green, who makes a comment such as, "It just goes to show how difficult it's to lose weight."
   The secondary gain for White was that he could claim to have justified his problem as insoluble and thus avoid the hard work of internal change; and for Black, to either feel the frustrated martyr ("I was only trying to help") or a superior being, disrespected ("the patient was uncooperative").
   Superficially, this game can resemble Adult to Adult interaction (people seeking information or advice), but more often, according to Berne, the game is played by Black's helpless Child, and White's lecturing Parent ego states.

Rackets

A racket is the dual strategy of getting "permitted feelings," while covering up feelings which we truly feel, but which we regard as being "not allowed". More technically, a racket feeling is "a familiar set of emotions, learned and enhanced during childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving".
   A racket is then a set of behaviours which originate from the childhood script rather than in here-and-now full Adult thinking, which (1) are employed as a way to manipulate the environment to match the script rather than to actually solve the problem, and (2) whose covert goal isn't so much to solve the problem, as to experience these racket feelings and feel internally justified in experiencing them.
   Examples of racket and racket feelings: "Why do I meet good guys who turn out to be so hurtful", or "He always takes advantage of my goodwill". The racket is then a set of behaviours and chosen strategies learned and practised in childhood which in fact help to cause these feelings to be experienced. Typically this happens despite their own surface protestations and hurt feelings, out of awareness and in a way that's perceived as someone else's fault. One covert pay-off for this racket and its feelings, might be to gain in a guilt free way, continued evidence and reinforcement for a childhood script belief that "People will always let you down".
   In other words, rackets and games are devices used by a person to create a circumstance where they can legitimately feel the racket feelings, thus abiding by and reinforcing their Childhood script. They are always a substitute for a more genuine and full adult emotion and response which would be a more appropriate response to the here-and-now situation.

Philosophy of TA

People are OK; thus each person has validity, importance, equality of respect.

Everyone (with only few exceptions) has full adult capability to think.

People decide their story and destiny, and this is a decision that can be changed.

Freedom from historical maladaptations embedded in the childhood script is required in order to become free of inappropriate inauthentic and displaced emotion which are not a fair and honest reflection of here-and-now life (such as echoes of childhood suffering, pity-me and other mind games, compulsive behaviour, and repetitive dysfunctional life patterns).

TA is goal-oriented, not merely problem-oriented.

The aims of change under TA are autonomy (freedom from childhood script), spontaneity, intimacy, problem solving as opposed to avoidance or passivity, cure as an ideal rather than merely 'making progress', learning new choices.

Transactional Analysis Today

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 used the now discredited science of Penfield and Spitz along with the neo-psychoanalytic thought of people such as Federn

, Weiss

and Erikson. By moving to an interpersonal motivational theory, he placed it both in opposition to the psychoanalytic traditions of his day and within what would become the psychoanalytic traditions of the future. 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, the consequences of the popularity of his book Games People Play, and problems arising from coercive reparenting techniques (the 1980s Schiff scandal) which were rejected long ago but have continued under other names and auspices . These problems have been compounded by the isolationist and elitist attitude that permeated the beginnings of transactional analysis as it established its own standards for competency based credentialing without taking into account other training or certification in occupational fields – while at the same time paradoxically cultivating the “pop psychology” image that appealed to mental health clients and other consumers in organizations and education.

Fifty years later

Within the overarching framework of transactional analysis, more recent transactional analysts have elaborated several different, if overlapping, “flavors:” cognitive, behavioral, relational, redecision, integrative, constructivist, narrative, body-work, positive psychological, personality adaptational, self-reparenting, psychodynamic, and neuroconstructivist . Some transactional analysts highlight the many things they've in common with cognitive-behavioral therapists: the use of contracts with clear goals, the attention to cognitive distortions (called “Adult decontamination” or “Child deconfusion”), the focus on the client’s conscious attitudes and behaviors and the use of “strokes”. Cognitive-based transactional analysts use ego state identification to identify communication distortions and teach different functional options in the dynamics of communication. Some have the competence to make additional contracts for more profound work involving life-plans or scripts or with unconscious processes, including those which manifest in the client-therapist relationship as transference and countertransference, and define themselves as psychodynamic or relational transactional analysts. Some highlight the study and promotion of subjective well-being and optimal human functioning rather than pathology and so identify with positive psychology. Many are increasingly influenced by current research in attachment, mother-infant interaction, and by the implications of interpersonal neurobiology, and non-linear dynamic systems. However, whatever the perspective preferred by the individual TA practitioner, all share a common group of Bernian concepts: ego states, transactions, strokes, games, scripts and existential positions. Thereby they form an interpretive community.
Today the training and certification standards of TA are to a large degree synchronized with normatives set by the various National Awarding Organizations (see EAP

, UKCP

, PACFA..).
References:
Allen, J.R. (2006). "Transactional analysis as an interpretive community: Identity and destiny in 2007," The Script, International Transactional Analysis Association,36(9):1-5. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. New York: Grove Press.

Pop TA

Berne's ability to express the ideas of TA in common language and his popularisation of the concepts in mass-market books inspired a boom of 'popular' TA texts, some of which simplify TA concepts to a deleterious degree.
One example is a caricature of the structural model, where it's made out that the Parent judges, the Adult thinks and the Child feels. Most serious TA texts, including those aimed at the mass market rather than professionals, avoid this degree of oversimplification. Thomas Harris's highly successful popular work from the late 1960s, I'm OK, You're OK is largely based on Transactional Analysis. A fundamental divergence, however, between Harris and Berne is that Berne postulates that everyone starts life in the "I'm OK" position, whereas Harris believes that life starts out "I'm not OK, you're OK". Many transactional analysts have regarded Harris as too far-removed from core TA beliefs to be considered a transactional analyst.

Controversy

In 2001 the French Interministerial Anti-Cult Mission (MILS) (PDF)

wrote (p 101-2 ):

MILS examined the organisation of a French group offering training in 'transactional analysis'. This organisation reveals a system of pyramid selling. Every new "member" is authorised, or even obliged, to take on patients for 'transactional analysis' while they're themselves still training as therapists. Treating patients provides them with the means of paying for their own training. Dues are payable to the organisation's master in psychotherapy at regional, national and international level. The patients undergoing therapy form the base of the pyramid, followed by the "contracts,[…] those being trained in the four fields", for example, guidance, education, organisation, and psychotherapy. The "contracts" may become "qualified in the four fields", "trainee teachers" or "trainers"...

MILS has also been informed of practices contrary to individual dignity by psychotherapists or practitioners of 'transactional analysis'. There was clearly collusion and solidarity among dubious professional organisations and groups to the detriment of victims. Self-styled ethics committees or professional ethics commissions discredit the complaints, gather false witness statements and come out in favour of the psychotherapists concerned..

In the United States, a controversy existed (and was eventually resolved - not least by her death) regarding Jacqui Schiff's abuse of TA,not to mention her abuse of one particular patient, for whose death she was responsible.

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