Transactional analysis

Eric Berne presented transactional analysis to the world as a phenomenological approach, supplementing Freud's philosophical construct with observable data. His theory built on the science of Wilder Penfield and René Spitz along with the neo-psychoanalytic thought of people such as Paul Federn, Edoardo Weiss, and Erik 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.

Berne's theory was based on the ideas of Freud but was distinctly different. Freudian psychotherapists focused on client personalities. Berne believed that insight could be better discovered by analyzing a client's social transactions.[2] Berne mapped interpersonal relationships to three ego-states of the individuals involved: the Parent, Adult, and Child state. He then investigated communications between individuals based on the current state of each. He called these interpersonal interactions transactions and used the label games to refer to certain patterns of transactions which popped up repeatedly in everyday life in every human interaction.

The origins of transactional analysis can be traced to the first five of Berne's six articles on intuition, which he began writing in 1949. Even at this early juncture and while still working to become a psychoanalyst, his writings challenged Freudian concepts of the unconscious.[3]

In 1956, after 15 years of psychoanalytic training, Berne was refused admission to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute as a fully-fledged psychoanalyst. He interpreted the request for several more years of training as a rejection and decided to walk away from psychoanalysis.[4] Before the end of the year, he had written two seminal papers, both published in 1957.

1. In the first article, Intuition V: The Ego Image, Berne referenced P. Federn, E. Kahn, and H. Silberer, and indicated how he arrived at the concept of ego states, including his idea of separating "adult" from "child".
2. The second paper, Ego States in Psychotherapy, was based on material presented earlier that year at the Psychiatric Clinic, Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Clinic, UCSF School of Medicine. In that second article, he developed the tripartite scheme used today (Parent, Adult, and Child), introduced the three-circle method of diagramming it, showed how to sketch contaminations, labeled the theory, "structural analysis", and termed it "a new psychotherapeutic approach".

A few months later, he wrote a third article, titled "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of Group Therapy", which was presented by invitation at the 1957 Western Regional Meeting of the American Group Psychotherapy Association of Los Angeles. With the publication of this paper in the 1958 issue of the American Journal of Psychotherapy, Berne's new method of diagnosis and treatment, transactional analysis, became a permanent part of the psychotherapeutic literature. In addition to restating his concepts of ego states and structural analysis, the 1958 paper added the important new features of transactional analysis proper (i.e. the analysis of transactions), games, and scripts.[3]

His seminar group from the 1950s developed the term transactional analysis (TA) to describe therapies based on his work. By 1964, this expanded into the International Transactional Analysis Association. While still largely ignored by the psychoanalytic community, many therapists have put his ideas in practice.

In the early 1960s, he published both technical and popular accounts of his conclusions. His first full-length book on TA was published in 1961, titled Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy.[5] Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups (1963) examined the same analysis in a broader context than one-on-one interaction.

Diagram of concepts in transactional analysis, based on cover of Eric Berne's 1964 book Games People Play.

Transactional analysis integrates the theories of psychology and psychotherapy because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive ideas.

According to the International Transactional Analysis Association,[7] TA "is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change."

1. 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. The same model helps explain how people function and express their personality in their behaviour[7]
2. As Berne set up his psychology, there are four life positions that a person can hold, and holding a particular psychological position has profound implications for how an individual operationalizes his or her life. The positions are stated as:
   1. I'm OK and you are OK. This is the healthiest position about life and it means that I feel good about myself and that I feel good about others and their competence.
   2. I'm OK and you are not OK. In this position I feel good about myself but I see others as damaged or less than and it is usually not healthy.
   3. I'm not OK and you are OK. In this position the person sees him/herself as the weak partner in relationships as the others in life are definitely better than the self. The person who holds this position will unconsciously accept abuse as OK.
   4. I'm not OK and you are not OK. This is the worst position to be in as it means that I believe that I am in a terrible state and the rest of the world is as bad. Consequently, there is no hope for any ultimate supports.[8]
3. It is a theory of communication that can be extended to the analysis of systems and organisations.[7]
4. It offers a theory for child development by explaining how our adult patterns of life originated in childhood.[7] This explanation is based on the idea of a "Life (or Childhood) Script": the assumption that we continue to re-play childhood strategies, even when this results in pain or defeat. Thus it claims to offer a theory of psychopathology.[7]
5. 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.
6. 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.[7]

Philosophy

• People are OK; thus each person has validity, importance, equality of respect.[9]
• Positive reinforcement increases feelings of being OK.[10]
• All people have a basic lovable core and a desire for positive growth.[10]
• Everyone (with only few exceptions, such as the severely brain-damaged) has the capacity to think.[9]
• All of the many facets of an individual have a positive value for them in some way.[10]
• People decide their story and destiny, therefore these decisions can be changed.[9]
• All emotional difficulties are curable.[10]

Freedom from historical maladaptations embedded in the childhood script is required in order to become free of inappropriate, inauthentic and displaced emotions 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). The aim of change under TA is to move toward autonomy (freedom from childhood script), spontaneity, intimacy, problem solving as opposed to avoidance or passivity, cure as an ideal rather than merely making progress and learning new choices.

Many of the core TA models and concepts can be categorised into

• Structural analysis – analysis of the individual psyche
• Transactional analysis proper – analysis of interpersonal transactions based on structural analysis of the individuals involved in the transaction
• Game analysis – repeating sequences of transactions that lead to a result subconsciously agreed to by the parties involved in the game
• Script analysis – a life plan that may involve long-term involvement in particular games in order to reach the life pay-off of the individual

At any given time, a person experiences and manifests his or her 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 an artificially intelligent system processing information and making predictions about major emotions that could affect 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 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.

Berne differentiated his Parent, Adult, and Child ego states from actual adults, parents, and children, by using capital letters when describing them. These ego states may or may not represent the relationships that they act out. For example, in the workplace, an adult supervisor may take on the Parent role, and scold an adult employee as though he were a Child. Or a child, using the Parent ego-state, could scold her actual parent as though the parent were a Child.

Within each of these ego states are subdivisions. Thus Parental figures are often either more nurturing (permission-giving, security-giving) or more criticising (comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways); Childhood behaviours are either more natural (free) or more adapted to others. These subdivisions categorize individuals' patterns of behaviour, feelings, and ways of thinking, which can be functional (beneficial or positive) or dysfunctional/counterproductive (negative).

Berne states that there are four types of diagnosis of ego states. They are: "behavioural" diagnosis, "social" diagnosis, "historical" diagnosis, and "phenomenological" diagnosis. A complete diagnosis would include all four types. It has subsequently been demonstrated that there is a fifth type of diagnosis, namely "contextual", because the same behaviour will be diagnosed differently according to the context of the behaviour.[11]

Ego states do not correspond directly to Sigmund Freud's ego, superego, and id, although there are obvious parallels: Superego/Parent; Ego/Adult; Id/Child. Ego states are consistent for each person, and (argue TA practitioners) are more observable than the components of Freud's model. In other words, the ego state from which someone is communicating is evident in his or her behaviour, manner and expression.

Emotional blackmail is a term coined by psychotherapist Susan Forward, about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics are useful to anyone trying to extricate from the controlling behavior of another person, and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others.[12]

Forward and Frazier identify four blackmail types each with their own mental manipulation style:[13]

There are different levels of demands—demands that are of little consequence, demands that involve important issues or personal integrity, demands that affect major life decisions, and/or demands that are dangerous or illegal.[12]

A research article by the staff of Consumer Reports, with Martin Seligman as consultant assesses that psychotherapy conducted by a group of Transactional Analysts is more effective than that of groups of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage counselors, and physicians; and that psychotherapy lasting more than 6 months is 40% more effective than that lasting less than 6 months.[14]

The three major limitations of Berne's work are:[15]

-Berne's emphasis on structural explanation (rather than on those derived from an energy theory),

-his failure to develop a script reversal technique which would satisfy his own criteria of conciseness and theoretical consistency,

-an apparent dependence upon content analysis.

When Will Hunting from the movie Good Will Hunting is being choked by Sean Maguire, you can see the spine of the book I'm OK, You're OK in the bookcase that Will is being pinned against [16]

Thomas Harris's 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".[17]

New Age author James Redfield has acknowledged[18] Harris and Berne as important influences in his best-seller The Celestine Prophecy (1993). The protagonists in the novel survive by striving (and succeeding) in escaping from "control dramas" that resemble the games of TA.

The twelfth episode of the third season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is called "Games Ponies Play" as a homage to this work.

Singer/songwriter Warren Zevon mentions transactional analysis in his 1980 song "Gorilla, You're a Desperado" from the album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School.

Singer-songwriter Joe South's 1968 song, "Games People Play", was based directly on transactional-analytic concepts and Berne's book of the same name.

TA makes an appearance in Antonio Campos' 2016 biographical drama Christine, a film covering the events that led TV journalist Christine Chubbuck to commit suicide on TV. She is brought to a transactional analysis therapy session by a colleague, where they introduce her to the "Yes, But..." technique.

Singer John Denver references transactional analysis in his autobiography. His wife at the time, Annie Denver, was getting into the movement. John says he tried it but found it wanting.

Eric Berne's Games People Play was featured prominently on an episode of Mad Men. Games was seen in Season 4, Episode 11, titled “Chinese Wall.” The approximate time period for this episode is September 1965. By late September 1965, Games People Play had been on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list for 9 weeks already.

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Transactional analysis.

• The International Transactional Analysis Association
• European Association for Transactional Analysis
• The Berne Institute in England
• Institute of Transactional Analysis
• UK Association for Transactional Analysis
• TA Works Training Institute in Oxford