Transactional analysis (TA) – is a direction in psychology, examining the development of personality and communication as the formation and interaction of subordinate levels of organization of the individual psyche. Transactional Analysis as a psychotherapeutic method has been developed in the 50-ies of XX century by the American psychologist and psychiatrist Eric Berne, who relied on Freud‘s representation about the structure of personality.
Eric Berne claimed that he implemented the adaptation of psychoanalysis to its more extensive and effective use. He also considered his merit the translation of sophisticated psychoanalytic terminology to a more accessible everyday language. But some critics still assert that transactional analysis is essentially just a popular version of psychoanalysis.
Several provisions of Transactional Analysis really resonates with Sigmund Freud‘s precepts, but there are specific features of transactional analysis, we can consider it as a separate branch of psychological theory and practice.
The concept of Transactional Analysis
Transactional analysis includes a number of areas:
1. structural analysis (the theory of ego states);
2. actual TA activity and interaction, based on the concept of “transaction”
3. analysis of psychological “games”;
4. script analysis (analysis of life scenario – “script”).
Let us consider in order each of these areas.
Structural Analysis
Watching the spontaneous social activity (in conditions of psychotherapeutic groups), Eric Berne found that from time to time people show very significant changes in their behavior – in their common condition, style of speech, intonation and emotion. These behaviors are often accompanied by emotional shifts. The resulting behavioral pattern is consistent with a certain mental state, while the other pattern corresponds to another mental state. These changes and differences have guided Bern at the idea of the existence of ego states.
The very idea of ”ego states” should be treated with special care. This is a very strong and quite non-trivial idea. After all, Eric Berne argues – contrary to one of the basic premises of humanistic psychology – that man is not unified and holistic: the behavior and the corresponding physiological, emotional and mental state of a person systematically changes in a way that it rather indicates a multiplicity than unity.
In professional language, ego-states can be described as follows: phenomenologically – as a sensory and operationally system – as behavioral patterns.In more simple terms, it can be defined as a system of feelings associated with certain behavior patterns. Each person has a limited repertoire of such ego states, which are not roles but psychological realities. This repertoire can be described by the following categories:
1. Ego-state, similar to the state of parental figures,
2. Ego-state, of independent nature and aimed at an objective assessment of reality;
3. Ego-state, still valid since it was fixed in early childhood and represents the archaic survivals.
Informally speaking the manifestation of these ego states are called Parent, Adult and Child. At any time, in the process of social interaction, a person is in one of the three ego states and has the ability to switch from one to another, however each person has different degree of readiness to move on.
Transactional analysis
Eric Berne defines transaction as a unit of communication. If two, three or more people meet, sooner or later one of them would speak, or in any other manner will make the others to understand, that he is aware of their presence. This is called the transactional stimulus. Person to whom is addressed transactional stimulus, in response would say or do something. This response is called the transactional response.
In the process of communication Berne highlights a few rules. The first rule states that the communication process will run smoothly as long as transactions are complementary. The corollary to this rule is: as long as transactions are complementary, communication can continue indefinitely. The converse rule is that the communication process breaks down when the transaction becomes a cross.
Analysis of the psychological “games”
Game – it is a succession of additional hidden transaction, unfolding in the direction of a well-defined and predictable outcome. This is a series of transactions that are seemingly quite plausible and seem easy to explain, but in fact are determined by a hidden motive. In other words, game means actions, containing some trick. A distinctive feature of games is the hidden meaning and winnings, which means getting something. Winnings may be biological, existential, inner psychological, external psychological, internal social and external social, and may combine elements of all of the above.
Games are generated by the desire of partners to achieve benefits at the expense of other participants in communication. Berne and his team have developed an extensive typology of games.
There was highlighted the following categories of games: the long game of life, marital games , games for parties, sex games, underworld game for psychotherapy sessions and constructive play.
Script Analysis
The basis of many games are scripts, programs of human life path, embodied in his childhood under the influence of social factors and education. These scripts contained in the ego-state of the Child, are poorly understood and therefore makes a person unfree and psychologically addicted.
What is the script? The script – is a continuously developable life plan, which is formed in early childhood under the influence of parents. This is a psychic force, which carries a person on a particular life path, regardless of whether he thinks this way is reasonable or resists it.
The psychotherapy, developed by Eric Berne, is designed to liberate man from the influence of scripts, programming his life, through their awareness, by contrasting them to the immediacy, spontaneity, intimacy and honesty in interpersonal relations, through the production of intelligent and independent behavior.
Features of transactional psychotherapy
As mentioned above, the TA has arisen in the bosom of psychoanalysis, and shares the idea that life’s failures can result from distorted perceptions of reality, the reason of which is in the early childhood conflicts. In other words, people do not effectively interact with reality, because they perceive it through the filters of children’s views.
At the same time, the psychoanalytic approach suggests that to conduct an effective resolution before the infantile conflicts – it is not possible. But their resolution, the basic psychoanalytic method: systematic analysis of free associations and the transfer takes years of daily psychoanalytic meetings. All this time the patient undertakes not to attempt major changes in behavior outside the therapy room. And from the above point of view it is justified.
Transactional Analysis believes (disagreeing with psychoanalysis in this) that radically changing the behavior, to make it effectively, it is possible, before or even regardless the depth resolution of childhood conflicts. This is related to one feature of the device of the mind. The personality of each person is not made of one program , but several programs (ego states). That way, what is not available for one “Ego” in man, is available for the other!
Berne’s Psychotherapy
In conclusion, transactional analysis is a separate area of psychological theory and practice. Psychotherapy, developed by Berne, is designed to liberate man from the influence of scripts, programming his life, through their awareness, by contrasting them to the immediacy, spontaneity, intimacy and honesty in interpersonal relations, through the production of intelligent and independent behavior. The ultimate goal of Transactional Analysis is to achieve harmony through a balanced personality relationships between all ego-states. Unlike psychoanalysis, conducted individually for a long time, transactional analysis involves group therapy sessions that provide a fairly rapid positive effect.
