TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

Transactional analysis is a form of social psychology developed by

psychiatrist Eric Berne in the late 1950s, and contains elements of
psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology and cognitive.
According to the International Transactional Analysis Association, T.A. is a
theory of personality and a systematic psyhoteraphy for personal growth and
personal change, offers an insight into how people are structured psychologically
and express their personality in terms of behavior.
At the simplest level, T.A. is a method to study the interactions between
people.
In Romania, the Romanian Association of Transactional Analysis was founded
in the year 2000.
According to Eric Berne each individual has a life script, developed in the
first years of life, beginning with the life inside the uterus until the age of 6-7
years old. Parents, family or parental figures having an important role in the
development of this Script , which serves as a survival plan ahead in life, even
when the result is pain or defeat. The childhood is the most vulnerable and
important period in our mental development because a childs mind is like a
sponge that absorbs information and tends to copy the behavior of those that
surrounds him. The Script is based on the experiences of childhood ,on his
perception of the world and his understanding of life and the emotional responses
of others to his needs and desires. We continue to re-play childhood strategies,
even when we are an adult. As adults the Script passes out of awareness.
According to T.A. there are three ego-states that people consistently use:
Parent-Adult-Child.
The Parent: A state in which people feel, think and behave unconscious as
their parents or parental figures acted, based on what thei observed. This is the
state that in a positive way protects and sets limits or in the negative way judges
and punishes.
The Adult: is the state that analyzes and decides, making decisions based
on their own perception of reality, on what their learned.
The Child: is a state in which human beings behave, feel and think just like a
child. It represents the emotions and needs that we felt when we where kids. This
is manifested in two forms: Free Child the creative, playful, spontaneous and
intuitive side, and Adapted Child meet the expectation of parents and society,
the child who limited his desires and became obedient and polite.
During communication we pass through all of the three ego-states according
to situations we encounter. For example, a person who received a insult from his

life partner may respond by looking at the floor or crying as they used to as a
child(a Parent Child transaction) or may shout or became violent because they
learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a
way of relating that worked(a Parent Parent transaction)
Transactions are based on communication between the three ego-states ,
the healthiest being the adult-adult.
There are four life positions that a person can hold, that has powerful
influence for his behavior in relations with others. The positions are:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Im Ok 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.
Im Ok you are not Ok. In this position I feel good about myself but I see
others damaged or less than me and is usually not healthy.
Im not Ok you are Ok. In this position I see myself as weak or not worthy
and I see others better than myself and entitled to abuse me.
Im not Ok 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.

A great importance in our daily interpersonal life are strokes that

represents the recognition, attention and responsiveness one person gives to
another.
Strokes can be positive or negative, verbal or nonverbal. A positive stroke
can be a smile, a greeting or another formal means of recognition.
Everyone has a hunger for strokes, even a negative one because one
negative stroke is better than no stroke at all which is also a form of recognition
or attention.
If children resort to naughty behavior to get attention, adults work hard or
make mistakes deliberately to obtain strokes.
To obtain strokes human beings resort to games in which they take
different roles : victim, rescuer or persecutor.
Rackets are a form of substitution of feelings that were not allowed or
expressed in childhood. Simply put, a feeling is replaced with another that is
allowed. For example, a person who was not allowed to express anger replaced it
with tears, so now as a adult when he feels anger bursts into tears.
Within the overarching framework of transactional analysis, more recent
transactional analysts have developed several different theories of Transactional
Analysis: cognitive, behavioral, relational, redecision, integrative, constructivist,
narrative, body-work, positive psychological, personality adaptational, selfreparenting, psychodynamic, and neuroconstructivist.

Bibliography
Eric Berne

What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Ed. Trei, Bucuresti (2006)

www.wikipedia.org
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