top of page
Transactional analysis
Transactional analysis is a theory of personality, a theory of interpersonal communication and a psychotherapy direction. In the 1950s, the American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Eric Berne defined the basic ideas and theoretical concepts of this direction. Since then, transactional analysis (abbreviated TA) has been constantly updated and developed at the level of theory and methods.
One of the central concepts of this theory and psychotherapy is the concept of transaction. A transaction is an exchange of messages between two people. By analyzing the communication with the environment, a hypothesis can be put forward about the intrapsychic dynamics of a person.
Philosophical assumptions on which transactional analysis rests:
The essence of a human being is good. Behavior can sometimes be bad. It is important to separate the concept of being and the concept of behavior. A being has psychological needs that are basically good, and satisfying those needs can be bad, if in doing so the person hurts himself or others.
Everyone has the ability to think, except for people with damage to the structures of the CNS, as a result of which the ability to think is compromised. Each person is responsible for deciding what they want out of life.
People decide their destiny, and those decisions can be changed.
Transactional analysis takes a developmental perspective in explaining personality. It assumes that behaviors and traits arise with a specific function, and that psychological problems are an attempt to find answers to environmental conditions.
Psychopathology arises as a consequence of the harmful influence of significant people from the environment on the person when he was a child and the child's wrong conclusions about the messages he received from the environment. The influences and messages of others and the impression left on the child by those messages become the psychic structures of the adult and are expressed in his functioning in the present.
Transactional analysis, using different terms and concepts, explains the psychological dynamics of a person and the person's relationship with the world around him. They help the psychotherapist to gain an adequate picture of the psychological problem: its origin, function, and maintenance method. Some of the key concepts are: frame of reference, existential positions, ego state Child, ego state Adult, ego state Parent, script, script messages, prohibitions and decisions, drama triangle and games.
TA partly uses words from everyday speech to describe behavior and psychological phenomena. This is what a part of the scientific public criticized the theoreticians of this direction. The reason for using such terminology is the theorist's desire to bring transactional analysis closer to people who do not professionally engage in psychotherapy. The idea is that the concepts presented in their simplified form can be useful to people in becoming aware of certain patterns in thinking and behavior, and that literature written in such a language can be a type of self-help literature.
As a form of psychotherapy, transactional analysis relies on two principles:
Making a contract - In psychotherapy there is a joint responsibility of the therapist and the client. The therapeutic relationship is based on equality. The psychotherapist cannot work on change for the client, but the psychotherapist uses his knowledge and suggests ways in which the change can be carried out. It is the client's responsibility whether they want to accept and implement the therapist's instructions.
Open communication – Psychotherapist and client should have all information about what is happening in their work. There is no information related to the therapist's insight into the client's problem related to the therapeutic process that the client must not know. The therapist and the client are equal as persons and have an equal role in the process of psychological change. If the client does not agree with the therapist, he should communicate this openly and directly to the therapist. Such a way of communication leads to a better understanding of the client and his problem.
Over the years, TA has developed several approaches within basic theory and psychotherapy. These directions differ in relation to which aspect of personality and communication they particularly pay attention to. The three main directions are: Classical School of Transactional Analysis, School of Decision Change - New Decision Therapy and Cathexis School.
The goal of transactional psychotherapy is the autonomy of the person. Autonomy refers to behavior, thinking and feeling that is a response to reality, here and now, and not a reaction to scripted beliefs. A person's autonomy also refers to getting rid of scripts - giving up repeating patterns from the past that are no longer good and useful for the person.
The autonomy of the person is formed from three aspects. They are:
Awareness - about the fact that a person can direct attention to the here and now, to the present moment, to be in contact with bodily sensations and external stimuli, without attaching the wrong meaning.
Spontaneity - which refers to the ability to choose freely from among a number of possibilities for feeling, thinking and behaving.
Intimacy - that is, a person's willingness to openly share feelings and desires with another person. Intimacy excludes playing games, it is a state when a person feels accepted by another person.
What is not transactional analysis?
Transactional analysis is not a trivialization of psychological knowledge, and it is not a theory that assumes an unequivocal connection between behavior and psychological dynamics. Just as from a medical point of view, we cannot reduce a person to blood type, height and weight, it is a complex relationship between the functions of different organ systems, so we cannot describe a TA person and his psychological functioning and behavior relevantly with only two or three concepts.
bottom of page