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.
TA outline
According to the International Transactional Analysis Association 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. This same model helps explain how people function and express their personality in their behavior.
2. It is a theory of communication that can be extended to the analysis of systems and organisations.
3. It offers a theory for child development, by explaining how our adult patterns of life originated in childhood. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
Philosophy of TA
* People are OK; thus each person has validity, importance, equality of respect.
* Everyone (with only few exceptions, such as the severely brain-damaged) has the capacity to think.
* People decide their story and destiny, and these decisions can be changed.
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 behavior, 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, learning new choices
