TA for Learners - 00.00 Introduction
TA for Learners
What is Transactional Analysis
Meaning:. Transactional Analysis is a Transactional Approach in implementing psychotherapy. Its founder, Eric Berne presented Transactional Analysis as a social psychiatry. It meant studying the psychiatric aspects of transactions or sets of transactions which take place between people in the moment prevailing.
Definition: Transactional Analysis is also a school of social psychology. It presents a study of phenomena that happen within people, between people, within groups of people and within organisations.
Specialisations : TA Practitioners qualify to practice TA in four specialisations. They are: Psychotherapy, Counselling, Organisational and Educational.
Eric Berne, the Founder of TA
Eric Berne (1910-70), a Canadian born American Psychiatrist is the founder of Transactional Analysis. His father was a doctor and his mother a professional writer. The traits of his parents made Berne a doctor and a hard-working writer. He qualified to be a MD from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He also qualified to practice Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, US. He trained under famous Psychoanalysts Eric Erikson and Paul Federn. Being a doctor he aimed to provide cure to his patients. He developed TA to achieve this as a therapeutic tool. The origins of TA can be traced to the six essays he contributed to psychiatric journals during the period 1949-62. He has authored six significant TA books covering the expanse of TA theory.
Fr. George Kandathil SJ, the Father of TA in India
Fr. George Kandathil SJ (1910-2011) is the father of TA in India. He is the first qualified TA expert from India. He brought TA to India in 1971. He received TA training from Muriel James and Claude Steiner, the first disciples of Dr. Eric Berne. He was a teaching member accredited by the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), California, USA. He established the Institute for Counselling and Transactional Analysis in Kochi, Kerala in 1973. It is a premium Classical TA Training Institution in India. Most TA experts in India have qualified from ICTA during its early years.
Benefits of learning and practising TA
Heightened Awareness:
l About where I am; what activity am I engaged in; where is my mind, what is it engaged in, what is it speaking, talking and saying, who is addressing whom in this mind talk;
l About the flights of imagination, fantasies and hurtful thinking;
l About thinking, feeling and emotional log-jams;
l About the nature, content and types of communications I engage in and how they affect me and other/s;
l About why, when, where and how my relationships sour and remain un-restored;
l About the mistakes I commit inadvertently and unintentionally;
l About the faulty assessments and decisions I make;
l About my tendency to justify and protect my own views and my un-desirable behaviours though they are inappropriate;
l About my aggressive, persecuting posturing;
l About my other person reliant, submissive, compliant, help seeking inclinations;
l About reasons for being unsuccessful in my work, enterprises and activities;
l About my inability to be free of remaining angry, hurt, pained, insulted, sad, anxious . . . . lonely;
Some other benefits:
l Freedom from incessant mind talk and intra-personal dialogues between personality components;
l Freedom from thinking, feeling and emotional log-jams;
l Freedom from flights of fantasies and autistic thinking;
l Gaining control over communications that generally go awry;
l Ability to restore relationships to warmth and cosiness on the go, and to restore hurt or broken relationships;
l Freedom from justifying, protecting and professing my point of view as being the correct one;
l Freedom from being persecuting, rescuing, or feeling victimised in my interactions with others;
l Being candid, open, honest and level in communicating my views, thoughts, feelings and ideas to others;
l Being assertive in expressing my needs, wants and expectations;
l Building healthy, rewarding relationships;
l Becoming successful in my work and activities;
l Being able to overcome failures without becoming dejected;
l Gaining capacity to enjoy self worth, value, dignity, respect and esteem as person;
l Gaining capacity for self responsibility;
l Gaining ability to manage urges, drives and impulses;
l Gaining the ability to pull back from harm or injury or loss causing events and activities;
Core Concepts and Ideas of TA Theory
Transactional Analysis is an elegant, simple, and easy to understand theory, free of jargon words. It is simple enough for a 10 year old child to understand its essential contents. Some five - seven terms are used in TA that have specific meaning.
Ego State - An Ego State is defined as a patterned formulation of thinking and feeling manifesting as corresponding patterns of behaviour. An activated ego state is manifest in terms of thinking - feeling - related behaviour.
Transaction - Transaction is a unit of give-take that occurs between people when they interact. It promotes social intercourse. A transaction comprises a set of transactional stimulus and a related transactional response. Transactions are vectors. They not only aid communication, they are carriers of 'strokes' and also foster mutual recognition.
Stroke - Stroke represents an infant’s need for touch. Stroke deprivation results in feeling of isolation, accompanied by disturbed mind and disturbing emotional states. Stroke is defined as a unit of recognition.
Game - Human interactions often go awry. As a result feelings of hurt, pain, insult, guilt, anger and experiencing being slighted, ignored, cornered are generated. Such dynamics are called games. Sets of ulterior complementary transactions with a switch and a cross-up leading to a predictable outcome called payoff constitutes a game. People engaging in games wish they never happen. As yet, they fall prey to them again and again.
Script - Our life is as though lived out to fulfil a life-time goal. Transactional Analysis proposes that it is based on a ‘story’ written in our childhood. This story determines our life’s course. Script is defined as a life plan written in our childhood based on childhood decisions under parental dominance, resulting in a predetermined life goal called script pay-off.
Racket: Racket is anything scripty. Its scope is unlimited. We think, feel, experience emotional surges, experience thinking-feeling-emotional log-jams, we engage in incessant mind talk; we also do, act, perform, execute things; we perceive, experience, assess, estimate and evaluate; we engage in day-dreaming; we also engage in flights of imagination, fantasising, hurtful thinking and planning; All these occurrences are rackets when they are scripty, hence unhealthy and do not help in solving problems or ending situations.
Racket: Racket is also a familiar but unhealthy feeling or emotion that people experience when an interaction has a bad ending. Racket is also an inauthentic feeling or emotion people use to end a situation or solve a problem albeit unsuccessfully. As yet the same feeling or emotion or manner of expression or behaviour is expressed in a variety of situations.
Discounting - A mechanism in us ensures that a part or an aspect of reality, or a reality situation, problem, difficulty, condition, circumstance, event, happening, occurrence, person or interaction is ignored or overlooked. We then perceive, evaluate, assess and deal with the concerned item coloured by our scripty assessment. What has happened is discounting.
Frame of Reference - It is a frame that structures our perception, evaluation and assessment of a person or reality. This occurs beyond our conscious awareness.
Redefining - Redefining is a mechanism we use to make the world fit our discounted frame of reference.
Some other terms we encounter in TA Literature
Behaviour: The word behaviour in TA means manifesting clues. Behaviour is classified in two ways. One as verbal clues and the other as non verbal clues.
Verbal clues comprise words, sentence structures, syntax, voice related features such as stress, volume, tone, diction and slang if any. Non-verbal clues include facial expressions, head slants, gesticulate actions, posture and pose.
Words include choice of words, slang words, sentence structures, syntax and redundants. Tone includes tone, volume, diction and stress. Facial expressions include expressions by eyes, lips, smiles, eyebrows, cheeks, wrinkles on forehead and between eyebrows and head slants. Gestures include expressions by fingers, hands and arms. Postures include pose and posture.
Behaviour accompanies changes in inner patterns of thinking and feeling triggered by internal and external stimuli.
Meaning - Meaning denotes the way we understand a word, statement or expression. The word ‘meaning’ has seven meanings. A few of them are dictionary meaning, assigned meaning, assumed meaning, and believed meaning. These get us to take for granted what we think is communicated without bothering to find out whether or not it is true. This causes a lot of misunderstanding between people in close associations.
Personalisation - Personalisation is the result of taking what is assumed to be true, instead of what is actually true. It happens because of dysfunctional thinking.
Attribution - Identifying a person, place, thing, activity, behaviour by its quality, trait or characteristic in lieu of its real identity is attribution. We implement it when we use words such as cheat, fool, idiot, useless to name and call people.
Bias - A prejudiced view of another that may not be entirely true.
Cybernetics - It is a term used to explain that noise improves the quality of communication. ‘Noise’ is generated when facial expressions, gestures, head slants, squints, smiles, postures etcetera accompany what is said. Therefore a precise message is psychologically inconceivable. Use of words such as actually, really, let me see, constitute noise too.
Other Concepts and Ideas
Social Psychiatry - Social Psychiatry is treatment of a variety of psychological, emotional, behavioural and characterological problems.
Reality - Any thing that affects us is a reality. It could be a person, animal, plant, thing or object. It could also be an event, occurrence or happening. Situations, problems, difficulties, conditions of life and challenges are realities too.
Reality Situation - Reality situation is a situation generated in an environment of mutual manipulation. A reality situation may be external or internal.
Social Control - It is a capacity that enables the person to gain control over own tendency to manipulate other people in destructive or wasteful way, and also over one’s tendency to respond without insight or option to the manipulation of others.
Loss of Social Control - The lack or absence of the aforementioned capacity to exercise social control is loss of social control.
Pleasure Principle - It is the tendency in individuals to seek immediate and complete relief of their urges, drives, impulses, desires, wants and needs without regard for the resulting consequences.
Reality Principle - It is the capacity an individual uses to determine beforehand the consequences of every course of action. It also means that the person withholds himself from succumbing to urges, drives, impulses, desires, wants and needs. He also uses this principle to assess beliefs, judgements and conclusions before taking action.
Personality - Every person responds to the same person or reality in a different manner. The different but individually characteristic manner of perceiving, evaluating, assessing resulting from underlying thinking, feeling generated by psychic organisation is personality.
Personality is a name for the organisation of psychic structures, the activation of which result in manifesting patterns of thinking, feeling, behaviour and response to reality and reality situations.
Reality Testing - It is the capacity in an individual to make a sane and impersonal assessment of reality. It also means the ability to check subjective reality on the touchstone of objective reality.
Psychological Time - It is the time spent by persons in mind engagements that manifest as flights of imagination. Psychological time is also time spent when we are caught in an overlap of assessment of past events and preparation for events yet to happen.
Contract - In TA it means a negotiated agreement between therapist / consultant and the patient / client narrowing the purpose and objective of treatment or consultancy. Its administrative part includes duration of engagement, number of sessions and their duration. Its operational part states who will do what and with what objective. It also speaks about the recompense to the therapist or consultant for the job.
Self Esteem - Esteem means respect and admiration. Self esteem represents a capacity to face and cope with the normal challenges of life and consider oneself as being worthy to live a happy and fulfilling life despite its challenges and resulting stress.
TA Beliefs and Values
OK-ness is a default capacity in people. They can recover it if it goes missing - People have an inherent capacity to enjoy their value, worth, dignity, respect and esteem as persons. They may at times experience their lack or absence. TA asserts that we can recover this capacity. We then experience ourself as being OK.
People can think - We have an inborn capacity to think and make choices. The loss of this capacity is apparent when we are confused, indecisive, or face dilemmas or feel challenged or incapable to respond appropriately. We can recover and use this capacity to think, make choices and live our life in new ways on our own terms.
Life is decisional - We make choices all the time. Every choice in a way constitutes a not-but manner of effecting our thinking, feeling, behaviour, response, or posturing. This constitutes a decision. Decisions frame our life course. If we find that our life is moving one way because of our past choices and decisions, we can reconsider them, make new choices and decisions, and live our life in new ways.
Before We Start
It is universally accepted that psychology was formally born as a science in 1879. Wilhelm Wundt established a laboratory in the University of Leipzig in that year.
Structuralism is an approach in psychology which focuses on studying the human mind by using introspection. This study is done by establishing basic units within the mind. Wilhelm Wundt is the father of this approach.
Functionalism is another approach in psychology. William James is accepted to be the father of this approach. It focuses on study of human consciousness by studying functions and roles of the human mind.
It stands to debate whether Transactional Analysis can be classified as belonging to structural or functional psychology. I think it takes useful parts of both.
Transactional Analysis has grown from contributions of Paul Federn the originator of Ego Psychology and his student and associate Eduardo Weiss.
Paul Federn was a student of Sigmund Freud who is acknowledged as the father of modern psychology. Freud generated a structure of personality using three component units named Super-Ego, Ego and Id. While he demonstrated how the Ego worked, Federn explored to find out how the ego felt. He coined the term ego state. Weiss describes an ego state as “the actually experienced reality of one’s mental and bodily ego with the contents of the lived through period”. Weiss further points out that ego states of former age levels are maintained in potential existence within the personality.
Eric Berne is the originator of Transactional Analysis. He developed this theory in collaboration with some fifteen contributors who participated in weekly San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars during the years 1957-1964. He developed a model of personality using three sets (types or categories) of ego states. He was engaged in treating patients with thinking, feeling, emotional, behavioural and characterological problems. He used the ego state model of personality to demonstrate that problems of the mind, behaviour, human experiences and compulsiveness occur because of personality anomalies and not because of mind dysfunctions.
Transactional Analysis is today accepted as a school of social psychology. In this context it provides a basis for explaining issues concerning persons, their relationships with others, problems in groups, teams and organisations. Transactional Analysis deals with dysfunctional thinking, feeling, behaviour, emotionally overcharged states, communication patterns and interactions and manipulative behaviours. It also deals with the various ways in which human beings structure their time in the short term, mid term and over one’s lifetime.
Practice of Transactional Analysis helps us to take charge of our life and live it on our terms. It helps to put right whatever is happening which is not to our liking. It helps us to deal with people, situations, problems, difficulties, conditions, challenges, conflicts, hurt or broken relationships, and thinking, feeling and emotional lock-jams sanely, safely, appropriately and effectively. It helps us to be at equal ease being alone and in the company of others. These are deliverables TA Practitioners make available to their clients through treatment and coaching. They do this using their expertise in their chosen field of specialisation, namely Counselling, Organisational, Educational and Psychotherapy.
This book is written to provide an overview of TA Theory in Part I and over thirty practices in Part II for achieving personal growth, personal development, personal effectiveness, personality development, game free interactions and script free living in the self help mode. Their implementation restores the neuro-psychic mechanism to health. The long term benefits are by way of substantial reduction in intensity of constitutional ailments besides rewarding good mental health, psychological well being, healthy relationships, childlike joy and happiness.
Noble Laureate Hans Sayle writes in his book ‘Stress of Life’ that stress promotes life and living. It may be said that constitutional diseases and ailments are adopted by the body organism to survive in a stressful and challenging world.
Readers are requested to bear in mind that this is not a text book of Transactional Analysis. Its contents are based on the author’s understanding of TA Theory.
***
(This Blog is a Chapter in 'My Little TA Book')
You can go to other blogs by clicking the link below.
List of Contents
The author can be reached at:
taforyouandme@gmail.com
ajitpkarve@gmail.com
+91 9822024037
The author can be reached at:
taforyouandme@gmail.com
ajitpkarve@gmail.com
+91 9822024037
Comments
Post a Comment