Transactional Analysis (TA)

I have just looked for yesterday's  last entry and can't find it.  I fear  that the computer has erased it.   I wrote about Freudian psychoanalysis and listed the names of the four psychoanalysts, including Berne,  who developed "schools" outside of psychoanalysis by working with patients in the "now" rather than starting out with the ponderous individual analysis of dreams to bring forth repressed material from the Unconscious.

Hoping it can be retrieved , I will proceed with what I consider to be so special about Berne's discoveries and creation of Transactional Analysis that  my whole approach to therapy was changed radically.  From having felt "burnt out" as a psychoanalytic therapist in l964, after  using TA, I found new interest, excitement  and life energy  in treating clients and in offering treatment and training workshops. I could see that I helped  people improve their lives and gain satisfaction from their work.  Eventually I got to contribute theoretical and practical insights to the field. I remain dedicated to TA, but miss the work and its challenges  to the point where I have started this blog to compensate  and perhaps help me avoid sinking into depressive lethargy.

1. Ego states


Berne's most important discovery was to show that, psychologically, a grown individual does not develop from childhood into adulthood  the way the  physical body  grows from a small size to  larger sizes.  . When it comes to thinking and feeling,  all the different dynamic ways of thinking and feeling with which a person functioned in the past, since infancy,  continue to co-exist in the "Now", in addition to memories stored in the unconscious. Thus,each one of us may shift from one "ego state" to another from minute to minute according to circumstances and the specific moment to moment interchanges of communication ("transactions") that may be taking place with others at each particular moment in time.


Each  "ego-state" is a distinct system for thinking and feeling,. Theoretically we operate with hundreds, maybe thousands of potential egostates.  However, as a way of establishing  manageable categories for gross distinctions among systems,  Berne named three broad  categories which correspond roughly to developmental stages, naming them  Child, Parent and Adult. They can be visualized as three labeled  circles. 

The Child ego state contains a number of sub-systems which can be shown as concentric circles within the circle showing the Child, like the rings in a branch of a tree which can be seen on a cross-section of a branch or tree trunk. The Child ego state continues to exist throughout a person's life and any one of these subsystems for thinking and feeling may operate at any moment of someone's life.

The Parent ego state starts developing at about age two and starts operating full force around age 5, continuing up to the end of someone's life.  It, also, contains concentric circles corresponding to parental influences and "voices"
of parents, teachers and mentors as they affected the individual while growing up - continuing right to the end of someone's life.

The Adult, lastly,  can be compared to an internalized computer which is set to deal with the reality of a person's life when called upon by an outside source or by any aspect of the internal Child or Parent.  It starts functioning at adolescence, which is why this period is often stormy.  The Adult ego state    gets updated constantly as the circumstances and reality change in a person's life .  Often, the Adult, representing rationality,  mediates between conflicting wishes or expectations of the Child or of the Parent.  Like the two other ego states it, also,  continues  to be available up to the end of a person's life unless taken over, or "contamined" by one or both of the other ego states,   as imay happen because of Alzheimers disease or senility.

2. Strokes and Transactions