SUMMARY

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY
By: ERIC BERNE

1. BIOGRAPHY:
Born in Montreal, Canada, Berne (1910-1970) grew up admiring his father, who was a physician devoted to his patients. After his father’s early death, Berne entered medical school, became an American citizen, and soon entered the Army Medical Corps as a psychiatrist. After world War II, Berne movedto San Francisco and resumed psychoanalytic training under Eric Erickson. Never achieving official recognition by psychoanalytic association,however, Berne developed his own orientation to psychotherapy: transactional analysis, a more “rational” approach. He wrote many papers and books, including Games People Play.
2. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT:
The origins of TA can be found in a variety of sources. Berne merged, mixed, and synthesized the approaches of Freud, Adler, and Rogers especially. From the beginning, Berne strove to make his theory accessible and he succeeded. The diagrams that Berne used to explain interactions between peope have become increasingly commonplace in counseling offices, classrooms, and management seminars.
3. VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE:
For Berne, people are motivated primarilyby basic psychological hungers to transcend patterns of behavior that begin early in life: stimulus hunger (the need to be acknowledge or affirmed by others); structure hunger (how we use time to maximize the number of strokes we receive); and positon hunger (the need to have a fundamental decisionsabout life validatedand affirmed). Personalityis composed of three conscious ego states, each an organized psychological system of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors: the parent, the adult, and the child.
4. DEVELOPMENT OF MALADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR:
Psychopathology, according to Berne, is the result of confused ego states. This confusion occurs when a person vacillatesbetween ego states withoutcompleting his or hir transaction. In addition, maladaptive behaviorcan result from playing games, a recurring set of transactions with a concealed motivation. Games occur when persons turn to others confirmation of their negative “not- OK”position, and the resultis the avoidance of intimacy.
5. GOALS OF THERAPY:
The fundamental goal of TA is to help client achieve autonomy, that is, to assume responsibility for their own actions or feelings, to take control of their lives, to plan and direct their own destinies, and to throw off any perceptions that are inappropriate for living here and now. In other words, TA helpsto free one’s adult from the influence of the child and parent. Another goal of TA is to help client analyze their relationships by discovering their predominant Life Positions (e.g, I’m Okay-You’re Okay).
6. FUNCTION OF THERAPIST:
The TA counselor works at being a catalyst for enabling clients to mobilize their resources. Acting very much like a teacher, the therapists explain key concepts such as structural analysis, script analysis and games analysis. In additionthe therapist helps clients make full and effective use of all three ego states, to live use of all three ego states, to live game-free.
7. MAJOR METHODS AND TECHNIQUES:
TA typically begins with a contract between client and therapist, which includes statements about what the client hopes to achieve and what the counselor will do, as well as specific criteria for knowing when the goal has been achieved. Structural Analysisis then employed to identify the client’s ego states and to become aware of how they function. Functional Analysis is a didactic method used to describe transactions to the client may be involved. And script analysis examines the person’s life direction, which is usually set an early age.
8. APPLICATION:
TA does not provide an abundance of case material. Nonetheless, the case of “ Mrs.Enatosky”, a 34 year old who had previously been in TA illustrates many of Berne’s application. Berne noted that she showed a specialaptitudefor TA and she shown began to exert social control over the games that occured between herself and her husband and between herself and her son.
9. CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
TA is conducive to short-term treatment and works well in a variety of settings. The use of TA and Gestalt therapy together has been especially helpful to many. It is one of the only approaches that illuminates interpersonal, as opposed to intrapsychic, reality. But although TA’s language has made it accessible to lay audience, it can be used to excess and the terminology threatens to create a barrier rather than a bridge. Cross-culturally, TA has shown some initiative in being sensitive to particular cultural needs and may lead to a greater sense of empowerment for minorities, but the TA jargon may also serve as a stumbling block for ethnic-minority groups.
10. CURRENT STATUS:
TA enjoyed a national groundswell of popularity in the 1960s and has been furthered by a body of data and a respected professional journal. Although it is often integrated into the work of a wide variety of therapists, few practitioners today would identify. TA as their primary theoretical orientation. Nevertheless, its interventions continue to be used by many eclectic practitioners.