Hi, I need some training material on Transaction Analysis. Would someone have a presentation on the same? Thanks! Maniesh.
From United States, Newport Beach
1From United States, Newport Beach
Hi Miniesh,
Please find some material on Transaction Analysis
Transaction Analysis is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change.
• 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 understand how people function and express themselves in their behaviour.
• As a theory of communication it extends to a method of analysing systems and organisations.
• It offers a theory for child development.
• It introduces the idea of a "Life (or Childhood) Script", that is, a story one perceives about ones own life, to answer questions such as "What matters", "How do I get along in life" and "What kind of person am I". This story, TA says, is often stuck to no matter the consequences, to "prove" one is right, even at the cost of pain, compulsion, self-defeating behaviour and other dysfunction. Thus TA offers a theory of a broad range of psychopathology.
• 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.
• Outside the therapeutic field, it has been used in education, to help teachers remain in clear communication at an appropriate level, in counseling and consultancy, in management and communications training, and by other bodies.
Key ideas of Transaction Analysis
Like Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), TA is pragmatic, that is, it seeks to find "what works" and where applicable develop models to assist understanding. Thus it continually evolves. However some core models are part of TA as follows:
The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model
At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviours, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:
• Parent ("exteropsychic"): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a way of relating that worked.
• Adult ("neopsychic"): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to what is going on in the "here-and-now," using all of their resources as an adult human being with many years of life experience to guide them. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.
• Child ("archaeopsychic"): a state in which people revert to behaving, feeling and thinking close to how they did in childhood. For example, a person being told off by the boss at work may look down and feel shame or anger, as they used to when being told off as a child.
Within each of these are sub-divisions. Thus parental figures are often either nurturing (permission giving, security giving) or criticizing(comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways), childhood behaviours are either natural (free) or adapted to others. Each of these tends to draw an individual to certain patterns of behaviour, feelings and ways of thinking, which may be beneficial (positive) or dysfunctional/counterproductive (negative).
Ego states are not intended to correspond to Freud's Ego, Superego and Id, though some have compared the two theories. Rather, ego states are consistent for each person and are more readily observable than the hypothetical Freudian model. In other words, the particular ego state that a given person is communicating from is determinable by external observation and experience.
Ego states also do not correspond directly to thinking, feeling, and judging, as these behaviours are present in every ego state.
There is no "universal" ego state; each state is individually and visibly manifested for each person. For example, a child ego state is individual to the specific human being, that is, it is drawn from the ego state they created as a child, not some 'generalised childlike' state.
Ego states can become contaminated, for example when a person mistakes Parental rules and slogans, for here-and-now Adult reality, and beliefs are taken as facts. Or when a person "knows" that everyone is laughing at them, because "they always laughed". This would be an example of a childhood contamination, insofar as here-and-now reality is being overlaid with memories of previous historic incidents in childhood.
Transactions and Strokes
• Transactions are the flow of communication, and more specifically the unspoken psychological flow of communication that runs in parallel.
• Transactions occur simultaneously at both explicit and psychological levels. Example: sweet caring voice with sarcastic intent. To read the real communication requires both surface and non-verbal reading.
• Strokes are the recognition, attention or responsiveness that one person gives another. Strokes can be positive (nicknamed "warm fuzzies") or negative ("cold pricklies"). A key idea is that people hunger for recognition, and that lacking positive strokes, will seek whatever kind they can, even if it is recognition of a negative kind. We test out as children what strategies and behaviours seem to get us strokes, of whatever kind we can get.
People often create pressure in (or experience pressure from) others to communicate in a way that matches their style, so that a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling parent will often engender self-abasement or other childlike responses. Those employees who resist may get removed or labeled as "trouble".
Transactions can be experienced as positive or negative depending on the nature of the strokes within them. However, a negative transaction is preferred to no transaction at all, because of a fundamental hunger for strokes.
The nature of transactions is important to understanding communication.
Kinds of transactions
Reciprocal or Complementary Transactions
A simple, reciprocal transaction occurs when both partners are addressing the ego state the other is in. These are also called complementary transactions.
Example 1
A: "Have you been able to write the report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Yes - I'm about to email it to you." (Adult to Adult)
Example 2
A: "Would you like to come and watch a film with me?" (Child to Child)
B: "I'd love to - what shall we go and see?" (Child to Child)
Example 3
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
Communication like this can continue indefinitely. (Clearly it will stop at some stage - but this psychologically balanced exchange of strokes can continue for some time).
Crossed Transactions
Communication failures are typically caused by a 'crossed transaction' where partners address ego states other than that their partner is in. Consider the above examples jumbled up a bit.
Example 1a:
A: "Have you been able to write that report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
is a crossed transaction likely to produce problems in the workplace. "A" may respond with a Parent to Child transaction. For instance:
A: "If you don't change your attitude you'll get fired"
Example 2a:
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "I'm just going to do it, actually." (Adult to Adult)
is a more positive crossed transaction. However there is the risk that "A" will feel aggrieved that "B" is acting responsibly and not playing his role, and the conversation will develop into:
A: "I can never trust you to do things!" (Parent to Child)
B: "Why don't you believe anything I say?" (Child to Parent)
which can continue indefinitely.
Duplex or Covert transactions
Another class of transaction is the 'duplex' or 'covert' transactions, where the explicit social conversation occurs in parallel with an implicit psychological transaction. For instance,
A: "I need you to stay late at the office with me." (adult words)
body language indicates sexual intent (flirtatious child)
B: "Of course." (adult response to adult statement).
winking or grinning (child accepts the hidden motive).
Phenomena behind the transactions
Life (or Childhood) Script
• Script is a life plan, directed to a pay-off.
• Script is decisional and responsive, ie decided upon in childhood in response to perceptions of the world and as a means of living with and making sense of. It is not just thrust upon a person by external forces.
• Script is reinforced by parents (or other influential figures and experiences)
• Script is for the most part outside awareness
• Script is how we navigate and what we look for, the rest of reality is redefined (distorted) to match our filters.
Each culture, country and people in the world has a Mythos, that is, a legend explaining its origins, core beliefs and purpose. According to TA, so do individual people. A person begins writing their own life story (script) very young, as they try to make sense of the world and their place within it. Although it is revised throughout life, the core story is selected and decided upon typically by age 7. As adults it passes out of awareness. A life script might be "to be hurt many times, and suffer and make others feel bad when I die", and could result in a person indeed setting themselves up for this, by adopting behaviours in childhood that produce exactly this effect. Or it could as easily be positive.
Redefining and Discounting
• Redefining means the distortion of reality when we deliberately (but unconsciously) distort things to match our preferred way of seeing the world. Thus a person whose script involves "struggling alone against a cold hard world" may redefine others' kindness and state that they are just trying to get something by manipulation.
• Discounting means to take something as worth less than it is. Thus to give a substitute reaction which does not originate as a here-and-now Adult attempt to solve the actual problem, or to not choose to see evidence that would contradict one's script. Types of discount can also include: passivity (doing nothing), over-adaptation, agitation, incapacitation, anger and violence.
Injunctions and Drivers
TA identifies twelve key injunctions which people commonly build into their scripts. These are injunctions in the sense of being powerful "I can't/mustn't ..." messages that embed into a child's belief and life-script:
Don't be (don't exist), Don't be who you are, Don't be a child, Don't grow up, Don't make it in your life, Don't do anything!, Don't be important, Don't belong, Don't be close, Don't be well (don't be sane!), Don't think, Don't feel.
In addition there is the so-called episcript, "You should (or deserve to) have this happen in your life, so it doesn't have to happen to me."
Against these, a child is often told other things they must do. There are six of these 'drivers':
Be perfect! Please (me/others)! Try Hard! Be Strong! Hurry Up! Be Careful!
Thus in creating their script, a child will often attempt to juggle these, example: "It's okay for me to go on living (ignore don't exist) so long as I try hard".
This explains why some change is inordinately difficult. To continue the above example: When a person stops trying hard and relaxes to be with their family, the injunction You don't have the right to exist which was being suppressed by their script now becomes exposed and a vivid threat. Such an individual may feel a massive psychological pressure which they themselves don't understand, to return to trying hard, in order to feel safe and justified (in a childlike way) in existing.
Driver behaviour is also detectable at a very small scale, for instance in instinctive responses to certain situations where driver behaviour is played out over five to twenty seconds.
Broadly, scripts can fall into Tragic, Heroic or Banal (or Non-Winner) varieties, depending on their rules.
Series of transactions
Rituals
A ritual is a series of transactions that are complementary (reciprocal), stereotyped and based on social programming. Rituals usually comprise a series of strokes exchanged between two parties.
For instance, two people may have a daily two stroke ritual, where, the first time they meet each day, each one greets the other with a "Hi". Others may have a four stroke ritual, such as:
A: Hi!
B: Hi! How do you do?
A: Getting along. What about you?
B: Fine. See you around.
The next time they meet in the day, they may not exchange any strokes at all, or may just acknowledge each other's presence with a curt nod.
Some phenomena associated with daily rituals:
• If a person exchanges fewer strokes than expected, the other person may feel that he is either preoccupied or acting high and mighty.
• If a person exchanges more strokes than expected, the other person might wonder whether he is trying to butter him up or get on good terms for some vested interests.
• If two people do not meet for a long time, a backlog of strokes gets built up, so that the next time they meet, they may exchange a large number of strokes to catch up.
Pastimes
A pastime is a series of transactions that is complementary (reciprocal), semi-ritualistic, and is mainly intended as a time-structuring activity. Pastimes have no covert purpose and can usually be carried out only between people on the same wavelength. They are usually shallow and harmless. Pastimes are a type of smalltalk.
Regards
Julie
From India, Hyderabad
Please find some material on Transaction Analysis
Transaction Analysis is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change.
• 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 understand how people function and express themselves in their behaviour.
• As a theory of communication it extends to a method of analysing systems and organisations.
• It offers a theory for child development.
• It introduces the idea of a "Life (or Childhood) Script", that is, a story one perceives about ones own life, to answer questions such as "What matters", "How do I get along in life" and "What kind of person am I". This story, TA says, is often stuck to no matter the consequences, to "prove" one is right, even at the cost of pain, compulsion, self-defeating behaviour and other dysfunction. Thus TA offers a theory of a broad range of psychopathology.
• 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.
• Outside the therapeutic field, it has been used in education, to help teachers remain in clear communication at an appropriate level, in counseling and consultancy, in management and communications training, and by other bodies.
Key ideas of Transaction Analysis
Like Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), TA is pragmatic, that is, it seeks to find "what works" and where applicable develop models to assist understanding. Thus it continually evolves. However some core models are part of TA as follows:
The Ego-State (or Parent-Adult-Child, PAC) model
At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviours, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:
• Parent ("exteropsychic"): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a way of relating that worked.
• Adult ("neopsychic"): a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to what is going on in the "here-and-now," using all of their resources as an adult human being with many years of life experience to guide them. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.
• Child ("archaeopsychic"): a state in which people revert to behaving, feeling and thinking close to how they did in childhood. For example, a person being told off by the boss at work may look down and feel shame or anger, as they used to when being told off as a child.
Within each of these are sub-divisions. Thus parental figures are often either nurturing (permission giving, security giving) or criticizing(comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways), childhood behaviours are either natural (free) or adapted to others. Each of these tends to draw an individual to certain patterns of behaviour, feelings and ways of thinking, which may be beneficial (positive) or dysfunctional/counterproductive (negative).
Ego states are not intended to correspond to Freud's Ego, Superego and Id, though some have compared the two theories. Rather, ego states are consistent for each person and are more readily observable than the hypothetical Freudian model. In other words, the particular ego state that a given person is communicating from is determinable by external observation and experience.
Ego states also do not correspond directly to thinking, feeling, and judging, as these behaviours are present in every ego state.
There is no "universal" ego state; each state is individually and visibly manifested for each person. For example, a child ego state is individual to the specific human being, that is, it is drawn from the ego state they created as a child, not some 'generalised childlike' state.
Ego states can become contaminated, for example when a person mistakes Parental rules and slogans, for here-and-now Adult reality, and beliefs are taken as facts. Or when a person "knows" that everyone is laughing at them, because "they always laughed". This would be an example of a childhood contamination, insofar as here-and-now reality is being overlaid with memories of previous historic incidents in childhood.
Transactions and Strokes
• Transactions are the flow of communication, and more specifically the unspoken psychological flow of communication that runs in parallel.
• Transactions occur simultaneously at both explicit and psychological levels. Example: sweet caring voice with sarcastic intent. To read the real communication requires both surface and non-verbal reading.
• Strokes are the recognition, attention or responsiveness that one person gives another. Strokes can be positive (nicknamed "warm fuzzies") or negative ("cold pricklies"). A key idea is that people hunger for recognition, and that lacking positive strokes, will seek whatever kind they can, even if it is recognition of a negative kind. We test out as children what strategies and behaviours seem to get us strokes, of whatever kind we can get.
People often create pressure in (or experience pressure from) others to communicate in a way that matches their style, so that a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling parent will often engender self-abasement or other childlike responses. Those employees who resist may get removed or labeled as "trouble".
Transactions can be experienced as positive or negative depending on the nature of the strokes within them. However, a negative transaction is preferred to no transaction at all, because of a fundamental hunger for strokes.
The nature of transactions is important to understanding communication.
Kinds of transactions
Reciprocal or Complementary Transactions
A simple, reciprocal transaction occurs when both partners are addressing the ego state the other is in. These are also called complementary transactions.
Example 1
A: "Have you been able to write the report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Yes - I'm about to email it to you." (Adult to Adult)
Example 2
A: "Would you like to come and watch a film with me?" (Child to Child)
B: "I'd love to - what shall we go and see?" (Child to Child)
Example 3
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
Communication like this can continue indefinitely. (Clearly it will stop at some stage - but this psychologically balanced exchange of strokes can continue for some time).
Crossed Transactions
Communication failures are typically caused by a 'crossed transaction' where partners address ego states other than that their partner is in. Consider the above examples jumbled up a bit.
Example 1a:
A: "Have you been able to write that report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
is a crossed transaction likely to produce problems in the workplace. "A" may respond with a Parent to Child transaction. For instance:
A: "If you don't change your attitude you'll get fired"
Example 2a:
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "I'm just going to do it, actually." (Adult to Adult)
is a more positive crossed transaction. However there is the risk that "A" will feel aggrieved that "B" is acting responsibly and not playing his role, and the conversation will develop into:
A: "I can never trust you to do things!" (Parent to Child)
B: "Why don't you believe anything I say?" (Child to Parent)
which can continue indefinitely.
Duplex or Covert transactions
Another class of transaction is the 'duplex' or 'covert' transactions, where the explicit social conversation occurs in parallel with an implicit psychological transaction. For instance,
A: "I need you to stay late at the office with me." (adult words)
body language indicates sexual intent (flirtatious child)
B: "Of course." (adult response to adult statement).
winking or grinning (child accepts the hidden motive).
Phenomena behind the transactions
Life (or Childhood) Script
• Script is a life plan, directed to a pay-off.
• Script is decisional and responsive, ie decided upon in childhood in response to perceptions of the world and as a means of living with and making sense of. It is not just thrust upon a person by external forces.
• Script is reinforced by parents (or other influential figures and experiences)
• Script is for the most part outside awareness
• Script is how we navigate and what we look for, the rest of reality is redefined (distorted) to match our filters.
Each culture, country and people in the world has a Mythos, that is, a legend explaining its origins, core beliefs and purpose. According to TA, so do individual people. A person begins writing their own life story (script) very young, as they try to make sense of the world and their place within it. Although it is revised throughout life, the core story is selected and decided upon typically by age 7. As adults it passes out of awareness. A life script might be "to be hurt many times, and suffer and make others feel bad when I die", and could result in a person indeed setting themselves up for this, by adopting behaviours in childhood that produce exactly this effect. Or it could as easily be positive.
Redefining and Discounting
• Redefining means the distortion of reality when we deliberately (but unconsciously) distort things to match our preferred way of seeing the world. Thus a person whose script involves "struggling alone against a cold hard world" may redefine others' kindness and state that they are just trying to get something by manipulation.
• Discounting means to take something as worth less than it is. Thus to give a substitute reaction which does not originate as a here-and-now Adult attempt to solve the actual problem, or to not choose to see evidence that would contradict one's script. Types of discount can also include: passivity (doing nothing), over-adaptation, agitation, incapacitation, anger and violence.
Injunctions and Drivers
TA identifies twelve key injunctions which people commonly build into their scripts. These are injunctions in the sense of being powerful "I can't/mustn't ..." messages that embed into a child's belief and life-script:
Don't be (don't exist), Don't be who you are, Don't be a child, Don't grow up, Don't make it in your life, Don't do anything!, Don't be important, Don't belong, Don't be close, Don't be well (don't be sane!), Don't think, Don't feel.
In addition there is the so-called episcript, "You should (or deserve to) have this happen in your life, so it doesn't have to happen to me."
Against these, a child is often told other things they must do. There are six of these 'drivers':
Be perfect! Please (me/others)! Try Hard! Be Strong! Hurry Up! Be Careful!
Thus in creating their script, a child will often attempt to juggle these, example: "It's okay for me to go on living (ignore don't exist) so long as I try hard".
This explains why some change is inordinately difficult. To continue the above example: When a person stops trying hard and relaxes to be with their family, the injunction You don't have the right to exist which was being suppressed by their script now becomes exposed and a vivid threat. Such an individual may feel a massive psychological pressure which they themselves don't understand, to return to trying hard, in order to feel safe and justified (in a childlike way) in existing.
Driver behaviour is also detectable at a very small scale, for instance in instinctive responses to certain situations where driver behaviour is played out over five to twenty seconds.
Broadly, scripts can fall into Tragic, Heroic or Banal (or Non-Winner) varieties, depending on their rules.
Series of transactions
Rituals
A ritual is a series of transactions that are complementary (reciprocal), stereotyped and based on social programming. Rituals usually comprise a series of strokes exchanged between two parties.
For instance, two people may have a daily two stroke ritual, where, the first time they meet each day, each one greets the other with a "Hi". Others may have a four stroke ritual, such as:
A: Hi!
B: Hi! How do you do?
A: Getting along. What about you?
B: Fine. See you around.
The next time they meet in the day, they may not exchange any strokes at all, or may just acknowledge each other's presence with a curt nod.
Some phenomena associated with daily rituals:
• If a person exchanges fewer strokes than expected, the other person may feel that he is either preoccupied or acting high and mighty.
• If a person exchanges more strokes than expected, the other person might wonder whether he is trying to butter him up or get on good terms for some vested interests.
• If two people do not meet for a long time, a backlog of strokes gets built up, so that the next time they meet, they may exchange a large number of strokes to catch up.
Pastimes
A pastime is a series of transactions that is complementary (reciprocal), semi-ritualistic, and is mainly intended as a time-structuring activity. Pastimes have no covert purpose and can usually be carried out only between people on the same wavelength. They are usually shallow and harmless. Pastimes are a type of smalltalk.
Regards
Julie
From India, Hyderabad
Hi, If you want some presenation and test to assess your life positions, please let me know, I have Looking forward to your reply Dr. Shanti Rekha
From India, Mumbai
From India, Mumbai
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