Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analysis (TA) is a system developed by Eric Berne for the purposes of understanding human behaviour. The system is somewhat influenced by Freud, but it has an emphasis on real, physical, observable behaviour. This article is based on the books Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy and Games People Play, both by Eric Berne. I can not do the whole subject of Transactional Analysis justice in this one short article. Berne uses many clinical examples to expand on his points, which I can not cover on account of it making the article too long and also copying the book. If there are any concepts which don't full come across, I can only suggest picking up the original source material.

The foundations of the theory is the concept of an ego state. An ego state is a coherent pattern of human behaviours within a specific situation. We all act differently in different situations. You say and behave in ways around your friends that you would never do so at work. Ego states are understood as being in three categories. They come from the psychic organs of extropsyche, the neopsyche and the archaeopsyche. These correspond to the following ego states: exteropsychic (i.e. identificatory), neopsychic (i.e. data-processing) and archaeopsychic (i.e. regressive). Since these terms are easy to confuse, they are often instead labelled as Parent, Adult and Child. They are written with capital letters.

The ego states have some mild similarities to Freudian personality theory of the superego, ego and id. Yet, they should not be confused as being the same thing. The Freudian theory focuses on aspects of the mind whereas the ego states are aspects of real, observable behaviour. The correspondence must be mentioned though. The superego is analogous to the Parent – a remnant of the real or perceived nature of the actual parent figures which acts as a moral guidance but also as a reprimander. The ego is analogous to the Adult – concerned with acting to meet survival in there here and now. The id is analogous to the Child – a leftover from childhood that contains the more wild and free aspects of the personality.

The theory of ego states comes from on the following clinical observations.

1. Every adult was once a child

2. Every human being with enough functional brain matter is capable of reality-testing

3. Every individual that survives into adult life had a parent figure

1 tells us that a large portion of personality is developed during the childhood. 2 tells us that there is no such mental illness that can cause a person to lose the ability to reality-test. What can is learning disabilities, neurological degeneration or neurological damage. None of these are relevant to psychotherapy. Reality testing is the process by which objective observations about the surrounding world are able to be processed into information. TA has a different view of so-called "mental illness" than typical psychiatrists. Tom Burns states that "the patient [of psychosis] loses the ability to 'reality test' - to check his or her terrifying or melancholic thought and feelings against external reality and judge them". Much like the Szaszian view developed in The Myth of Mental Illness, being "unable" to reality test is a personality flaw. 3 tells us that the parental figures are important in the forming of the personality too. The parental figures remain in the personality, either as they were or as they were perceived to be.

These form themselves into three hypothesis of TA

1. Relics of childhood survive into later life

2. Reality-testing is a function of discrete ego states and not an isolated capacity

3. The executive may be taken over by complete ego states of an outside individual, as perceived

1 tells us that the Child ego state is important. The goal should not be suppression of the Child ego state as it is where sublime experiences in life come from. 2 tells us that the ability to reality test is a specific function of a specific ego state. If this ego state is not able to be expressed, then this behaviour will not manifest. The differentiation between this and the psychiatry position is that the psychiatrist considers this skill of "reality testing" to be gone or unable to be performed. TA considers it only suppressed or dormant due to overactive ego states that lack the ability to reality test. 3 tells us that ego states can be filled by the personality or perceived personality of another person.

The ego states react differently to stimuli. The Parent is judgemental and enforces sets of borrowed morals. The Adult will transform stimuli into information and fill in the blanks based on previous experience. The Child will act in more abrupt, unpredictable ways based on pre-logical thinking. Different stimuli can elicit a response from different ego states. The response is dependent on the interactions between the three ego states.

Cathexis is the ego state with executive power. Executive power is defined as the ego state which is able to actually express behaviour in the real world and determines which ego states are able to be expressed. This is like the veto power of executives. For example, the Adult ego state may have the executive, but at a party allow the Child ego state to act so fun can be had. The Adult might decide that they've had too much to drink at a certain point and veto the Child, and slow down. If the Adult is currently the executive we say the Adult is "highly cathected". The flow of cathexis is the movement of the executive from ego state to ego state. Cathexis flows based on the permeability of ego states: are they rigid or lax? We can return to this idea later.

Delving more into Cathexis, we can discuss bound, unbound and free cathexis. Consider the energy in a monkey falling from a tree. Bound cathexis is like the potential energy, unbound cathexis is like the kinetic energy and free cathexis is like the energy in his muscles. Bound cathexis is a potential change of ego state, unbound cathexis is a passive change in ego state and free cathexis is a conscious change in ego state. Unbound and free cathexis are often grouped together into active cathexis. In general boundaries between ego states are semi-permeable. They are relatively impermeable to bound and unbound cathexis and quite open to free cathexis. What this means in practice is that it is much easier to consciously change ego state than passively.

The purpose of introducing cathexis is to better understand the concepts of the executive and the "Real Self". The "Real Self" is the ego state which the free cathexis dominates. That is to say, the state we would consciously choose to be in. This phenomena is observed readily when people act differently for a short time and say they "don't know what came over me". Their actions in such a state was not felt as the Real Self. The executive is the ego state with the greatest sum of unbound and free cathexis i.e. the active cathexis.

When discussing the Parent ego state, it is important to consider its current role. It is either an active ego state, or an influencing ego state. When active it is both the Real Self and the Executive, which manifests itself as the person acting like a parent. When the Parent ego state is not the Real Self and Executive, but holds strong influence, then the person acts as a parent would like. The Child ego state can manifest in two ways depending on the influence of the Parent ego state. If the Parent has a lot of influence over the Child, the Child is adapted, meaning it is obedient. This would manifest as child-like but well behaved. A weak Parent can lead to a natural Child, or disobedient Child, which manifests as tantrum or sulking.

The primary applications of the theory as presented so far is the understanding of social interactions. There are four kinds of social interactions: rituals, pastimes, games and intimacy. Rituals are of the lowest levels, and proceed along pre-determined rails. These include the simple passing greetings: "Hello, how are you?". After rituals have commenced there comes the question of how to spend time. The safest way to do so is through pastimes. These also proceed more or less along certain rails. Their purpose is to quite literally pass time. They also proceed along rails, but have a small amount of variation. Typical topics include the weather, health, family and so on: "it's starting to get dark early now".

As individuals are able to feel more comfortable, games might be played. A game proceeds along some typical patterns but the variations are huge depending on the ego states of the players. Games have two levels to the interaction: the social level, and the real level. In other words, games have an ulterior motive. We'll look at some examples of games st a moment and identify the ulterior motives. Games are also played to be "won" and "lost". A few examples will allow us to understand rituals and pastimes. However, games are a sprawling topic than can not be done justice in this article. Let's look at a few examples of games to get the general idea.

Why don't you - yes but. One of the most common games, YDYB is often found played at parties, and can involve any number of people. Consider the following:

White: "My husband always does our own repairs but he never does anything right"

Black: "Why not take a course in home repair?"

White: "Yes, but we don't have the time."

Blue: "Why not buy him a guide book?"

White: "Yes, but he'd never read it."

Red: "Why not get a professional to do it?"

White: "Yes, but he'd never agree to let anyone else do it."

And so on and so forth. This can go on for many rounds. The ulterior motive here is that White is not looking for actual advice. Actually, White probably already tried these things already. The game is instead about whether White can prove the hopelessness of their situation. White wins if they are able to fend off all suggestions, white loses if they are not able to come up with a "yes, but..." to a suggestion. On a social level, the interactions are Adult-Adult. Yet, on the psychological level White is in the Child ego state and the other players are Parent.

Alcoholic. Alcoholic is a five player game. There is the alcoholic themselves, although the vice might not actually be alcohol (gambling, sex &c can all function well). The persecutor who tries to get the alcoholic to change their ways, typically a spouse. The rescuer who attempts to save the alcoholic. The patsy who sympathises with the alcoholic and gives them money under the pretence of some other project (they both know what the money will be spent on). The patsy can also sometimes more directly enable the alcoholic ("come and have a drink with me"). Finally, there is the connexion, who deals out the alcohol. For the alcoholic, the game has many aspects. First, the ruckus provides its own kind of fun, but it leads up to the final victory: forgiveness from the persecutor.

Psychiatry. A two player game between the Patient and Psychiatrist. The Patient plays this game to show the Psychiatrist that they can not be cured, because they do not want to be cured. They seek out therapy anyway, since it helps them play a sharper and sharper game of Psychiatry. Here the social interaction is Adult-Adult, but again on a psychological level the Psychiatrist is Parent and the patient is Child.

Scripts are much larger collections of social interactions, that often play out over years or decades. Scripts involve routine patterns of behaviour that rarely change. A woman who marries a string of alcoholic husbands can be said to have a script based on the game of Alcoholic.

So far we have mostly discussed the theory as for a normal functioning person. However, the purpose of the development of the theory was for the treatment of psychopathology. Now, we will discuss what can go wrong in the normal functioning of the ego states and how to treat it.

Life may be seen as a continuum of events, moving from moment to moment. Each of these moments could be said to be an "ego unit". Each ego unit can be considered a link in this chain of life events. If trauma is experienced, that ego unit is damaged or altered in some way which can have a specific detrimental impact on the person. There are many ways in which this trauma can be experienced.

Exclusion is the domination by one ego state, which works hard to reject and deny the existence of the other two. An exclusive Parent will be entirely judgemental, incapable of fun or enjoyment, and incapable of objective reality-testing. An exclusive Adult will turn the person into a data-processor and nothing more. There will be no possibility of fun or enjoyment, and no ability to take sides in moral conflict or act in a guiding role. An exclusive Child will lead to a narcissistic and impulsive personality. It is hard to predict what actions an exclusive Child will take.

The important point to remember here is that in an exclusive ego state the suppressed ego states are not gone. The person is in fact capable of performing the other ego states, they are temporarily decommissioned. Therapy can re-comission the ego states, which we will get to later.

Another psychopathology is contamination. Contamination is expressed in two ways. There is contamination of the Adult by the Parent (prejudice) and contamination of the Adult by the Child (delusions). The Parent contains real or perceived parental prejudices that are repeated but not understood. The evolutionary purpose of this is to pass down survival techniques when the reason why they work is not particularly well understood. Perceiving hand-washing before cooking food as a contamination of the Adult by the Parent might be beneficial to your health, even if you don't understand bacteria. When this ego state contaminates the Adult, then some of these irrational prejudices are experienced as though they are objective facts. On the other hand, the Child ego state is pre-logical and unpredictable, and when it contaminates the Adult ego state, delusions are experienced as though they are logical. It is possible for both the Parent and Child to contaminate the Adult at the same time.

The final form of psychopathology that is possible is overly rigid or overly lax ego state boundaries. In the case of overly lax ego boundaries, the experience will be one of constant and shifting moods. Chronic experience of lax ego boundaries can lead to diminished or non-existent sense of Real Self. Overly rigid ego boundaries can lead to challenges in appropriate behaviour, as e.g. the Child is still active when the Adult needs to be active. This can manifest in a huge number of possible combinations depending on which ego state is currently active and which one should be moved to.

Now that we have covered the basic forms of psychopathology, it is appropriate to begin to take steps to remedy them. Transactional Analysis has a very realistic and physical view of therapy. There is no abstract interpretation of dream symbols and other such esoteric theorising. There is only real analysis of real behaviours that are visibly manifest. The primary goal of Transactional Analysis is giving the Adult executive control over the Parent and Child. This is called symptomatic or social control. Pragmatically, this means that the Adult is able to veto poor decisions by the Parent and Child. The analogy of the party is perfect. Someone with psychopathology might on one extreme be incapable of any enjoyment at all (over active Parent). On the other extreme is someone who is incapable of any restraint and wakes up the next morning with a throbbing headache and no memory (over active Child). A more balanced behaviour would be first "I can afford to let myself enjoy this party a little" and then "I'm starting to get drunk now, I should slow down (even though everyone else will encourage me to drink more)".

However, there are other goals than social control. There is also symptomatic relief. In this case the patient is not seeking a cure as such but rather seeking lessons in a better game. Consider a salesman who is so neurotic that he struggles to convert any sales. Rather than seeking a cure for his neuroticism, he is simply taught a better game of salesman. In this way his professional life is no longer impacted and he can return to being an "evening and weekend neurotic".

Another goal is a transference cure. In this the therapist allows the patient to continue a game that was broken off early by e.g. the death of a parent, or continue a game in a more benign form. The goal here is to provide relief to a troubled Child ego state through demonstration of the more benign game.

The final goal is psychoanalytic cure. This is a total decontamination of the Adult ego state from the Child or Parent, and to relieve trauma in the Parent or Child ego state.

The therapy itself has four primary stages. First comes Structural Analysis. Then comes Transactional Analysis proper. Then comes Game Analysis. Finally, Script Analysis.

Structural Analysis is the analysis of the ego state set up to help deal with (but not master) conflicts. Structural Analysis essentially involves the patient diagnosing their own ego states. In the Transactional Analysis method, patients are never held in the dark about their therapy. In fact, they are expected to more or less self diagnose. After successful Structural Analysis the Adult will be able to maintain control of the personality in stressful situations. However, there may be still some conflicts between Parent and Child, contamination of the Adult, and the Adult may not have full executive control. Specifically, through intense games, other people (knowingly or not) can trigger negative and unwanted responses from Parent and Child ego states. After Structural Analysis there are three pathways open to a patient. There could be termination of treatment, if the condition is considered sufficiently treated. On the other hand, Transactional Analysis proper and then game analysis and finally script analysis might be the choice for social control, symptomatic relief or transference cure. The third option is psychotherapy for a psychoanalytic cure.

Transactional Analysis proper needs to be done in group therapy. More precisely, group therapy leads to Transactional Analysis in a clinical setting. The point is to analyse the transactions between members. Consider the example provided by Berne: two housewives have the following conversation

White: "I stopped sleeping why my husband, and I told him if he wanted sex he could find someone else"

Black: "Why did you do that?"

White: "I tried so hard and then you criticise me"

White proceeded to cry.

This interaction is very short yet a huge amount of analysis can be done. First White declares that she has stopped sleeping with her husband. We can say that she is speaking in the Adult ego state here: this is a mere statement of fact. Black asks why White has done this. Black asks the question in the Adult ego state. However, White confuses this for the Parent ego state, almost as though she heard "why did you do that you stupid girl?". This causes White to respond from the Child ego state.

Transactions can take 4 primary forms. There is complementary transactions Adult-Adult in which the stimulus and response are both Adult in nature. Two people discussing some scientific topic with no ulterior motive could be an example of an Adult-Adult interaction. Adult-Adult interactions can not be said to be either good or bad as such; they are neutral. The other complementary transaction is Parent-Child. One person is directing a response from their Parent to the other Child; and vice versa. In this way the Child is being parented, and the Parent has a child. These interactions have the possibility of being good or bad, depending on the situation. For example, if in our example Black began to comfort White, this would be seen as a bad complimentary interaction. The Parent ego state of Black is feeding the Child ego state of White to continue to misrepresent Adult-Adult conversation. This can encourage further neurotic behaviour. On the other hand, many games can be won by both parties with a deliberate Parent-Child transaction; a lot of romantic teasing is of this kind.

The other two interactions are crossed transactions. We have already seen one where Black speaks as an Adult, but is seen by White as the Parent, thus causing White to reply as Child. The other type would be the reverse: Black speaks as Adult, but is seen by White as a Child, thus causing White to reply as Parent. This might be seen by asking a perfectly rational question and then being responded to in a torrent of abuse. Crossed transactions are generally perceived as neurotic behaviour.

Now we can consider Game Analysis. We have already done some amount of this so far when giving examples of games earlier. Pastimes and Games with ordinary and happy people can be enjoyed for their own sake. Typically with people suffering from psychopathology, Pastimes and Games can not be enjoyed for their own sake. Pastimes might be ways of painfully literally passing time until the next thing on the agenda, or a way of superficially warding off intimacy. For some, Games might at best be a painful but necessary step in achieving intimacy with another human being. This is an important point to consider. Some with psychopathology have no difficulty with intimacy, but have a great deal of difficulty in reaching intimacy. The glib and superficial actions of the Pastime and Games seem too burdensome. In some ways, these people are more acutely aware of the ulterior motives of Pastimes and Games.

By analysing games the eventual goal is to understand the destructive games that patients play, and give them the ability to refuse to play the destructive games of others. A patient may eventually gain social control through this game analysis. It is easy to see how if you understand the ego state of your opponent in a game, you can avoid being goaded into giving an unfavourable response. The point of this therapy is behavioural change as such.

Script analysis is performed to help patients identify particular scripts that run over and over in their life, often with destructive outcomes. The goal here is to replace the destructive script with a less destructive one. Group therapy is again helpful here since other members of the group can fill the roles of the script while the original trauma that lead to the script are resolved.

If the chosen pathway is not Transactional Analysis but rather psychotherapy, Berne also has a system for this. For these sorts of patients, the Parent or Child is experienced as the Real Self, and the goal is to experience the Adult as the Real Self. This can be challenging to do so. The Transactional Analysis therapy depends upon having the Adult as an ally who will be able to analyse transactions and games along with the therapist during the sessions. However, for cases where the Adult is simply not present most of the time, other measures need to be taken. In some ways, all that needs to be done is Adult-Adult communication, to help re-active the Adult of the patient. The only difficulty is getting the Adult out to start. Berne presents a few rules to help with this

1. Psychotherapy should only be done during periods of minimal confusion

2. The patient should have a chance to appraise the therapist first

3. Let the Child or Parent have their way first

4. The initial overture to the Adult should be made in a well-timed, firm and unmistakably Adult language

This covers many of the basic points of Transactional Analysis. As stated, this can only be considered a very brief overview, and not every concept is as developed as it could be. However, the subject matter is so massive this serves as a simple introduction, without the use of lengthy clinical examples.