Contributions of Transactional Analysis

Transactional analysis provides a cognitive basis for the therapeutic process that is often missing in models of counseling. The insistence of this approach on having clients get out of their victim like positions and realize that they don’t have to continue to live by their early decisions is, I believe, crucial to effective therapy. In my opinion TA, especially redecision therapy, provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding how these early decisions are made, and how they are related to present self-defeating life stances.

Many people are restricted by their early decisions: they cling to parental messages, live their lives by unexamined injunctions, and frequently are not even aware that they are living in a psychological straitjacket. Conceptually, redecision therapy offers tools members can use to free themselves from an archaic life script and achieve a successful and meaningful life.

TA can be adapted to brief, structured, and problem-focused therapy, which is a strength in many settings. Practitioners who work within a managed care framework generally have less time to gather client information, make an assessment, provide an orientation to the therapy process, establish rapport, and intervene in a therapeutic manner (Davis & Meier, 2001). It is essential that a TA counselor explain the program policies and limits to the client and how the policies are likely to affect the process, type, and length of the therapy.

Transactional analysis allows a range of possibilities for both preventive and remedial work; the approach also provides for both an educational and a therapeutic structure. It is important that the information given in TA therapy sessions be balanced by experiential work aimed at involving the client both cognitively and emotionally. Therapy interventions are more likely to succeed and produce enduring change if they involve the emotional realm rather than being aimed purely at a cognitive level (Greenberg, Korman, & Paivio, 2002).

Personally, I favour integrating TA concepts and practices with Gestalt and psychodrama techniques. Doing so can integrate the cognitive and emotive dimensions quite naturally. TA concepts can be brought to life by the enactment methods that are typical of psychodrama and Gestalt therapy. Of course, this is what the Gouldings have accomplished. Working from a theoretical base provided by TA, they have used a combination of therapeutic methods from other experiential approaches.

How comprehensive is TA as a theory that can provide a foundation for practice? According to Dusay (1986), TA is recognized as a complete theory of personality and an entire system of psychotherapy. From Dusay’s perspective, TA has two major advantages as a therapeutic system. First, there is a complete and easily communicated theory of personality, and second, because of this foundation, the therapist is free to develop an innovative style of treatment utilizing his or her own strengths. He adds, if one were to observe trained transactional analysts in action, one may see therapeutic styles ranging from a more “intellectual” cognitive approach to a “feeling” emotive approach.

EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES AND ACTIVITIES FOR TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

Not all of the following exercises deal with therapeutic procedures routinely used by all TA practitioners; however, they are designed to increase your awareness of matters such as these: In what ego state do you tend to function? What kind of strokes do you typically receive? Which of the parental messages that you picked up early in life do you still live by? How do your decisions made early in life still influence you? What games prevent intimacy? What is the basis for new decisions?

Exercises for Personal Reflection and for Small Groups

These exercises can be used for your personal reflection and also as a basis for sharing experiences in a small group in the classroom.

1. The ego states: Parent, Adult, Child. TA teaches people to recognize when they are operating in their Parent, Adult, and Child ego states. Are you aware of a dominant ego state in which you function? Do you have trouble functioning in a particular ego state? If you do this exercise in a small group, each person in your group should choose an ego state and remain in it during a group exercise, thinking and speaking from the chosen state. The purpose of this exercise is to help you become aware of how you might function as a Parent without knowing it.

2. Stroking. TA stresses the need for strokes, both physical and psychological ones. What are the specific types of strokes you need to sustain you? What strokes do you seek? How do you get the strokes you want? Are you able to accept positive stroking, or do you have a need to discount it and set yourself up for negative stroking? If you do this exercise in a small group, you could experiment with asking fellow students for the strokes you want. Discuss in your group the idea of conditional strokes. Were you brought up to believe you would get strokes when you behaved in the expected manner?

3. Injunctions. Injunctions are messages we have been programmed to accept—that is, messages we have knowingly and unknowingly incorporated into our lifestyle. Reflect on a few of the following injunctions as they apply to you. What are some other messages you heard as a child? Add these to the list. Which of these messages still influence you?

• Don’t be
• You should always do what is expected.
• Don’t be who you are.
• Don’t succeed/fail.
• Don’t trust others.
• Be perfect never make a mistake.
• Be more than you are.
• Don’t be impulsive.
• Don’t be sexy.
• Don’t be aggressive.
• Keep your feelings to yourself.
• Think of others before yourself.
• Never have negative thoughts.

Which of these injunctions have you accepted uncritically? Which of them do you most want to modify? How might you go about changing any of these injunctions?

As a small group exercise, each person “becomes” his or her parent and gives injunctions. Each person should adopt the tone of voice he or she imagines the parent would have used. Get involved in the exercise, and really tell people the way you think they should be and should live. As a second part of this exercise, discuss the injunctions you most struggle with at this time in your life.

4. Decisions and redecisions. People tend to cling to early decisions and to look for evidence to support these decisions. However, TA assumes that what has been decided can be redecided. What is one early decision that you think has an impact on you today? What is that impact? What is one early decision that you would most want to change? If you do this as an in-class small group exercise, devote some time to identifying and sharing one of your early decisions. Then, determine what you are doing to keep this decision current. Finally, discuss what you might do to change this original decision so that you are not held back by it. For example, you may have decided early on to keep all of your negative reactions inside you; you may have been told both directly and indirectly that you were unacceptable when you expressed negative reactions. Do you want to change your early decision? If so, in what way? What kind of new decision would you want to make?

5. Exploring your rackets. In TA a “racket” refers to the collection of bad feelings people use to justify their life scripts and the feelings on which they base their decisions. Some possible rackets are:

a. An anger racket

b. A guilt racket

c. A hurt racket

d. A depression racket

For instance, if you develop a guilt racket, you may actually seek out situations that will support your feelings of guilt. You will continually do things that result in feeling guilty. As a small group exercise, spend time exploring how you maintain old, chronic, bad feelings. What might be one of your major rackets? List some recent situations that you put yourself in or found yourself in that led to old, familiar feelings of depression, guilt, anger, or hurt.

6. Games we play. Spend some time reflecting on some of the games that you played as a child to get what you wanted. For example, perhaps you played the Helplessness Game. By acting helpless others may have treated you as helpless and did for you what you really did not want to do for yourself. Although you probably received some benefits from the game, think about the price you may have paid for such gains. Were the benefits worth the price? What games do you sometimes play now? What do you get from these games, and what does playing them cost you in terms of your relationships with others? What do you think you’d be like if you gave up playing a particular game? As a small group exercise, share your experience with playing a particular kind of game and also being on the receiving end of a game others may play with you.

7. Life positions. Think about yourself with respect to your self-esteem. Do you genuinely like and appreciate yourself? Can you feel like a winner without putting another person down? Do you think you are right and the rest of the world is wrong? Or do you continually put yourself down? Early in life you might have felt that everyone around you was just fine and that you were basically not OK. What are some of the situations that led to these feelings of inadequacy? How might you challenge these feelings now? Would you classify yourself as a winner or a loser?

8. Contracts. TA therapy works on a contract basis, which means that clients clearly specify what they want to change as well as what they are willing to do to bring about that change. What do you think of the use of contracts in therapy? If you were a client in TA therapy, what is one example of a contract you would be willing to establish? Consider writing down a contract that outlines one specific behavioral change you want to make. How could you begin to work on this contract today on your own? If you were to successfully complete this contract, what difference might it make to you?

9. A book of you. Write your own table of contents for a book about your life, and then give your book a title. What title best captures the sense of your life now? What would you include in the chapters? Write down the key turning points and key events of your life in your table of contents. Now, assume you want to revise your book. What revisions do you want to make, chapter by chapter? Do you want a new book title? This would make an interesting exercise for sharing in a small group in class.

10. “You are your parents” exercise. This exercise can be done with a partner or in small groups. It will provide a format for looking at the influence your parents have on you and the quality of life you see your parents experiencing, and it will help you decide how you’d like to modify your own values and behavior. Close your eyes and see your parents at their present ages in a typical setting. Visualize the way they live. How is their marriage? How do they react to their children? What kind of life do they have? Now imagine yourself at their ages in the same setting. For a few minutes imagine that you value what they do and that your life is almost identical with theirs. In what ways would you modify the outcomes of this fantasy?

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. To what degree do you think children are “scripted” and then destined to live out their lives in accord with this script? Do you think children actually make decisions about the messages they receive, or do you think they accept the injunctions uncritically? How does your answer influence the manner in which you would work with a client in therapy?

2. Consider the possibility that you might be a counselor using the TA approach. How do you think your patterns of games, rackets, and early decisions would affect the way you worked with certain clients? Using what you know of yourself, are there any individuals with whom you might have particular difficulty working? What do you think this might say about you?

3. TA is generally a didactic and structured model of therapy. Would you be comfortable in the role of teaching along with the structuring that would be expected if you were to function within this model? What aspects of this educational model might you incorporate into your style as a counselor, even if you did not adhere to TA theory?

4. A contract is a basic part of TA therapy. How do you think you’d proceed with a client who refused to negotiate a contract with you? How valuable do you think a contract is? What is your personal evaluation of the TA approach? Consider questions such as the following:

• To what clients do you think TA is best suited?
• What contributions of TA do you think are most significant?
• What are the major limitations of TA? Explain.
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of TA as applied to multicultural populations?
• What specific concepts from TA might you be most inclined to draw from in your work with clients?

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