TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS ( T A)
a) Introduction
Counselling is a relationship between two persons which includes providing the assistance to an immature person regarding defining his problem, to think about him and to develop some habits and attitudes for intelligent decision making. The aim of counseling is to help a person in dealing with developmental tasks fit for his age-group.
b) Transactional Analysis
Transactional analysis defined by Eric Berne is a theory of personality and social action and a clinical method of psychotherapy based on the analysis of all possible transaction between two or more people on the basis of specially defined ego states. Transactional analysis is useful to any person who wants to be a real person. A real person is one who acts spontaneously in a rational and trust worthy way with decent consideration for others. Real people are autonomous.
The salient feature at transactional analysis is that it basically views people as products of relationship and their behavior as the functions of the past interactional fearing experience. It holds the view that people are responsible for what they do. If a man understands what is wrong with him and has enough motivation he can become a winner. It is usually practiced in groups.
c)Concepts
v People can be autonomous
v They are not enslaved by their past
v Change is an autonomous process
v Autonomous people are real people and they have the qualities like awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.
d)Theory of Personality
TA is a dynamic theory at personality in the sense that uses the concepts of psychic energy and the distribution of energy. The structure of personality is based on the personality theory of parent, adult, child ego states. He defines the ego states on the patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving. Any individual in a social grouping will exhibit one of these states.
Parent ego state
It refers to the parental and cultural influences. The person behaves like one of his parents/elders when he was young. This is a set of feelings, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors which one came across during his childhood. It contains behaviors that are copied stored information, Opinions, judgment and inner influence.
Parental ego states are in two forms. They are controlling parent and Nurturing parent.
Adult ego state
Adult ego state keeps us from being ‘hijacked’ by emotions and traumatic experiences of yester years. It helps us to make use of our mental and physical capabilities to meet the challenges that we face day after day. It discards unrealistic inappropriate messages and feelings and makes his own decisions. The important characteristics are organization, intelligence, processing, probability and decision making. It is devoid of feelings.
Child ego state
It contains all the feelings, needs potentialities of a child. Berne says we all carry within ourselves a little boy or a little girl who feels, thinks, acts and responds just as we did when we were children. It also contains creative intuitive capacities such as rebellion, compliance etc. TA has identified three different forms of child ego state they are
1. Natural child
2. Adaptive child
3. Little professor
e) Four type of analysis of TA
1. Structural analysis
2. Transactional analysis
3. Games
4. Script
1. Structural analysis
It is the first stage of counselling. It is the analysis of the Structure of the personality. It diagnoses and separates feelings, patterns and ego states from one another. It helps people to understand who they are, why they behave so. It helps the person to remain in control of the personality in stressful situation.
2. Transactional analysis
This is the second stage of the counselling. It helps the client to understand the three distinct types of transactions. They are complementary, crossed and ulterior. They are more analyzing the on-going transactions of group members.
3. Complementary Transaction
It occurs when the stimulus given by one person gets the expected response from another person.
4.Crossed Transaction
This happens between two ego states when a message sent from one person gets the unexpected response. The lines between the two ego states cross and communication breaks down.
5. Ulterior Transaction
It involves more than two ego states at the same time. In this type of transaction two messages are exchanged one in the social level and one in psychological level. There are two types of ulterior transaction. They are Duplex transaction and Angular ulterior transaction.
3. Games
A game is an on-going series of transactions seemingly complementary, covertly ulterior which leads to a well defined pay off. Pay off are usually negative feelings like fear, anger, sadness for one or both the players. Game is defined as a series of complementary transactions, progressing to a well defined predictable outcome. Most of what happens in life is game. The client is encouraged to learn more satisfying ways of structuring time and acquiring strokes.
4. Scripts
Script analysis is the analysis of life dramas that people without awareness act out compulsively some of the impressions which get imprinted in the earlier experiences will influence our behavior. It is a tool of TA. It tells us how we got the impression and how we can get rid of it scripts are two
1) Winning script 2) Losing script
Dr Berne defines script as a life plan based on decision in childhood, reinforced by parents.
Transactional analysis counselling process
The success of TA treatment largely depends on the setting of the room where there is held. The furniture, the color of the curtains and walls, the dress of the therapist all constitute the setting.
In the initial interview, the therapist very carefully tries to assess the ego state; the client seems to be in. From which the therapist draws certain conclusions. TA interview records are kept for future references. Brief notes on summary of the interview are recorded in standard forms. With the client complaints, his life position, symptoms, ego states, childhood experiences etc.
Contract theory and techniques- the establishment and completeness of contracts is one of the important TA techniques that can be used for effective therapy. A contract is the bilateral agreement between the therapist and the client.
The first stage of TA relationship is meeting the confused client with the parent. The counsellor seeks the information to establish a contractual relationship.
In the second stage, the counsellor explains the client’s behavior using the information obtained in the first stage. The counsellor make client aware of the internal conflicts and explore.
The third stage is marked by confrontation make him aware of the contamination of the other ego states and make him break the contamination and elicit a commitment to some action. The client is self conditioned.
It frees people from their foggy feeling and behavior and helps in improving the communication process. It is used for everyday problem solving.
Conclusion
Transactional Analysis can be said to be an effective method in the process of counselling. Recently its scope is increasing. Individuals especially the young adults are the needy clients of this transactional analysis counselling, because present generations carry different complex ego states. It enable the clients to identity the sorts of relationship.
REFERENCE
1) Sivarajan K, Psychological foundations of education, Calicut University,
Calicut, 2005.
2) Nayak A. K, Guidance and counselling, APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 2004.
3) Srivasthava K. K, Principles of guidance and counselling, kanishka, New Delhi, 2003.
4) Shashi prabha Sharma, career guidance and counselling, kanishka, New Delhi, 2005.
5) www.wikipedia.com.
-----