TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
CONTENTS
HISTORY AND ASSUMPTIONS 1
EGO STATES 2
TRANSACTIONS 7
STROKING 13
LIFE POSITIONS 15
16 TRADING STAMPS AND RACKETS
STRUCTURING OF TIME 18
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF TA 25
CONCLUSION 26
GLOSSARY OF TERMS 28
BIBLIOGRAPHY 31
TRANSACTIONAL
ANALYSIS
HISTORY AND ASSUMPTIONS
Transactional Analysis (TA) was originally developed by the late Dr Eric Berne, a psychiatrist in California, as a method of psychotherapy, but increasingly over the last 25 years it has developed as a complete theory of the personality and now has applications in many areas other than therapy.
Berne’s observations of his patients led him to certain beliefs that are the underlying assumptions of TA:
1. The first assumption is concerned with the nature of memory. TA assumes that all the events and feelings that we have ever experienced are stored within us, as though on video-tape, and can be replayed. We can re-experience the events, and more importantly, the feelings of all our past years.
Of particular significance, because they were so crowded with new feelings and experience, are the tapes from our childhood.
We can re-live the feelings we had as a child of joy or frustration or our childhood
perceptions of parental behaviour and commands.
We carry these feelings and perceptions around with us, and they are frequently
reactivated, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
This assumption is supported by current research on memory using hallucinogenic drugs and electrical stimulation of the brain.
2. The second assumption is concerned with the nature of personality. Berne had been treating a successful lawyer who, in the course of his treatment revealed a regularly experienced awareness of being just a child. The lawyer realised that, despite his maturity, his responsible job and his role of father to a family, he would at certain times feel not like a lawyer, but like a little boy.
This was confirmed by Berne’s observations of the child-like mannerisms and
gestures manifested by this patient on such occasions.
Observations made with many other patients convinced Berne that the child state
was a part of every individual’s personality and that in fact 3 such states existed within all people:
2.1 There is a collection of recorded feelings which the individual principally experienced while as a child – the child state.
2.2 There is also with the individual a model based on her/his own parents –
the parent state.
Both the child and the parent state are recordings in the brain of real and
significant experiences that happened usually during the first 5 years of life.
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2.3 There also exists the adult state which is principally concerned with the processing of information in the here and now.
EGO STATES
Berne believed that these 3 states, which he termed ego states, make up the human personality. He suggested that although people behave in a myriad different ways, it is possible to classify their behaviour into one of 3 distinct ways of behaving, which seem to arise from different sources within the personality.
The 3 different functioning parts of the personality are termed: the Parent, the Adult and the Child. When one way of behaving predominates, we say that a person is in a particular ego state: the Parent ego state, the Adult ego state or the Child ego state.
These states are all manifestations of the ego, of the self, and can be observed in gesture, tone of voice and behaviour, almost as though they were different people within us.
A person operates in only one of these 3 distinct ego states at any one time, though she/he may move quickly from one ego state to another. We shall consider each of these ego states in detail but first a few points must be made about the concept ‘ego state’.
1. The 3 words: Parent, Adult and Child, as used in TA, are being used in a very specific way. They have different meanings from the normal usage of these words. To avoid confusion, when used in this specific way, the words are written with an initial capital letter.
It should also be pointed out that Parent ego state, Adult ego state and Child
ego state are usually abbreviated to Parent, Adult and Child.
2. These ego states are not abstract concepts but actual states which can be observed in behaviour. When observing a piece of interaction we must never assume that a particular ego state is being exhibited unless we can identify its obvious signals. Of course this is a matter of interpretation, so the behaviour might be misinterpreted.
3. TA does not evaluate one ego state as superior to another. It simply suggests that the ego states are different from each other. It is important to realise this becauseit is easy to assume that the terms Parent, Adult and Child carry some evaluative message.
4. By definition, all our behaviour must fall into one of the 3 categories, Parent, Adult or Child. Most of the time we may be unaware in which ego state we are operating,
Which ego state is in executive. We may shift from one to another unconsciously.
One of the that TA can do is make us aware of our ego states so that we can choose in which one to operate.
5. While we all share the 3 basic ego states, we are obviously not all alike. We differ in 2 ways:
5.1 in the content of our Parent, Adult and Child which is unique to each person,and represents recordings of individual experiences.
5.2in the working arrangement, or the functioning of the Parent, Adult and Child – their relation in the individual to each other. The therapy aspect of TA is particularly concerned with this.
Having made these points, we can now consider each of the ego states in detail.
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State
Structural Diagram Simplified Form
Of the Personality
The Parent
This state contains the attitudes, feelings and behaviour incorporated from external sources, primarily parents. In outward behaviour it shows in critical or nurturing behaviour. It is concerned with succouring, helping, criticising, censuring, laying down rules and punishing. In fact all the behaviours we commonly associate with being a parent.
The Adult
This state, like the others has nothing to do with a person’s age. It contains those behaviours concerned with collecting and processing facts and information, with trying to get in touch with objective reality, with organising, with computing, with analysing, with testing probability. It is sometimes referred to as the computer in the personality and it operates dispassionately and without emotion.
The Child
This state contains all the impulses that come naturally to an infant, such as joy, trust, love. It also contains the recordings of early experience, how it was responded to and the ‘positions’ taken about the self and others. Unlike the Adult state, the Child state is full of strong emotion.
So, to put it very simply:
When you are acting, thinking or feeling as you observed your parents do, you are in your Parent.
When you are dealing with current reality, gathering facts and computing objectively, you
are in your Adult.
When you are feeling and acting as you did when you were a child, you are in your Child.
With a little practice, and an understanding of the above definitions, it is not difficult to classify behaviour into one of the 3 states.
Verbal statements are important in this classification but it should be remembered that interaction is a lot more than just a verbal exchange, we use non-verbal cues as well: gesture, facial expression, tone of voice, posture and movement can all be signs which aid the identification of an ego state.
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A simple example is apparent in the 3 responses to the same stimulus: a well endowed young woman passing by a in a brief swimsuit. It should be easy enough to identify the ego state of each of the given statements:
‘I don’t know what young people are coming to these days’ (Parent)
‘I see swimsuits are briefer this year’ (Adult)
‘Cor’ (Child)
The Child response demonstrates an important point. The Child is child-like not childish. The word ‘childish’ is never used in TA as it has come to have strong connotations of undesirability, of something to be stopped forthwith or got rid of. As we shall see, the Child is in many ways the most valuable part of the personality.
As said earlier, no ego state is better than another, but one can be more appropriate than another. As we are free to choose the ego state we respond from, choosing the appropriate state is a matter of judgement and sensitivity. In the above example, the comment we chose to make would depend upon to whom it was addressed.
Ego States: First Order Structural Analysis
Parent Ego State
The taught version of life. Behaviour, attitudes and precepts copied from parents
or authority figures. Essentially complete by 5 years of age, though old tapes (archaic
behaviour) can be updated. We cannot erase the ‘recording’ but we can turn it off.
Adult Ego State
The thought version of life. Works likes a computer, transforms stimuli & processes and stores that information on the basis of previous experience. Objectively appraises reality in the present, estimates probabilities and operates without emotion.
Child Ego State
The felt version of life. Contains the desires, needs, feelings and behavioural patterns of childhood that come naturally to the individual.
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Ego States: Second Order Structural Analysis
Critical or Controlling Parent Nurturing Parent
Establishes rules of conduct. Supports and helps others by
Restrains the Child. Strong, reassuring and doing things
critical, authoritarian, opinion- for them. Protective,
ated, prejudiced, moralistic. sympathetic, caring, giving,
understanding.
Logical, rational, autonomous, Updates Parental and Child
reality tester. date to determine valid
information and appropriate
feelings and behaviour.
Adapted Child Little Professor
The natural child responding to Can be creative and inventive,
parental requests, admonitions the unschooled wisdom of the
and attributions. Complying, child. Intuitive, finding new
withdrawing procrastinating, ways of doing things, or
ashamed. mischievous and gamey when
manipulating.
Free Child
Can be disturbed or happy. Uncensored, spontaneous, affectionate, sensuous, curious fun-loving,
rebellious, fearful, hurt. Strong basic desires related to physical survival.
It may have been noticed that when the behaviours associated with ego state were listed many of them were opposites. For example, under Parent both helping and criticising behaviour were listed. We need to look at each state in a little more detail to see why this is so.
The Parent state has 2 parts to it:
1. The Critical or Controlling Parent (CP) which establishes rules of conduct and is strong, opinionated, prejudiced, critical, authoritarian and judgemental.
2. The Nurturing Parent (NP) which supports and helps others by reasurring and doing things for them. It is protective, sympathetic, caring, understanding, giving.
Both parts of the Parent can be either constructive or destructive. When we analyse a piece of behaviour as coming from the Parent ego state, we can be more precise and say it comes from from either the CP or the NP. In the example above, it came from the CP. If the response had been: ‘Be careful dear. You’ll catch your death of cold’, it would have come from the NP.
The Adult
The Adult state, apart from its computer function of observing, collecting data, thinking, weighing probabilities, etc, also tests Parent beliefs and attitudes and Child feelings for their appropriateness to the current situation.
The Adult, when it is functioning, is always keeping in touch with and assessing date from the Parent and Child. Although you are in the Adult ego state you may still hear ‘voices’ from other ego states.
Keeping in touch with the other states while operating in the Adult is perfectly normal but problems may arise if the Adult is contaminated by the Parent and/or the Child, that is, if the Adult cannot operate alone. If the Adult is contaminated by the Parent this results in prejudices. If the Adult is contaminated by the Child this results in phobias and delusions.
TRANSACTIONS
When 2 people meet and communicate with each other, a transaction takes place. A message or stimulus from one person, whether it is verbal or non-verbal will normally elicit a response from
another, and the stimulus and the response that form the transaction may come from any of the 3 ego states in each individual. It is the interplay of ego states with which TA is concerned.
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There are 3 types of transaction:
1. Complementary Transactions
A complementary transaction occurs when a message, sent from a specific ego state, gets the
predicted response from a specific ego state in the other. Complementary transactions can
occur between the same ego states in the 2 participants, Parent to Parent, Adult to Adult, Child
to Child or between the Parent in one participant and the Child in the other. No matter what
ego states are involved, when the transaction is complementary, the communications is
ongoing and can continue as long as the participants wish.
1. What’s the time? 1 2
P P
2. Half past 10.
A A
C C
The foregoing transaction is an example of a complementary Adult-Adult transaction.
Information is requested and received.
1 2
1. This TA stuff is absolute
rubbish P P
2. Yes, and we’re stuck with it all
weekend. A A
C C
In the foregoing example of a complementary transaction both participants are operating from the critical part of the Parent ego state. As long as they both agree to keep criticising, this conversation can continue indefinitely.
2. Crossed Transactions
Here the first speaker may be forced into a complementary productive Adult-Adult
transaction by the second speaker crossing him.
3. Ulterior Transactions
Ulterior transactions are more complex than either complementary or crossed transactions.
In both the complementary and crossed transactions only one ego state of each participant
is involved; in ulterior transactions, 2 or more ego states are involved. The message of the
speaker is sent to at least 2 of the listener’s ego states.
Ulterior transactions are represented diagrammatically by drawing straight lines between
the ego states that seem to be transacting on the social surface and dotted lines between
ego states involved on the underlying hidden or psychological dimension.
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Ulterior transactions can mask, create or encourage bad feeling.
For example, you arrive late at a meeting, your Head of Department says, ‘Glad you could
make it’. On the social level the transaction is meant as a joke from one Child to another.
But there’s a hidden Parent-Child transaction on the psychological level: ‘Can’t you get
anywhere on time?’ We could diagram the statement in the following way:
You now have a choice as to how you respond. If you reply sarcastically, ‘You know how my classes love me; they wouldn’t let me go.’; this might have a hidden message in return. On the surface you are returning the joke, Child-Child. However, the underlying message is directed from your Parent to the Head of Department’s Child: ‘I got your message. Some of
us actually teach you know’.
We could diagram the transaction now like this:
1. Glad you could make it.
(Can’t you get anywhere on P P
time.)
2. You know how my classes love me.
They wouldn’t let me go. A A
(I got your message. Some of us
actually teach you know.)
C C
Whether a transaction is ulterior or not depends on 2 factors: first, what the speaker really
means; and secondly, how the speaker’s words are heard.
Often a statement intended to send a hidden message is not heard as such, simply because the responder misses the hidden message or consciously chooses to ignore it.
Sometimes we perceive messages to be hidden when this is not the speaker’s intention.
This often happens hen we feel particularly defensive or sensitive about the issue being
discussed.
Since ulterior transactions often create bad feelings, we may even choose to ignore them by responding only to the surface statement. Even this decision, however, might contain a
hidden message: ‘I’m aware of the underlying meaning in what you said, but I’d prefer not
to respond to it’.
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STROKING
Everyone from the moment she/he is born needs the stimulation of stroking. Without it, babies actually die and adults may shrivel up as personalities. A stroke is a stimulation one person gives to another, and an exchange of strokes is one of the most important activities in which people engage.
Strokes are any act of recognition one person gives to another. For babies and young children most strokes will be actual physical touching; for adults physical strokes are generally replacedby symbolic strokes such as praise or words of appreciation.
Strokes can be positive or negative; a kiss or a smack. They may be unconditional for being, or Conditional for doing.
Examples:
Positive Unconditional: ‘I love you.’ ‘You’re beautiful.’
Positive Conditional: ‘Thank you for the flowers.’ ‘I like you when you smile like that.’
Negative Conditional: ‘I don’t appreciate your sense of humour.’ ‘You didn’t do this job
As well as you might.’
Negative Unconditional: You’re hopeless.’ ‘Get lost.’
If a person cannot receive positive strokes, she/he will look for negative ones rather than get none all. A blow is better than being totally ignored.
However, it is the giving and receiving of positive strokes that develop emotionally healthy people with feelings of confidence in themselves, trust in others and a general feeling of being OK.
The kind of positive strokes that give this OK feeling, of everything being well with the world, may
be spread across the 3 ego states as follows:
Receiving
1 My Child needs to be stroked by being cuddled or hugged.
2 My Adult needs to be stroked by being congratulated on my work.
3 My Parent needs to be stroked by being thanked for the care I have shown to someone.
Giving
1 My Parent needs to stroke the Child of others.
2 My Adult needs to stroke the Adult of others.
3 My Child needs to stroke the Parent of others.
All these strokes should be positive.
However, my stroke pattern of giving and receiving will be very much conditioned by the kinds of strokes I received as a baby and child. If I became used to negative strokes, to being smacked, criticised, shouted at, and generally put down, I should probably go through life looking for and giving negative strokes.
If I received positive strokes of praise, love, rewards, but only conditional upon performing well or conforming to the rules, then I would tend to give and look for strokes based on performance or acceptable behaviour, and so on.
Strokes are very potent. One of the most powerful, yet easy, ways to us TA to change your own life is to look at your stroke pattern and then change it by giving more positive unconditional strokes at work and outside work. The effect on colleagues, family and friends will always be beneficial to them and you.
LIFE POSITIONS
The experiences of the baby and child during her/his first few years, particularly the strokes or lack of strokes, and the prescriptions and proscriptions she/he receives from parents, teachers and other adults, lead the individual to take basic positions about her/himself and others.
These decisions become generalised into the basic OK and Not OK psychological positions. There are 4 of these life positions:
The OK Corral
I’m OK I’m OK
You’re OK You’re NOT OK
I’m NOT OK I’m NOT OK
You’re OK You’re NOT OK
1 I’m OK/You’re OK
The child who comes to accept her/his own worth and that of other people, who can
trust other people and feel confidence in her/himself, is in an I’m OK/You’re OK position.
Very few people seem to be able to operate in this position, but it is the most constructive,
creative and healthy, and enables openness and intimacy to exist between people.
2 I’m Not OK/You’re OK
For most of us our early experience was of being put down, criticised, made to feel a fool,
made to feel powerless or inadequate by parents, teachers, big brothers, etc, and we
incorporated enough feelings about our own various inadequacies to carry through these
feelings into our adult life where we then work from the position of I’m Not OK/You’re OK.
If we think about our nervousness before making a speech or facing an argument with a
superior, or our apprehension when waiting for comments on our performance, we see the
not OK feelings of our Child within us. Most people are generally in this position.
3 I’m OK/You’re Not OK
In their childhood some people have had such a brutalised experience, physically and/or
psychologically, that, for their own survival, then switch positions to I’m OK/You’re Not OK.
As they take this into adulthood they are likely to display signs of chauvinism, prejudice,
megalomania and dictatorial or persecuting behaviour. At its most extreme it produced
Hitler, at a more moderate level Principals or parents who are forever getting angry with
and putting down their subordinates or children.
4 I’m Not OK/You’re Not OK
This position is one of black despair in which few people can be for very long without
damaging their personality. It is the world of depressives and suicides.
Although we can move temporarily into another position, we are most of the time bound by the one which we were led to accept early in our life. Unless, that is, we become more self-aware and try to move into more healthy positions.
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TRADING STAMPS AND RACKETS
Trading Stamps
The word ‘stamps’ is borrowed from the practice of collecting trading stamps when making purchases
and later redeeming them for merchandise.
People tend to collect good and bad feelings. Collecting a good feeling from a positive stroke is called in TA, collecting a ‘psychological gold stamp’, while collecting a bad feeling from a negative stroke is collecting a ‘psychological grey or brown stamp’.
Specific colour is sometimes assigned a stamp to represent a bad feeling: red stamps for anger; bluestamps for hurt feelings and depression; white stamps for purity and self-righteousness; green stamps or jealousy and envy. Etc.
The colour assigned to psychological trading stamps is, of course, unimportant. The important point is that psychological trading stamps represent an indulgence in bad feelings learned in childhood which are stored up and eventually ‘redeemed’.
Children are not born with their feelings already programmed towards objects and people. Each child learns toward whom and toward what she/he can show affection; each learns toward whom and toward what to feel guilty; each learns whom and what to fear; each learns whom and what to hate; each learns how to give and receive certain kinds of strokes.
Early in our life we experience fairly commonly periods when for various reasons we feel very Not OK -things go wrong in our family and we feel helpless and powerless surrounded by powerful and hostile adults. At these times we retreat into certain Not OK feelings to deal with the situation as we see it, and though we experience many different kinds of feelings, one or 2 gradually become our habitual
favourites for handling these bad times. Such feelings may be: anger, fear, frustration, loneliness,stupidity, pain, guilt, rejection, inadequacy, depression, self-righteousness, etc.
While these feelings may have been an appropriate response to the original childhood situations, later in life a person tends to seek our situations in which she/he gets a particular stroke so that she/ he can re-experience the old feelings. These feelings become her/his negative stamp collection.
Rackets
Your favourite bad feeling is called your racket, and when you are feeling Not OK, you will be looking for transactions and strokes that will get you into that feeling: you look for confirmation that justifies your feeling angry, inadequate, guilty, etc, so that you can add to your stamp collection.
We must however, distinguish between rackety feelings and genuine responses to situations. There are times when it may be very appropriate to feel angry, guilty, rejected, etc. The racket can be recognised because it is repetitive, inappropriate to the situation, and is manipulating the situation and people in it for the benefit of creating the bad feeling.
In these manipulated situations a person may adopt a stereotyped role of Victim, Persecutor or Rescuer, and look for people to transact with who play complementary roles.
Persecutors and Rescuers will seek out Victims; and Victims might seek out one or other, or both. These exchanges can provide all parties with intense strokes and when the exchange begins to tire the players may switch roles to maintain the strokes.
For example, when a Persecuting wife sees her Victimised husband leaving the room after tiring of The previous harangue, she may switch to Victim and say: ‘It’s so difficult for me to cope. I’m sorry
….’ This may possibly lure her husband back into the room to play Persecutor or Rescuer, and collect more stroke payoffs.
If both are left finally with bad feeling and it is a situation they have experienced many times, the likelihood is that they have been playing a Game.
Neil Benbow
(c)neilbenbow2026
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