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Transactional analysis

  
 
captain piss
19:38 / 18.04.07
I’ve been interested in the idea of DIY psychotherapy, and came across some comments in one of Ken Wilber’s books (No Boundary ) expressing doubts about the usefulness of much of the psychotherapy that goes on in the traditional therapeutic setting of one-on-one consultation. I think his concern was that any insights or progress gained in this kind of environment tends to be diluted, lost or overly-simplified – and I would guess there is a potential worry that psychotherapy tends to bland people out a bit, applying some fairly generic heuristics to individual situations that vary enormously (hmm, that might be a clumsy or dangerous assertion – it’s just an overall impression I’ve gained).

He recommended transactional analysis (TA) as a useful method because of its simplicity and immediate practicality (it’s also the method practised by late ‘lith doyen Robert Anton Wilson, as many will know, who I think did it for a living at one point).

Probably the most famous book on TA is the notorious I'm OK - You're OK (as lampooned in many a sitcom over the years). I’ve been reading it lately and it does seem to offer a lot of tools to get going with a DIY approach, or certainly as a worthwhile adjunct to getting a little bit of counselling in real life. If you can only afford a few sessions, this provides a pretty helpful framework to make the most of what you’ve learned and perhaps progress further with sorting yourself out, I suspect.

But I was interested to know if anyone had any experience or views on this. Do people have views on the usefulness of TA? Is it maybe overly simplistic?

For example, let’s say someone was struggling with a general feeling that they were a bad person or something similar. I get the impression other approaches to therapy might encourage getting to the root of the problem by going back to childhood and trying to identify events and triggers that caused the feelings. With TA, on the other hand (or at least the flavour of it espoused in I’m OK – You’re OK), there seems to be a suggestion that the part of our psyche which learned how to feel about the world when we were an infant (referred to as the ‘Child’ in TA parlance) takes a bad imprint, if you like, no matter who you are, and there’s no need to bother figuring out why, to do something useful about it. This unhappy Child (or ‘NOT OK Child’, as the book calls it), with a poor self-image, remains a strong factor hovering around in the personality of every adult, pretty much. It’s the part that takes over when you find yourself reacting inappropriately or over-emotionally to everyday events, for example. But as long as you know it's there, you can kind of rationalise 'cranky' emotions that crop up, and find a way to work with them more productively (simplifying a bit as i don't want to ramble on).

So I'd be interested to hear any views people have on TA as a method.

And apologies if this post is not very well-informed on the overall realm of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, I don’t really have a clue about it yet (or maybe that’s just my dodgy Child acting up again).
 
 
NewMyth
03:12 / 25.04.07
I find TA a very useful model. Robert Anton Wilson, esp. in "Prometheus Rising," paralleled it to Freud's and Leary's concepts. Id, Ego, SuperEgo; brain's first 4 circuits.

"I'm Okay, You're Okay" by Thomas Harris, clearly set out the TA system. Eric Berne -- the creator of TA -- is deeper in "Games People Play," but it's a denser read.

However, I later learned that "IOYO" actually watered down or misinterpreted some of Berne's beliefs. Particularly the initial imprint of Not Okay. Harris was influenced by Harry Stack Sullivan, who said we all had an initial "Birth Trauma" -- which Harris states as we are all born with the Not Okay imprint, which ran against Eric Berne's philosophy.

I like how TA says the true, or best way to be -- with yourself and others -- is honestly, authenticity, INTIMACY. TA helps us to see all the things that get in the way. As RAW used to say, it aids us to avoid being a robot, and to see our Reality Tunnels.
 
 
Sterra
10:16 / 18.05.07
I think that it is useful for getting outside of circles of thought. So when you get depressed or anxious about something instead of focusing on that completely if you can think about something else (IE transactional analasys) that helps.

Sort of like how you cure hiccups.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
11:25 / 19.05.07
I cure hiccups through pressure points and breathing techniques :P

I think the problem with DIY analysis is that many people are happy to bullshit themselves (it's suprising how many people think they're better than average) and so they avoid issues that require attention, or else down play them. Whilst professional analysis can involve an indirect approach to important issues in order to prevent the patient from getting upset and prematurely ending the therapy, they still get pursued with (ideally) full consideration from an impartial source.
 
 
Mooot
16:05 / 24.05.07
I'd like to second NewMyth's recommendation of "Games People Play" but there is still the little concern that the 'tradition' mixes dramaturgy with half-baked psychoanalysis. There's a level of nobilty to Dramaturgy that a three tiered seperation between "adult" and infantile/disciplinary can't match. Also wtf with the the seperation of parent and adult? Is a self-policing adult not a rational actor AND a guardian of social boundaries?
 
 
Quantum
16:15 / 24.05.07
it's suprising how many people think they're better than average and think that they don't suffer from thinking they're better than average.
 
 
captain piss
13:07 / 12.06.07
NewMyth: From what I can gather, the IOYO idea seems to be that the ‘Not Okay’ imprint arises not so much at birth but from the experience of being a defenceless, relatively incompetent infant surrounded by far more obviously capable adults – an experience we all have for our first few years of life. But interesting to hear this is an idea that Berne isn’t really in agreement with.

But yeah, it makes sense that the TA model could be a tool to help us navigate life in a less robotic way, less in thrall to the distortions and dysfunctional emotional templates that often get set down in early life.

Sterra: yeah, maybe it’s the fact that it gives you a different focus that’s useful. The same way I like to do a tarot reading when I’m worried about something, as it maybe provides another camera angle on the same situation.

Mako and quants: I guess there’s a reluctance/difficulty with facing up to unpleasant aspects of ourselves… Interestingly, I notice Ken Wilber has published a paper about working with the shadow that combines TA and gestalt therapy, about which he says: “These are the two schools I would most recommend for shadow work, although there are many others that I would also recommend as being very helpful.”

Maaat: I don’t get what you mean, though I wish I did – it sounds interesting. In books like IOYO I’ve gained the impression that the Adult can decide on the validity of social boundaries and the like, from a reasoned point of view (rather than as a reflex response that was programmed in by your parents’ behaviour during your formative years).

I read an essay recently somewhere suggesting that the practise of meditation was a good way to get the ‘Adult’ working well in your life, it being the kind of ‘objective observer’ within the personality (though in reality it’s always tainted by the Child or Parent to some extent, I guess).
 
  
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