Transactional Analysis Theory and Practice: A Curtain-Raiser 1

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, BSc, BTA, a Transformational TA Coach

+919822024037; ajitpkarve@gmail.com

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TA Practice: A Curtain-Raiser 1

This blog sets the frame and pitch that determines the content and context of this section on TA Practice.

Khalil Gibran has written a section on 'Our Children' in his famous book 'The Prophet'. It is the best way he thinks children should be brought up. It is far from what reality can offer. Parents do their best in bringing up their children. Children should be brought up on a diet of permissions and allowers. What children decide during their years of upbringing is their own call. They live in a world of their own making. We too have done the same. The way our life is proceeding provides clues. It tells us whether or not we have allowed ourselves to be fed on a diet of permissions and allowers. This without blaming our parents for the life we are leading.  Also not doing nothing about it by saying that it is destiny or fate; or doing nothing and putting up hands and expressing helplessness.

Life is work in progress. It is so all the time. Just watch someone buying vegetables from a vegetable vendor or in the super-market. The person picks and chooses what he intends to buy. He casts away some of the ones he picks up. Not that they are wasted. Someone else takes away what he has discarded. Same goes with the choices we make in life. The problem does not lie in choosing. The problem lies in not discarding the wrong or inappropriate choice we have made. It helps us to move out of feeling victimised or helpless. It is the principle of self-responsibility. Every person on purpose or unawarely makes a choice (and hidden in the choice is a decision). The choice itself is based on the principle of self-determination. As a consequence the person is also responsible for the consequences of his decisions. This is one of three philosophical pillars on which Transactional Analysis theory has been formulated alongside empiricism and phenomenology. Lokmanya B.G. Tilak a key figure in India's freedom struggle made this statement. "Swarajya is my birth right. And, I shall attain it." Every person seeks to grow from the limited to the unlimited. This is incorporated by Berne in Transactional Analysis by the principle of Physis. It is nature's gift to us to grow and to develop. Therefore installing the right thing pushes out the undesirable to age in dust on the shelves of a closed shop, as Berne puts it in the context of rackets. Here are seven principles of self-responsibility:

1. Examine your assumptions and beliefs. (We can know them by looking at what we justify and protect.)
2. Your emotions are your responsibility. No one can make you feel anything you don’t allow them to. (These are covered in the four myths contributed to Transactional Analysis by Taibi Kahler.)
3. You get the behaviour you tolerate. (TA recommends love and, accepting the person and ignoring the behaviour or dealing with it in isolation.)
4. Blaming others for your situation makes you a victim, and hands them control of your life. You always have choices (even if you don’t like them). (Blaming shifts a person to the Persecutor role on the drama triangle. It is a step in game participation.)
5. Understand that you never have to have the same thought twice, unless you really like having that thought. (This is one of three philosophical assumptions of TA. You can choose to think differently for a better life.)
6. Your time is your currency, spend it wisely. (Time structuring and task structuring both help to reduce stress. (This is an aspect of Constancy Hypothesis in TA.)
7. We must, like elite athletes, rest, reflect, plan, warm up, cool down, and analyse our performance regularly if we want to ‘go faster’ and 'farther'. 

*Adapted from a blog of Peter Fuda. The portions in brackets are my contribution.  

On Children

by Khalil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's and be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~~~~~

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