Transactional Analysis Theory and Practice: Introducing Transactional Analysis as a Theory

This blog comes from Ajit Karve, BSc, BTA, a Transformational TA Coach
+919822024037; ajitpkarve@gmail.com
See the other blogs here : Table of Contents
Introducing Transactional Analysis as a Theory

1. What is Transactional Analysis?

It is a 'transactional approach' in Individual and Social Psychiatry. Transactional Approach means that the consultant / therapist / counsellor identifies problems within a person by observing the nature of interactions the client/s have with one another.

2. What is Individual and Social Psychiatry?

Individual Psychiatry means the study and treatment of mental illnesses, emotional disturbances and dysfunctional behaviours.

Social Psychiatry means the study of psychiatric aspects of transactions (special types of interactions) that take place between two or more individuals at a given time and place.

3. What are the types of problems people face?

People face problems concerning their mind states, thinking, emotions, feelings, behaviours, interactions, relationships, habits, addictions, dependency, traits and character;

Incapacity to deal with reality and reality situations - sanely, safely and effectively.

Problems arising from discord in relationships, or disturbed / broken relationships, or compatibility issues, or co-dependency, or effects of addictions, or incapacity to handle conflicts / misunderstandings, or exploitation, or handling domestic and work-place abuse among many other. And also physical, mental, sexual victimisation and abuse.

Over occupation with mental logjams. It is mind occupation with thinking, disturbed emotional overcharge, wrong caused or suffered, guilt, worry, anxiety and distress, grief and severe ones like depression. They interfere with normal living.  

Lack of motivation, loss of focus, low esteem and procrastination.

Suicidal, homicidal tendencies and aggression and abuse issues.

Addictions and habits.

Spendthrift-ness.

4. What are definitions of Transactional Analysis? 

Definitions of TA and similar other concepts and ideas of this theory help to understand their meaning as applicable to Transactional Analysis theory and practice. 

TA is a theory of Personality and a systematic psychotherapy for Personal Growth and Personal Change.

TA is a theory of Personality. It offers systematic methods for Personal Growth and Professional Development.

TA is a systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry.

TA is a school of Social Psychology.

5. Who founded TA?

Eric Berne MD 1910-1970 a Canadian born American Psychiatrist is the originator of TA. Fifteen other eminent practitioners contributed to develop TA into the complete theory it is today.

6. When was TA Founded?

TA was founded in 1957. Its launch is identified with the publication of Berne's Paper - ‘Ego States in Psychotherapy’ in the American Journal of Psychotherapy.

7. What makes TA so special?

TA grew out of Freudian Psychoanalysis and Paul Federn’s Ego Psychology. Berne’s contribution was to link problems of the mind, emotions, behaviour, accommodating, relationships and similar others to anomalies in personality.

8. What is an anomaly?

Anomaly is a deviation from normal. It is anything that is abnormal and unhealthy. Affected and afflicted personalities display anomalies.

9. What are the types of personality anomalies? 

Personality anomalies are explained in TA in a topic titled Psychopathology. 

There are two types of pathologies. They are Structural Pathology and Functional Pathology. Topics of contamination, exclusion and constancy are covered in structural pathology, and topics of lability of cathexis (flow of psychic energy) and boundary issues are covered in functional pathology.

10. How do these show up in a person?

They show up commonly as confusion, indecision, struggle and conflicts. They also show up as neurosis and psychosis.

11. How do they affect a person?

• The person is unable to respond to and deal with situations, problems, difficulties, conditions, challenges and conflicts effectively;
• The person is unable to respond to and deal with people, events, occurrences sanely, safely, appropriately and effectively;
• The person is unable to be free from many types of mental logjams.  They are explained in 3 above.
• The person is unable to deal with problems arising from situations of life. The person may also be at a loss being in control of oneself under stress and respond to behaviours of others sanely, safely, appropriately and effectively.
• The person is unable to bounce back to mental wellness and psychological well-being soon after being affected by a particularly disturbing event.
• The person is over-occupied with events that are yet to occur and events that have happened.

12. How does this help in understanding anomalies?

An empowered cognitive personality component helps to deal with aforementioned sources of stimuli effectively. TA tells us how the capacity of this component is clouded, influenced or it is decomissioned generating the stated conditions. It also provides a therapeutic process to resolve the issues.

13. What is reality?

Whatever exists is a reality. In TA the word reality identifies sources of affect. These sources may be within us or outside us. These sources could be people, events, happenings, occurrences, interactions, what we saw or heard, what someone said or commented. Reality is generated when there is an incessant urge to think and delve about a person, event, occurrence or incidence, and then, digging into right and worng, and how and why. Likewise reality is generated within when we are locked in thinking logjams when reflecting on a topic, and emotional loggjams in states of anxiety, distress, insult, embarrassment, hurt, pain, dislike, hate, resentment, animosity and many more. 

14. What happens thereby?

Interaction with reality generates reality situations. Reality situations generate an environment of mutual manipulation. A tug of war results.

15. So what is desirable?

We need to master the capacity to resist the manipulation by others and also to resist the urge to manipulate others. We succeed sometimes but we frequently fail. Often times the sources of manipulation are within an individual. They show up as :

(1) dysfunctional perception, assessment and evaluation of reality; 
(2) inability to manage urges, drives and impulses;
(3) inability to exercise permissions and allowers; 
(4) inability to implement stroke accounting;
(5) inability to move out of drama triangle roles;
(6) inability to end non-productive or hurting interactions;
(7) inability to move out of passive behaviours;
among many more.

16. What is this condition called?

It is called lack or loss of social control.

17. What is social control?

Social control is a capacity. It enables one to control one's own tendency to manipulate other people in destructive or wasteful ways. It also enables one to overcome one's tendency to respond without insight or option to the manipulation of or by others. A person having social control is also able to hear and recognise voces in the head. It means that the person has awareness about the ongoing mind talk and about emotional logjams.

18. Why do people fail?

People fail because they use pleasure principle instead of using the reality principle.

19. What are these principles?

Pleasure principle serves whims and fancies instead of helping to effectively deal with sources of reality.

Reality principle gets the person to focus on dealing with causes sanely, safely, appropriately and effectively by using age appropriate capacities. This results in the person generating new experiences that help him later on. Reality principle also helps one to judge before hand the consequences of various courses of actions. It also enables one to make sane choices after sufficient evaluation of the resulting consequences.  

20. How does pleasure principle function?

The pleasure principle is at work when our perception, evaluation and assessment occurs in a programmed manner. I call it a roulette wheel effect. 

Adapted from Black-ball Rentertainment

Imagine a roulette wheel. It is so designed that it is set in motion automatically whenever the person encounters a stimulus that is inconsistent with the programmed view of reality. There are at least twelve variables that trigger this automatic motion. They are person, place, time, role, event, situation, circumstances, belief, trigger, threat, allegation and naming. The response matches the number at which the roulette wheel stops. Though 479 combinations are possible with twelve variables. Only a few of them are the programmed responses and are frequently activated. i.e. the same responses are noticed in a variety of situations. The responses are person specific. They are predictable. Often times the responses lack the minimum conditions of being sane, safe, appropriate and effective to end the situation or solve the problem. 

Many a time the response is inconsistent with the stimulus. Using a reverse tracing method helps to know if this has happened. If the question generated for the response is identical to the one originally posed then the response is healthy. Else it is unhealthy. Here is an example:

Q. Are your free tomorrow?
A. Yes, I am free tomorrow. 
[The same question is generated here. The question for are you free tomorrow would be: Are you free tomorrow? Therefore the response is healthy and not automated.]

Q. Are you free tomorrow?
A. What is the work you want me to help you with?
[A different question is generated here. The question would be: "Can you help me with some work tomorrow?" Therefore this response is unhealthy. It is system generated.]   

21. What happens as a result?

The person looses capacity for conscious awareness, autonomy and self responsibility. The person moves to justify, protect and profess his / her own perception of reality. 

The person is unaware that the programmed neuro psychic mechanism has taken over, and that it is dictating his / her faculties and response systems. 

22. Explain more.

The programmed neuro psychic mechanism that structures a programmed response is called script. It also organises the structural components of personality to generate a programmed and conditioned response.

Decommissioning or clouding of cognitive faculty or capacity results.

As an example xyz spills tea when the spouse is around. This happens unintentionally many times in a week, not necessarily every time. The person is pulled up or commented upon. In any case the person receives attention. So in a way the neuro psychic mechanism engineers spilling to gain attention.

23. What does personality mean in TA?

Personality means the manner in which the personality's P-A-C structural elements organise themselves to generate a  response to a given stimulus. A P-A-C model is used to present our personality structure. It looks like this:

24. What is the structure of personality in TA?

Personality is modelled using ego states as building blocks. There are three types or categories of ego states. They are named Parent, Adult and Child. Parent, Adult and Child are colloquialisms used for extero-psychic, neo-psychic and archeo-psychic ego states. They are collective nouns, much like we use group, family, class or crowd. Each of them show up as distinct patterns of thinking, feeling and corresponding behaviour. Each of them also generate characteristic perception, assessment, evaluation and response to reality and reality situations. Parent ego states are incorporated during growing years from significant parent figures. Their attributes match those of the parent figures from whom they were borrowed, learnt or copied. They are introjects, meaning taken in whole without assessment, evaluation or checking them out for their validity. Adult ego states are here and now ego states. Their attributes represent sane, safe, age appropriate appraisal of reality. They represent stored adulthood experiences and lessons learnt and stored while dealing with reality. Adult ego states also help in conducting reality testing. Adult reality testing is checking subjective view of reality on the touchstone of objective reality. Child ego states are manifestations of childhood appraisals of reality. They are therefore called archaic relics from one’s own childhood. They were useful in dealing with issues before we were ten - twelve - fifteen - eighteen years old. They are however inappropriate in resolving adulthood problems. They are nevertheless valuable. They are the storehouse and controllers of psychic energy within the personality structure. The appropriateness of human responses largely depends on their health. They also help in capacities of happiness and joy, creativity, innovation, imagination and out of the box thinking in adulthood. Besides they empower us as adults to use 5 to 7 year old capacities to forgive and forget. This they help to restore relationships to become congenial, loving and affectionate.

24. Tell more about reality testing.

Reality Testing helps to make a sane impersonal appraisal of reality. It also helps to forecast / predict the outcomes from various courses of response.

25. What does script do?

Script takes executive control over the structure of personality. This it does by  enforcing psychopathology. The person’s Child view and belief is validated by Parent beliefs, values, principles and assessment frames.  The person’s ability to deal with reality is impaired.

26. What therefore happens?

The responses are not sane, safe, appropriate and effective in ending the prevailing situation.

27. How does the therapist know?

By studying series of single to and fro interactions - transactions.

28. What does the therapist do?

The therapist separates and segregates the ego states, and then strengthens their boundaries. He then gets the client to empower the reality testing Adult ego states.

29. What happens as a result?

The person gains the ability and capacity for social control.

30. 

31. What are transactions?

A transaction comprises a transactional stimulus and a related transactional response. Transactional means that they originate in an ego state in one person and is directed toward an ego state in another person. It is therefore a vector.  They are differenct from interactions in that they are accompanied by mutual recognition. They are also impacting. Transactional also means that there is mutual give and take. This give and take is in the nature of strokes besides the content of the message. 

32. How are transactions classified?

Transactions are classified based on the nature of their content. Every transaction conveys messages at two levels - social level and psychological level. The message at social level conveys the straight meaning of the communication. The message at the psychological level conveys the implied meaning of the communication. It may convey the same meaning as the social level or a meaning different from the social message. A different meaning may be conveyed because of content being inconsistent with the stimulus, a skewed sentence structure, inappropriate tonal quality, volume and accompanying non-verbal facial and bodily expressions.  When the messages are identical the transaction is congruent and when they are not identical, the transaction is incongruent. Congruent transactions are simple transactions and incongruent transactions are complex transactions.

33. What are the types of transactions?

We have seen that there are two types of transactions simple and complex. Each of these are further classified. Simple transactions are classified as being complementary and crossed. Complex transactions are called Ulterior Transactions. The content of the psychological message in ulterior transactions is generally responded behaviourally. They are classified as being duplex and angular. 

Complementary transactions have mutuality as a ruling feature. As a result communication may continue indefinitely. 

Crossed transactions cause a break in communication. One or both the parties need to change their ego state for communication to be restored. 

In Duplex transactions the sets of social and psychological messages are are parallel like complementary transactions. They however occur between different sets of ego states. A<->A and C<->C

In Angular transactions an A to A social message is responded by a A to A resposne at the social level and a C to A response behaviourally. 

Two simple transactions. The first one is complementary and the second one crossed.

A: B, what is the time?     B: Hi, the time is 10:30. - Simple Transaction

A: B, what is the time?     B: Look at your own watch. Don't ask me.

Four complex transactions. All of them are duplex transactions. B perceives A's questions different from the straight meaning and therefore in all these transactions the reply is in response to the perceived meaning and not to the social content of the communication.

A: B, what is the time?     B: Why? am I late.
Here B conceives the question to be : B, why are you late?

A: B, what is the time?     B: Why? have I kept you waiting?
Here B conceives the question to be : B, we have been waiting for you!

A: B, what is the time?     B: Oh! Sorry. My bus got late.
Here B conceives the question to be : B, what got you to be late?

A: B, what is the time?     B: Not my fault. There was a derailment.
Here B conceives the question to be : B, Why do you always get late.

An example of an angular transaction:
Shop-keeper to Customer

Social Message A<--> A
Psychological Message A<-->C

Sir, you have seen all the varieties. (He takes out another piece from the show-case and tells this to the customer.) See, this one is the best we have. It is expensive though. I am not sure whether it fits your budget.

Customer: I see your point. I will buy it.

Customer's response : Social Message C <--> A

34. Which of these are most significant?

Crossed and Ulterior transactions are most significant.

35. Why are they significant?

Because they initiate unhealthy interactional patterns called games.

36. What is a Game?

Game is a variety of time structuring. It is marked by the interpersonal dynamic being repetitive, dishonest and unhealthy. It is played out by the participants outside their conscious Adult awareness. It  manifests as an unhealthy behavioural pattern. The start of the interaction appears to be innocent and gives no indication that it is going to proceed to a game. 

A: So, how was your visit to the historical monument last week. 

B: It was good. We all enjoyed it.

A: I think you were away for a fortnight.

B: Yes, you are right. We were away for a fortnight.

A: You work in a public dealing post in your office. You must be making money on the side (this is the Con of the game) to have enough to go out frequently with your family on such outings, nah. Here the conversation shifted from the tourist visit to the person. This initiates the game. This is the switch in the game dynamic.

B: What you are saying is unfair and unwarranted (this is the gimmick of the game). I am not corrupt. I save from month to month. My wife is also working. 

A: Yes, that is true. It must be a cover-up. For most of your expenses must be in cash. Don't hide the reality. Come-on own up.

B: B in dumb-founded. (this is the cross-up of the game). The conversation goes into a limbo. B finds an excuse and walks away swearing never to meet A again. A is also feeling ashamed for bringing up this topic and justifies for making the allegation. Thereafter both parties get engaged in intense mind talk and emotional logjams. (This constitutes the payoff of the game. What they are doing is converting their hurt feelings into stamps. The stamps are usually cashed later on, for a show-down.) 

The game starts with an innocent conversation. Then at switch for no reason and without conscious purpose one of the parties makes a remark or attribution.  Both parties are taken by surprise. Thereupon a lull in the conversation follows. This is called the cross-up. The switch is pulled by making a manipulating statement, attribution, expression, sentence, action or behaviour. Both parties then quickly replay their conclusions about the other. These are reinforced by generation of a bias or opinionated view. The accompanying unpleasant feelings or emotion keeps replaying in the background for a while. The participants do not like the outcome. As yet they happen to engage in the game. Games ordinarily result in generating gossip or a temporary break in relationship. Hard games result in divorces, partnership break-ups, legal battles, homicide, suicide or confinement in jail, lock-up or mental facilities.

37. How can a game be identified?

Game can be identified by asking this question: "What happens again and again, that I do not like."

Game can also be identified by the preferred role we play in the dynamic. The role may be that of Persecutor (by putting the other down), or Rescuer (by offering un-sought help or assistance), or Victim (by expressing helplessness).

Games usually occur between persons in close associations. Their onset is specific to place, situation, time, event or statement.

Games also take  place  between persons not known to each other. Here the onset can be triggered by event, situation or a trigger such as a challenge. There is a John James formula to identify a game. The questions to identify it are:

1. What happens again and again (that results in an unpleasant outcome) that I do not like.
2. When, where, at what time of the day, and how does it happen.
3. How does it start.
4. Then what happens . . . . Then what happens . . . .Then what happens . . . .
5. How does it end.
6. How / what do I feel when it ends.
7. What / how does the other feel when it ends.

What is the nature of extreme mind activity in terms of thinking, labelling, emotional super-charge that engages my mind after the interaction. 

Games also proceed to payoff through stages of response, dialogue, discussion, argument, conflict and crossup. 

38. Is there any name to the manipulating expression, sentence, statement, attribution, action or behaviour?

Yes.

39. What is it?

Racket.

40. What is a Racket?

A racket is a favourite feeling one picks up from a variety of situations that have gone awry. The feeling may be one of anger, dislike, pain, hurt, embarrassment, ego hurt, cornered, blameless, helpless, among many other. Each person has his own spread of favoured feelings that he/she finds it difficult to give up.

A racket may be an expression of an inauthentic feeling that is ineffective in problem solving or ending a situation 

A racket may also be an inauthentic action, activity, behaviour or display. 

Rackets are escalated when questioned. They are justified as being necessary.

The purpose of all these methods of expressing rackets is to manipulate others and in the process secure their attention and extract strokes. The person-specific racket shows up in a variety of situations. 

There are many types of rackets.

Rackets are feelings. Feeling angry, sad, embarrassed, cornered, isolated, helpless, anxious, distressed can be racket feelings when they meet the stated conditions.

Rackets are emotions. Emotional logjams of anger, sadness, depressed, cornered, isolation, feeling of being ignored, let down are racket emotions when they meet the stated conditions.

Expressed Feeling Rackets: They are expressions of inauthentic feelings. They are substitutes for authentic feelings. They have a manipulative quality. They are used to draw attention of others in order to obtain strokes. They are used in a wide variety of situations. They do not help to end situations or solve problems.

Expressed emotional super-charge: Shouting, swearing, threatening, aggressiveness, or withdrawing, becoming silent, moving away, leaving the scene and a variety of mannerisms are rackets. 

Rackets are actions, behaviours and activities. Dangerous activities, aggressive driving, having scant regard for own safety or other person safety are also rackets.

41. What do rackets do?

They help to initiate a game or engineer a switch in a game.

Rackets help to regurgitate favoured feelings and emotions.

Rackets help to reinforce beliefs about oneself, another or others and about the quality of life entitlements.

42. What do games and rackets do?

They generate unhealthy strokes.

43. What are strokes?

Strokes represent an infant’s need for touch. Stroke deprivation during infancy affects neurological development. Stroke deprivation generates a condition called hospitalism. Strokes are units of recognition. Exchange of strokes takes place through medium of speech (saying something nice or hurting), visually (noticing another or looking at each other), by hearing and listening (giving an ear to another) or by touch (such as a shake hand, or a pat, or caress or even a slap), or by expressing kindness, care, affection and love. Strokes leave a lasting memory. They are either pleasurable or painful. Strokes are exchanged to express how the other is as a person (good, bad, gentle, rash) or  for a reason (you look good in that shirt, I like the way you speak, your manner of speech was pleasant).  

44. So where does all this take us to?

It takes us to Script.

45. So what is script?

Script is a name for an unhealthy intra-psychic mechanism in operation. It deprives persons the capacity for executive control. Persons in script respond in a programmed manner when their view of reality is challenged. It generates a programmed way of thinking, experiencing feelings and emotions, speaking, acting, doing and behaving. It also generates a programmed way of perceiving, evaluating, assessing and responding. Life scripts are lived out by engaging in games and rackets. These are loser or non winner scripts. There are also winner scripts. In winner scripts the person succeeds in the enterprises he undertakes.

Scripts help to structure life. They also help to structure time in the long term. All of us experience script as mind talk and painful feelings and emotions that we cannot discard.

46. What is mind talk?

When a tune plays we hum a song. When we engage in mind talking - all of us are, there is some triggering process deep within us. It helps us to spend time. Healthy people are able to have a silent mind.

47. What other way do we engage our mind?

We engage in psychological time.

48. What is psychological time?

There are three types of time. One is clock time. We engage in activity dictated by clock like in a game of football. The other is goal time or event time. Time occupation is determined by activity like in a game of baseball. The third is psychological time. It is time spent without awareness in matters of past or future or pending tasks or goals and the like. We lose contact with here now. We can know about it by asking these questions: Where am I?, What am I doing?, Where is my mind? What is it engaged in?

49. Can we end it?

Yes we can end it. It is done by asking these questions in slow succession. What is this mind thinking? . . . . . . . . Do I need to think? . . . . . . . . No. . . . . . . . . .  It results in a meditative mind, free of thinking.

50. How does it benefit?

It helps to generate the moment. We can then use it to engage in purposeful activity in conscious awareness.

51. Why do we learn T.A.?

We learn TA to practice:

- Psychotherapy and Counselling

- Training

- Organisational Development

- Conflict Resolution

- Team Building

- Coaching

- Education

- Marital Counselling

- Parenting

- Child Upbringing

- Social Work

- Sports

and the like. 

52. What about using it for ourselves?

Yes, it does help. It aims to change script.

53. What are the challenges?

Script has a homoeostasis. This homoeostasis maintains script control. It generates an inertia - a resistance to change.

54. What is the way out?

Commitment, dedication to a cause and dogged determination are the needs. Progress is slow. But, the results are motivating.

55. What is the way?

Script makes us believe that the appearances are true. Script is based on script beliefs. We learn to distinguish between true and false beliefs. It helps to discard old beliefs and install new beliefs. There is an alternate way though.

56. What is the alternate way?

T.A. Self Therapy practice delivers script free living. It 8s 9ffered by Ajit Karve on completing Diploma Level training. 

57. What are the goals of Transactional Analysis?

The goals of T.A. are capacity for conscious awareness, autonomy, capacity for decision making and problem solving, game free interactions, script free living, and the ability to engage in level, candid, open, honest interactions.

58. How is the body of T.A. theory organised?

It is organised as six theories and seven auxiliary topics.

59. Which are the six theories?

1. TA theory of Personality

2. TA theory of Interactions

3. Stroke Theory

4. Game Theory

5. Racket Theory and

6. Script Theory

60. Which are the seven auxiliary topics?

1. Psychological Hungers

2. Life Positions

3. a) Passivity and Passive Behaviours

  b)Four Discounts and Discounting

  c)Symbiosis

4. Rackets, Racketing and Racketeering

5. Frame of Reference and Redefining

6. Drivers and Injunctions

7. Script System

61. How is this done?

By specialising in one of four areas of specialisation.

Psychotherapy

Counselling

Educational and

Organisational

62. This means that it is used mainly in other person application mode.

Yes. That is true.

63. Who uses them?

Professionals from aforementioned areas use it. They also include trainers, coaches, managers, team leaders, sportsmen, politicians, clergymen, social workers, sports managers and the like.

64. How do they use it?

By using contracts, systematic methods, and level open honest game free interactions and guiding clients. Guiding is done by getting clients to gain conscious awareness.

65. About the originator of T.A.

Eric Berne, MD a Canadian born American Psychiatrist is the originator of Transactional Analysis.

66. About the contributors of T.A.

Fifteen collaborators of Berne contributed to develop the theory.

67. Who are they?

Claude Steiner

Steve Karpman

John Dusay

Aaron and Jacqui Schiff

Robert and Mary Goulding

Pat Crossman

Taibi Kahler

Fanita English

Stephen Karpman

Franklin H. Ernst

Richard Erskine

Marilyn Zalcman

Muriel James

Pam Levine

Carlo Mosio

68. What is Berne’s contribution in creating Transactional Analysis?

By showing that the cause of most mental, emotional, behavioural anomalies are due to defects in personality structures.

By providing economy in treatment. This means saving time and effort, and getting patients to get cured.

By providing cure instead of helping patients to feel getting better as yet continuing to be dependent on therapist and medication.

69. Books of Transactional Analysis

- Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

- Principles of Group Treatment

- Games People Play

- Sex in Human Loving

- What Do You Say After You Say Hello

These are books written by Eric Berne

Scripts People Live is a book by Claude Steiner

Transactional Analysis is a book by Woollams and Brown

TA Today is a book by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines

70. Which are the TA Training Institutes in India and Abroad?

It is now sixty years since the origin of TA and fifty years since the establishment of ITAA the Apex body of Transactional Analysis Community.

There are regional bodies in UK, Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and India. Institutions are affiliated to the regional bodies.

71. How long does it take to learn Transactional Analysis?

Training takes from three to seven years. It depends on the type of application.

The Institute of Counselling and Transactional Analysis offers a BTA in two years.

72. What is the need to have TAST then?

Transactional Analysis is an effective system when it comes to treating others or when using it on others in many modes.

TAST provides practices one can use to achieve the goals of TA faster and without resulting in relapse.

73. Who has developed TAST?

Ajit Karve a BTA from the Institute of Counselling and Transactional Analysis has developed TAST.

It offers methods for persons conversant with TA Theory that help to achieve :

• Good Mental Health and Psychological Well Being;
• Having healthy interactions with others;
• Learning to express our thoughts, feelings and opinions safely;
• Healthy Relationships;
• Stress-free living;
• Freedom from Emotional and Thinking Lock-Jams;
• Freedom from Victimisation and put-downs; 

in the main. It also helps in 

• Being comfortable being alone and equally comfortable in the company of others;
• Being able to exert oneself when times are good and relax when times are adverse;
• Being able roll back and move forward when relationships are hurt;
• Being able to be affectionate, loving, forgiving and forgetting;
• Living a purposeful life;

74. How long does one typically take to implement these processes in Self Help mode?

It takes a year to realise the full potential of practices.

The benefits one enjoys motivates its practitioners to engage deeply.

~~~~~

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