WHAT IS TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
Transactional Analysis was founded by Dr. Eric Berne – an innovative and
creative thinker who brought together some of the most effective ideas in
psychotherapy (analytic, cognitive behavioural, phenomenological) into a
powerful body of theory and practice.
It is best known and practiced as a theory and method of psychotherapy. It is
also employed in a wide variety of other contexts, most notably counseling,
coaching and education, and some of its models are taught on professional
trainings, such as social work, teaching and youth work, no doubt, due in no
short measure to the deceptive simplicity of its models and their easily
transferable and practical uses.
TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS AS AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH
Transactional Analysis, in recognition of its multifaceted nature, is best
described as an integrative approach to psychotherapy. Unlike an “eclectic”
approach, in which a practitioner chooses the best or most appropriate ideas
and techniques from a range of theories and models, an integrative approach,
brings together different theories and models, from a variety of approaches and
models them into a new theory or model.
Whilst staying true and respectful to his psychoanalytic roots, Berne, in
developing his integrative theory wanted to speed up the process and to “fill a
gap” (1961, p.244), that he believed existed in, and detracted from the
effectiveness of classical psychoanalysis.
Feeling that in practice, psychoanalysis was limited by its failure to
acknowledge and work with the ‘here and now’, rather than just ‘the past’, and
in particular, that it ignored the therapeutic benefits that a concentration on the
conscious, as well as the unconscious mind, could bring, he wanted, according
to Cornell and Hargaden,(2005) to “Humanize the psychoanalysis of his day”
(p. 8) and to create a “social psychiatry” (Berne, 1961, p.12) that accounted for
the social and cultural context of the individual.
To achieve the above, he innovatively linked and developed ideas from
psychoanalysis, with ideas from the other two major steams of psychology,
behaviourism, and humanism, and created a powerful therapy that incorporated
theory and techniques from all three.
