Transactional Analysis has been around for a long time but it has stood the test of time and continues to be developed even though its founder, Dr. Eric Berne died in 1970.
Transactional Analysis – Origins
Berne, who was a psychoanalyst, originally developed Transactional Analsysis as a language to enable him to communicate with his patients more effectively.
However, when Transactional Analysis arrived in the UK, circa early 1970s, it was not embraced by academia and was in danger of not gaining a foothold in this country.
Development in the UK
Berne’s ideas began to circulate amongst interpersonal trainers looking for user friendly models to help them communicate more effectively as trainers.
Course with titles like “Behavioural Sciences for Trainers” began to appear. They appealed to a new generation of trainers keen to move away from expert based training and more into group facilitation.
Transactional Analysis Today
Fast forward to today and Transactional Analysis is an essential part of the toolkit of most learning facilitators.
It is also an important area of learning for managers and leaders, to enable them to manage difficult conversations and to role-model empathy, fairness and understanding.
The Parent Adult Child Model
Your personality is made of three ego states: Parent, Adult and Child.
The Parent consists of things you have learned from your parent figures. A parent figure is anyone who has contact with you in your formative years (and beyond) and whom you see as a parent figure. The more contact they have, the more they are likely to influence your behaviour, attitudes and values.
The Adult is your rational, objective self. It operates in the here and now. It thinks without emotion and processes facts, observations and experiences.
The Child is your emotional centre. It thinks like a young child. It lives on its emotions, desires and wants.
The Classic Model
We tend to use the classic model of transactional analysis when helping people learn about the different ego states.
Here in The Development Company we see Transactional Analysis as a key tool for facilitators. We use it in a number of ways.
You can start to discover more about it by completing the profiling questionnaire and receiving personalised feedback on your results.
