Transactional Analysis Tool - Essay Example

Behavior in Organizations Transactional analysis ‘TA’ is a tool used for analyzing and improving interpersonal communications and relationships. This social psychology developed by Psychiatrist Eric Berne is quite outstanding because of the depth of its theory and the many ways in which it can be applied to understand the psychological make-up of a person. Transactional Analysis is practiced worldwide and there are national organizations which provide training and certification in transactional analysis in many countries. In dealing with personalities, transactional analysis provides information on a person’s psychological structure using the three part ego-state model. It can be used to analyze systems and organizations through its theory on communications. It helps to understand the theory of human development, by explaining that the life patterns in which we live today, originated from our childhood. On the whole transactional analysis gives a complete understanding on the concepts of psychopathology, diagnosis, and treatment. Its system of psychotherapy can be applied to treat all types of psychological disorders, ranging from the problem people face in their everyday life to extreme or severe psychosis. Transaction analysis can be used to help individuals, groups, couples, and families. Transactional analysis is based on certain philosophical concepts such as: It is possible to make a person at any age and stage in their life to take responsibility for their decisions and actions. Everybody has a worth and dignity as a human being and deserves to be treated accordingly. Everyone has the capacity to think People decide what their future is through their early script decisions. Their script decisions can be also be changed. Transactional analysis is based on certain key ideas that enable us to understand the human psychology. Following is a list of these key ideas: I'm OK - You're OK – This is on of the best-known expressions of transactional analysis. It is based on the idea that everyone exists in the okay state, which means that everyone has value and worth and deserve to be treated accordingly. Due to this nature people have the capacity to enhance their personality and can have healthy relationships with the people around them. Strokes – In transactional analysis, strokes are basic way in which people interact with one another. According to Berne, people need strokes to survive and thrive. When you start to understand how people send an receive strokes, you will learn about the negative and positive stokes and come to know, how to do way with negative strokes to change unhealthy patterns of behavior. Ego States - According to transactional analysis, there are three ego states, which are the parent, adult and the child ego states. Each ego state comprises of an entire system of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, through which people interact with one another. The interaction between each ego state forms the foundation of the transactional analysis theory. Transactions- Transactions are the way through communication exchanges take place between people. Transactional analysts are trained to recognize ego states and can easily see how people change between ego states. They can intervene into the transactional sequence when necessary to improve quality of communication. Games People Play – Games are the repetitive but negative transactions that people get into and which actually mask the direct expression of their thoughts and emotions. Berne uses the term ‘Games’ to identify dysfunctional behavioral patterns. Games bring about negative feelings and self-concepts, and mask the direct expression of thoughts and emotions. Each games is tagged by Berne with an instantly recognizable name such as "Why Don't You, Yes But," "Now I've Got You, You SOB," and "I'm Only Trying to Help You” and so on. Life Script - Life script is the pre-conscious life plan that governs the way in which life is lived out. This life plan can arise out of dysfunctional behavior caused by of self-limiting decisions made in childhood, in the interest of survival. Changing the life script to be more productive and positive is one of the key points of transactional analysis psychotherapy. Contracts - Transactional analysis practice is based upon mutual contracting for change. Transactional analysts view people as capable of deciding what they want for their lives. Accordingly, transactional analysis works on a contractual basis between the client and the therapist, educator, or consultant. Transactional analysis can be applied to different fields to bring about changes in the people personalities and ways of thinking. Counseling - Counselors use transactional analysis to help their clients to develop productive problem solving behaviors. Counselors educate and establish an equal working relationship with their clients and through this relationship they learn about tools they can utilize in their day-to-day functions. Psychotherapy - Transactional analysis can be used in psychotherapy to change pathological behaviors and thoughts, which incapacitate a person’s mind and thoughts. Trained and skilled transactional analysts work with their clients and use effective and portent methods to remove their dysfunctional behaviors, in order to establish and reinforce healthy functioning. Organizational - Transactional Analysis is a powerful tool in the hands of organizational development specialists. They can use the key ideas of transactional analysis to build their organizational strategy so that they can effectively address the needs of organizations and in order to build functional relationships, and most importantly eliminate dysfunctional organizational behaviors. Education - Educators who work with transactional analysis teach the simple concepts of basic transactional analysis so that students can use this knowledge to shape their personality and psychological functioning. This kind of knowledge reaches across all fields of learning and gives the student a unified educational experience. The goal of transactional analysis is to enable individual to independently update strategies to deal with life problems and situation that arise in life, from the kind of knowledge they possessed to deal with life in their childhood. It makes use of contracts to provide mutual collaboration and joint responsibility in the therapeutic or consulting process. Through open communication the client and the practitioner both have full information about what is going on at each step in their work together. Transactional analysis when applied in an organization can help to smooth out a lot of relationships. Everybody knows that working in an organization is nor easy. Calling an organization environment as dysfunctional is an understatement. Transactional analysis can provide a roadmap for people within the organization to follow in order to have productive interactions. In order to understand how to implement transactional analysis in organizations let’s take some popular TV serial as an example – if you take ER which was set primarily in the emergency room of fictional County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, it shows the relationships between doctors and their patients and how they interacted with each another in dealing with patients. Another show that involved dealing with complex human emotions is NYPD Blue, which was based on the life of the New York Police and the tough job they had to do in fighting crime. Each character required a significant understanding of human psychology to deal with the goriness of criminal behavior and ultimately solve crimes and bring the criminals to justice. In each of the serial, all the characters set out with being in a state of okay. As the shows progress and situations become more and more complex, the negative emotions displayed by the character can be understood through the concept of games. Through mutual contracting each of the characters influence and change each other and this is how we see characters evolve into better characters during the course of the show. What is important to understand through these serials is how people interact with one another, how the psychosis of one character affects another, how people deal with stress depending on their psychological make-up and how these incidents find a parallel in our life, in order to make our lives better and more meaningful. By applying the key ideas of transactional analysis in the serial, we can understand the parallel of it in our life to remove negative emotions and lead a more productive life. Transactional analysis began as a social psychology, but it clearly steered away from, psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis primarily focused on people's external behavior and gave secondary importance to analyzing their internal psychological processes. Eric Berne designed Transactional Analysis as a system which sought to understand the interactions of people and to improve the human social environment. Almost fifty years after Transactional Analysis' inception and thirty years after Eric Berne's untimely death it has become a movement with thousands of members all around the world and is poised to enter the third millennium as a highly effective, information based psychology and psychiatry of human communication. References : Read More