Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis is a term coined by psychiatrist Eric Byrne and is used to refer to the study of any interaction between two people. He created the structure of transactional analysis to study human behaviour. I read the book I’m Ok – you’re OK by psychiatrist Thomas Harris, which explores Byrne’s ideas but disagrees with them on a few levels. I found it interesting how this structured analysis can be applied to any and every interaction and it made me reflect and think about what state of mind I was in during conversations. Although these theories and explanations are a bit dated as the book was written in the 1960s, I will try to unpack the idea behind the theory.
The idea of transactional analysis is that our personality is made up of three states of mind and so is the person we are interacting with. These are the Parent, the Adult and the Child and each one is influenced by our past experiences. The differences between each state are both obviously physical and mental. These can be facial expressions, vocabulary, gestures, posture and body functions and they can be very apparent to someone looking out for them. Through Byrne’s studies and sessions with patients, he was able to get the patients to identify their own 3 states, which helped them make progress in the issues they were facing. He made considerable progress with teens and in parenting.
The Parent
The Parent is a huge collection of unquestioned or imposed recordings in the brain. This is estimated to have taken place in the first five years of a person’s life, before their “social birth” of entering schools and more frequent external interaction. The most substantial contribution to these recordings is usually your parents or parent substitutes. Everything we saw our parents do and heard them say is recorded as truth in “the Parent”. This information is unedited and not questioned, as a child we have nothing to compare it to. The recording doesn’t take the circumstances into account, as Harris uses an example of an arguing couple where the husband is intoxicated. The child doesn’t know this and takes the argument at face value and that is what’s recorded. All generalisations or opinions of our parents are taken as fact making it difficult to change these perceptions later on in life. The recording tends to stop at around five years old because this is when we start noticing inconsistencies. For example, we may be told by our parents to never tell a lie, but we witness them lying. These contradictions can get overwhelming and confusing. We tend to carry these recordings through our life and not reflect on them much.
The Child
This recording happens simultaneously with the parent recording but is recording internal events. The responses we have to the things we see and hear when we’re young. Since we have limited vocabulary during the most critical of our early experiences, most of our reactions are feelings. These feelings can come from the interpretations of a disapproving look or sense of approval. Both can come and go so quickly that it’s difficult to keep track of cause and effect. This sense of confusion makes the child take a stance of “I’m not OK” which plays a big part in the idea of how this psychology works. There is also a vast amount of positive data stored in the child. This is where all our creativity, curiosity, desire to explore and know, the urges to touch and feel and experience and the recordings of the wonderful, pristine feelings of first discoveries are stored. We take these feelings from our early experiences into the rest of our lives. The contradicting feelings of uncertainty of the unknown or lack of understanding compared to feelings of excitement and euphoria give us the feeling of “I’m not OK”.
The Adult
The Adult is the part of us that starts to find out things for ourselves from about 10 months old. The Adult develops a ‘thought concept’ of life based on data gathering and data processing. This becomes reassuring later in life when we are feeling anxious. The Adult faces many setbacks in the early years by being told things like ‘don’t touch that’ or ‘no, naughty’, but they will touch it anyway to learn for themselves. As we get older, we tend to test the things we’ve been told, some are proven to be true, and others aren’t. We start to pick out ‘constants’ that we can trust and rely upon as sources of data. It’s important to note that the verification of Parent data doesn’t erase the Not OK recordings in the Child, but the Adult starts to probability estimate as we get older. This makes us better at devising solutions when we meet trouble, but this works as a muscle and so it needs to be practised. The Adult is our rational self, the one that relies on facts and data to make informed decisions about life.
The Four Life Positions
The three states of Parent, Adult and Child are always working together, and one tends to take control in particular circumstances. I’ve found that stepping back and thinking about what state I’m in can help move the discussion forward in a more productive way. Harris believes that throughout life we are always in one of four life positions – “I’m not Ok – You’re not OK”, “I’m not OK – You’re OK”, “I’m Ok – You’re not OK” and “I’m OK – You’re OK”. These positions explain our basic perception of our standing in the world. The most common one is “I’m not OK – You’re OK” and this is the perception we have when we’re children. We believe that everyone else has it figured out and we are struggling to cope. Although this mindset is common in children, it tends to carry on throughout our lives and many people feel this way. Harris’s goal with his clients was to achieve a state of “I’m OK – You’re OK”. Being comfortable in the world around you and believing that everyone else is comfortable and confident in it too.
To reach the life position of “I’m OK – You’re OK”, Harris would make his patients aware of their three states and discuss the traits of each of their states with him. Once they understood that they had these three distinct personas, they could identify when each of them appeared and why they did so. This led them to work on the floors they discovered in the Parent, Adult and Child and make progress with any issues they had. Although I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this psychology is about and the many applications, I hope that I’ve gotten the basic idea across. Thinking about what state I may be in when approaching certain situations has helped me think about my actions a bit more and focus more on maintaining a life position of “I’m OK – You’re OK”.