Psycho Education - All In One Blog

Transactional Analysis is a psychoanalytic therapy created by known psychotherapist Dr. Eric Berne in 1950s. Developed with the aim to analyze the social transaction to identifies three ego states involved as a source for understanding the human behavior, this therapy make the challenging transactions easier and understandable. A person can improve the interpersonal interactions once they understand how to interact from one of three ego states namely Parent, Adult, and Child. This fascinating theory of communication is based on the philosophy that people have these ego states or parts to their personality survive in every person regardless of their age.

Each ego states are an important part of improved communication done effectively with unique language and role. Parent part is a speech of values, child is of emotions, and adult is of rationality and logic. Below is the short description of these ego estates:

Parent

This is the trained concept of human life set by the beliefs and importance an individual learnt before they develop an ability to question their life. It represents the immense set of things or recordings in the brain of an external moment perceived or experienced during first five years of life by the actions of parent. This is why it is called parent ego state.

Child

Unlike the parent state that represent recording in the mind of external events, child is the felt concept of life representing the recordings in intelligence of internal affairs related with external events an individual experience.

Adult

This is the last ego state based on the thought concept of life. Dr. Eric describes this state as one which is mainly concerned with converting the stimuli into pieces of information and filling that adult data on the basis of experience gain before. During this part, a person able to give own opinions and make self decisions based on the child and parental information.

Whenever a person interacts with themselves or others, transactions or interactions take place between these three different ego states. Parent and Child state have further two sub-categories. To gather the complete information about these ego parts and how interactions conduct between these, it is beneficial to take Transactional Analysis Training from skilled and experienced transactional analysts.

One example of each ego states

Parent: – Look on both side of the road before crossing the lane

Child: – The event was really very fantastic

Adult: – I can hear a train is coming

Basic types of transactions

Crossed

Abnormal or unhealthy transactions between human are considered as crossed. This transaction mostly results into conflicts, misunderstandings, and stress.

Complimentary

It is the healthy transactions and describes the effective normal interactions. In this, response must go back from receiving to sending ego state.

Communication which means exchanging ideas or words is actually more than this. Effective communication means other person hearing the speaker should able to understand what the speaker is trying to say. Ideal way to avoid conflicts and ensure good interaction includes doing the complimentary transactions. If people are involved in crossed transactions, any of them or both must shift the ego state to reset the communication.