A summary of TA concepts

It is important not to confuse episcripts with scripts, any more than one would equate cancerous growths with normal development. Episcripts, as the name implies, are taken on from others outside the self, whereas scripts correspond to personal development and blossoming into life.

FINALLY, AND TO CONTINUE…..

Like Einstein, who stated that a physicist did not understand relativity if he could not explain it to a l2 year old, Berne insisted that transactional analysis should be comprehensible to an 8-year old. Indeed this is why TA can be very useful for child therapy and in educational contexts. However, ultimately it is empathetic sensibility combined with solid therapeutic skills that are the essentials for good practice. Therefore the International Transactional Association has developed high standards for, qualification, training and ethics.

In l970 Berne died suddenly of a heart attack. He did not live long enough to fully refine his theories although he was working at them continuously until the end of his life. After his death, the very simplicity of basic transactional analysis was misused by some, so that in the public mind it became erroneously viewed as a pop psychology. Fortunately there were already enough competent well-trained transactional analysts to spread it TA in the rest of America and the world, especially throughout Europe, Latin America, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the scholarly TA Journal was maintained as well as many other publications. Sadly, Berne did not live to see this expansion.

To this day I know of no more effective therapy when practiced by responsible, sensitive practitioners. This has been confirmed by comparative research (Novey, 2002) and, as mentioned earlier, transactional analysis has proven effective in many fields. There are many ways to find out more about transactional analysis. (For more ideas on how, visit the ITAA web site at http://www.itaa-net.org and the US organization (USATAA) web site athttp://www.usataaconference.org/and forthcoming conferences and meetings.) However I hope this article has given you at least a beginning understanding of what it is all about.