Transactional Analysis Interpersonal Relationships

The study of human behaviour is a very complex and complicated concept. It is engulfed by the psychological factors such as perception, learning, personality and motivation. In addition to these factors, individual behaviour affects and is affected by the behaviour of others. One of the major problems in the study of social behaviour is to analyse and improve the interpersonal relationships. One basic approach to study interpersonal relations is transactional analysis. This analysis deals with understanding, predicting and controlling interpersonal relationships.

The concept of transactional analysis was introduced by Eric Berne. Before Eric Berne’s work, a lot of work had been done in the field of psychology to understand human mind. The

They assume that human beings as equal, worthy and responsible. The process of adult ego state formation goes through one’s own experiences and continuously updating attitudes left over from childhood. People with adult ego state, gather relevant information, carefully analyse it, generate alternatives and make logical choices.

The Child Ego State

The child ego state is characterized by very immature behaviour. The important features of child ego state are creativity, anxiety, depression, dependence, fear, joy, emotional sentimental etc.

(iii) Transactions

A transaction is a basic unit of social interaction. The heart of transactional analysis is the study and diagramming of the exchanges between two persons. Thus where a verbal or non verbal stimulus from one person is being responded by another person a transaction occurs. Transactional analysis can help us to determine which ego state is most heavily influencing our behaviour and the behaviour of the other people with whom we interact. Depending on the ego states of the persons involved in transactions, there may be three types of ransactions:

I. Complementary transactions: Both people are operating from the same ego state. There can be nine complementary transactions. They are given below:

 Adult-Adult transactions

 Adult-Parent transactions

 Adult-Child

Ulterior transactions: Sometimes two ego states operate within the same person but one disguises the other one. This is called ulterior transactions

(iv) Script Analysis

In a layman’s understanding, a script is the text of play, video, or a radio or TV programme. In transactional analysis a person’s life is compared to a play and the script is the text of the play. According to Eric Berne,” a script is an ongoing programme, developed in early childhood under parental influence which directs the individual behaviour in the most important aspects of his life. A script is a complete plan of living, offering prescriptions, permissions and structure which makes one winner or loser in life.

(v) Life Positions

In the process of growing up people make basic assumptions about their own self worth as well as about the worth of significant people in their environment. The combination of assumptions about self and others is called as life position. Transactional analysis constructs the following classifications of the four possible life positions or psychological positions:

 I am OK, you are