http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Kinds_of_transactions
Kinds of transactions
[edit] Reciprocal or Complementary Transactions
A simple, reciprocal transaction occurs when both partners are addressing the ego state the other is in. These are also called complementary transactions.
Example 1
A: "Have you been able to write the report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Yes - I'm about to email it to you." (Adult to Adult)
Example 2
A: "Would you like to come and watch a film with me?" (Child to Child)
B: "I'd love to - what shall we go and see?" (Child to Child)
Example 3
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
Communication like this can continue indefinitely. (Clearly it will stop at some stage - but this psychologically balanced exchange of strokes can continue for some time).
[edit] Crossed Transactions
Communication failures are typically caused by a 'crossed transaction' where partners address ego states other than that their partner is in. Consider the above examples jumbled up a bit.
Example 1a:
A: "Have you been able to write that report?" (Adult to Adult)
B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent)
is a crossed transaction likely to produce problems in the workplace. "A" may respond with a Parent to Child transaction. For instance:
A: "If you don't change your attitude you'll get fired"
Example 2a:
A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child)
B: "I'm just going to do it, actually." (Adult to Adult)
is a more positive crossed transaction. However there is the risk that "A" will feel aggrieved that "B" is acting responsibly and not playing his role, and the conversation will develop into:
A: "I can never trust you to do things!" (Parent to Child)
B: "Why don't you believe anything I say?" (Child to Parent)
which can continue indefinitely.
[edit] Duplex or Covert transactions
Another class of transaction is the 'duplex' or 'covert' transactions, where the explicit social conversation occurs in parallel with an implicit psychological transaction. For instance,
A: "I need you to stay late at the office with me." (adult words)
body language indicates sexual intent (flirtatious child)
B: "Of course." (adult response to adult statement).
winking or grinning (child accepts the hidden motive).
[edit] Phenomena behind the transactions
[edit] Life (or Childhood) Script
* Script is a life plan, directed to a pay-off.
* Script is decisional and responsive, i.e., decided upon in childhood in response to perceptions of the world and as a means of living with and making sense of the world. It is not just thrust upon a person by external forces.
* Script is reinforced by parents (or other influential figures and experiences).
* Script is for the most part outside awareness.
* Script is how we navigate and what we look for, the rest of reality is redefined (distorted) to match our filters.
Each culture, country and people in the world has a Mythos, that is, a legend explaining its origins, core beliefs and purpose. According to TA, so do individual people. A person begins writing his own life story (script) at a young age, as he tries to make sense of the world and his place within it. Although it is revised throughout life, the core story is selected and decided upon typically by age 7. As adults it passes out of awareness. A life script might be "to be hurt many times, and suffer and make others feel bad when I die", and could result in a person indeed setting himself up for this, by adopting behaviours in childhood that produce exactly this effect. Though Berne identified several dozen common scripts, there are a practically infinite number of them. Though often largely destructive, scripts could as easily be mostly positive or beneficial.
[edit] Redefining and Discounting
* Redefining means the distortion of reality when we deliberately (but unconsciously) distort things to match our preferred way of seeing the world. Thus a person whose script involves "struggling alone against a cold hard world" may redefine others' kindness, concluding that others are trying to get something by manipulation.
* Discounting means to take something as worth less than it is. Thus to give a substitute reaction which does not originate as a here-and-now Adult attempt to solve the actual problem, or to choose not to see evidence that would contradict one's script. Types of discount can also include: passivity (doing nothing), over-adaptation, agitation, incapacitation, anger and violence.
[edit] Injunctions and Drivers
TA identifies twelve key injunctions which people commonly build into their scripts. These are injunctions in the sense of being powerful "I can't/mustn't ..." messages that embed into a child's belief and life-script:
Don't be (don't exist), Don't be who you are, Don't be a child, Don't grow up, Don't make it in your life, Don't do anything!, Don't be important, Don't belong, Don't be close, Don't be well (don't be sane!), Don't think, Don't feel.
In addition there is the so-called episcript, "You should (or deserve to) have this happen in your life, so it doesn't have to happen to me."
Against these, a child is often told other things they must do. There are six of these 'drivers':
Be perfect! Please (me/others)! Try Hard! Be Strong! Hurry Up! Be Careful!
Thus in creating their script, a child will often attempt to juggle these, example: "It's okay for me to go on living (ignore don't exist) so long as I try hard".
This explains why some change is inordinately difficult. To continue the above example: When a person stops trying hard and relaxes to be with their family, the injunction You don't have the right to exist which was being suppressed by their script now becomes exposed and a vivid threat. Such an individual may feel a massive psychological pressure which they themselves don't understand, to return to trying hard, in order to feel safe and justified (in a childlike way) in existing.
Driver behaviour is also detectable at a very small scale, for instance in instinctive responses to certain situations where driver behaviour is played out over five to twenty seconds.
Broadly, scripts can fall into Tragic, Heroic or Banal (or Non-Winner) varieties, depending on their rules.
[edit] Series of transactions
[edit] Rituals
A ritual is a series of transactions that are complementary (reciprocal), stereotyped and based on social programming. Rituals usually comprise a series of strokes exchanged between two parties.
For instance, two people may have a daily two stroke ritual, where, the first time they meet each day, each one greets the other with a "Hi". Others may have a four stroke ritual, such as:
A: Hi!
B: Hi! How do you do?
A: Getting along. What about you?
B: Fine. See you around.
The next time they meet in the day, they may not exchange any strokes at all, or may just acknowledge each other's presence with a curt nod.
Some phenomena associated with daily rituals:
* If a person exchanges fewer strokes than expected, the other person may feel that he is either preoccupied or acting high and mighty.
* If a person exchanges more strokes than expected, the other person might wonder whether he is trying to butter him up or get on good terms for some vested interests.
* If two people do not meet for a long time, a backlog of strokes gets built up, so that the next time they meet, they may exchange a large number of strokes to catch up.
[edit] Pastimes
A pastime is a series of transactions that is complementary (reciprocal), semi-ritualistic, and is mainly intended as a time-structuring activity. Pastimes have no covert purpose and can usually be carried out only between people on the same wavelength. They are usually shallow and harmless. Pastimes are a type of smalltalk.
Individuals often partake in similar pastimes throughout their entire life, as pastimes are generally very much linked to ones life script and the games that one often plays. Some pastimes can even be understood as a reward for playing a certain game. For example, Eric Berne in Games People Play discusses how those who play the "Alcoholic" game (which Berne differentiated from alcoholism and alcoholics) often enjoy the "Morning After" pastime in which participants share their most amusing or harrowing hangover stories.
[edit] Other kinds of transactional series
The other kinds include procedures, operations and games. Games are discussed below.
[edit] Games and their analysis
[edit] Definition of game
A game[4] is a series of transactions that is complementary (reciprocal), ulterior, and proceeds towards a predictable outcome. Games are often characterized by a switch in roles of players towards the end. Games are usually played by Parent, Adult and Child ego states, and games usually have a fixed number of players; however, an individual's role can shift, and people can play multiple roles.
Berne identified dozens of games, noting that, regardless of when, where or by whom they were played, each game tended towards very similar structures in how many players or roles were involved, the rules of the game, and the game's goals.
Each game has a payoff for those playing it, such as the aim of earning sympathy, satisfaction, vindication, or some other emotion that usually re-enforces the life script. The antithesis of a game, that is, the way to break it, lies in discovering how to deprive the actors of their payoff.
Students of transactional analysis have discovered that people who are accustomed to a game are willing to play it, even if as a different "actor" from what they originally were.
[edit] Analysis of a game
One important aspect of a game is its number of players. Games may be two handed (that is, played by two players), three handed (that is, played by three players), or many handed. Three other quantitative variables are often useful to consider for games:
* Flexibility: The ability of the players to change the currency of the game (that is, the tools they use to play it). In a flexible game, players may shift from words, to money, to parts of the body.
* Tenacity: The persistence with which people play and stick to their games and their resistance to breaking it.
* Intensity: Easy games are games played in a relaxed way. Hard games are games played in a tense and aggressive way.
Based on the degree of acceptability and potential harm, games are classified as:
* First Degree Games are socially acceptable in the players' social circle.
* Second Degree Games are games that the players would like to conceal, though they may not cause irreversible damage.
* Third Degree Games are games that could lead to drastic harm to one or more of the parties concerned.
Games are also studied based on their:
* Aim
* Roles
* Social and Psychological Paradigms
* Dynamics
* Advantages to players (Payoffs)
[edit] Contrast with rational (mathematical) games
Transactional game analysis is fundamentally different from rational or mathematical game analysis in the following senses:
* The players do not always behave rationally in transactional analysis, but behave more like real people.
* Their motives are often ulterior
[edit] Some commonly found games
Here are some of the most commonly found themes of games described in Games People Play by Eric Berne:
* YDYB: Why Don't You, Yes But. Historically, the first game discovered.
* IFWY: If It Weren't For You
* WAHM: Why does this Always Happen to Me? (setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy)
* SWYMD: See What You Made Me Do
* UGMIT: You Got Me Into This
* LHIT: Look How Hard I've Tried
* ITHY: I'm Only Trying to Help You
* LYAHF: Let's You and Him Fight (staging a love triangle)
* NIGYYSOB: Now I've got you, you son of a bitch
Berne argued that games are not played logically; rather, one person's Parent state might interact with another's Child, rather than as Adult to Adult.
Games can also be analysed according to the Karpman drama triangle, that is, by the roles of Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer. The 'switch' is then when one of these having allowed stable roles to become established, suddenly switches role. The victim becomes a persecutor, and throws the previous persecutor into the victim role, or the rescuer suddenly switches to become a persecutor ("You never appreciate me helping you!").
