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Transactional Analysis (TA) : 1. Ego States

1. Transactional Analysis (TA) is a theory developed in the 1950s to improve communication by analyzing ego states, transactions, and life positions. It views communication as a transaction between two people where the response is affected by their ego states - parent, adult, or child. 2. TA involves analyzing three ego states that represent ways of thinking and behaving - parent (protection, rules), adult (logical, rational), and child (emotions). It also analyzes life positions that represent one's philosophy, such as "I am OK, you are OK." 3. TA helps improve relationships and organizational effectiveness by understanding how crossed transactions (unexpected responses) can be converted into complementary transactions through proper analysis of ego

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262 views

Transactional Analysis (TA) : 1. Ego States

1. Transactional Analysis (TA) is a theory developed in the 1950s to improve communication by analyzing ego states, transactions, and life positions. It views communication as a transaction between two people where the response is affected by their ego states - parent, adult, or child. 2. TA involves analyzing three ego states that represent ways of thinking and behaving - parent (protection, rules), adult (logical, rational), and child (emotions). It also analyzes life positions that represent one's philosophy, such as "I am OK, you are OK." 3. TA helps improve relationships and organizational effectiveness by understanding how crossed transactions (unexpected responses) can be converted into complementary transactions through proper analysis of ego

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siddhi jain
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Transactional Analysis (TA)

Transactional Analysis is a theory developed by Dr. Eric Berne in the 1950s. Transactional Analysis is
a social psychology and a method to improve communication. The theory outlines how we have
developed and treat ourselves, how we relate and communicate with others, and offers suggestions
and interventions which will enable us to change and grow. Transactional Analysis is underpinned by
the philosophy that:

• People can change

• We all have a right to be in the world and be accepted

Transactional Analysis (TA) is a personality and psychotherapy for personal growth. It has wide
applications in Clinical Psychology, organisations and education also. Dr.Eric Berne, the originator of
TA, considers a transaction as the unit of social intercourse. A transaction consists of a transactional
stimulus (TS) and a transactional response (TR). TS is the behaviour (verbal or nonverbal) produced
by one person in acknowledgement of the presence of others when two or more people encounter
each other. TR is the response to TS by another person.

It is beneficial to study TA as it has received great popularity and a wide appeal because on a well
developed psychoanalytical theoretical base and it uses very simple, understandable, everyday
terminology.

Transactional Analysis involves the analysis of ego-states; analysis of transactions, life-positions

1. Ego States:
It represents a person’s way of thinking, feeling and behaving. There
are three ego states present in everyone: child, parent and adult.
They are related to behaviour of a person and not his age. However,
they are present in every person in varying degrees. There may be
more of one ego state than another at a specific point of time. When
two persons communicate with each other, communication is
affected by their ego states. These are;

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(a) Child ego:
Child behaviour reflects a person’s response to communicate in the
form of joy, sorrow, frustration or curiosity. These are the natural
feelings that people learn as children. It reflects immediate action
and immediate satisfaction. It reflects childhood experience of a
person gained generally up to the age of five years.

A child can be:


(i) Natural child:
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He is naturally curious, joyous or scornful. He does what comes his
way naturally.

(ii) Adaptive child:
He reacts the way his parents want him to react. He is trained to act.

(iii)Rebellious child:
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He has the experience of fear, frustration and anger.

(b) Parent Ego:


Parent behaviour is acquired through external environment. As
young children, their parents’ behaviour remains embedded in their
minds which is reflected as parental ego when they grow up. It
usually reflects protection, displeasure, reference to rules and
working on the basis of past precedents.

This can be:


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(i) Nurturing parent ego:


As nurturing parents, managers praise good performance of the
workers. They interact with them and help them during times of
distress. They reflect nurturing behaviour towards others.

(ii) Negative or critical parent ego:


As critical parents, managers criticize or ignore poor performance of
the workers rather than help them to improve. They have a critical
attitude while interacting with others.

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(c) Adult ego:
Adult behaviour reflects the ability to analyse the situation and take
logical decisions. He overcomes the emotional feelings and takes
decisions based on facts and figures. This state is based upon
reasoning, thinking, experience, rationality and discussion based on
facts.
It updates the parental ego to determine what is right and wrong
and child ego to determine what feelings to express and what not to
express. These ego states are present in all human beings at some
time or the other. People respond to different situations in different
ways depending on their ego state.

2. Life Position:
Behaviour of a person depends upon his experience at different
stages of his life. He develops a philosophy towards work from early
childhood which becomes part of his identity and remains with him
for lifetime unless some external factor changes it. These positions
are called life time positions.
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They fall into four categories:


(a) I am OK, You are OK.

(b) I am OK, You are not OK.

(c) I am not OK, You are OK.

(d) I am not OK, You are not OK.

(a) I am OK, You are OK:


This life position represents adult ego of a person. It becomes the
philosophy of a person who has good and positive experiences with
others. They feel confident about themselves and others. Managers
with this life position believe in give and take. They are competent
to take decisions and also allow others to participate in the decision-
making processes. They delegate authority and express confidence
and consistency in others. They are not threatened by others and
express freely what they want to express.

(b) I am OK, You are not OK:


This life position represents parent ego of a person who is brought
up as a rebellious child. They have critical attitude towards others.
They believe whatever they do is right and blame others for their
wrong acts. This usually happens when a person is ignored as a
child.
Managers with this life position have critical attitude towards
others. They find faults with others and lack trust, faith and
confidence in them. They believe whatever they do is right and,
therefore, do not delegate tasks to others.

(c) lam not OK, You are OK:


This life position represents a state of distrust in the person himself.
He lacks confidence in whatever he does. He believes he cannot do
things that people around him can do and, therefore, keeps
grumbling most of the times about something or the other.

Managers with this life position are usually not good managers.
They do not perform well, have an erratic behaviour, feel guilty for
their acts and often use excuses to act against others.

(d) I am not OK, You are not OK:


This life position represents a desperate state of persons who have
lost interest in life. They have been brought up as neglected children
and, therefore, have negative attitude towards life. In extreme
situations, they may even commit suicide. Managers with this life
position do not believe in themselves and others. They make
mistakes in work, do not make proper decisions and also do not
believe in decisions made by others.

One of these life positions dominates every person at a point of


time. The optimum position is ‘I am OK, You are OK where a person
believes in himself and others. It represents an adult- adult
transaction and a psychologically matured state of mind. This
position can be achieved through education and managers should
try to reach this stage through training and development
programmes in their interest and interest of the organisation.

3. Analysis of Transactions:
When two persons interact or communicate with each other, there
is a transaction between them. While transacting, both of them are
at different ego states.

Based on the ego states, two types of transactions can take


place:
(a) Complementary and

(b) Crossed.

(a) In complementary transactions, sender of information gets an


expected response from the receiver.

People get expected response from each other because both are in
the expected ego states. Both are, therefore, satisfied and
communication is complete. In complementary transactions, ego
states of two persons are parallel to each other. Stimulus and
response patterns are as predicted.

There can be nine types of complementary transactions:


adult – adult Parent – parent child – child

adult – parent Parent – child child – parent

adult – child Parent – adult child – adult

(b) In crossed transactions, sender gets unexpected response from


the receiver which obstructs the process of communication.
Stimulus – response lines are not parallel in these transactions.
Rather, they cross each other. The person who initiates the
transaction or creates a stimulus gets a response he does not expect.

If manager acts as adult but the employee responses as child, the


communication process will get blocked. Either the manager will
come down to the level of child or try to make the employee behave
as an adult so that communication is resumed.

For example, a manager says to his employee “you misbehaved with


your colleague yesterday and I don’t expect this behaviour to be
repeated.” The communication represents parent ego of the
manager and child ego of the worker. The worker, rather than being
apologetic, responds, “I did not do anything wrong. I shall not
apologies.”

This is an unexpected behaviour where the parent of the worker


talks to the child of the manager.
This transaction appears like this:

When parent ego of manager talks to child ego of the worker and
child ego of the worker talks back to parent ego of the manager,
communication is effective but where egos get crossed,
communication breakdown takes place. The above interaction
between manager and worker would have been effective if the
worker had said, “I am sorry sir, I’ll take care not to behave like this
again.”

This would appear like this:

By proper understanding of one’s own ego state and that of the


other, communication barriers on account of behavioural mal-
adjustments can be reduced. Transaction Analysis transforms
negative attitude of people into positive attitude. It changes failure,
fear and defeat to victory, optimism and courage. It makes people
strong and directed towards positive thinking.

It improves interpersonal relationships amongst people by


understanding their ego states. Crossed transactions can be
converted into complementary transactions and communication
process can be improved. People will be more comfortable
interacting with each other. This will improve effectiveness of the
organisation.

Positive thinking and complementary transactions help to


understand human needs and improve motivation. People can
perform jobs which give them positive energy. It focuses more on
intrinsic satisfaction than extrinsic satisfaction.

It also changes the managerial style from autocratic to participative


by changing the life position from ‘I am OK, You are not OK’ to ‘I
am OK, You are OK. It makes people move from Theory X
assumptions of McGregor’s motivational theory to Theory Y
assumptions. This is beneficial for the employees and organisation
as a whole.

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