The Evolution of a Relational Paradigm in Transactional Analysis
What's the Relationship Got to Do With It?
- 198 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Evolution of a Relational Paradigm in Transactional Analysis
What's the Relationship Got to Do With It?
About This Book
In this fascinating and robust volume, the editors have compiled a collection of articles that provides an account of their individual theoretical journeys as they trace the evolution of relational transactional analysis. They re-examine the term 'relational', offering the reader a multiplicity of ways in which to conceptualise the theory of transactional analysis from a truly pluralistic perspective.
This collection of 14 stunning articles from the Transactional Analytic Journal, written over a period of nearly three decades, traces the evolutionary process of a way of thinking that incorporates both theoretical innovations and advanced methodological ideas. Central to the themes of this book is a theoretical understanding of the bidirectionality of the relational unconscious, alongside a methodology that not always, but most often, demands a two-person methodology in which the therapist's subjectivity comes under scrutiny.
Uniquely useful as a research tool for psychotherapists interested in the most up to date psychological theories, this book offers a perspective on relational theory that is both respectful and critical. It will be of enormously useful to the trainee, the researcher, the clinician and the supervisor and will help inform the development of a clinical dialectical mind.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1
THE BILATERAL AND ONGOING NATURE OF GAMES
Games and their relationship to other TA concepts
- The concept of ego states is the basis of the analysis of games originally proposed by Berne (1964) using transactions: Games are viewed as a series of manipulative transactions between ego states which are designed to reach a predictable payoff. The intrapsychic dynamics described in Berneâs theoretical, as opposed to transactional, game analysis are based on biological and libidinal needs as conceptualized in psychoanalytic theory, rather than on concepts specific to TA.
- Role analysis is the basis for Karpmanâs (1968) analysis of games using the Drama Triangle, with the switching of the roles of Rescuer, Persecutor, and Victim being a major feature.
- Discount analysis, based on identifying an individualâs distortions of reality and his or her need to maintain a constant frame of reference, is highlighted in the Schiffian identification of games (Schiff et al., 1975). In this framework a game is initiated as each discount occurs, mostly in the form of a redefining transaction aimed at establishing one of the six specific roles on the Redefining Hexagon (Schiff et al., 1975, p. 67).
- Rackets and the analysis of emotional experiences with their subsequent effects on behavior are the basis for the racketeering approach to games developed by English (1976). In this approach the payoffs and switches are a panic reaction to the possibility of losing the exchange of familiar racket strokes.
- Script and the existential life position are the vehicle by which the Not-OK miniscript dynamic was developed by Kahler and Capers (1974). Driver behaviors stemming from counterscript messages, stoppers stemming from script injunctions, and payoffs are described as the elements of an ongoing process. Although not in itself a game, this nearly instantaneous sequence may describe what happens internally when a player is making a switch in the course of game playing.
- Racket system analysis (Erskine & Zalcman, 1979) and interlocking racket systems, although not intended to be the analysis of game processes, describe well the intrapsychic processes which underlie the gimmick (a particular sensitivity) and which show the ongoing nature of the process due to the reinforcement factors and the cumulative effects they produce. Reinforcement is seen between past and present; between belief, behavior, and emotion; and between reality and fantasy.
Bilateral participation
- every stimulus in a game is a con in that each personâs response to a con is not accidental, but another invitation to continue the game;
- each person is motivated by his or her own particular gimmickâdepicted as buried in each playerâs intrapsychic internal experienceâwhich forwards the game he or she is playing;
- the switch can be initiated by either player;
- the crossup is a moment of surprise and heightened awareness that the other person is disappointingly âotherâ in a symbiotic sense;
- each time a switch and a crossup occurs, each person takes an intrapsychic payoff in the form of charges of negative, unresolved emotional energy of a non-problem-solving nature.
Example Episode 1 | Example Episode 2 |
---|---|
Players | Players |
A âI canât find my rulerâ | B âWhere did you put your bag?â |
B âWhere did you leave it?â | A âIâm not sureâ |
A âI donât knowâ | B âMaybe itâs in the carâ |
B Jumps up to look for it | A Makes no reply and continues to read |
Possible Switches when B comes back with ruler: A âWho told you to go rummaging in my personal belongings?â | Possible Switches in Episode 2: A Rattles his newspaper and says âAre you ready?â |
or Switch by B B âYou really are a hopeless caseâ | or Switch by B B âHurry up you slow coachâ |
The con
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The bilateral and ongoing nature of games
- 2. Through the looking glass: explorations in transference and countertransference
- 3. An overview of the psychodynamic school of transactional analysis and its epistemological foundations
- 4. Therapeutic relatedness in transactional analysis: the truth of love or the love of truth
- 5. Reflections on transactional analysis in the context of contemporary relational approaches
- 6. There ainât no cure for love: the psychotherapy of an erotic transference
- 7. Psychological function, relational needs, and transferential resolution: psychotherapy of an obsession
- 8. The man with no name: a response to Hargaden and Erskine
- 9. There ainât no cure without sex: the provision of a âvitalâ base
- 10. The place of failure and rupture in psychotherapy
- 11. Traversing the fault lines Trauma and enactment
- 12. This edgy emotional landscape: a discussion of Stuthridgeâs âTraversing â¨the fault linesâ
- 13. Are games, enactments, and reenactments similar? No, yes, it depends
- 14. The role of imagination in an analysis of unconscious relatedness
- Index