Transactional Analysis
Journal
April 2005 Abstract
Volume 35, Number 2
TAJ Theoretical Diversity: A Debate about Transactional
Analysis and Psychoanalysis
Claude Steiner and Michele Novellino
This article presents a lively debate in the form of four letters exchanged
by Michele Novellino, a proponent of transactional psychoanalysis, which
utilizes the analysis of transference, countertransference, and unconscious
phenomena, and Claude Steiner, who takes the position that transactional
analysis was developed as a radical departure from psychoanalysis and does not
benefit from the use of psychoanalytic terminology.
In the Terrain of the Unconscious: The Evolution of a
Transactional Analysis Therapist
William F. Cornell
This
article delineates four realms of unconscious experience-depicted as the
Bernean, the characterological, the transferential, and the emergent-as they
relate to the evolution of transactional analysis theory and technique.
Presented in semiautobiographical fashion, the article relates the unfolding of
different levels of understanding of unconscious processes in the author's
professional development. Case vignettes illustrate the therapist's engagement
with diverse aspects of unconscious processes within the therapeutic
relationship.
Integrating Psychoanalytic Understandings in the
Deconfusion of Primitive Child Ego States
Ray Little
The
author describes his particular approach to deconfusion of primitive Child ego
states. The theory presented consists of an integration of psychoanalysis and
transactional analysis. Therapeutic principles are described from a relational
perspective.
Engaged Research: Encountering a Transactional Analysis
Training Group through Bion's Concept of Containing
N. Michel
Landaiche, III
The author describes his experience of observing a
transactional analysis training group focused on work with highly challenging
clients. This encounter precipitated his inquiry into the nature and effect of
researching. Drawing on Bion's psychoanalytic concept of "containing"-with its
aspects of receiving, thinking, and interpreting-the author hypothesizes how an
engaged approach to research into human functioning might actually be
therapeutic or growth-enhancing for the individual or group being studied. Such
engagement requires the researcher's ability to structure experiences both
bodily and mentally on the path to understanding and affecting human
capacities.
Transactional Psychoanalysis: Epistemological
Foundations
Michele Novellino
Transactional psychoanalysis
consists of applying the principles of the Roman school of psychodynamic
transactional analysis to the individual psychotherapy setting. This article
presents methodological and epistemological elements that are useful for
understanding the model. Particular emphasis is placed on how transactional
analysis represents an integral part of the current relational psychoanalysis
movement. From an epistemological perspective, one crucial step consists of
shifting focus from the metapsychological level to the level of clinical
theory. This article also compares the work of other authors interested in
rediscovering Berne's psychoanalytic roots. Several aspects of transactional
analysis of transference are discussed, and a fourth rule of communication is
proposed.
An Analysis of Nonverbal Transactions Drawing on Theories
of Intersubjectivity
Helena Hargaden and Brian Fenton
This
article proposes that Berne's focus on the transactional nature of
psychotherapy foreshadowed later developments in psychoanalysis that have come
to be known as "relational psychoanalysis." Relational psychoanalysis, which
introduced the interpersonal and intersubjective experience into traditional
psychoanalysis, brought psychoanalysis into a more interactive framework. Given
that Berne's intention for transactional analysis was to enable people to
communicate more effectively-to move away from games and toward intimacy-the
authors offer further thinking about how this aim can be realized by developing
relational thinking within transactional analysis. This article builds on ideas
that have emerged in the transactional analysis journals of the last 2 decades
(Cornell & Hargaden, in press), which provide a template of the evolution
of relational transactional analysis. One of the main components of this
theoretical perspective is the theory of intersubjectivity. The authors propose
that this theory significantly alters the theory of transactional analysis
proper and adds a deeper understanding to the transferential relationship. The
focus in this article is primarily on the nonverbal aspects of
intersubjectivity with a view to building on the relational theory of Hargaden
and Sills (2002).
The Therapist as a New Object
Servaas van
Beekum
This article explores the concepts of introjective and
projective identification as a way to understand the dynamic of transference.
Object relations theory highlights the importance of the objects in a child's
life and how the child learns from his or her relationships with those objects.
In therapy, the therapist becomes a new object in the client's life, thus
activating the dynamic of transference. The way a therapist works with
transference sheds light on his or her view of the role of the therapist and
leads to a discussion of methodological differences between psychoanalysis and
transactional analysis.
Confusion and Introjection: A Model for Understanding the
Defensive Structures of the Parent and Child Ego States
Heather
Fowlie
This article discusses the interrelated processes of confusion
and introjection, which take place in the Child and Parent ego states
respectively. Drawing on British object relations theory, the author explores
the development of the Parent and Child ego states based on the original model
of structural ego states (Berne, 1961). Viewing both as pathological
structures, she examines the kind of experiences that act as catalysts for
their development and the defenses that are adopted as part of this process. A
model for deconfusion and a relational methodology for work with these defenses
is suggested.
Correlations between Psychoanalysis and Transactional
Analysis
Ken Woods
This article considers the ways that
psychoanalytic psychotherapies and transactional analytic psychotherapies
overlap. It also describes how in psychoanalysis the analysis of superego
defenses has supplanted the analysis of id derivatives.
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