January 2012 Topic: Transactional Analysis: You Tube Games, Etc.
Theramin Trees has done an amazing job with his videos about transactional analysis. They include:
TA1: Ego States and Basic Transactions is the first in his series on TA and offers some of the metaphors he finds useful such as Parent, Adult, and Child states and basic transactions. It has been viewed 87,156 times.
TA2: Games is the second video and looks at games and some ideas on how to deal with them.
TA3: Gimmicks is the third video and looks at some different perspectives they can be viewed from–including gimmicks as faulty rules, faulty roles and faulty definitions–and then possible ways out.
He also gives some suggestions to those who offer comments about his work.
More Transactional Analysis Books
To add to our collection of transactional analysis books:
(6) TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines
By A Customer-”Best introduction to current transactional analysis, both for anyone and professionals. Introduces the key concepts of TA in a very practical manner. You are also encouraged to work on yourself using the concepts. Very easy to read and comprehensive at the same time.’
(7) Transactional Analysis: 100 Key Points and Techniques by Mark Widdowson
“Transactional Analysis (TA) is a versatile and comprehensive system of psychotherapy. Transactional Analysis: 100 Key Points and Techniques synthesizes developments in the field, making complex material accessible and offering practical guidance on how to apply the theory and refine TA psychotherapy skills in practice.”
(8) Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy (Advancing Theory in Therapy) by Helena Hargaden and Charlotte Sills
From Amazon’s product notes-
“Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective presents a relational model of psychotherapy which reflects the theoretical and methodological changes that have been evolving over recent years.”
“In this book, Helena Hargaden and Charlotte Sills tell the story of their model through case history, theory and diagram illustrating how the unconscious process comes to life in the consulting room. Their relational theory and applied methodology of transactional analysis makes it possible to chart realms of uncertainty and the unknown, (deconfusion of the Child ego state), with theoretical assistance.”
(9) Raising Kids O.K.-Transactional Analysis in Human growth and Development by Dorothy Ellen Babcock and Terry D. Keepers
Customer review:
“This was the first growth and development book addressed to parents for child-raising within the framework of Transactional Analysis. Unlike earlier books which focused on an understanding of adult behavioral difficulties, this is the first book showing the parents how to bring up their children so that they will become adults with intimacy, awareness, and spontaneity they need to live happy and fulfilled lives.”
“This book covers normal psychological development, emphasizing healthy family functioning and including the entire life span. Filled with down-to-earth, practical advice, it guides the parents to an understanding of the child’s needs in term of emotional help and time structuring.”
(10) A New Self: Self-Therapy with Transactional Analysis by Muriel James and Louis Savary
No notes available.
(11) Are You OK? – the essential video on transactional analysis for everyone
DVD
January 2012 Topic: Transactional Analysis: Game Theory of TA
Reprinted from working-minds.com: “Game Theory in a Nutshell”:
Dr. Berne discovered the Game Theory area of T/A during close study of alcoholics. He defined only three roles or moves in Game-playing: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor. You all make these moves in virtually all transactions, automatically, by default, because these three moves were given to you by example, since the day that you first drew breath, since every one of you grew up inside the Culture-Structure.
The advantage of learning and consciously, intentionally operating inside of an awareness of Games operated by others is the same as with any skill: You can learn to drive from a parent, or you can learn to drive at racing school; you can learn English in school or on the street or from our brain-deadening media – or you can study an encyclopedia and a dictionary and a thesaurus. One is haphazard, the other produces a skill.
How you know that there is a Game is that there is a switch. Someone bangs their car into yours, you become a Victim – or they do. If there is a policeman nearby, you might prevail upon them to Rescue you. Both sides in such a case will usually attempt the role of Persecutor, either immediately – loud accusations, even fisticuffs – or wait to ask the insurance company to Rescue by acting as Persecutor.
The Dating Game is fraught with soap opera-style drama: girl flirts with boy (Rescue me from being single); boy takes girl out and is over-aggressive (she is Victim); she tells all her friends (Rescue by sympathy). Meanwhile, he tells all his friends how she conned him for dinner and entertainment (he is also Victim, from the same evening), and likewise receives ‘Rescue by sympathy’.
If things go just a little wrong, she warns her friends of his boorish or ill-mannered behavior (Persecutor), and-or he lies to his friends that she led him on and did not acquiesce (same evening: he is also Persecutor). If things go really bad, she calls the cops on him for touching her (serious Persecutor), or he does more than touch her (same: serious Persecutor). Switch, switch, switch.
On and on, for the last several millennia, with no solution expected for the never-ending Battle of the Sexes/Genders – or for the Irish or the Israelis or the native population of whatever country you want to name.
But the use of T/A skills can intervene in this automatic stimulus-response, which occurs at the level of Individual, at the levels of Group and Community, and indeed, between nations and races. In fact, should an expedition of Martians ever land on the White House lawn, Mankind will perpetuate this same Game behavior on them, which the Martians will not comprehend. I expect any such party of Visitors From Space will either take us under their wing, classifying us as intergalactic savages, or take immediate offense and wipe us out without a qualm.
