TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS(TA)

Damodar Suar
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

After reading this chapter, you would

understand yourself and reduce self-defeating behaviour
in interaction,
understand and improve your relations with others, and
Straight-forward and honest in your dealings in
interactions.

TA deals with how we relate to other people in social

interaction. The unit of interaction is called
transaction.
If two or more people encounter each other in social
aggregation, sooner or later one of them will speak, or give
some other indication acknowledging the presence of
others. This is called transactional stimulus. Another person
will say or do something called the transactional response.
TA is concerned with these stimulus-response relationship
I do something for you, you do something for me.

Scripts: Verbal and non-verbal message from parents, friends,

relatives, societal members, happenings in family, school,
playground, are recorded in brain and form the script.
Unconscious mind, preconscious, and conscious mind massages are
retrieved to shape the script.
Psychological scripts: massage from parent, relatives.
Cultural scripts: American assertive and achievement-oriented,
Japanese go-getters and team players, Indians respect to seniors
and dependence on them. Child rearing practices
Sub-cultural scripts: Bihari, Bengali, and Oriyas
Business Script, Family Script, Religion Script, etc.
Constructive and destructive scripts, Awareness about destructive
script and rewriting of counter scripts lead to new interests and
achievement in life.

Exercise
Think of one thing you now do which you copied from a
parent figure and perhaps repeat to your spouse,
children, friends and coworkers.
Think of a recent situation in which you believe you
gathered facts and on the basis of those facts made a
reasonable decision.
Think of one thing you did for fun as a child that you still
do.

Structural Analysis and personality

From time to time people show noticeable changes in
posture, viewpoint, vocabulary, accompanied by change in
feeling. The same individual show different patterns. This
give rise to the idea of ego-states.
Parent
Child
Adult

PARENT
TAUGHT
CONCEPT

PERSON

Nurturing
Critical/
Prejudicial

ADULT
THOUGHT
CONCEPT
Natural/free/ untrained
CHILD
FELT
CONCEPT

Affectionate, impulsive,
curious, sensuous
Little professor

Adapted
Complying, withdrawing

Exercise
Draw three separate and non-overlapping circles of different
or equal sizes, as they come to your mind, to identify the
Parent, Adult and Child components within yourself. Identify
one circle as Parent, another as Adult, and still another as
the Child as you feel.

CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSACTIONS

# Complementary Transaction: occurs when a message

sent from a specific ego state, gets the predicted response
from a specific ego state in other person. Communication is
open because the responses given were expected
responses and were appropriate to the stimulus.
# Sometimes a stimulus receives an unexpected or
inappropriate response and the line of communication
become
crossed. Two interacting persons glare at one another,
unwilling to continue transaction or are puzzled by what has
just occurred between them

Complementary Transactions

P
A

P
A

Adult/Adult Transactions

P
A

C
1.wife

P
1

A
2

C
2.Husband

1.Wife grieving for lost friend

2.Comforted by sympathetic
husband

1.What is the yearly salary for

this job.
2.It start at Rs 10,0000/-

Sympathetic Parent/Parent Transaction

P
A
C

1
2

Playful Child/Child Transaction

1.Those children really miss their father

2.Lets take them to the park for a little fun

1.I really like you

2.I Like you too

Crossed Transactions
P

P
1

1
2

C
1 Wife

C
2 Husband

A
2

C
1.Boss

C
2. Secretary

1.Grieving for her lost friend

1.What time is it ?

2.Well,how do you think I feel !

2.You are always in such a hurry!

P
1

A2

Boss

secretary

1.Boss: I need 25 copies of this

report for the board meeting this
afternoon can you get them for me.
2. Secretary: Aren't you lucky
youve got me around to take care
of you

1.Wife: Id like to use the car on

Wednesday night and have
a good visit with my sister.

2.Husband: Mrs, my dear, you

never want to talk to me

C
Wife

C
Husband

Transaction may be direct or indirect, straight forward or diluted, intense or

week (Lack feeling)
Indirect transactions are three-handed. A man may be too fearful to speak
directly to his boss, so he says something to the co-worker,hoping the boss will
get the message .
Diluted transaction are half hostile, half affectionate

 Ulterior Transactions : Always involve more than two ego states. When an ulterior message is sent, it is disguised under a socially acceptable transaction.
A. Would you like to come up
C.To see my etchings?

An ulterior message is given when a secretary submits a letter with

several typing errors to the boss. This invites the boss to give the
secretary a parental put-down.
It is our finest sports car, but it may
be racy for you

P
A
C

A
C

It is an important job, but you

cant do it?- A
C

Exercise

Think back to a transactions you had today. Try to diagram

it. Identify the transaction and mention your feeling after the
interaction was over.

Steps to change Interaction style

1.

Hindsight: Reflect on present

2.

Midsight: Get reflection/feedback from others

3.

Foresight:Think,how you can interact/relate to others in future

Exercise
Rate how you feel generally about yourself and others most
of the time (>50%of the time). Put the tick mark for yourself
and others.
Yourself
Others
I am OK
Others are OK
I am not OK
Others are not OK

FOUR LIFE POSITIONS: OK SONG

I am ok
I am not ok
I am ok,you are ok (4)
LIFE IS WORTH LIVING
Healthy

I am ok,you are not ok(2)

Get rid of others
YOUR LIFE IS NOT
WORTH MUCH
Paranoid behaviour and in
extreme cases homicide

You are ok
you are not ok
I am not ok, you are ok (1)
Get away from me
LIFE IS NOT WORTH MUCH
depression,withdrawl and anxiety

I am not ok,You are not ok (3)

LIFE IS NOT WORTH
ANYTHING AT ALL
extreme withdrawl,succide

To be ok and others ok

Empathy

Tolerance

Trust

Compromise

JOHARI WINDOW
Self (I)
known

25%
Known

Unknown

25%
Blind Area

Arena or
open Area
Others

25%
Closed Area
Unknown

To increase arena:
1.Empathy
2Trust

25%
Dark Area

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Games are a set pattern of transactions that have surface logic but hidden meanings and attempt to draw in
an unsuspecting participant. The outcome of games is always almost a win-lose proposition. Straightforward
as well as devious people play games. Most games are dysfunctional to interpersonal relations. How to
know that someone is playing a game:
Repeated behaviour of the player.
Creation of emotions in the audience/defendant
GAMES
Now Ive Got You, You S.O.B.: One employee gets back at another by luring her into what appears to be
a natural work relationship. Actually the situation is rigged so that the other will fail. When the inevitable
mistake is made, the game player pounces on the associate and publicly embarrasses her.
Poor Me : The person depicts himself to the boss as helpless. Criticisms for inadequate performance are
avoided because the boss truly feels sorry for the individual, who may actually begin feel sorry for himself.
Blemish : 1.A teacher may play blemish with his students by pointing out unimportant flaws just as his
parent had done with him/her. 2.The boss appears to be objectively evaluating an employees total
performance. In reality, the boss is looking for some minor error. When the error is found, the employee is
berated for the poor performance, the inference being that the whole project/task is inadequate.
Hero: The boss consistently sets up situations in which employees fail. At some point, the boss steps in to
save the day miraculously.

King of the Hill: The boss sets up situations in which employees end up in direct competition with her. At
the end, she steps in and demonstrates her competence and superiority while publicly embarrassing her
employees.

Prosecutor : The employee carefully carries around a copy of the union contract or organization
regulations and investigates management practices. This employee dares the boss to act in an
arbitrary manner. Once he does, the employee files a grievance and attempts to embarrass the
boss.
Yes, but: The boss responds with Yes, but to every good answer or idea that the subordinate
may have. By doing this, the boss can maintain a superior position and keep subordinates in their
place. It represents a form of pseudo-participation; that is, the boss asks for participation but
answers every suggestion with Yes, but
Harried : A new executive, takes up one work after another and lastly collapses. Either s/he leaves
the job or finds herself/himself in a psychiatric clinic. The lady executive takes up the role of
mistress, mother, doing marketing, rearing children, entertaining guests one after another. One day
she finds that she is unable to meet the varied role demands and unable to satisfy her husband and
children. The husband is carefully chosen, he will criticize her that she is not like his mother.

Games and New script

1. Awareness 2. Spontaneity (freedom to choose without reasons)3.
Intimacy(love, warmth and tender)
Favourite games I play
as persecutor
with whom?
as rescuer
with whom?
as victims
with whom?
Kind of script
(constructive, destructive, unproductive)
Type of drama
( farce, tragedy, melodrama, saga, comedy)
Audience response (applauded, bored, awed, tearful, hostile)
New Script desired
____________________________________
Contact with self for new script ______________________________
THANK YOU