In this essay I am going to look at Transactional Analysis (TA) and the Gestalt approaches and look at how I could use them with a client I have dealt with previously and how it may have benefited them.
TA was developed by a Psychiatrist called Eric Berne (1910 - 1970). ’Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality and systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change (Ian Stewart, Vann Joines, 1987: 3) It is a tool that can be used to look at how people interact with one another and how people are structured psychologically.
The basic part of TA is people are structured in a three-part model. These are called ego-states. These ego-states are related through feelings, behaviour and thought. The ego-states are Parent, Adult and Child. This is known as the PAC model.
If in Parent state they will be copying what our parents did or said when we were younger and then we use them as an adult.
The Adult state is when we are dealing with the here and now. You will be ‘behaving, thinking and feeling in response to what is going on around me here and now, using all the resources available….as a grown-up person’. (Ian Stewart, Vann Joines, 1987: 4)
The Child state is going back to how we were as a child and replicating it as an adult.
Clues are used to identify which ego-state a person is in. Bernes used four ways of recognising these - the behavioural, social, historical and phenomenological diagnosis. The most important one being behavioural.
Examples of behaviours in each state are shown below.
It’s not always easy to see which state someone is in. For example, someone on the exterior they may be looking like the Adult but internally they may be the Child. Someone in a