Letter From the Coeditor

Preparing to write this editorial for the fourth issue of the Transactional Analysis Journal (TAJ) for 2021, I looked at what my colleague and coeditor Sylvie Monin had written last October for the end-of-year issue. That year was notable for the TAJ because it was its 50^th anniversary of publication, although it was more widely notable for everyone because it confronted us with new, overwhelming challenges to our worldview. Sylvie began by describing, with eloquence and passion, the state of the planet in 2020. We were already in an unprecedented (that now overused word) global situation of a terrible pandemic, climate-change-led fires and floods, and the spreading social and existential impact of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd. And Trump was still US President: Many of our American friends and colleagues felt desperate and exhausted.

Did we imagine how things might be one year on? That the pandemic would still be raging, with new variants of the COVID-19 virus causing even more concern, that the fires and floods would become even more forceful and devastating, that we would see the dismaying return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan? But it has happened, and we don’t know how much more is to come.

Therapists, counselors, coaches, and supervisors face increasing demands on their time to support anxious and struggling clients, and all of us have to make our own accommodation to a new kind of life. So how can we think our way through this novel situation, with no previous experience to guide us?

In conversations over the years with transactional analysis (TA) friends, when we have talked about how we describe ourselves, I have said that I think of myself not as an academic or a researcher but as a journalist looking for connections between the microcosm—the everyday—and the macrocosm—the universal perspective. So it is to journalism (and literature) that I turn when looking for a pattern or a frame with which to think about these times we find ourselves in.

In a new novel by Sally Rooney (2021), two young women write to each other. One says that “we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness” (cited in Enright, 2021, para. 5); her friend agrees but finds “solace in the ordinary. ‘Maybe [she thinks], we are just born to love and worry about the people we know’ ” (para. 5), and that is enough reason to survive. As the “women write to each other about societal collapse, and how their lives of easy consumption are made possible by the misery of millions, they are also interested in personal goodness … in the relationship between beauty and sympathy; in the uses of fiction and the emptiness of fame. [One] is questing and disillusioned, [the other] more hopeful and fretful both” (para. 9). This may begin to sound like a 19^th century novel, but the key here is that right now “their response to existential threat is not to talk of nihilism, but of empathy, morality and love” (para. 9).

And I want to add “hope.” We see it around us in scientific cooperation for the development and delivery of vaccines as well as in the growing awareness of each person’s need for, and right to, recognition, respect, and to be seen for who they are. And we witness the amazing adaptability, ingenuity, innovation, creativity, and care for one another that humanity can show.

Three recently published books of “popular science” demonstrate this trend: Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (2020), Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships by Robin Dunbar (2021), and Hello Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World by Will Buckingham (2021). The titles say it all: We can aim to turn around our desperate situation, and in fact we often do.

How do we see our changed world now, we as individuals and we as a particular community? How has the TA world responded to change and made its own changes? I think of three areas. First, in terms of the TAJ itself, there has been a significant increase in the number of articles being submitted and a shift in content. Quite a high proportion now are about research, and the sources from which they come has widened. This might be because people have found time in lockdown to put their ideas on paper, because the circumstances have caused people to consider what is most important to them, or it may be because of a greater sense of being part of a community. We don’t know, and we may not find an answer, but it could be an indicator of something significant.

Then there is the choice and challenge that ITAA has been faced with: How to be a community when we can’t meet each other in the usual way at conferences and meetings. This situation has brought into focus something that has been happening anyway: the realization that our traditional way of being as an organization has consequences for many members, for if and how people choose to be members, and, most importantly, for the environment. Online meetings, formal and informal, webinars, and now plans for next year’s conference are all part of this enforced but desirable change. Even more than this, exams and events such as Training Endorsement Workshops (TEWs) have also moved online, the result of some amazing work, thinking, planning, creativity, and commitment by the International Board of Certification (IBOC).

All of this means that we are not just asking ourselves “what can we do in this situation?” but developing the question that many had been voicing for a while: What should we do long term? What are the implications for our community, and how are we demonstrating our beliefs in equality, accessibility, inclusivity, opportunity, and so on by following the old adage “necessity is the mother (or parent) of invention”? How can we become an organization for the 21^st century? And how can we think through what that means together? The new eco-TA movement (Barrow & Marshall, 2020) and the analysis of the implications of travel by de Graaf and Tigchelaar (2020) are both stimulating and important starting points for us in this regard.

So, to turn at last to the contents of this issue: TA has a long history, a record of making and integrating changes, and a core concept—life script—that is both a bond and a means of orientation. Script is the key concept in each of the three articles presented in this issue, but they also illustrate more about the TA world. They may be only three articles, but their sources are worldwide: from Italy, the United States, and India. Their range is also wide as they focus on very different aspects of life and work.

In “The Experience of Anxiety in Body and Mind: A Transactional Analysis Perspective,” Susanna Ligabue and Paola Tenconi describe the background and the process of their work with patients exhibiting anxiety. They see the body as the primary door to script for understanding and treating anxiety disorders. This article was originally published in an Italian journal and was translated for submission to the TAJ. In this process something else happened: In response to the review process and the clarification of ideas as they were translated from Italian to English, the article transformed. This is an important part of our global community. Significant developments of practice, areas of research, and so on are limited to language groups until we make a conscious effort to spread them. We also need to be aware of the implications of doing so.

Ligabue and Tenconi survey developments in many modalities for treating anxiety and describe the nuances and variations of anxiety disorders before offering a TA perspective. They illustrate their ideas with vignettes and include guidelines on how and why they work as they do. This is a subtle and valuable contribution from notable practitioners.

A very different facet of script is the basis of an intriguing article by Leonard Campos on “Cultural Scripting of Age Identity and Its Consequences.” Campos suggests that using our chronological or calendar age to define ourselves is culturally scripted and that we should look to our personal, individualized age identity to provide a greater age autonomy. This could lead to a more holistic approach and socially just decision making when dealing with an aging population. He describes some myths around aging, different approaches, and the TA input from thinking around autonomy and collective confrontations to scripted notions of age. He then goes on to encourage us all to consider the alternatives to acceptance of cultural norms. In doing, so he cites a vast range of research on all aspects of aging, in itself a helpful and constructive resource.

Story is key in all our explorations and confrontations of script—for ourselves and our clients in whatever field we work. Aruna Gopakumar, in her absorbing article “Story Options: A Technique for Transforming Narrative Through Playful Emotional Exploration,” describes an apparently simple but in effect quite profound method of enabling script change through personal work within a group using storytelling techniques based on psychodrama. If scripts, as constructions in the present, become accessible through the stories clients choose to tell, selective and subjective as they are, how can we invite people to see other possible interpretations of their life experiences in a creative way? Gopakumar describes in detail the method she devised, the preparation needed, the responses in the group to one participant’s story, and the ongoing changes and outcome. “Story Options,” her name for this way of working, truly expresses the importance of script, both honoring the client’s meaning making and creating a playful space in which new meanings can emerge.

Last, we have two book reviews, both linked to key thinkers in TA. José M. Martínez reviews a new book by Richard Erskine titled A Healing Relationship: Commentary on Therapeutic Dialogues. In it, Erskine aims to emphasize the intersubjective nature of integrative psychotherapy and, matching the text to the thesis, to write as if in conversation or correspondence with the reader. Interestingly, Martínez reflects on his own response to this approach, to finding himself engaging more immediately with colleagues, an effective answer to the stimulus from Erskine. The presence of an involved other is a crucial component for our clinical practice and, I believe, all of our practice.

All three articles just described, and this book review, show us where we are now in TA. The final piece in this issue takes us back to where we began. Claude Steiner, Emotional Activist: The Life and Work of Claude Michel Steiner, edited by Keith Tudor, tells the story of one of the first transactional analysts. In his review, Beren Aldridge describes this as a warm and vulnerable, rigorous and honest book that accounts for Steiner’s human flaws and failings alongside his achievements. The book is organized around Steiner’s major contributions to theory and combines selections from his unpublished autobiography with discussions between Tudor and his coauthors about Steiner’s work. This is all part of our history and a timely reminder that Steiner believed that, if we took his ideas seriously, we must at the very least attempt to deal with sexism, racism, and crude capitalism.

Which takes us back to the beginning. So I wish you enjoyment, stimulus, resolution, and reconciliation in your reading—and hope for the year to come.