Developing a Coherent Map of Transactional Analysis Theories

Abstract

This article offers some theoretical reflections on the foundations of transactional analysis with criteria for a scientific theory. A common basis for the different theories, models, and explanations in transactional analysis is presented. The view of the human mind as a self-organizing system is derived from the transactional analysis view of human nature and from Berne's approach to the human psyche as an organ in itself. The theories of personality structure and dynamics (ego system and ego states), the creation of relationships (seen as an expanded communication theory), and the creation of life (script theory) are considered as a closely related network that forms a coherent map of transactional analysis theories. The importance of the role of the ego system and the need for a definition of exteropsychic and archeopsychic ego states as pathological within the structural model is examined. The functional model and the connection and transition between the structural and the functional models are described.

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Notes on contributors

Ingo Rath

Dr. Ingo Rath is the Chairman of the Austrian Transactional Analysis Institute, TZI Instructor for WILL International, Professor of Didactics of Natural Sciences at the University of Salzburg, a transactional analysis psychotherapist in private practice, and an EATA Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst.