Letter From the Coeditor

We are all living through strange and anxious times. The pandemic is still with us, the war in Ukraine continues, the climate emergency is ever more strongly evidenced, social and economic collapse is all around us, politics in many parts of the world seem fragile and perverse. We cannot help but encounter and confront all these in our own lives, personal, professional, and social. What to do?

People involved in transactional analysis (TA) are, on the whole (maybe universally), courageous and hopeful—it is embedded in our cultural script. How do we share our encounters and concerns? Inevitably, and positively, through our communication, and writing and developing TA is a big part of that.

A few years ago I was asked to reflect on why I write (Newton, 2013). This led me to discover that when writing I need to be in dialogue; to engage with others; to share my ideas, experiences, and beliefs; to be part of the discourse in a transformational community; to make a difference. But it is only ever “what will do“ for the moment, no idea is ever finished or finalized.

After that article appeared, a colleague emailed me describing it as a gift and a new way of seeing. In his usual way of writing, he saw himself as addressing the members of an imaginary audience but unmindful of developing a relationship with them. He realized that he had been, perhaps, telling a story with an expected conclusion rather than building a story together with others. When we share our understanding and encounters through our ongoing discourse is when writing, reading, and reflecting are most meaningful.

This issue of the Transactional Analysis Journal (TAJ) is a demonstration of that process. Changes are happening, and we are learning fast. You may have read in Helen Rowland’s (2022) piece in The Script about how we are planning to widen the scope of contributions to the Journal. A lively and energetic discussion among the editorial board members last September led to some new ideas and perspectives that are beginning to manifest here.

Before describing the individual contributions in this issue, I want to consider some of the principles and implications of this new revitalization. One has to do with the responsibilities of authorship and conversely the anxieties that new and/or aspiring authors inevitably experience. We do have criteria and requirements as a journal that makes a serious academic contribution, and we will keep those in place. We do expect authors to contextualize their ideas, to review thoroughly the TA and other literature relevant to their writing, and to be respectful and OK-OK to other writers (even when there are profound differences). We will continue to see our editing as a developmental and supportive process when needed and to confront work that needs more attention to reach the expected standard. We will encourage academic debate and avoid being doctrinaire or dogmatic. And we remind ourselves that the TAJ has an important role in teaching and training, in all fields of TA application. Students and trainees are using new articles as well as older and revered sources to increase their learning and stimulate their thinking and creativity. We are all in an ongoing conversation, exchanging and expanding ideas as we engage in our collegial dialogue.

Linked to all of this is the issue of academic acceptability. In her article in The Script, Helen wrote:

One of the themes that emerged in the group discussions was around the academic tone of the Journal, which brought us to thinking as a group about accessibility on two different levels: first, regarding the “readability” of articles for readers who do not come from a conventional academic background or for whom English is a second language, and second, how to make the Journal more accessible for new writers or writers who lack academic confidence. (Rowland, 2022, p. 8)

Although “international” has been part of our name since the ITAA’s founding in 1964, that word has taken on new meaning in the intervening years. We are now a genuinely global organization, and the TAJ reflects that in the range and diversity of our contributions and contributors. Language, culture, diversity, and social responsibility; special issues on neurodiversity, systemic oppression, and normativity; greater attention to research articles from many countries; republishing articles translated into English after publication elsewhere in other languages; completely new areas such as eco-TA—are all examples of the widening scope of the Journal.

Recently, Steff Oates, in her search for material about the early years of TA (for a book in the Innovations in Transactional Analysis series edited by TAJ Consulting Editor Bill Cornell) sent me some facsimiles of The Script from the early 1980s (personal communication, 30 January 2023). What a different world TA was then! As we draw on and value all that early exploration, we also must acknowledge that we live in a different age and a different TA culture.

Another clear takeaway from the editorial board meeting, and an ongoing discussion among the coeditor team, is the possibility of a wider range in the type of contributions we publish in the TAJ. So far we have mostly published articles, book reviews, and sometimes letters. We hope and intend from now on to expand these to include, for instance, commentaries on published articles, essay-type pieces, debate and discussion through the exchange of letters and responses to those—all of which you will read in this issue. Hopefully, to come later, will be shorter pieces (perhaps from new writers) and interviews, and we will be open to other ideas as they come up.

So how does this issue of the TAJ manifest this changing environment and our hopes for the future? The first article, by Brad McLean, is a review article. This is another link to “where we come from” and as such has an important role to play. In describing the articles in the TAJ on relationship work since the 1970s, McLean maps the changes in perspective through the decades and thus offers a kind of social commentary (or social history) of both TA thinking and practice and the development of theory in this area from pragmatic and behavioral toward relational and analytic. His findings contain some surprises, including that TA, a modality so founded on interpersonal communication and social psychology, is, when we look closely, somewhat lacking in material on couples work. Brad ends by proposing more research and exploration of the issue of TA and relationships work, and we will see more in a future theme issue of the TAJ devoted to “Relationships in Love, Play, and Work.”

Next in this issue, Anisha Pandya, in her article “From Rackets to Pacifiers: A Humanistic Approach,” suggests a reframing of the concept of rackets based on their self-soothing role. “Pacifiers” as an alternative for “rackets” puts the focus on a humanistic perspective as a valuable approach to understanding intrapsychic processes. Drawing on the work of Fanita English, Pandya brings attention to the self-protective, ingenious, survival function of rackets and substitutes the term “pacifiers” as a metaphor for the soothing, passive behaviors that help people to deal with their emotions and real feelings. She proposes a quadrant model of pacifiers, which she illustrates with case vignettes of the varying types she has encountered in her practice with clients and families.

One big change that we have seen over the decades is the relational turn, that is, the move from behavioral approaches toward empathic, relational practice. Mandy Atkinson is a highly experienced practitioner working with people with eating disorders, first in a multidisciplinary clinical unit, where she heard many stories of intrusive and traumatic treatments, and later as an independent psychotherapist. Her experience led her to develop a model that she calls “Nourish,” which is a way of mapping the psychological and relational needs of clients that acknowledges the damage that has led to their situation and accounts for their emotional needs in moving toward cure. This she inventively diagrams and then illustrates with an extended case study.

TA began as a group therapy with the understanding that the question of the individual and the group goes back to the beginnings of psychology, including to Freud and other originators. The most important thing about any group is the very fact of its existence. Hence, the overriding concern of every healthy group is to survive as long as possible or at least until its task is done (Berne, 1963, p. 90). In an intriguing and exploratory article, Ales Zivkovic considers the role of the deviant in the group and how the deviant is at once threatening to the life of the group and essential as a defining role in the group’s unique character. Zivkovic takes us through the stages and dynamics of forming, threatening, and challenging within the group and explores the role of deviance in the formation of a group’s collective identity and its need for and use of deviants in that process. He also suggests an application of all of this to TA training groups.

One change that we have all experienced to a greater or lesser extent over the last 3 years, and that we all have our own feelings about, is the move to working online. This has obviously impacted psychotherapy enormously, but also teaching, training, and supervision. As we now move back toward more in-person work, we can reflect on that impact, including its highs and lows and its interpersonal and intrapsychic effects. In a significant and fascinating essay, Ronen Stilman invites us to turn from the earlier focus on technology and its consequences and implications—including the narrative of the perils of working online and the somewhat rigid ideas that became associated with it—to consider online experience as the place where our relational frame is disturbed, where we are on the boundary between connection and disconnection, and to view it also as the edge where learning, growth, and repair can occur. Stilman invites us as practitioners to consider our own relationship with technology and what this might tell us about our sense of qualitative contact with clients.

As an innovation in the TAJ, Pietro Cardile next contributes a thoroughly considered response to Stilman’s essay. As Cardile admits, Stilman’s article caused him to think in new ways about online working and, in particular, the theme of liminality, that transitional place that Stilman refers to in his title. In spite of his concerns about what is missed when people are not together in person, Cardile looks at Stilman’s essay as a beginning to research into online work and its effects. He concludes by asking how far TA and clinical practice are compatible with online working and if TA can be brought into cyberspace without losing its soul.

Cardile is commenting on an theme that is new, immediate, and important to every practitioner today. But sometimes we need time to contemplate or study before we share our response, and this is what we see in Ed Novak’s “Reflection” on Anisha Pandya’s (2022) article “Touching Practice: An Exploration of Runanubandh, Touch, and Contact in Psychotherapy.” The subject is touch, often a much discussed topic in TA training and practice, and one about which Novak’s and Pandya’s experience and thinking both dovetail and diverge. In the process, they add to our understanding of both the risks and benefits of touch, especially in work with trauma. We are grateful to Novak and Cardile for their considered contributions and hope to involve other experienced practitioners in this venture in the future.

Letters to the Editor is an established part of many publications, including the TAJ, although they may not be as abundant here as they are in some scientific journals. These letters are a vital aspect of scholarly debate and discourse. Theory develops through putting forward hypotheses, research, and analysis, thus adding to or subtracting from ideas. In a valuable contribution in this TAJ, Ray Little has responded to Alistair Berlin and Megan Berlin’s article on projective identification in the October TAJ (Berlin & Berlin, 2022). The idea of projective identification is one about which there are differing interpretations, and it is essential to trace the emergence of consensus or dispute. We appreciate Little’s detailed critique and the willingness of Berlin and Berlin to respond to that in print.

This is a somewhat lengthy editorial letter, marking some important new steps in the future development of the TAJ. All of these articles, as well as the essay, response, reflection, and letters, are part of that development. I hope that you enjoy and are stimulated by reading them.