Transactional Analysis.

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FdSc Food Manufacturing Management

Module 2: Social Psychology for Managers

Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analysis as defined as:

“An ever-expanding system of related techniques designed to help people understand and change their feelings and behaviours”

Woollams and Brown (1978)

Eric Berne began to develop the theory of TA before 1958 when his first articles on the subject were published. In his seven books and fifty articles, Berne describes TA as:

“Structural and transactional analysis that offers a systematic, consistent theory of personality and social dynamics derived from clinical experience, and an actionistic, rational form of therapy which is suitable for, easily understood by, and naturally adapted to the great majority of psychiatric patients”

Berne: Transactional analysis in Psychotherapy (1961)

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Stewart & Joines (1987) go on to say that it is a theory of personality which uses a three part model, known as the ego state model, which helps understand how people function and express their personality in terms of behaviour. Discussion of each ego state as an entire system if thought, feeling and behaviour was defined as being Parent, Adult or Child. It was made clear that whilst these three ego states may always be present in the individual, only one state is in control at any one moment.

Berne observed that people need strokes, which are a ...

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