“This article presents the Comparative Script System – a chart which synthesises the major theories in TA: Classical School and the racket system; Redecision School and Cathexis School. It offers a tool which presents all of these within a systemic framework…”
To read the full article, download it here.
Jean Illsley-Clarke’s Affirmations, as well as a page describing how to use them, can be downloaded below.
This is a simple and powerful tool describing how people go through cycles in their psychological and emotional development and that certain messages of affirmation can support them in the tasks that are key in each stage. As well as understanding individual human development, this thinking can also be powerful in conceptualising the stages of a group and the affirmations they might need.
Anette Dielmann and Kathy Christina Pithan observe that the effectiveness of TA is very much evident in relationships – with ourselves, our clients and systems. In their workshop in Berlin on 28th July 2017, Anette and Kathy demonstrated how they make use of the special relationship competence of animals in their practice, specifically horses and dogs. Thinking back to this workshop almost a year later, snapshots of memory form in my mind’s eye. I remember what had meaning for me on that day.
We are sitting in a circle, Kathy’s two dogs in the middle, greeting participants, accepting cuddles and pats. They go very close to some people, keep more distance from others.
A woman wants to explore her behaviour in relationships. She chooses a dog to do this with. The exercise: connect with the dog, ask her (the dog) to get onto a shiny carpet of silver foil and stay on it for a set time (a few seconds). The client connects strongly with the animal, speaking softly, there are many words, cooing, cuddling, patting. After a while, they begin to walk around together, the dog eager at first, the human very caring, looking big and somewhat hesitant. When the woman steps onto the carpet, the dog does not follow, seems unsure. The exercise looks difficult. I feel tension in the room. The facilitators ask the client how she feels. I recognise TA concepts in their questions. The client reflects with the coaches around “who is OK in this relationship and who is not”, “who is taking care of who”, “how is responsibility held”, “how does discounting self and others show up typically”.
The facilitators end the exercise when the client has recognised her own patterns, decided what she wants to work on developing for herself – in her own context. Everyone relaxes. The dog plays on the silver carpet.
The aim was not for the client to become an expert in getting a dog to do what she wants. It was to support the client in becoming more of an expert on herself.
How coaching sessions with direct feedback from animals (responding to all that is present in the moment) can help increase a client’s self-awareness, clarity and confidence can be described theoretically at length. For me, experiencing this phenomenon has had the most profound impact.
I was delighted to be able to attend this conference during the last week of July. Since 2005, I have travelled most years to many and various wonderful destinations for TA conferences. The anticipation and excitement of re-connecting with colleagues from all over the world, is wonderful! This time a Swiss TA educator, Evelyne Papaux, and I decided to share a small apartment in the city. It is a great way to get a feel for the city – having to commute to the conference venue each day. We also had free time to explore the city.
Berlin is a fascinating city – a mixture of wonderful old architecture and very modern buildings, as so much of Berlin was bombed during the war. One of the most moving experiences outside of the conference proper, was a 2 hour guided walk along the Berlin Wall – as it happens it was an early evening with the rain pouring down! Even though we were really cold and wet by the end, it seemed fitting weather for the topic. Being informed of the inhumanity as well as courage and resilience shown by humans was both sad and inspiring. Hearing old recordings of both officials and ordinary people speaking, seeing the memorial to the 137 people who died trying to cross the wall, seeing images of people jumping out of windows being caught (or sometimes not) was a deep experience for me.
A delightful experience was seeing the Berlin Bears all over the city – and especially the United Buddy Bears project – bears decorated from artists all over the world “holding hands” in solidarity.
The Conference was a buzz of people (about 960 of us) from all over the world. The excitement of seeing people that I hadn’t seen for a year or two – plus meeting new people. We were spread over 2 parts of the Technical University with so many workshops running each session that it sometimes became difficult to choose – I wished I could have mastered the art of bi-locating! A special moment at the Celebration event at the end of the conference was the awarding of the European Association of TA (EATA) gold medal to Trudi Newton – one of the foundational educational Transactional Analysts in the educational field of application of TA.
Layo and I will be sharing some of the learning from the workshops we attended, in the next few newsletters. We hope you will be excited to read something about each workshop over the next few newsletters:
1) The Same but Different – the paradox of belonging – How do we hope the paradox of being in a committed relationship, keeping our own sense of self but also creating a rich shared sense of the we-ness (Presented by Lis and John Heath)
2) Boundaries as Chances: Effective and intense relationship work – TA and animal assisted interventions. (Presented by Anette Dielmann and Kathy Christina Pithan)
3) Learning imagoes and their usefulness in different types of learning (Presented by Trudi Newton & Giles Barrow)
4) Meetings – Boundaries – Learning – Teams; a workshop looking at ways to structure and run team meetings, in order to increase effectiveness and innovation. (Presented by Mandy Lacy)
5) Liminality – how we hold and work with this in change (Presented by Giles Barrow & Trudi Newton)
6) VUCA – Effects on Leadership and Organisations; An inspiring workshop about leading and making decisions in a world, that is Volatile, Uncretain, Complex, and Ambiguous. (Presented by Günther Mohr and Natalia Berrio Andrade)
7) Some key ideas from the panel discussion on the 4 fields of TA
8) Functional Fluency and Leadership (Presented by Anette Dielmann and Jutta Kreyenberg)
9) The difference between explicit and implicit knowledge (Keynote by Dr Abel)
The author suggests that in the face of the current global crises that threaten the human species, transactional analysts need to assess their theoretical tools for understanding social development and their ability to contribute usefully to social change.
She offers that Transactional Analysis cannot claim to be a social psychology in the fullest sense and that Clare Graves’s theory of psychosocial development (popularized by Beck and Cowan in their 1996 book (Spiral Dynamics) may provide some of what is missing in Transactional Analysis theory. She suggests that there is a high level of compatibility between Spiral Dynamics and Transactional Analysis because both have a developmental perspective and share many concepts.
Illustrations based on the author’s work show how integrating these two theories enriches the possibilities of working with individuals and groups by allowing therapists and or developmental practitioners and their clients a deeper appreciation of their social context and cultural frame of reference.
Finally, the author asks the challenging question of how humans, as a species, will respond to the current threats they face: Will they progress or regress developmentally?
Read the article: TA and Spiral Dynamics Final
an expanded version of this article is published in the TAJ at http://tax.sagepub.com/content/41/3/265.full.pdf+html