In each newsletter, we interview one person of our community who uses TA in their field. This time we interview Sharon Kalinko (TSTA), who chaired the SATAA for several years. We interview her regarding her experience with TA, and – since she has been working with TA in South Africa for many years – asked her about her perspective on TA history in South Africa.
Judith:
Sharon, thank you for your time regarding this interview. We look forward to hearing your thoughts… As a first question – what is the biggest impact TA has had on your life?
Sharon:
TA literally changed my life. It was what caused me to decide to become a psychologist running therapy and training groups. Until this time I was a secondary school teacher which I really did not enjoy but it allowed me to work and still be available for my children. Group work is what I enjoy the most and what I am best at.
TA was also my introduction to my own psychotherapy and the best therapy I have had has been with the trainers who came out to South Africa to teach TA. This has led to a lifetime of personal growth and developments and a profound understanding of human behaviour.
In addition to what I learned from my TA trainers and all the conferences which I attended, I met the most amazing people who became very important to me during my early years of private practice as a psychotherapist as well as being a single mother of two young girls. I learned the real meaning of “I’m OK – You’re OK” which was a profound experience for me when I first encountered it. The achievement of this life position has a been a lifelong pursuit for me and has informed all my work.
Judith:
As a therapist, how do you practically use TA? Can you give us a recent example?
Sharon:
I use TA in my work all the time. Apart from running TA training groups from TA 101s to two ongoing advanced TA training groups, an ongoing TA therapy group and individual TA therapy, I have integrated TA into many different therapeutic approaches which I now use e.g. Constellations and Enneagrams.
Judith:
That sounds great. And I am sure you use it for yourself ongoingly, too… What is a recent example of how you have used TA principles personally?
Sharon:
I use TA all the time in my life e.g. by being aware of when I am involved in a Game and when I regress into my Script System. This enables me to move back into my Adult ego state in order to problem solve rather than becoming embroiled in unproductive behaviour.
Judith:
What would you say are some of the things you do that ‘feed’ your natural child, that you love doing?
Sharon:
I am still working on freeing my Natural Child as I grew up in a very adapted environment where feeding one’s Natural Child was frowned upon. What I enjoy most is travelling and learning about different cultures, walking in nature, reading, painting and colouring in, listening to music, talking to and playing with my grandchildren, hanging out with my friends and loved ones, cooking and eating good food, etc.
Judith:
Thank you for your openness around this – it does also show that it is a continued learning and growing with TA, no matter how long we’ve worked with it… great to be reminded of this.
And now another question… we live in interesting times in our beautiful South Africa…. Politically, socially, economically. What do you think is it about TA that is particularly useful for us in South Africa?
Sharon:
I think that TA is useful to everyone and is easily accessible because of its use of simple language that people can identify with immediately. I think that people across the entire spectrum in South Africa can identify with the concepts in TA and it gives them a language that enables them to communicate their feelings and experiences in a meaningful way.
I think that the concept of cultural script is particularly useful to us in South Africa as a way of understanding the differences between people in such as way as to accept that it is ok to be different and that one culture is not superior to another. We can then be curious about each other’s ways of perceiving the world and each other without being judgmental and critical.
Judith:
Thank you for your thoughts on this… and I am adding another, big question at the end of this interview. Since you were one of the people who have been involved in TA in South Africa for many, many years, would you describe to what ‘TA in South Africa’ looked like from your perspective in the last few decades? This could give us ‘newer’ ones an insight into what has happened so far… and how the SATAA came into being?
Sharon:
Let me try to do my best to set out the history of the SATAA from its inception in the early 1970s to the present. I hope that I have got all the facts straight. To the best of my knowledge it started in the 1970s with Maria Gilbert and Petrushka Clarkson who were in the process of getting certified by the ITAA and were in training with Richard Erskine in the USA as there was no one to train them in South Africa.
I first met them when I was training as a voluntary counsellor with the then Johannesburg Marriage Guildance Society (now FAMSA). One of the modules for this training was a TA 101 with Maria and Petrushka. I was immediately hooked and wanted to learn more from them which I did. This was in 1976 and at the time Petrushka was preparing to move to the UK which she subsequently did. Maria was still here for a number of years and through her training she gathered a vibrant group of psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers who became an advanced training group and which then developed into the SATAA. There were at least 10 of us including Diana Shmukler, Merle Friedman, Shirley Spitz, Hannetjie van Zyl, Bea Kidd, Sandy McDonough, Gail Gottlieb, Sandy Gluckman, Martin Yudaiken, myself and a number of others. During these years no trainers were willing to come to South Africa to train us because of the politics. Maria brought out Richard Erskine and Rebecca Trautmann in 1978 for the first time and they worked with our group which was much larger than those mentioned above. They worked with people from Pretoria University and this is when our advanced integrative TA training began. After that Richard and Rebecca came here virtually every two years until the 1990s to do training workshops which often lasted between 5 and 10 days each. During that time Carlo Moiso also came out twice to conduct two 5 day workshops and Mary Cox came with her husband to run a training workshop. They enabled those who wanted to get certification with the ITAA to get not only their training hours but their knowledge and skill. At that time the SATAA was a loose association which was not registered with the Dept of Social Development or the Receiver of Revenue. We had a bank account which was used for collecting money for workshops and for paying the trainers and all the training was clinical.
In the 1990s just before South Africa had a new democratic government, most of the members of the SATAA either emigrated, relocated or moved away from this group. This was primarily because by then Maria had left and Diana Shmukler who succeeded her, had emigrated to the UK. While Diana was the Prof. of Clinical Psychology at Wits, she and Merle Friedman promoted TA and it was part of the psychology curriculum. When Diana left, it was again removed from the curriculum and the flow of new recruits from Wits stopped.
When Diana left, she handed over the SATAA to me to continue running it. Unfortunately, at that time, there were very few people still interested in TA and I only qualified as a PTSTA in 1990 which meant that it was not until then that I could start training people in TA and running TA 101s.I had no one to supervise me in this country and had to go to conferences and training workshops overseas in order to keep up to date and to gain further training as a trainer. With the help of about 5 people, we managed to keep the SATAA going as an organization. I tried to encourage my trainees to join me in the running of the organization without much success.
After the democratic elections when Diane Salters returned to South Africa she contacted me and we began to talk about running the SATAA more formally, especially in order to be able to organize a conference. Another person who played a big role was Colin Brett, who was living part time in Cape Town and doing organizational training and work there in the 90s and perhaps before that. He was certainly instrumental in encouraging me to do my TSTA exam which I started working towards in the 1990s and resulted in my becoming a TTA in 2000.
Judith:
Thanks Sharon. And tell us about the International TA conference in Johannesburg in 2008?
Sharon:
The conference was organized by Diane Salters and myself. Diane recommended to have the conference in Johannesburg rather than Cape Town. At that time she had set up a website and we started working on getting the SATAA formally registered in order to have an organization which could host a conference. It took about 3 years to organize the conference which we did with the help of a conference organizer and seed money from the ITAA, WPATA and EATA as we had very little money in our bank account. At that time South Africa was a very popular venue for international events and we received a lot of support and encouragement from our parent organizations overseas. The conference was very successful and as a result we managed to acquire some funds for the first time.
I continued to occupy the chair of the organization until I resigned in 2014 at which point I felt it was time to make space for new energy. By then we had registered with the Dept of Social Development as an NGO, we were registered with the Receiver of Revenue, we had a new constitution as well as a professional website.
Judith:
Thank you, it’s great to hear your thoughts on this and gives us some context to TA in South Africa… let’s hope we can keep it alive and grow our community in the years to come.