TA on Trial — Transactional Analysis 10 (C1)

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS · LESSON 10

TA on Trial

C1 (B2–C2) · 90 minutes

What would convince you?

Task Choose the one piece of evidence that would most convince you that a talking therapy works. Be ready to say why.

A

Millions of readers say a book about it changed their lives.

B

An experienced therapist describes thirty clients who got better.

A trial: one group gets the therapy, a similar group gets another treatment, and the first group improves more.

C

D

The theory explains your own family perfectly.

1. Would any of these convince you that the theory's ideas are true?

2. Can something work even when the explanation behind it is wrong?

READING

Two questions, not one

Asking whether TA is "scientific" hides two separate questions. The first is about outcomes: do people who receive TA, as therapy, counselling or training, end up better off than before, or better off than people who received something else? The second is about constructs: do ego states, strokes, games and scripts exist in the way the theory says, and can they be measured?

The two can come apart. A treatment can help for reasons its own theory does not explain: a warm relationship, a clear structure, hope. And a concept can be measurable even if no treatment built on it works.

TA has tools for the second question.

The psychiatrist John Dusay's egogram, set out in his 1977 book Egograms, is a bar chart of how much energy a person puts into each functional ego state. Questionnaire versions followed, among them the Tokyo University Egogram, developed in departments of psychosomatic medicine in Tokyo and Kyushu and used in Japanese clinical research. Such questionnaires can show that people answer consistently. They cannot show that ego states are real parts of a mind.

For the first question, TA research runs to hundreds of studies since the 1960s. What they add up to is disputed.

Two questions, not one

1 · Outcomes: does it help?

2 · Constructs: is it true?

P

?

A

C

before

after

Source work · Cards A and B

Task For each card, write two lines: It shows… and It can't show… Then agree on the card you trust most and the card you trust least, with one reason each.

Card A · The count

Card B · The sceptics

Ohlsson, T. (2010), "Scientific evidence base for transactional analysis in the year 2010", International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research, 1(1), 4–11.

Khalil, E., Callaghan, P. and James, N. (2007), "Transactional analysis: A scoping exercise for evidence of outcome", report for the Berne Institute, University of Nottingham, School of Nursing (as discussed in Ohlsson 2010).

Writing for the first issue of a new TA research journal, Ohlsson listed every TA study he could find: 326 between 1963 and 2010. He then looked for studies of the effects of TA psychotherapy. Of the 60 he could obtain and judge relevant, 50 found significant positive effects, 10 found none, and none found harm. He admits he made no systematic check of their quality; he reasons that most were doctoral research, so their designs were professional.

Prepared for a UK TA training institute, this search identified 97 studies and included 19 with a clear, repeatable method and before-and-after measures. The verdict: TA is probably as effective as other therapies, but its evidence base is scant, of relatively poor quality and insular, rarely tested by the wider academic and health world. Ohlsson called this "unduly harsh". In Sweden, TA therapy had been refused official recognition in the early 1990s for "lack of research".

Source work · Cards C and D

Task Same two lines for each card: It shows… and It can't show… Then choose your most and least trusted card from all four.

Card C · The meta-analysis

Card D · One trial, two readings

Vos, J. and van Rijn, B. (2022), "The effectiveness of transactional analysis treatments and their predictors: A systematic literature review and explorative meta-analysis", Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Olson, R. P., Ganley, R., Devine, V. T. and Dorsey, G. C. (1981), "Long-term effects of behavioral versus insight-oriented therapy with inpatient alcoholics", Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49(6), 866–877 (as discussed in Ohlsson 2010).

A systematic search of five databases found 41 clinical trials, 13 of them randomised. Pooled, they showed moderate to large improvements in symptoms, social functioning, self-efficacy and ego-state scores, and TA held up against comparison treatments and waiting lists. Better outcomes went with ego-state change and a good client–practitioner relationship. The authors list limits: many trials date from the 1970s, blinding was impossible, and researcher allegiance could not be checked. One of the two authors is a TA specialist.

A randomised trial added one of three extras to a hospital alcohol programme: behaviour therapy, TA, or both. The 2007 review on Card B summed it up: TA performed worst on every measure. Ohlsson read the full paper differently. The TA group drank more at the middle follow-up, but by the long-term follow-up the difference had gone; every version of the programme reduced drinking. The researchers also led the behavioural programme; the TA therapist was a single outsider.

READING

The case against

The pop-psychology image. Games People Play and I'm OK – You're OK sold in millions. Catchy labels made TA easy to sell and, for many academics, easy to dismiss as self-help.

Testability. The philosopher Karl Popper argued that a theory is scientific only if some possible observation could prove it wrong, and he charged psychoanalysis with being able to explain any behaviour at all. Critics put the same question

to TA: if any behaviour can be described as some ego state or some game, what result would count against it?

Oversimplification. Three circles and a list of named games must leave much of human personality out. Supporters reply that simplicity is the point: a model clients can use beats a complete one they cannot.

Freud, renamed? Parent, Adult and Child resemble Freud's superego, ego and id.

READING · CONTINUED

The case against

Berne rejected the comparison: "Parent, Adult, and Child are not concepts, like Superego, Ego, and Id, or the Jungian constructs, but phenomenological realities" (Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, 1961). Ego states, he claimed, can be observed in voice, posture and words.

Cultural assumptions. TA's ideal person is aware, spontaneous and self-directing, and its stories of scripts often picture a mother, a

father and their children. Is that a universal goal, or a mid-century American one? Some answers come from inside TA. The India-based transactional analyst Pearl Drego proposed the Cultural Parent (1983): a community's shared rules, carried inside each member, that keep a social order in place. Her example was the dowry system. In later work she argued that change must happen in groups and communities, not only in the therapy room.

Which charges stick?

1. Is a theory less valuable because ordinary people can understand it?

2. What observation could ever prove that someone is not in a Child ego state?

3. Is "observable" enough to make an idea scientific?

4. Is the goal of autonomy universal, or does it reflect one culture?

5. Where you live, would a therapist work on the person, the family or the community?

Superego

rough parallel

Parent

Ego

rough parallel

Adult

Id

rough parallel

Child

Freud: inferred

Berne: observed?

READING

TA today, and Berne's goal

TA is practised and taught in four fields: psychotherapy, counselling, education and organisations. The International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), founded in 1964, was joined in 1976 by the European Association for Transactional Analysis (EATA), a federation of national associations that sets training and examinations in all four fields. Beyond the profession, TA's diagrams turn up in management training, coaching and communication courses, often without the name.

Berne set out the purpose of all this in Games People Play (1964). The goal is autonomy, which he saw as the release or recovery of three capacities. Awareness is perceiving the world freshly, for yourself: in Berne's words, "the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way". Spontaneity is the freedom to choose from the full range of feelings and behaviour, instead of old patterns. Intimacy is open, game-free closeness with another person.

TA today, and Berne's goal

Awareness

Autonomy

Spontaneity

Intimacy

The motion

Task Before you prepare: give the motion a number and write it down.

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

This house believes that TA is more useful than it is true.

• Proposition argues for the motion: TA helps people, whatever the status of its concepts.

• Opposition argues against. You may argue that TA is truer than the motion suggests, or that a tool built on untrue ideas cannot be truly useful.

• Judges take no side. They decide which side argued better, by the strength of evidence and reasoning, and give reasons.

Prepare your case

Task (Proposition and Opposition)

Task (Judges)

Prepare a 2-minute opening with three arguments. Use at least one source card (A–D) and one charge from "The case against". Predict the other side's best point and prepare a reply.

Agree three criteria for a winning case. Then prepare one hard question for each side, based on a source card.

• Useful to whom: clients, therapists, trainers, companies?

• Does Card C support usefulness, truth, or both?

• If a model helps people, does it matter whether it is true?

The debate

RUNNING ORDER

1. Proposition opening · 2 min

2. Opposition opening · 2 min

3. Judges' questions to both sides · 3 min

4. Opposition rebuttal · 1 min

5. Proposition rebuttal · 1 min

6. Judges confer and give a verdict with reasons · 2 min

7. Everyone votes again · 2 min

1 strongly agree · 2 mostly agree · 3 on the fence · 4 mostly disagree · 5 strongly disagree

This house believes that TA is more useful than it is true.

Back to Lesson 1

Task Give each statement a number. Then compare with your numbers from Lesson 1. For any statement where you moved, name the idea or lesson that moved you.

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

Your personality is fixed by the time you are seven.

You can't change other people, only yourself.

Most of what we say isn't really about what we're saying.

You can understand your own mind without an expert's help.

Which statement did ten lessons change least for you? Why?

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

What will you keep from TA, and what will you drop? Name one idea for each, and say what it would change, or has changed, in how you see people around you.

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Which TA term would you explain to a friend tomorrow, and which would you leave out of the conversation?

Case closed?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Ten lessons, one map: Berne's story · Parent, Adult, Child · the functional model · transactions · strokes · rituals and pastimes · games · the drama triangle · life positions and scripts · TA on trial.

Further reading: Ian Stewart and Vann Joines, TA Today: the standard introduction. Eric Berne, Games People Play: the book that started the craze.

The verdict is yours. Keep the questions, test the answers.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

SOURCE WORK · CARDS A TO D suggested points; any well-argued answer is acceptable

• Card A · The count. Shows: a large body of TA research exists, and most effect studies report benefits. Can't show: the quality of those studies (no systematic quality check); how big the effects are; whether unpublished negative results are missing; anything about whether ego states are real (Question 2). Note: the author writes as a TA insider for a TA journal.

• Card B · The sceptics. Shows: when strict inclusion criteria are applied, few studies remain, and their quality is questioned; real-world consequences (Sweden). Can't show: that TA does not work; scant evidence is absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. Its own method was challenged by Ohlsson.

• Card C · The meta-analysis. Shows: the strongest outcome evidence (Question 1), including randomised comparisons with other treatments. Can't show: whether improvement comes from TA's specific ideas or from shared factors such as the relationship; whether old trials reflect TA today; whether allegiance inflated results. Ego-state scores changing is not proof that ego states exist (Question 2).

• Card D · One trial, two readings. Shows: how much depends on reading the full paper, the timing of follow-ups and who runs the study (researcher allegiance cuts both ways). Can't show: much about TA in general; it is one study of one patient group with one TA therapist.

• Most trusted: usually C (largest, most systematic, randomised trials included); least trusted: often A (counting without quality check) or D (single study). Accept other choices with reasons.