what's TA at TAworks?

At TAworks we take a contemporary constructivist view of transactional analysis — that is, through the relationship between us, we create our experience. Picture a coral reef — this symbolizes how community is co-created between individual organisms. Change emerges — the spiral is a metaphor for how this happens and is found throughout nature.

This perspective inspires all our practice viewing relationships as central, including the individual’s relationship within her or him self. Thus developing the capacity to self-reflect is vital — and TA provides a useful map to support this.

TA provides a wealth of useful concepts to support personal or professional or organisational development. At TAworks we include learning about all of the following and more in our wide range of training programmes — you can also find details in our calendar and browse sample material via our articles page.

useful TA links:

what’s TA?

Originating in 1950’s with Eric Berne (1910-1970) TA has continued to develop theoretically, and today provides richness in illuminating relationships — within oneself and between individuals, groups and systems. It is a theory of communication as well as providing concepts to consider personality, and a model of systems.

Berne called his theories "social psychiatry" — today it is termed a social psychology. He focused on the importance of using everyday language and on core humanistic values:

everyone is ok
people can think
if a person can think
then they can decide to change

TA is a psychological framework which incorporates a variety of perspectives, ranging from cognitive behavioural to psychodynamic. It can lead to professional qualifications in counselling, psychotherapy, education and organisational applications

People often ask, as they begin to learn about TA —

what’s its use?
how it is applied?
what are the benefits?

There are at least five answers to these questions, whatever field of TA application:

to monitor my self and so aim to maintain my internal Adult ego state — being alert in the here and now, evaluating my internal responses and accounting for what is going on around me.
to make professional assessments of my client and their context and to share those understanding in ways that make sense to my client — whether this is an individual or a system.
to decide on, and implement, whatever interventions seem most effectively to bring about the realistic goals negotiated with my client.
to review outgoing communication between my client and myself, and within the wider context, in order to notice and account for changes.
when useful, to share relevant TA concepts with my client.