 Hi and hello from MIP TV and today we're going to take you on a journey of discovery we're going to take you on a wonderful trip through the development the arc of the development of transactional analysis for its very early roots to the present day and there's no better tour guide to take us on that wonderful journey than Mr Bob Cook who is it was a I'll say today an authority on transactional analysis so as we cast our boats out on this wonderful voyage where's our first ports of call Bob? Well we have to start really we have to start in 1949 and mention the originator of transaction Eric Byrne. Yes. In 1949 his first book which was a layman of psychanalysis and he was really talking about psychanalysis was a Freudian. Yes. And that that was really his first ideas and thoughts I think from those early days about the ego and then he departed from psychanalysis really through that the 50s and started to think about his early ideas of what he would call the ego and we all know that what the ego is it's really the genesis and called personality and created a personality model for psychotherapy if you like and the idea that there's three parts of the self in one psychic skin. Yes. Yeah and it's interesting we just recalled another video we kind of talked about the idea of Freud but what I want to ask I want to kind of ask if this is a myth because it's it's kind of abroad is it true that Byrne was declined membership of the New York psychoanalytical society and that is what spurred him on to develop his new idea. That's the that's the got it. Now interestingly I went on a mission to find out where that gossip originated from and there's three autobiographies on Byrne and I couldn't find it in any of them so I don't know if that's been handed down to different trainers or but that is the sort of like conventional gossip they got declined as that we've just said and that spurred him on. Yes. It's his own his own ideas and development personality. Yes it's an apocryphal story perhaps. Yeah that's right. I've heard about many many times. Yes. Which if you say students watching this tells you one of the reasons you shouldn't use Wikipedia for your reference. It's on the front of Wikipedia. I haven't found it anywhere. I think it's one which has been passed down in time. Yeah but the thing is of course it is true that in 1961 he created a new model of psychotherapy and we'll let's start there. So in his first book 1961 he put down the four four building blocks of a transaction analyst and you can call yourself a transaction analyst if you adhere to these four theoretical concepts. Yeah. A parent adult child, a theory of personality, a theory of communication called transaction analysis proper with you know things study of transactions, a theory of script which is an unconscious life plan played out throughout life and games which is to do with repetitive behaviors. If you think those four arcs or four templates you could call yourself a transaction. Yeah and that's important. He went on in 1963 to form the first International Transaction Analysis Association in America, Carmel and he started to supervise early TA therapists in his methodology. Social workers, probation workers love the first model of transaction analysis because they like the idea of parent adult child and they really love the focus that Eric Byrne had which was that especially with people who are quite damaged or even the neurotic population to strengthen the adult ego state instead of somebody getting caught up in the regressed child or the overburden critical parent. So it provided good tools for those early mental health professionals. Yeah and I think what's really interesting about that is a very, very if you think of Freudian ideas they can be complex and quite kind of you get bogged down in them but TA is quite it's a I read somewhere he wanted to write it and they use the terminology the 60s in layman's terms we'd say laypersons nowadays and it is very simple and in fact we were speaking a little while ago off-camera and he was saying that in his very early ideas he said that unless you went to the the board and wrote these ideas and taught it to the client at least is it four times in the session? Yeah you really weren't doing it properly. Correct and very much an edgictive model and probably the first CBT focused. Yes that really struck me out because you know everybody thinks you know TA is about subconscious process but actually the model is the model of understanding our transactions and strengthening that adult ego state is quite a cognitive approach really isn't it? Very much. I mean Eric Berner had great challenges with a very, he wasn't that young at the time but I would say a very young psychotherapist coming through at that time who developed Gestalt Psychotherapy and he had a lot of challenges with Fitz Pearls who developed Gestalt Psychotherapy from Karl Mao which is very you know in the different parts of San Francisco yes of course Gestalt Psychotherapies all mainly to deal with the unconscious and what he would do he would send clients to the new Gestalt Psychotherapist or psychoanalysts if they wanted to deal with their unconsciousness because he was far, far, far more focused on how to strengthen the adult ego state in here and now and move towards quite focused cognitive changes through many of the techniques like the drama, triangle, like ego grams, like script analysis so he wanted change to happen as soon as possible. Yes so he would encourage people to understand how they developed their life plan that kind of play of play of life that we call the script and it also be interested in the repetitive behaviors that got people you know people always falling down the same behavioral hole and it also be really interested in trying to get people to understand you know were they being affected from how the child in them was affected by the parent almost like this kind of battle of wills that sat inside the skin of the person and to make a new decision and put that new script on the road as soon as possible yes yeah changed changed the record almost and a lot of the early TA therapy it's methodology was through education yes so that takes us to 67 maybe 1960s and they died right and when he died in 1970 from a double heart attack on Carmel Bill he was he was just finishing off another one of his books which was called Sex and Human Loving which again was finished off by somebody else costumously and what you had one is then an avoid in the TA movement and you have three approaches vying for priority and the three approaches were the enduring classical approach or burning approach the idea is we've just talked about developing a robust adult mediating between the warring factions of the parent and child eager state and making new re-decisions and putting a script on the road that was the adult eager state and then you had another wonderful charismatic person developing another approach still TA but dealing with the parent eager state and that was called the Shiffian school or often called the Catexa school which is very much to do with re-parenting the idea of a replacement parents and the idea that the TA therapist would have a contract with clients where the contract would be something like the client who was quite disturbed with that population usually we're going to a resident residential therapy and through regression take on board the new replacement parents of the the therapist so it's long-term work and very very always diametrically opposite from the approach that Bern talked about which is cognition so that's the second approach and probably the one which came won the battle was the approach which concentrated on the child eager state which was re-decision psychotherapy by the Gouldings buildings he had three schools if we take you back to the Shiffian one that's Claude Steiner is it no that's that was definitely created no nothing no course I was very much in the classical school right the particle Sun actually very good sure talk about Jackie shift yes Jackie shift and most shift yeah so this is just just for those people maybe you're not all favorite TA this was a move away from a more cognitive place to a place where there's a more intersubjective relationship where the client could know no no not at all this was about replacement parenting yes regression nothing to do with the intersubjective space between the verbs and the client in a co-creative relationship this was very much what some people call brainwashing all right okay I've got a very very bad name Jackie shift got debarred from TA in 1979 and it's the dark side of transaction analysis really which many many people today would really never talk about it's taught in training programs and some of the concepts are still talked about but the early ideas of replacement parenting or brainwashing I would like to say are really the dark sides the dark ages of transaction analysis okay yeah okay so the the theory that dare not speak his name yeah because it had a terrible press and I really fundamentally moralistic to be done agree with it right so we're now moving on to the the next model he talks about which was the decision school yes this is the Gouldings isn't it yeah yes is the idea that we make are that you go back in time with the client either through role play where they play out the parent child conflicts and make new re-decisions so you have to go back to when the first decisions were made originally look at look for the injunctions look for the the stuck places and with the help of the therapist make new new decisions and reintegrated in your life and develop a new script yes so this is very much about looking at how you viewed the world as a child and how you adapted to the world as a child correct and then realizing that maybe those adaptions that may have worked as in childhood to some extent now no longer are a bit defunct in adults so you go back you look where it started and you literally like her like it's somewhat like the therapist is like a writer on a TV series re helps the client rewrite the script so that they can read they can they can act in a more in a in a play of the lives which is directed by them yeah that's right and yeah you're right the therapist plays a very directive function yes almost like psychodrama they go back make these new decisions and then with the help of the therapist integrate them in their modern-day life yes script on the road yes that's kind of the lot of was that a lot based on contracts in Bob did I remember that you make contracts to go back in time a lot of role-playing yeah into the child and it's a wonderful approach I mean it's very much to do to do with going back into the child league estate see I never went to the child league estate he believed you can make redistributions from the adult where the Gouldings believed you need to go back to where the decision will originally made which is in the child league estate and make new ones and am I right in thinking that one of the contracts may be not to go crazy is that is that right yeah that you could have things called escape hatch closures yeah make decisions not to go crazy to make you know keep yourself sane yeah you know yes you're quite you're quite right but fundamentally you'll go back and the idea is that you would put in make new redistributions from the child league states integrating into adults and have a new script in life okay and that went into the 1980s okay that takes us up then to the birth of a new school really the Richard Erskine ideas of integrative psychotherapy now integrative psychotherapy is primarily relational in nature and it's the idea that the therapist's major function is to help the client integrate the different parts of the cells in other words to help them integrate the cutoff fragmented disowned parts of the south through trauma or through this health and help them provide a more healthy function through integration yes to to leave parts of that were not useful behind look at them and maybe cut them away or take them out or bin them yes well what happens in food trauma yes what you do of course is that you almost like fragment off cut bit like a honeycomb yes you basically because you don't want to feel the feelings of the trauma or even remember the incidents of the trauma you hide it off into parts of your unconscious or consciousness if you like with press consciousness into that segment within the honeycomb and you close that part of you so you don't remember you for getting in inverted commas and you don't feel it and the only way you probably feel it through flashbacks and later life that becomes repressed and cut off from the major energetics energetic source of the human condition now the problem with that well the good thing about eyes it cuts off the trauma so you don't have to feel it yeah you don't have to think about it the problem though in later life is that number one you haven't got access to that energy anymore because it's spend all the time keeping the honeycomb shut or that energy compartment of home close up and also you're driven all the time to to not feel not think or not get in touch of that that part of you so you will often be driven compulsively through triggers in the present and you won't know why you're driven that way yes yes and come back from wars something post-traumatic stress disorder what they've done is a fragmented part of that whole will swarm away but in the present suddenly they can be cycling along the road and then you know they hear a bang from pay I don't know a carpenter in a car or whatever it is and then they end up on the floor like a regressed child yes yeah because because they've hidden it away and the explosion is kind of opened the box and it's all come out yeah that's right and so so it's really important to integrate to take back to take ownership of the different parts of yourself so that you can put another script on the road so again it comes back to scripts comes back to scripts life plans life plans yeah so moving on from Richard's ideas idea yeah big piece of research done in the 80s and 90s about how the relationship impacts on the therapeutic outcome correct and that that lays us then to what were called in general psychotherapy the relational turn yes your idea that it is the relationship between the therapist and client which is paramount regardless what model you've been trained in yes and that what really is the curative part here is that the relationship takes center stage yes not the methodologies yes so a big shift if you think of where we started we burn where it was the model it was the the teaching it was the going to the board now we're into a place where the relationship sits central central front of the centre and from there all the works kind of moves moves that moves on from it yeah so so I'll say the final school but the up-to-date school if you like in terms of a developmental arc of TA is Helena Hargan and and Charlotte Sills Keith Tudor you know that now they are the sort of forerunners of this final school which is called relational transaction analysis yes and the idea we've just talked about is the relationship is right at the front and they would use transference but in transference in the here and now they would rework with transference in the here and now not go back into history and examine the transference there so they wouldn't go back to you know somebody comes in and says oh you're lying me of my father when I was three so if you look at classical transference through regression you go back and examine the transference or analyze the transference but in relational transaction analysis you wouldn't at all you would stay in the here and now and say well I'm not your father let's explore what this angers about yes and that's interesting isn't it because that's very much here and now instead of kind of going back and exploring it say well I'm not your father but you know what's what's going on yeah that's very relational and it's interesting Keith Tudor when I trained was a big writer in in the world of person therapy yeah Roger's yeah big time big time he writes a lot of books and articles yeah and he's written quite a lot in TA and this school I would say he's probably the most prominent in transaction analysis at the moment the idea of reworking the transference in the here and now that the relationship is the curative factor now all these people still think eager states through communication live scripting games they're still transaction analysts the methodology is different yeah just how it's delivered yeah so what's next is there a new emerging idea in CA so it's Bob cooks some new school no seriously I think neuroscience yes I would agree yeah yeah and maybe also looking at spirituality yeah I'm being more more I don't I don't think you've got a long way to go with that transaction analysis but the idea is of you know neuroscience neurobiology transaction analysis I think I think that there's a book there you know transaction analysis and neurobiology and I think it's a wheel wheel probably where we'll go and I said I think was a big way to go in spirituality as well for the idea of vices and you know we've got the fifth dimension of the self because Erskine talks about four dimensions of self cognition emotion thinking of behavior I think there's a fifth which is spirituality so those are two particular areas I would think might be concentrated more on especially neuroscience what would burn have made of this do you think he would have dropped dead if it's turn it is a phase turn in his grave if it is thought I think of some of the shiffian work yeah move further on I think we love the redecision work and I think I think he would also like to a lot of the ideas of relational transaction analysis and I hope but I think his own shortcomings to do with his own script but I hope that he would have embraced the methods of using transaction analysis in a child eager state in the early years of someone's life I don't know but he certainly as he was very in very sharp intellectual thinker I would embrace some short money but the ideas of the modern age yes and it was a it was a medical doctor as well isn't it so the idea of neuroscience I would love that I would imagine he would have loved that yeah he would really have embraced that and it's a sad loss that he died he died at the age of 60 yeah so yeah yeah so young I mean so we've seen a huge huge number of stars and approaches in transaction analysts and I when it when somebody says they're transaction analysts worry the real question is the real question is well okay what type of transaction list yes that's the real question yeah and it poses the question that you know it would be difficult to train as a TA therapist in a year or 18 months wouldn't say it's it's such a look on your face does it all Bob yeah this is a you know this is a huge piece of theory and the therapist has to go along with that this isn't something they can just kind of you know hop on the bus and you know they really have to engage in the in the therapy themselves and experience it for themselves don't they yeah and they need to know all the different styles and approaches so they know what they don't want and they know what they like and yeah they develop their own identity but I know to be a certified transaction analyst will take you about 70 years time training yeah so it's a big training big training and I'm a relational psychotherapist I'm very much versed in a lot of Erskine's ideas so I know where I stand in terms of somebody asked me what type of therapist and I would say I would say I'm a relational integrated transaction analyst yes and somebody like you asked burn back in 1960 would have said that I'm a classical TA therapist whatever TA is there but we've developed now it's a 2017 well Bob it's been a wonderful journey our ship has docked and yes that's a full what a wonderful trip and what a valuable learning I'm sure there's going to be people watching this who'll just be so grateful of you spending the time to share this I mean this is a wealth of knowledge you've shared Bob so thank you very much you're welcome thank you