 Hello and welcome to MIPTV and with me for his regular book review is Mr Bob Cook. How you doing, Bob? I'm very well, thanks Roy. Now you've got a really interesting book tonight by someone that I've met very briefly and you know very well, Richard Erskine, a man who's credited with being one of the pioneers of relational TA, I believe. Well, he's the pioneer of integrative transaction analysis from a relational perspective. Right, well there we go. Perhaps it's the same thing as perhaps it isn't. Why it's important is that the modern relational transaction analysis movement, which was formed in 2009 really, comes from Helena Hargill and Charles Sills, and quite often gets mixed up with Richard Erskine's integrative relational movement, so it's very easy to do. So it sounds like there's two perspectives, but this is Erskine's own view of things. And it's called Theories and Methods of Integrative TA by Richard Erskine. Yeah, that's the way to it. There is a method of integrated transaction analysis by Richard Erskine. There we go. Way back in 1977, over 40 years ago. Wow, so what makes this book so interesting, Bob? Well, it's a historical document from a long time ago. Richard Erskine is now 76 and even when he wrote this in 77, 76, you know, he'd written quite a lot of articles, well-known psychopathic articles. He was well-known in the TA movement, the early, early origins of TA. I'm not quite sure if he studied with Byrne, but he certainly studied with Fritz Perls, because he did Gestalt's training for a while. But he went on to become really interested in transaction analysis, and he trained with some of the early pioneers of TA. And in 1976, 1977, he put this book together. Probably 40, is it right, 30, 40 of his well-known articles at that time. And so we're going back to the beginnings of TA. So the beginnings of his ideas on, this is Richard Erskine's ideas on script, some of his ideas on rackets, some of his ideas on the methodology of an integrative psychotherapy, some of his ideas on the three dimensions of human behavior, some of his ideas on early transactional analysis and how to use it. OK, I heard something quite interesting there that I think might be interesting to explore. The three dimensions of human behavior, what's that, Bob? Well, let's just put that into, you know, his article. His article, I think, is called the ABC of psychotherapy, or the ABC of integrative psychotherapy, if I can remember it quite rightly. And it's not so much three dimensions of behavior. I think I need to put that in context really. It's the origins of a model which he went to Corian later on in 1988. And he called the model self-in-relationship model, where he talks about three dimensions of human functioning rather than behavior, actually. And he talked about the behavioral aspect of the human personality, the emotional aspect, the cognitive aspect, and that you can actually enter into the world of the clients or through any of these different dimensions, whether it be cognitive, whether it be thinking, whether it be behavior. And it really was the origins of his first idea of integration. Yes, because that sounds like he's joined from quite a few schools there, behavioral school. He sounds also, I think, might be joined maybe from the person's centre school or the humanistic school. Well, certainly when we think of his first supervisor, that was, if this is true, talking to Richard himself, was a supervisor that worked with Rodgers himself, just down in the college Rodgers was in. David Kupner, is it? So some of Erskine's early ideas, interestingly enough, comes from Rodgers himself. Certainly the ideas, I think, we look back at some of the methods of integrative psychotherapy he talks about, achievement, involvement, inquiry. The ideas of achievement and staying behind the clients and actually attuning to the rhythm of the client comes very much from the humanistic tradition, I think, of Carl Rodgers. It does. And I spoke to Richard Erskine about six or eight months ago. I did an interview with him. And he was telling me the same thing, that one of his supervisors was a contemporary of Rodgers. He's kind of interested how all the theories tend to, you know, when you kind of dig deep enough, they all kind of mesh a little bit or touch. Yeah. And Erskine is a unique character, not just because of himself, but because he studied with some of the foremost people, like, as I said, Burl Fritz Pearls, who created Gestalt Cyberpair Me, Eric Byrne, who created Transaction Analysis, and if his supervisor was David Kupner, then that's very early access to some of the thinkings and the beliefs of, you know, Rodgers himself. Yeah, it's fascinating. And the book sounds to me like a collection of essays, maybe, a collection of writings. The articles which he wrote. The article I really like, written way back then, is talking about integration, as I said, and also talking about, you know, a series of methods for psychopurpose, which he calls inquiry, attunement, involvement. A very nice article. Also, his ideas on script, which comes straight out of, of course, Eric Byrne. So you've got the origins of Transaction Analysis there. And you've got a series of articles. You're probably right, which he wrote early on. But as the book goes on, it talks about his later articles as well in 77. And there's a forward in there. There's a very young picture of Richard Erskine, I must say, way back in time. So, you know, that's there as well. So it's a good book, I think. It sort of develops the archetypal therapy in the TA movement and perhaps the humanistic tradition, if we look at it that way. Yeah, and historical documents. It's one that charts the movement of TA, adapting to other ideas. And I would imagine quite important for any student who's studying relational TA. Yeah, absolutely. Looking back at Erskine's idea of integration, way back then, that first article, I don't know, it was 73, 74. I think it was called the ABC of Psychotherapy. Looking at how when you actually work with clients, you can come along side and be attuned, if you like, to a cognitive way of expression, you know, emotional way of expression and a behavioral way of expression. I mean, it comes on the back, if you think about it, of the behavioral revolution by myself in the 60s. And you have the cognitive ideas as well coming along there and they come together and now we get the modern CBT, of course. Yeah, yeah. So you are right. If we look at all these origins in the last 70 or 80 years, they're coming from many, many different authors, but you know, very well looked at, I think, in Erskine's book. Yeah, it's interesting because I was just thinking when I did my teaching qualification, we would talk about the cognitive domain, the thinking domain, the effect of the feeling and the psychomotor, how people behave and use themselves. And it's something that comes up quite a lot in therapy, you know, that people will oscillate between those three domains of being, yeah. And of course, what really then became a hallmark of his organization was he added a physiological domain there, which made a fourth. And then in his self and relationship model, he put a circle, sorry, a diamond around those four points, which he then filled in to symbolize relationship. How interesting. So in other words, in other words, that the relationship is the actual overarching concept that links all the four dimensions of the self. And without the human relationship and the encounter between the therapist and the clients, they're more like techniques. Yes. Yes, they're more like the lyrics of a song without the music. Yeah, that's a wonderful way to look at it. Without the attention to the relationship, you lose contact with the client in front of you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a lesson that I think, I think all therapists can take away because about what modality of therapy there's a lot of research out there saying that the relationship, good quality relationship and the ability to repair fractures in the relationship are, give the best indicators for a good outcome in therapy. So, yeah, it's a really good lesson to take away. So Bob, we're going to put a link for those of you who are watching, we're going to put a link in the comments bar below. And we're going to, I'm going to put a link to the book and also a link to maybe some other information about her skin. And also let's have some comments in the comments bar below. What do you think? Are you someone who studied relational TA? What's your view of the work of Richard Erskine in the relational school? And as always, this isn't a paid product placement. This is Bob just sharing his love of books and literature. So as always, Bob, thank you for sharing that knowledge. And we'll see you in the next book review, I guess. You will. I think it's number, I think this was number 24. So the next one I think is number 25. Yes, we'll see you. We'll see you in 25. That's how old I am, Bob. Thank you.