One of the advantages of TA is that complex intra—and interpersonal processes can be described in an accessible way.

Enquiry and exploration into the content of a person’s inner archive gives insight into their personality structure and motivations.

Eric Berne conceptualised transactional analysis as a social psychiatry, meaning a model of human development that was based on interpersonal interactions. Berne emphasised that people can only keep their ego states intact and coherent when they are in continuous interaction with the outside world. Then the boundaries between the ego states remain

Each ego state has a plus and a minus side. It seems that if too much of the quality of the plus side is deployed, the minus side begins to act up. Too much of a good thing becomes itself the problem!

In addition to the three psychological schools of thought described by Pine, recent years have seen the development of a fourth: mentalisation theory (Fonagy & Bateman, 2006). This theory reserves a central place for the ability of people to correctly assess their own and others’ mental states. People develop this ability via “attachment”, the

Strictly speaking, the function of transactional analysis is the identification of specific ego states involved in a transaction. People who are aware from which ego state they and others communicate increase their choices and thus their personal effectiveness (Karpman, 1971).

The Parent is not the same as the superego, but an internalisation of authentic parental figures as well as larger systems in the outer world with their socialising influence.

In this textbook, we have opted for more neutral terms: Structuring Parent instead of Critical Parent and Natural Child instead of Free Child.

If a certain behaviour results in a stroke, then it’s likely that the child will repeat that behaviour. Moreover, as a rule: anything is better than no strokes at all. If it appears there are not enough positive strokes to provide for the different types of hunger in the child, then he will go in search of negative strokes that will work. If a