Transactional Analysis (TA) is a theory of personality and a psychotherapy method for personal growth and personal change. TA became popular in the 1960’s due to the best selling success of Eric Berne’s book “Games People Play”. Among many other psychotherapeutic approaches TA is classified as a humanistic discipline.

TA is extremely effective in work with situations when people start doing things they do not normally do, when they are confused, panicky, anxious, under stress, unable to manage strong emotional reactions like anger, when they face relationship problems, bereavement (death or a broken bond with a significant other) and also in work on self-growth including dealing with bad mental habits that steal years from happy life you and others could have like inability to express yourself, avoiding difficult situations or conversations, excessive suspiciousness, jealousy, or unhealthy desire for control.

In TA we believe that People are OK & Everyone Has the Capacity to Think. People Decide Their Own Destiny, and These Decisions Can Be Changed.

As a TA counsellor, I encourage my clients to learn the ideas of TA for my clients to be able to take an equal role in the process of change. Eric Berne, who created TA, believed that each client should have full information about what was going on in the psychotherapy work. This reflects the core TA beliefs about people being OK and people being capable of thinking for themselves.

In TA clients are helped to take responsibility for their lives and their progress in psychotherapy. The focus of the work is on how the past distorts the here-and-now relationship with the psychotherapist or other people, how “to fight the past in the present in order to assure the future”.

More about TA: www.itaaworld.org