Transactional Analysis is one of the most commonly used counselling theories, moreover, the one that has a mass appeal. This mass appeal is largely a result of books such as Games People Play and Born to Win as well as the metaphorical terminology (e.g. drivers, strokes, games, etc.). The reader, who starts to read TA Today after these books, will probably be up for some struggle – it is not an easy read and one feels that occasionally the structure of the book also causes unnecessary difficulties. However, there is no royal road to science – if one wants to understand an approach, he or she also has to become familiar with the terminology and the way in which the internal logic of the theory is built up.
As Transactional Analysis is a mechanistic approach, the book first takes the key categories of the approach (Part II and III), then constructs relationships between these categories (Part IV) and finally positions these relationships in an interaction (Part V and VI). The function of Part VII is to place Transactional Analysis in a wider context.
This is a structure that helps the reader to appreciate the breadth and depth of Transactional Analysis and understand the key concepts of this approach. However, this is also a structure that is problematic from both theoretical and presentational point of view. A critical reader could easily see that the connections between key categories and the transformed categories (transformed as a result of the interaction between these categories) remain unexplained. This is because it is not the subject dictates the logic, but the subject is pressed into the constructed logic. Because of this mechanistic presentation and the lack of discussion on human development, the proof of many important claims in Transactional Analysis is the constructed relationships between the categories. Nowhere is it more self-evident than in the chapters on the script. As to the presentation, it is highly unusual, and probably unacceptable, that the authors inserted sentences such as: 'If theory is not so much to your taste, simply pass this section by. It's not essential to your understanding of anything else in this book.'
In spite of these critical remarks, it has to be emphasised that TA Today offers valuable knowledge for a great variety of readership: practitioners, students of counselling and the interested lay people. Once one becomes familiar with the terminology, understands the way the logic of Transactional Analysis is constructed, he or she can easily read this book or use it as a reference book. Furthermore, Transactional Analysis, as a therapy, is a powerful tool of helping clients as well as organisations that experience problems because of the games people play.
© Dolores James
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