Co-Creative Transactional Analysis

Papers, Responses, Dialogues, and Developments

Graeme Summers, Keith Tudor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781782201571
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429912092
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Education in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Co-creative transactional analysis is an approach to a particular branch of psychology which, as the phrase suggests, emphasises the "co-" (mutual, joint) aspect of professional relationships, whether therapeutic, educative and/or consultative - and, by implication, of personal relationships. The "co-" of co-creative acknowledges the transactional, inter-relational, mutual, joint, and co-operative, as well as partnership. Developed by the authors over some fifteen years, the co-creative approach has found a resonance not only amongst psychotherapists, but also educationalists, consultants and coaches. The book itself represents and reflects the co-creative approach in that it is based on a critical dialogue between the authors themselves about their collaborative and independent work, as well as between invited contributors and the authors.

CHAPTER ONE
Co-creative transactional analysis*

Graeme Summers and Keith Tudor

Drawing on field theory and social constructivism, we present a dynamic, co-creative approach to transactional analysis. This approach emphasises the present-centred nature of the therapeutic relationship—or therapeutic relating—and the co-creative nature of transactions, ego states, scripts, and games. We frame this approach within a positive health perspective on transactional analysis (as distinct from an undue emphasis on psychopathology) and argue that co-creative transactional analysis provides a narrative or story about transactional analysis itself, which offers new and contemporary meanings to old transactional truths. The chapter concludes with a series of questions for self-supervision, which may serve as a useful guide to co-creative transactional analysis practice.

There is currently a lively debate in transactional analysis about its present, past, and future. This discussion often becomes polarised in terms of whether transactional analysis is “transactional analysis enough” or not. Over the past forty years, transactional analysis has developed in many directions—theoretically, technically, organisationally, and internationally—and in doing so has, in our view, lost some of its radical roots. At the same time, therapy, science and the social/ political world have changed at an exponential rate, and transactional analysis needs to account for this.

In the past [then] ten years, a number of writers have argued for what may be characterised as a “back to the future” approach to transactional analysis—that is, returning to its basic concepts [and, in doing so,] discovering new meanings or reaffirming old ones and applying these to a changing and postmodern world. Cornell’s (1988) critical review of life script theory, Schmid’s (1991) focus on the transactional creation of realities, and Allen and Allen’s work on postmodernism (1995) and constructivism (1997) have all been especially influential. It is in this tradition that we locate our work in developing a narrative of transactional analysis that reframes and updates familiar concepts.

The roots of co-creativity

Co-creativity derives principally from two theoretical strands: field theory (Lewin, 1952) and social constructivism (see Gergen, 1985).

Field theory is a general theoretical outlook that emphasises interrelationship. Drawing on the metaphor of an electrical or magnetic field, this holistic approach questions linear causality and suggests that events occur “as a function of the overall properties of the field taken as an interactive dynamic whole” (Parlett, 1991, p. 70). The implication of this approach is that:

when two people converse or engage with one another in some way, something comes into existence which is a product of neither of them exclusively … There is a shared field, a common communicative home, which is mutually constructed.

(p. 75)

This approach has been particularly developed in gestalt theory and therapy. By applying and developing this perspective in relation to transactional analysis, we are emphasising the transactional, the relational and the mutual in the therapeutic relationship.

From social constructivism we derive the perspective that our perceptual and phenomenological experience is an elaboration or construction based on hypothesised cognitive and affective operations—that is, there are many consensual realities, and we organise ourselves and our experiences through the stories or narratives we tell about “reality.” Within transactional analysis, Allen and Allen (1997) pointed out that since transactional analysts work with scripts they/[we] are familiar with this narrative view of realities. The principles of constructivism that are relevant to and that inform co-creative transactional analysis may be summarised as follows:

• Meaning constantly evolves through dialogue.
• Discourse creates systems (and not the other way around).
• Therapy is the co-creation, in dialogue, of new narratives, which provide new possibilities.
• The therapist is a participant-observer in this dialogue.

Allen and Allen (1997) summarised and compared the different emphases of constructionist and classical schools of transactional analysis with the following additional implications for co-creative transactional analysis:

• There is an emphasis on continuous self-creation and self-re-creation (in dialogic relationship).
• Ego states and transactions are elicited from meaning (rather than the other way around).
• Script is a story that, like transference, is co-created in an ongoing present process.

Co-creative transactional analysis: guiding principles

The principle of "we"ness

The therapeutic relationship (or relating) is more potent than the potency (or impotency) of the therapist or client alone. It provides a supportive theoretical framework that emphasises the “we”ness (Saner, 1989) of the therapeutic relationship as the medium for human development and change. It also emphasises the cultural context of both individual and field. This is significant given that more cultures in the world are “we” cultures than the individualistic and individualising “me” monocultures of northern and western Europe and non-indigenous North America. These latter cultures have given rise to much monocultural psychology and psychotherapy. For example, “we”ness has generally been discouraged within transactional analysis for fear of inviting symbiosis. The “we”ness of Adult–Adult relating, however, is very different from the “we”ness of Parent–Child, Parent–Parent, or Child–Child relating, all of which constitute transferential or, what we consider, co-transferential processes.

The principle of shared responsibility

Given its emphasis on meaning through dialogue and on multiple meanings and realities, co-creative transactional analysis supports the practical manifestation of interdependence, co-operation and mutuality within the therapeutic relationship by emphasising the shared client—therapist responsibility for the therapeutic process. This is in contrast to traditional transactional analysis, which emphasises the personal responsibility of the client. It also contrasts with more recent integrative transactional analysis approaches, which, in our opinion, tend to over-emphasise the responsibility of the therapist. While the therapist must take a leading role in the creation of therapeutic safety, our emphasis on shared responsibility is intended to provide a conceptual frame for acknowledging and exploring co-created experience.

Berne’s (1964/1968a) focus on the advantages of games suggests what, even in apparently negative exchanges, each party contributes to and gains from the relationship between them. The healing aspects of relationship—for example, potency, permission, protection, support, and challenge—are co-created and co-maintained by active contributions from both therapist and client. The therapist’s particular contribution is his or her skill in facilitating and using this shared responsibility to promote awareness and development. Shared responsibility is not, however, the same as equal responsibility. Efforts to divide responsibility into a 50:50 or a 60:40 split, for example, are reductionist attempts to define the phenomenon of relationship from an individualistic frame of reference.

The principle of present-centred development

Co-creative transactional analysis emphasises the importance of present-centred human development rather than past-centred child development. Essentially, we view psychotherapy as an Adult—Adult process of learning and healing. Although this process necessitates involvement in, and learning from, positive and negative transference as it is created in the relationship, the therapeutic focus is on supporting the client’s here-and-now developmental direction. This reduces the possibility of inappropriate infantilising of adult clients (and trainees), which can develop when growth is predominantly defined within a Parent—Child frame of reference.

Following Bruner’s (1986) division of knowledge of the world into the paradigmatic (traditional science and consensual reality) and the narrative (the realm of stories), Allen and Allen (1997) argued that while ego states, transactions and games fit easily into the paradigmatic mode, scripts are more compatible with—and, indeed, are—narrative:

The concepts of ego states and games fit with the modernist’s search for “essences.” They are conceptualised as “real” and basic … In contrast, at least certain understandings of script fit with the postmodernist position that meanings can emerge and disappear in the context of our interactions.

(p. 91)

Although we agree with this reformulation of script theory, we also accept the challenge of the “narrative turn” that philosophy and social science has taken in the last twenty years to deconstruct transactions, ego states and games in order to present a more complete picture of a constructivist, co-creative transactional analysis.

In this chapter we develop co-creative transactional analysis by first discussing the therapeutic relationship, co-created through transactions (or what we term co-creative reality), following which we address the other three main areas or foundations of transactional analysis: ego states (co-creative personality), scripts (co-creative identity), and games (co-creative confirmations).

The therapeutic relationship

It is now widely acknowledged in outcome research on psychotherapy that the therapeutic relationship is the determining factor in successful therapy; for example, Bergin and Lambert (1978), Luborsky, Crits-Christoph, Alexander, Margolis, and Cohen (1983) and Hill (1989) [see also Duncan, Miller, Wampold & Hubble, 2010]. In fact, the relationship is more important in counselling and psychotherapy than is the practitioner’s theoretical orientation—see Lambert (1992), Duncan and Moynihan (1994), Kahn (1997). Despite the fact that the therapeutic relationship is presupposed and “a sine qua non of effective therapy” (Stewart, 1996, p. 198), comparatively little has been written explicitly about the therapeutic relationship in transactional analysis—see Berne (1966, 1972/1975b), Barr (1987), Clarkson (1992b), and Erskine (1998b). Although there are differences between the three so-called traditional “schools” within transactional analysis, all describe the therapeutic relationship in terms of transference (see Tudor, 1999b). Erskine and Trautmann (1996), in particular, emphasise the relationship as central to the integrative approach to transactional analysis (viewed by some as a fourth school within transactional analysis). This approach draws heavily on self psychology and focuses on the importance of the therapist providing empathic attunement to the client. The role of the therapist as provider differs in emphasis from our conceptualisation of psychotherapy based on mutual relationship and shared responsibility.

In a seminal and extended article on the subject, drawing on Greenson’s (1967) original work in psychoanalysis, Gelso and Carter (1985) discussed three components of all therapeutic relationships: the working alliance, the transferential or “unreal” relationship, and the “real” relationship. In her model of five relationship modes, Barr (1987) identified a “developmentally needed” (p. 137) relationship. Clarkson (1990, 1995) adopted this and added a fifth component: the transpersonal relationship.

With regard to Gelso and Carter’s theorised therapeutic relationships, we agree with Barrett-Lennard’s (1985) response to their article:

No clear-cut grounds are given or evident for distinguishing elements that belong to the real relationship versus the working alliance. The problem may result from these two components being basically different in kind, the former having to do with strength and effectiveness of the relationship … and the latter referring to a main area of content of the relationship.

(p. 287)

Gelso and Carter and those who follow them, then, essentially confuse two forms of knowledge: one defining the content—and, we would add, process—of the relationship; the other evaluating a quality (strength, effectiveness) of the relationship. The working alliance is thus part of making and maintaining an Adult—Adult relationship, not a separate relationship in itself.

On the question of the developmentally needed relationship, it is perhaps significant that Barr (1987), in her brief description of this relationship mode, did not describe or diagram the relationship between client and therapist. We suggest that, in theory and practice, any developmentally needed or reparative transaction is based in a transferential relationship—that is, in some replay of the past in the present (e.g., an “I as I was—You as I would like you to have been” relationship). In our view, the Child developmentally needed relationship is a positive, idealised or idealising version of the transference relationship, whereas age-appropriate Adult developmental needs are a feature of present-centred relating.

Finally, we view Clarkson’s addition of the transpersonal as a quality—or moment—in the relationship rather than as a relationship in itself. Thus we consider the notion of a transpersonal relationship to be an over-extrapolation of occasional moments of transcendence that occur within the I—You relationship.

In our view, these three models are overcomplicated both theoretically and from a practical, clinical point of view. A transactional analysis model of therapeutic relationships needs to be based on the analysis of transactions in the therapeutic relationship: a co-creative transactional relationship.

Our simplified proposal is that there are essentially two ways of relating: present-centred Adult—Adult relating and past-centred co-transferential relating (see Figure 1.1). In addition, there are the stepping stones of “partial transferential transactions” by which we move between past- and present-centred relating.

Figure 1.1. Co-creative therapeutic relating.¹

The process of relating occurs when two or more people engage in a series of transactions. The double-headed arrows in Figure 1.1 represent the equal value we give to both forms of therapeutic relating and the movement between them. Both ways of relating can co-create metanarratives on the therapeutic relationship. However, while co-transference relating creates familiar transferential themes, Adult—Adult relating allows for fresh configurations and meanings to emerge.

This formulation has a number of advantages from a transactional perspective:

1. It names and emphasises the present-centred Adult—Adult therapeutic relationship.
2. It locates and equalises the partial transferential transactions (Past I–Present You and Present I–Past You) in that both client and therapist may be experiencing the past in the present or have what Rogers (1951) referred to as “transferential attitudes” (p. 199). This view suggests that either the therapist or the client ca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• FIGURES AND TABLES
• ABBREVIATIONS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE Co-creative transactional analysis
• CHAPTER TWO The neopsyche: the integrating Adult ego state
• CHAPTER THREE Response to "The neopsyche: the integrating Adult ego state", and rejoinder
• CHAPTER FOUR Dynamic ego states: the significance of non-conscious and unconscious patterns, as well as conscious patterns
• CHAPTER FIVE Response to "Dynamic ego states", and rejoinder
• CHAPTER SIX Empathy: a co-creative perspective
• CHAPTER SEVEN Response to "Empathy: a co-creative perspective", and rejoinder
• CHAPTER EIGHT Co-creative contributions
• CHAPTER NINE Response to "Co-creative contributions"
• CHAPTER TEN Implications, developments, and possibilities
• AFTERWORD
• AFTERWORD
• APPENDIX ONE Introducing co-creative transactional analysis
• APPENDIX TWO A co-creative "TA 101": notes on the syllabus
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES
• INDEX