The Evolution of a Relational Paradigm in Transactional Analysis

What's the Relationship Got to Do With It?

Helena Hargaden, William F. Cornell, Helena Hargaden, William F. Cornell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367259280
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000691948
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this fascinating and robust volume, the editors have compiled a collection of articles that provides an account of their individual theoretical journeys as they trace the evolution of relational transactional analysis. They re-examine the term 'relational', offering the reader a multiplicity of ways in which to conceptualise the theory of transactional analysis from a truly pluralistic perspective.

This collection of 14 stunning articles from the Transactional Analytic Journal, written over a period of nearly three decades, traces the evolutionary process of a way of thinking that incorporates both theoretical innovations and advanced methodological ideas. Central to the themes of this book is a theoretical understanding of the bidirectionality of the relational unconscious, alongside a methodology that not always, but most often, demands a two-person methodology in which the therapist's subjectivity comes under scrutiny.

Uniquely useful as a research tool for psychotherapists interested in the most up to date psychological theories, this book offers a perspective on relational theory that is both respectful and critical. It will be of enormously useful to the trainee, the researcher, the clinician and the supervisor and will help inform the development of a clinical dialectical mind.

1

THE BILATERAL AND ONGOING NATURE OF GAMES

Jenni Hine

For a number of years I have been dissatisfied with some aspects of the way game theory and game analysis are described in transactional analysis. These concerns were highlighted by the keynote speech on “Game analysis and racket analysis” given by Marilyn Zalcman at the July 1986 EATA conference in Holland (Zalcman, 1987). The most serious concerns about game theory relate to its use by the unwary. By inviting the use of perjorative labels for games, the theory actually furthers games while pretending to offer a solution to a painful process. This misuse is inherent in the one-sided analysis proposed by Berne in Formula G (Berne, 1972) and in his theoretical game analysis: “The analysis is undertaken from the point of view of the one who is ‘it’,” that is, the person seen as responsible for starting the game (Berne, 1964, p. 47). The bilateral nature of games was implied when Berne spoke of games as “an on-going series of complementary ulterior transactions” (Berne, 1964, p. 44), an idea we give lip service to when we say, “It takes two to play a game.” However, as long as we continue to use this model to analyze only one of the participant’s motivations, and we use such a plethora of names for games, game theory will continue to provoke “Not-OK” labeling and much controversy about what is actually going on.

In the view of games presented here, new definitions of the concepts in Formula G are proposed along with diagrams which provide visual clarity and emphasize the bilateral, transactional nature of games and the cumulative effects of game playing. Such a presentation is needed if the game concept is to remain useful theoretically and therapeutically.

The general dynamics of game mechanisms, including an analysis of the intrapsychic components and how they relate to other TA concepts, together with related theoretical examples using role analysis, discount analysis, and racket system analysis, are discussed in the latter part of this article. Also covered are some of the dysfunctions that lead to the switch and make for the ongoing nature of games. However, specific games are not discussed, nor are the transactional ways of moving out of a game.

Games and their relationship to other TA concepts

Games have been analyzed by various authors in terms of different TA concepts. Each view has added useful insight into the complex phenomenon defined by Berne as a game.

1. The concept of ego states is the basis of the analysis of games originally proposed by Berne (1964) using transactions: Games are viewed as a series of manipulative transactions between ego states which are designed to reach a predictable payoff. The intrapsychic dynamics described in Berne’s theoretical, as opposed to transactional, game analysis are based on biological and libidinal needs as conceptualized in psychoanalytic theory, rather than on concepts specific to TA.
2. Role analysis is the basis for Karpman’s (1968) analysis of games using the Drama Triangle, with the switching of the roles of Rescuer, Persecutor, and Victim being a major feature.
3. Discount analysis, based on identifying an individual’s distortions of reality and his or her need to maintain a constant frame of reference, is highlighted in the Schiffian identification of games (Schiff et al., 1975). In this framework a game is initiated as each discount occurs, mostly in the form of a redefining transaction aimed at establishing one of the six specific roles on the Redefining Hexagon (Schiff et al., 1975, p. 67).
4. Rackets and the analysis of emotional experiences with their subsequent effects on behavior are the basis for the racketeering approach to games developed by English (1976). In this approach the payoffs and switches are a panic reaction to the possibility of losing the exchange of familiar racket strokes.
5. Script and the existential life position are the vehicle by which the Not-OK miniscript dynamic was developed by Kahler and Capers (1974). Driver behaviors stemming from counterscript messages, stoppers stemming from script injunctions, and payoffs are described as the elements of an ongoing process. Although not in itself a game, this nearly instantaneous sequence may describe what happens internally when a player is making a switch in the course of game playing.
6. Racket system analysis (Erskine & Zalcman, 1979) and interlocking racket systems, although not intended to be the analysis of game processes, describe well the intrapsychic processes which underlie the gimmick (a particular sensitivity) and which show the ongoing nature of the process due to the reinforcement factors and the cumulative effects they produce. Reinforcement is seen between past and present; between belief, behavior, and emotion; and between reality and fantasy.

The fact that so much thought has been put into the analysis of the intrapsychic and psychodynamic aspects of games reflects the importance of the phenomenon and its relevance for clinical work, whether acknowledged or not. In addition, the fact that there are so many aspects of games to consider has contributed to the difficulty in developing an overall conceptualization for this phenomenon.

Bilateral participation

It is important to keep the bilateral nature of games in mind at all times. Each party to a game is playing his or her own version, which is complementary to the version played by other participants.

Formula G gives a unilateral analysis of a game episode and is a fine tool for examining one player’s part, even though the player may be labeled Not OK in the process. Berne (1972) explains the formula as follows:

$$\text{C}+\text{G=R}\to \text{S}\to \text{X}\to \text{P}$$

C + G means that the con hooks into a gimmick, so that the respondent responds (R). The player then pulls the switch (S) and that is followed by a moment of confusion or crossup (X), after which both players collect their payoffs (P). Whatever fits into this formula is a game, and whatever does not fit it is not a game (Berne, 1972, p. 443).

The fact that Formula G is neither completely one-handed nor a true bilateral picture with mutual responsibility should, in a sense, imply two Formula Gs superimposed. The bilateral nature of games is better shown in Karpman’s Drama Triangle (1968), although even there showing each person’s moves is complicated. Nevertheless, Formula G does indicate how the intrapsychic motivations (the gimmicks) give rise to the ulterior stimuli in the transactions (the cons).

The newly proposed diagram for Formula G (Figure 1.1) shows the two-handed nature of a game, the interlocking of each player’s cons and gimmicks, and the buildup to the familiar climax of the switch, the crossup, and payoffs.

FIGURE 1.1 Formula G: game episode or segment

In this diagram players are represented separately, and their intrapsychic processes are highlighted with different patterns. The gimmicks are depicted as components of the intrapsychic experience of each player and so are the payoffs. Each stimulus is shown as a con whether labeled con, response, or switch. The darker inner line represents each person’s current experience of the game in which they are involved.

The important points to emphasize in relation to this diagram are:•

• every stimulus in a game is a con in that each person’s response to a con is not accidental, but another invitation to continue the game;
• each person is motivated by his or her own particular gimmick—depicted as buried in each player’s intrapsychic internal experience—which forwards the game he or she is playing;
• the switch can be initiated by either player;
• the crossup is a moment of surprise and heightened awareness that the other person is disappointingly “other” in a symbiotic sense;
• each time a switch and a crossup occurs, each person takes an intrapsychic payoff in the form of charges of negative, unresolved emotional energy of a non-problem-solving nature.

This game process is illustrated in Table 1.1 by two examples of a game episode involving players A and B.

TABLE 1.1 Case example: two game episodes by player A and B

Example Episode 1	Example Episode 2
Players	Players
A “I can’t find my ruler”	B “Where did you put your bag?”
B “Where did you leave it?”	A “I’m not sure”
A “I don’t know”	B “Maybe it’s in the car”
B Jumps up to look for it	A Makes no reply and continues to read
Possible Switches when B comes back with ruler: A “Who told you to go rummaging in my personal belongings?”	Possible Switches in Episode 2: A Rattles his newspaper and says “Are you ready?”
or Switch by B B “You really are a hopeless case”	or Switch by B B “Hurry up you slow coach”

To demonstrate the bilateral responsibility in a game, Episode 2 shows player B with a “helpful, bossy” type racket (English, 1976, p. 184) generating the first apparent stimulus, whereas in Episode l it was generated by player A with a “helpless, bratty” type racket (English, 1976, p. 182).

The con

In this conceptualization every stimulus in the game is a con, whether it is labeled con, response, or switch in Formula G. That is, a con is a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The bilateral and ongoing nature of games
• 2. Through the looking glass: explorations in transference and countertransference
• 3. An overview of the psychodynamic school of transactional analysis and its epistemological foundations
• 4. Therapeutic relatedness in transactional analysis: the truth of love or the love of truth
• 5. Reflections on transactional analysis in the context of contemporary relational approaches
• 6. There ain’t no cure for love: the psychotherapy of an erotic transference
• 7. Psychological function, relational needs, and transferential resolution: psychotherapy of an obsession
• 8. The man with no name: a response to Hargaden and Erskine
• 9. There ain’t no cure without sex: the provision of a “vital” base
• 10. The place of failure and rupture in psychotherapy
• 11. Traversing the fault lines Trauma and enactment
• 12. This edgy emotional landscape: a discussion of Stuthridge’s “Traversing 
the fault lines”
• 13. Are games, enactments, and reenactments similar? No, yes, it depends
• 14. The role of imagination in an analysis of unconscious relatedness
• Index