Transactional Analysis
&
Ego States
•Transactional Analysis was
developed by psychotherapist
Dr Eric Berne who evolved his
theories as he observed
behavioural
exchanges
between his clients.
He noticed that the same individual appeared to
show different aspects of themselves depending on
the behaviour of the other person (words, tone of
voice, non–verbal reaction) they were reacting to.
He observed people changing their behaviour
(unconsciously) to manipulate others into responding
in certain (sometimes destructive) ways. These he
labelled ‘games’.
“Transactional Analysis is a system of
psychology for understanding human
behaviour, changing human behaviour
and predicting human behaviour.”
Eric Berne
According to transactional analysis, the building blocks of our
personality are ego states. The term 'ego state' means a state
of the 'ego' or '1'. Thus, the 'I’ is central. A person is in a
particular ego state at a particular moment and may be in
another ego state a moment later.
An ego state is a holistic set of consistent and coherent
patterns of being, deciding, thinking, feeling and behaving,
which can be experienced internally, and expressed externally
by an individual.
An ego state is a way in which we think, feel and
behave, making up our personality at a given
time.
These states are thinking and feeling as a:
 Parent
 Adult
 Child
According to transactional analysis, our personality is
made up of basically three ego states - the Parent Ego
State, the Adult Ego Sate and the Child Ego State.
Each of the ego states has its sub-dimensions as well.
The TA model of personality can be depicted
diagrammatically by three circles stacked on top of
each other and inscribed with the letters P, A, C inside
the respective circles.
An ego state is basically something that we think
and feel at a given point of time and is reflected
in how we relate to ourselves and to other
people. With a little bit of effort, we can observe
ourselves behaving from a particular ego state.
Ego states are experiential and observable
elements of our personality
The parent ego state is that part of the personality which
has been borrowed from our parents or from those who
took their place, and from parental and authoritarian
figures in our daily lives. All of us, in childhood, absorb the
personalities of others into our own. Usually without being
conscious of it, we pick up other people's postures,
gestures, habits, ideas and expressions.
The Parent Ego State
(P)
This collection of attitudes, feelings, and behaviours copied from
any and all significant Resources parent figures becomes the
parent ego state. We record their ways of seeing and doing things
in our brains and later in life they become almost automatic
responses. When in parent ego state, we literally behave the way
our parents behaved. The parent ego state is expressed outwardly
in either of two ways:
• Critical or
• Nurturing Behaviours and Attitudes.
Critical Parent
The critical parent ego state is about blaming others and
giving unconstructive criticism. It does not listen, is not
interested in explanation and is extremely judgemental. The
critical parent-will write you off as a person rather than deal
with your behaviour. Thus; as a teacher when you see a
student talking in class distracting himself and you, you call
him a nuisance. This is not dealing with the behaviour, but is
labelling the student. When you do that you are behaving
from the critical parent ego state.
Nurturing Parent
The nurturing parent ego state is primarily concerned
with looking after, nurturing and comforting people. It
is rooted in understanding and tries to make people
feel good about themselves by instilling confidence. It
encourages others to go on and is full of appreciation
for people and their positive behaviours.
Thus, when you congratulate a student on
his/her winning an elocution contest, you are
in your nurturing parent role.
The nurturing parent supports life, growth,
and self expression. It empowers a person to
be a winner.
The Adult Ego State
The Adult ego state behaviors are about collecting, analyzing and
evaluating information and making sense and balanced judgments
about things.
The adult ego state deals with facts and not feelings and emotions. It
responds to the feelings and emotions of its natural child ego state
and the opinion and beliefs of the parent ego state, by thinking
before speaking.
The Adult ego state is about trying to understand why it is that we
respond or behave in a particular way and make a conscious choice.
The Adult Ego State emerges around
six months in the child and is
concerned primarily with appraising
facts, reasoning, thinking, evaluating
and responding to available data.
The typical adult behaviours are being calm, rational,
analytical, unemotional, logical and reasonable. The typical
words used are Why? When? Where? What? How? Who?
Does it make sense? Is it accurate and so on. It checks on
reality before making conclusions and responses.
One can make a distinction between two aspects of the
Adult ego state:
• Photographic Adult and
• Combining Adult.
Photographic Adult @’A)
The Photographic Adult (PA) is the ego-state that senses
information and records it for later use. Unlike the Parent
and Child, it is objective in its functioning, remembering
information as is, without adding its interpretation to the
information.
Thus, when you tell your student that helshe scored the
highest in Maths last year, you are in your photographic
Adult ego state.
Combining Adult (CA)
It is a manifestation of Combining, adult when one of your teachers
tells you that in the forthcoming Board Examinations, the school is
likely to get some sixty percent distinctions alone. Her prediction is
based on her observation of how the present batch of students has
been doing.
The combining adult is that part of the personality which makes
calculations using data that come from the photographic adult and
what is stored in one's memory. It calculates probabilities, makes
predictions and does most of the reasoning.
The Child Ego
State (C)
The Child ego state is the repository of feelings and
emotions. Everyone carries within their brain and nervous
system permanent recordings of the way they experienced
the world, the way they felt about the world and adapted to
it. It is as if our mental tape record is recording events on
the one track (parent) and the feelings associated with
those events on another track (child).
In other words, the Child ego state is the recording of
internal events or the responses of the little person to what
helshe sees and hears. This recording takes place
simultaneously with the recording of the external events
from the Parent ego state.
It is the recording of joy, surprise, amazement and all the
wonderful feelings associated with our first discoveries of
life on the one hand and terror, agony and all the fearful
feelings which we experience on the other.
People who spend a lot of time
operating from a child ego state
usually are acting as they did
when they were a child.
There are many things that can happen to us today as
adults which recreate the situation of childhood; when this
happens, we say that our Child ego state has taken over.
The Child ego state develops into four discernible parts;




the Natural Child,
the Compliant Child,
the Rebellious Child and
the Little Professor.
Natural Child (NC)
The natural child behaviours are those which reflect a
person's needs and wants in-an open, honest and nonmanipulative way. The natural child expresses itself
spontaneously without concern about others. It is energetic,
feeling, loving, uninhibited and loves fun. It feels free and
does what it wants. In it are found genetic recordings of all
our primary urges.
Adapted Child (AC)
The adapted child is that part of the child that exhibits a
modification of the natural child's inclinations. These
adaptations occur in response to traumatic experiences,
training and demands from significant authority figures.
Adaptations may occur in two ways: submissive or
compliant child, and rebellious child.
The child ego can be natural, adaptive and rebellious.
• The natural child is sensuous, impulsive,
affectionate, and does things that come naturally.
• An adaptive child is one, who is trained and
instructed by parents to behave in a manner taught
by them
• The rebellious child is one who is not allowed to
open up and experiences anger, fear, and
frustration.
Adapting to the demands of my parents
or parental figures, behaving, thinking
and feeling in ways that were imprinted
on us as a child, I am said to be in
Adapted Child.(defiant, helpless)
The Adapted Child ego state represents human
response which has some negativity in it, some
resistance, some reaction and some deeper hostility.
A disobedient child, a rebellious teenager and a
person with a personality disorder may be said to be
“in the Adapted Child ego state.”
Without
parental
pressures
or
demands, and acting as we wanted to
without influence, like simply playing or
making a sand castle and losing
ourselves in our own world, we are said
to be in Free Child.
Little Professor Ego State –
The “Adult-in-the-Child”, aka the Little Professor, is
that smart, intuitive, creative and manipulative part of
us that helps the Adapted Child learn how to get what
it needs. When we grow up in a less-than-nurturing
family the Little Professor is the neural network that
works behind the scenes to gather and store data
about what works and what doesn’t work.
• Transactions occur when the ego states of two people
interact. The transaction can be verbal or non-verbal.
• One person initiates the communication (the stimulus)
and the other replies (the response).
• Transactional Analysis comes to life when we note which
ego states were responsible for our interactions because
we can then understand why things go great or why they
fail.
https://mcpt.co.uk/transactional-analysis-and-ego-states/
https://www.counsellingconnection.com/index.php/2009/06/22/an-introduction-to-ego-states/
https://serenitycreationsonline.com/psychological_defense_mechanisms.html
https://rediscoveryofme.com/transactional-analysis/