Chapter 28

TA THERAPY

Therapy is a process designed to help people in achieving personal

change. In this chapter, we look at the nature and techniques of therapy
in T A practice.

Self-therapy
If you have read this book and worked through the exercises, you have
already d o n e a great deal of self-therapy. You have examined the typical
patterns of your own behavior, feelings and thinking. To help understand
these, you have learned to use the many analytical devices that T A offers.
You have recognized the outdated Child strategies that you now realize
are not the most effective options for you as a grown-up, and you have
tested active ways of replacing these with new and more successful
options.
Some T A writers have given special attention to developing ways in
which T A can be used in self-therapy. Notable among these is Muriel
James. She won the Eric Berne Memorial Scientific Award for her work
on self-reparenting.' This is a system by which the person can build a 'new
Parent', providing positive new messages to overcome the negative,
restrictive messages that may have been given by the actual parents. It
employs a combination of techniques, including questionnaires, contract-
making, fantasy and visualization, and behavioral change assignments.
In a sense, all therapy is self-therapy. T A recognizes that everyone is
responsible for his own behavior, thoughts and feelings. Just as nobody
can make you feel, so nobody can make you change. I'he only person who
can change you is you.

Why therapy?
So, given that people are responsible for their own change, what is the
point of working with a therapist?
O n e way to answer this question is in terms of discounting and the
frame of reference. We all have some investment in blanking out aspects
of reality that would threaten the picture of the world we put together in
childhood. A n y time I get into script in adulthood, I will be discounting to
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defend my frame of reference. If I am to solve problems and change

effectively, I need to become aware of the aspects of reality I have been
discounting.
But that's where the catch comes. By the very fact that I am
discounting them, these features of reality are 'blind spots' for m e . I may
be able to detect and correct my discounting by rny own Adult effort.
T A ' s armory of analytical tools can help m e greatly in this.
However, there are likely to be some parts of my frame of reference
that I see in Child as being particularly important to my survival. These I
will defend with especial energy. I will do this outside of awareness, by
maintaining blind spots on any perceptions of reality that would confront
these crucial discounts. In order to change in these areas, I need input
from someone else who does not have the same blind spots.
Friends and family members are not likely to be the best source of
this input. Families typically have blind spots that all the m e m b e r s of the
family are brought u p to share. I am also likely to select my friends, and
my spouse or partner, because they have blind spots in common with my
own. O n e purpose of working with a therapist, or of joining a therapy
group, is that it gives me a source of feedback which is not subject to my
own blind spots.
If T go on to use this feedback and begin altering my frame of
reference, I am likely to begin feeling scared in Child. To see me through
the change, I may need support and protection. I may also benefit from
further confrontation as I employ all kinds of diverting tactics outside of
my awareness as ways of defending against change. I will find it easier to
make the change, and establish it as p e r m a n e n t , if I get strokes and
encouragement from others. All of these benefits I can get from working
with a therapist or group.

Who can benefit from therapy?

There's a T A saying: 'You don't need to be sick in order to get better.'
You do not have to be disabled, disadvantaged or disturbed to get benefit
from therapy. In fact, you do not even need to 'have problems'. You can
be a well-functioning, fulfilled person, and enter therapy simply to get
even more of what you want from life. Nobody is one hundred per cent
script-free, no matter how lucky they were with their parents. For most of
us, there are some areas of life where we have been setting up problems
for ourselves by getting into script. If so, we may find it worth the time,
money and commitment involved in going into therapy to resolve these
script issues.
This said, T A therapy may also be sought by anyone who is
experiencing personal problems, ranging from temporary relationship or
work difficulties to severe mental disturbance. Treatment of the more
serious disorders requires an appropriate setting, with psychiatric
support.
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Characteristics of TA therapy
If you decide to go into T A therapy, your first step is to find a qualified
therapist and contract to attend for a certain n u m b e r of sessions. These
may be individual consultations, or you may become a m e m b e r of a
group. T A was originated by Berne as a method of group therapy, and
most T A therapists still favor group treatment as the setting of choice.
In earlier chapters, you have already learned the main characteristics
of T A therapy. Let's review these.
T h e practice of therapy in T A is founded upon a coherent theoretical
framework, which you have learned in this book. You know that the main
building-blocks of this theory arc the ego-state model and the concept of
life-script.
Personal change is seen in terms of a decisional model. In Part IV,
you met T A ' s account of how each of us decides in childhood upon script
patterns of behaving, thinking and feeling. A premise of all T A therapy is
that that these early decisions can be changed.
Y o u learned in Chapter 26 how T A treatment is based on a
contractual method. The client and therapist take joint responsibility for
achieving contract goals. These goals are chosen to p r o m o t e movement
out of script and into autonomy, in the way described in Chapter 27.
T h e therapeutic relationship in T A rests on the assumption that
people are OK. T h e client and therapist are viewed as being on a level
with each other, neither one-up nor one-down.
Open communication is fostered. Therapist and client speak a
common language, using the simple words which you have met in this
book. T h e client is encouraged to learn about T A . Therapists will usually
ask their clients to attend introductory courses or read books on T A such
as this o n e . If the therapist takes case notes, these are open to the client's
inspection. In all these ways, the client is empowered to take an active
and informed part in the the treatment process.
A n additional feature of T A therapy is that it is oriented to change,
rather than simply to the achievement of insight. Certainly, T A lays stress
on understanding the nature and sources of problems. But this
understanding is never viewed as an end in itself. Instead, it is a tool to use
in the active process of change. The change itself consists in making a
decision to act differently, then going ahead and doing so.
With this orientation, T A practitioners have never attached value to
long-drawn-out therapy for its own sake. It's not expected that a client
must necessarily take months and years of on-going work to achieve
insight before he can change. B e r n e underlined this in a famous
recommendation to clients: ' G e t well first, and we'll analyze it later if you
still want t o . '
At the same time, T A is not solely a 'brief-therapy' approach. For
the resolution of some problems, a long-term relationship needs to be set
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up between client and therapist, and this also can be done within a T A
framework.

Three schools of TA
It's usual to distinguish three main 'schools' in present-day T A . E a c h of
these has its own distinctive theoretical emphasis and its preferred range
2
of therapeutic techniques.
Few individual T A therapists nowadays belong exclusively to any
one of these 'schools'. In fact, in order to gain professional accreditation,
the therapist must demonstrate the ability to draw freely on the thinking
and techniques of all three. T h e following 'thumbnail sketches' bring out
the central features of each school, deliberately making them seem more
sharply distinct than they really are.

The classical school

T h e classical school is so called because it follows most closely the
approach to treatment developed in T A ' s early days by B e r n e and his
associates. Classical practitioners use a whole range of analytical models
to facilitate Adult understanding and at the same time 'hook' Child
motivation. Y o u learned many of these devices in the earlier chapters of
this book: the D r a m a Triangle, the egogram, the stroking profile,
Options, etc.
Thus in the classical approach, the first step is for the client to
develop understanding of how he has been setting u p problems. H e then
contracts to make behavioral changes which will mark movements out of
his old scripty patterns and into autonomy. It is recognized that as the
client changes his behavior, he is likely also to begin feeling differently,
but encouragement to express feelings is not itself a central focus of
classical T A .
G r o u p treatment is strongly favored by the classical school. T h e
group process is viewed as centrally important. This means that the
client's interactions with other group m e m b e r s are assumed to be a re­
play of the problem which the client has brought to therapy, which in turn
is a re-play of problem situations left unresolved in childhood. T h e
therapist's role is to allow the group process to develop, then feed in
interventions which help the group m e m b e r s become aware of the games,
racketeering and other scripty patterns they have been exhibiting in their
relationships with other members and with the therapist.
In the view of the classical school, an important function of the
therapist is to give the client new Parental messages. Pat Crossman has
suggested 'three P's' that the therapist must provide in order to do this
effectively: permission, protection and potency}
In giving permission, the therapist gives the client messages that
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actively contradict injunctions or negative counterinjunctions in the

script. These may be delivered verbally, as for example: 'It's O K for you
to feel what you feel!' or 'Stop working so hard!' Permissions may also be
modeled by the therapist.
If he is to accept the therapist's permission, the client in Child must
perceive the therapist in Parent as being more powerful — having greater
potency — than the actual parent from whom the original negative
messages came. The client must also see the therapist as being able to
provide protection against the disastrous consequences he fears may
result from disobeying his parents' negative commands.

The redecision school

Bob and Mary Goulding arc the orginators of a therapeutic approach that
combines the theory of T A with the techniques of gestalt therapy,
developed by Frederick (Fritz) Perls. The Gouldings point out that early
decisions arc made from a feeling rather than a thinking position.
Therefore, in order to move out of script, the person must re-contact the
Child feelings he experienced at the time of the early decision, finish the
business by expressing those feelings, and change the early decision for a
new and more appropriate redecision. This may be accomplished through
fantasy or dreamwork, or by 'early scene work', in which the client tracks
back in recollection to an early traumatic scene and re-experiences it.
Bob and Mary Goulding follow Perls in believing that when someone
is 'stuck' with a problem, this indicates that two parts of their personality
are pushing in opposite directions with equal force. The net result is that
the person is using a great deal of energy, but getting nowhere. This
situation is called an impasse. The Gouldings elaborated Perls' theory by
picturing impasses as occurring between different ego-states. In therapy,
impasse resolution is usually carried out using the gestalt technique
known as 'two-chair work'. The client imagines the conflicting parts of
himself in different chairs, "becomes' each part in turn, and carries on a
dialogue with the object of resolving the conflict. During this process,
suppressed Child feelings may often be brought to the surface.
Even more than T A practitioners generally, redecision therapists
emphasize personal responsibility. Tn redecision work, the therapeutic
contract is not viewed as a two-sided agreement between client and
therapist; it is a commitment made by the client to himself, with the
therapist as witness. T h e therapist does not 'give the client permissions'.
T h e client takes permission to behave and feel in new ways, with the
therapist acting as a positive model. Likewise, potency is seen as a
resource which the client already has, rather than being provided by the
therapist.
Redecision therapists frequently work with groups, but they do not
focus on group process. Instead, therapy is done one-to-one, with the rest
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of the group acting as witnesses and providing positive strokes to

encourage and reinforce change.
While the expression of feeling is central to redecision work,
therapists in this school stress that it is also important for the client to
understand what is going on. Typically, the feeling work will be followed
immediately by an 'Adult de-brief. Equally important is for the client to
m a k e a contract for behavioral change to practice and consolidate his new
decisions.

The Cathexis school

In Part V , we met the important contributions to T A theory m a d e by the
Cathexis school. T h e Schiffs originally founded the Cathexis Institute as a
center for the treatment of psychotic clients. They used an approach
which they called reparenting. It is based on the premise that 'craziness' is
the result of destructive, inconsistent Parental messages. In treatment,
the client is encouraged to regress to early infancy. In so doing, he
decathects his 'crazy Parent' ego-state, i.e. withdraws all energy from it.
H e is then literally given the chance to re-do his growing u p , this time with
the therapist providing positive and consistent Parent input. Luckily, this
second time of growing up proceeds much more quickly than the first time
around. Even so, reparenting means that the fully-grown 'infant' will be
heavily dependent for some time on his new 'mother' and 'father'. This
style of treatment, then, requires a secure setting and a high degree of
commitment on the part of the therapist, as well as psychiatric back-up.
In the early days of Cathexis, the Schiffs legally adopted their 'children',
so that there is now a widespread 'Schiff family'. A m o n g them are
counted some of the most respected theorists, therapists and teachers in
present-day T A .
Schiffian method has also proven effective in therapy with non-
psychotic clients. T h e emphasis here is on the consistent confronting of
discounts and redefinitions. Instead of being passive, people are urged to
think and act in order to solve problems. T h e intense therapeutic
commitment of reparenting is not appropriate in work with non-psychotic
clients. However, the Schiffian therapist may enter into a parenting
contract with such clients. The therapist contracts to b e consistently
available to the client, within specified time boundaries, and serve as a
'replacement parent', giving the client new and positive Parental
definitions in place of the restrictive messages that may have been
received from the actual parents.
When Schiffian therapy is done in groups, the group is seen as
providing a reactive environment. This means that all the m e m b e r s of the
group, including the therapist, are expected to respond actively to the
actions of other members. If you do something in the group that I don't
like, I am expected to tell you: T don't like what you just did. I want you
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