Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Transactional analysis anybody??

Let me first start with the a little fact file - The attached photo is that of Dr. Eric Berne. He was a Psychology professor and propounder of Transactional analysis.

I came across this term when reading my MBA courseware. Must tell, suddenly I am feeling great interest for Psychology. Psychology truly is a very interesting and intriguing subject.

I really marvel at the human brain and the free will God has given us. It’s wonderful how we can first think and then think and find out exactly what made us think as we thinked!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have always been a Math Geek, an engineer at heart. As such I thought that science and math’s are the "Real sciences". I thought that these are the only subjects that work on solid logical reasoning. 1+1 is always 2 be it today or a hundred years from now. Rate of change of momentum is directly proportional to the applied force and acts in the direction of the force applied, today, tomorrow or a hundred years later. But I might feel happy today, sad tomorrow and Jubilant 10 days later. I mean, this - feeling - thing is unpredictable.

I was charmed at my first encounter with Psychology. I was amused to know that the way I behave might have a logical reason as well. I read the transactional analysis theory proposed by Dr. Eric Berne. I fell in love with Psychology.

As per Eric, each person is made up of three alter ego states - Parent, child and adult. He then goes on to say how these alter ego states take shape. How they affect the way we respond to day to day situations. How and why - one Ego state is dominant at one time and the other at another time. I also read about "strokes". Stroke is the term we use for the type of acknowledgement we give to a person. Stroke can be positive, negative or don’t care. The concept of strokes is then combined with child, adult and parent theory to know how the various ego states interact with each other. He then goes one step ahead and tells when and exactly why communication go wrong and the way to avoid it. The icing on cake is the real life example he gives, which are eerily accurate.

It was wonderful to read a different stream of science. It was an eye opener. In fact now I feel that Psychology in its most basic form should be studied by everyone. It tells a lot about yourself, which if used properly can improve you into a better person....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. Profounder? What's a profounder?

2. You're a science student... do you KNOW what PHYSIOLOGY is?
I think you mean something else. Do cross-check before disrespecting my subject.

a traveller said...

Umm... As a graduate and soon-to-be postgraduate of Psychology, I do feel almost duty bound to point out that Sorry, TA has nothing to do with physiology.

I mean, I know I struggled with physiology a lot and absolutely hated the paper so maybe calling me an authority on this subject would be a stretch (ok, it'd be an absolute joke, but let's not go there).

Still, I did pretty decently in Counseling and while I may not be a fan of most ego-state theories given by various psychoanalytic bent-of-mind people who think they're so cool (I'm not from that school of thought - can you guess?), but I do like Berne's TA, and have read up a bit about it, and believe you me, physiology came nowhere close to it.

You think I'd like it if it did? Hah!

susheel said...

Hmm...Thank you. Was good to see some comments coming in, even if it is for controversial issues :-)

My spellchecker did me in :-( I did not mean PHYSIOLOGY, I meant Psychology. I know they are quite different(Its acknowledged and changes done...)

Well let me put my knowledge test, the response I got for the post is from Parent ego state. The reply I am giving above is from the adult ego state (or at lest that is what I think)

Traveller: Gr8 to know that you are a Psychology student. Please tell me if my observation were correct...

Anonymous: Its Propounder and not profounder, I mistyped.
Propounder by the way is the noun form of propound, which means To put forward for consideration; set forth.