At a glance
Transactional analysis looks at what happens between 2 people line by line, and at which part of you is speaking. It names the shifts you already feel in your voice and your stomach. Here is the model, and what changes once you can see your own part in it.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- The rehearsed conversation that never happens. Clients arrive having planned exactly what they will say, and then hear themselves using a tone they learned long before they could choose it.
- Helping as the only way to stay close. Clients tell me they step in before they are asked, and feel the resentment arrive days later, pointed at the person they helped.
- The relief of seeing the move. When clients can name their own part in an exchange, the question of who started it loses most of its grip.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why do I become a different person in some conversations?
Something in you changes position before you have chosen anything. You walk into your mother’s kitchen, or your manager’s office, and your voice drops half a tone. The words are yours. The posture arrived from somewhere older than this afternoon.
Transactional analysis describes 3 positions you move between, often inside a single sentence.
- Parent. The voice built out of the adults who raised and taught you. It instructs, warns, soothes and disapproves, and it uses phrases you did not invent.
- Adult. The part that can look at this room, this year, this person, and answer what is actually in front of you.
- Child. The part that felt things first and most strongly, before you had language for them. It still carries the delight, the dread and the wish to be allowed.
The capital letters matter. These are not your actual parents and not your actual childhood. They are positions, available to you at any age, and a good deal of the trouble between 2 people comes from which position each of them is speaking from rather than from the subject they think they are arguing about.
Why does the same exchange go wrong every time?
Most conversations that fail are not disagreements about the subject. They are 2 people speaking from positions that do not meet.
A line goes out from one position and is aimed at another. “Did you remember to call the landlord?” can be an Adult asking an Adult for a piece of information. It can also be a Parent checking up on a Child. The words are identical. What the other person hears is not in the words at all, it is in the position they feel themselves being put in.
So when a straightforward question comes back as “why are you always on at me”, the exchange has crossed. You spoke from one position and were answered from another, and now you are both dealing with the crossing rather than the landlord. This is where most couples lose an evening. It is also where repair is quickest, because the correction is small: go back, say the plain thing, and if you can, say which part of you said the first version.
What is the part of the sentence that never gets said?
Some exchanges run on 2 levels at once, and the level that decides the outcome is the quiet one.
On the surface the sentence is reasonable. “Are you going out like that?” Underneath it carries something else, and both people hear the underneath perfectly well, which is why the answer comes back sharp while the words stay polite. Transactional analysis calls these repeating 2-level exchanges games, which is a cold word for something nobody enjoys being inside. The name points at the ending: the exchange finishes with a familiar bad feeling, and the familiarity is the clue. If you can predict how you will feel at the end of an argument before it has started, you are probably in one.
It does not mean you are manipulating anyone. Most of this sits outside awareness and was learned at a time when it worked. What it does mean is that the straight version of the sentence has not been said, often because saying it would expose a wish you are not certain you are allowed to have.
Why do I keep ending up in the same role?
Patterns like these settle into roles, and a role repeated often enough starts to feel like character. You may notice that you are reliably the one who fixes things, or reliably the one who is let down, or reliably the one who becomes the villain for saying the obvious out loud.
Those 3 positions, the one who rescues, the one who suffers and the one who blames, rotate between people and inside one person, usually faster than anyone can follow. The person who steps in to help at 8 can be the one accusing at 9 and the one feeling hard done by at 10. I have written about that shape on its own, because it is worth recognising from the inside: the drama triangle.
What is worth holding on to here is that a role is not a personality. It is a position taken under pressure, and usually one that worked at some point for somebody. That is also why asking a partner to simply stop occupying theirs so rarely achieves anything.
Can I change any of this, and where would I start?
The change that holds is not a technique for the conversation, it is noticing the shift in yourself a second earlier than you did last time. The body tends to know first: a tightening somewhere, a readiness to speak before the other person has finished, a particular heat behind the eyes. That is the moment the position changes, and it is the only moment in which you have much choice.
- Catch the shift in your body. Before you work out who is right, notice where you went tight, and whether the voice about to come out of you is yours or inherited.
- Say the straight version. Replace the 2-level sentence with the plain one underneath it, which is usually a want or a fear, and is usually shorter.
- Ask rather than take up the position. One real question, asked out of curiosity instead of out of a verdict, uncrosses more exchanges than being right ever has.
- Describe the pattern, not the person. “This is the one where I start fixing and you start apologising” leaves a partner somewhere to stand. “You always do this” does not.
The research I have read on transactional analysis treatments pooled 41 clinical trials and reported moderate to large improvement overall, with changes in how clients used these positions, and in the relationship with the practitioner, among the things that predicted it.1 The authors describe their own analysis as exploratory and the trials differ in design, so it is better read as encouraging than as settled.
There are limits worth saying plainly. Watching your own position helps least where one person holds most of the power and has no intention of giving any of it up, and it is not the first thing to reach for where there is fear in the room rather than friction. A way of understanding conversation will also not carry a low mood that has lasted years, a grief that has not moved, or drinking that has quietly become how the evening is got through. Those ask for their own work, over longer, with someone who can stay with them.
If you recognise yourself here and want to look at your own version of it, you can book a session, or a free 30-minute call first to see whether it is the right fit.
Questions people ask
Do I need to learn the model before therapy is useful?
No, you can arrive knowing none of it and still get the benefit in the first session. Most people find the language useful only after they have felt the shift it describes.
Is this a talking therapy or a set of exercises?
It is a conversation, and the understanding comes out of the conversation rather than out of homework. Some people like having a map of the positions to look at between sessions, and others never want one.
Can this way of thinking be used with couples?
Yes, and couples often feel the relief sooner than individuals do, because both of you are looking at the same exchange at the same time. In my own work with couples I draw mainly on emotion-focused therapy for couples, which stays close to what each of you feels while the other is speaking.
How do I know whether this way of working suits me?
If you tend to understand things by seeing the shape of them, it will suit you. If you would rather stay with the feeling than name the pattern, say so early and the work can go that way instead.
Will I have to talk about my childhood?
Only as far as it explains something you are living with now. The positions you move between were learned somewhere, but the work stays with the conversations you are actually having.
If these ideas speak to you, psychotherapy is a place to try them out on your own life, with me alongside you.
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Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
