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Contextual Transactional Analysis: The Inseparability of Self and World

Author(s) : James M. Sedgwick

Reviews and Endorsements

'James Sedgwick's updating of TA, and incidentally much related psychotherapy besides, is a timely, necessary, very well-informed, well-written and welcome book. The author successfully transcends the traps of therapy-as-usual and throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater. The psychotherapy field has long paid lip service to the importance of socio-political contexts but Sedgwick attempts to go further by subtle analyses and critical thinking to expose the nature of "horizontal suffering". Whether you share his political analysis or not, Sedgwick potentially offers a seriously game-changing view of therapy in a world that is much more complex and challenging than the first and second waves of theorists of therapy faced. His book deserves a wide readership in the therapy professions.' - Colin Feltham, Emeritus Professor of Critical Counselling Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.


The main thesis of this book is that certain forms of psychological distress are best addressed through fostering appropriate conditions for greater social and political awareness and identity formation. In presenting this thesis, the author makes a compelling case for a contemporary transactional analysis (TA) that accounts much more for the context of life. In doing so, Sedgwick both acknowledges those authors in TA who have previously argued about the significance of experiences and concepts such as alienation and oppression, and offers his own critical analysis of TA - one that is informed by sociology, historical materialism and class politics, as well as a close reading of some 60 years of TA theory. This is a well-researched and well-informed book that presents complex ideas in accessible and often novel ways, illustrated with clear examples from clinical therapeutic practice. I congratulate Sedgwick on this tour de force and his contribution to what could - and should - be considered to be (to paraphrase a metaphor used by the author) a "good-enough transactional analysis" for the 21st century. - Keith Tudor, Professor of Psychotherapy, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand; Editor of Psychotherapy and Politics. International