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Radical-Relational Perspectives in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy: Oppression, Alienation, Reclamation

Author(s) : Karen Minikin

Reviews and Endorsements

In this work Minikin moves fluidly from the macro to the micro, from the street to the clinic, from the individual to the State. She sets about politicising Transactional Analytic practice and thinking, and at the same time brings Transactional Analytic ideas to throw light on human lives as they are lived in socio-political zones of strife and conflict. Personal anecdote and case illustration helpfully leaven and lighten the work, making it a very accessible read.
Farhad Dalal, Psychotherapist, Group Analyst and Author of CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami

This book outlines the threads of journeying to freedom and liberation from societal and internalised oppression in relationships between therapists and clients. Readers are encouraged to consider next steps after awareness and recognise other dimensions than traditional thinking. Interspersed with reflective case examples that process and influence the therapist’s attitude and values, the author examines privileged systems that therapists may be working within and the development of identity as a socio-political approach. A book packed with insights and reasoning to support compassion and the therapist’s self-reflection as key elements of relational approaches and a tool for reforming alienation. An essential reader that outlines development of a radical approach to decolonising psychotherapy.
Dr Isha McKenzie-Mavinga, Psychotherapist, Author, Lecturer

Karen Minikin elegantly re-visions and revitalises the theory and practice of transactional analysis as she takes up the concept of alienation as defined by Steiner et al in 1975, and explores it as the chief source of stress, distress and trauma in society - with connectedness in relationship as the source of liberation. She explores alienation from every angle, from the personal, developmental and the inter and transgenerational to the social, political, economic and environmental. The book is extremely well researched and includes rich quotes and references to others working in the field - poets, philosophers, writers and of course psychotherapists. But at no time does the academic richness become oppressive. Minikin takes the reader on a journey – a deeply personal, moving, challenging journey that demonstrates how this concept of alienation is at the heart of the inequalities in the world’s political, economic, social and cultural systems. Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about the book is how Minikin avoids oppression in her writing. She never tells us what to think; she simply tells us what she thinks, how she thinks and how and why she has come to think what she thinks. Then we are left to think for ourselves. When you have read the book you will know how wonderfully important that is!
Professor Charlotte Sills, Ashridge Business School and Metanoia Institute

In this book, Karen Minikin brings together two approaches in transactional analysis (TA) – radical psychiatry and relational TA – in a most creative way. Informed by history, geography, anthropology, developmental psychology, and, of course, psychotherapy, the author considers and develops various aspects of theory of both radical psychiatry and relational TA, illustrating them from her own experience as a woman of dual heritage, including personal encounters, and through dialogues with other Black and Asian colleagues, as well as by means of clinical vignettes and case studies. Maintaining a centrality of focus on alienation and oppression, the author offers a psychopolitical text that invites – indeed, challenges – the reader to pay attention to the relationship between the personal in the political/social world and the political in the personal and intrapsychic world. This is work of breadth and depth that deals with complexity and intersectionality in a straightforward and accessible way – and which, ultimately, provides hope for the future. I will be reading this again and again, and highly recommend it.
Professor Keith Tudor, Auckland University of Technology