The Transactional Analyst in Action: Clinical Seminars

This book represents a synthesis of more than thirty years dedicated to the spreading and teaching of transactional analysis, and will be useful to students, directors and professors of the schools of transactional analysis, and also to therapists of other schools, providing an up-to-date and complete idea of the current state of the analytic transactional methodology. The handbook describes the epistemological and methodological roots for a well-grounded psychotherapy with transactional analysis (TA): differences among method, methodology, therapeutic plan, and strategy and technique are all illustrated. TA is presented as a phenomenological branch of modern relational psychoanalysis. Transference and counter-transference are reconsidered in a Bernean perspective. The four strategic phases of alliance, decontamination, deconfusion, and relearning are presented, together with the well-known techniques of the eight Bernean therapeutic operations, two and three-chairs work, redecision technique, and dream-work. The major transactional analysis schools of psychodynamic TA, integrative psychotherapy, and redecison school are summarized and compared. The author’s theory of unconscious communication and of ‘six steps’ for the first interview are introduced. Many clinical cases help the reader to assimilate the different concepts.

The topics are presented in a way to offer both students and psychotherapists an integrated version of what the current panorama of transactional techniques offers, in particular those of a psychodynamic orientation, but giving ample space to the redecisional techniques.