Could TA be Spiritual

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Dear Brother John

Tony asked me to write something to explain to you why I think TAI (Transactional Analysis in Ireland) could be said to have a spiritual dimension.

The first thing that came into my head was an answer from the old catechism about why is the church called HOLY - the answer included something about 'being holy because of the number of its members who are holy'

Well, I would say something the same about TAI - there are five or six of its members with an openly spiritual attitude, and probably many more who are less up front about it, but would definitely be spiritual, even if not exactly religious.

But perhaps it would be more appropriate to tell you some of my own personal opinions and experiences and after that leave it to yourself to decide.

I don't know how much you already know about transactional analysis, but the quick definition I give to people is that TA is about what goes on inside people and between people.

In that sense, TA has a lot in common with Christianity - after all Psychology means learning about the psyche or soul, even if not all the learning goes beyond the human aspects.

TA is known as a humanistic psychology - by that I interpret that it is about part of the creation, not the whole and not necessarily about the Creator.

But the more I myself study TA, the more amazed I am at the gift of humanity and the more I would like it to achieve even that 'merely human' goal of awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy that Eric Berne named as the autonomy each person was made to strive for with all the strength of the PHYSIS energy they were born with.

I think that John the Baptist would be a good patron for TAI - we have a similar job to his - to prepare human hearts for God to come and take over.

Faith, conscious faith, is a gift from God, not given or not accepted by as many as seemingly in former days.

TA says in its statement of Philosophy:

Everyone is OK

Everyone can THINK

Everyone makes DECISIONS and these decisions can be changed.

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Everyone is OK seems to me to echo God saying that he looked at EVERYTHING he made and saw that it was good.

(In no way does it imply the everything people do is OK, on the contrary, I see it as a principle task in TA to hold those contradictory elements in balance - that we can be essentially good and horrifically-behaved at the same time.)

Everyone can THINK, I take to mean that awareness is possible for all of us if we want it, we just have to want it badly enough - which sometimes happens when our bad behaviour loses us what we treasure most in life, the regard of the people we love.

And that 'everyone makes decisions', means to me that we cannot let ourselves off the hook - EVERYONE regardless of their circumstances makes decisons, the word of HOPE is in that last bit - 'and these decisions can be CHANGED' Surely this is the most Christian part of it all - that no matter how stupidly we have behaved, we CAN change - ...

Maybe I am going on too much -

However, I have to say that I continually test everything in TA against my Christianity, and only rarely do I find things I disagree with.

For example, I do not find the concept of commitment through thick and thin there - but that doesn't surprise me - I only really understand that kind of unconditional love because I can think of God's commitment to me, 'regardless of my behaviour'.

Eric Berne was Jewish and not very religious. However, even he said one time that as a doctor he treats people, but it is God who cures them.

No way would I regard TA as a substitue for my faith, but it has surely been a great help to me.

Perhaps my favourite insight that I got from TA is the way it helps me have some inkling about the Blessed Trinity.

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TA refers to the three different ways a person expresses themself to the world:

in a parental way that they learned from the grown-ups who reared them;

in a child-way, as they once behaved when they were small;

and in an adult way, based on the reality of the current situation and what is appropriate for these specific circumstances.

To me, this is very like the way God expresses himself to me: -

Sometimes like the dearest Parent who loves and supports and chides me as I need it;

sometimes as my dearest brother whose delight is to be with the children of men and who plays with creation;

and sometime with the directness and energy of Love in action, exactly what is appropriate to this moment's need - what is usually called the Holy Spirit.

It is directly due to TA teaching that I have spent much time over the past twenty years trying to model my own ego-states on the Trinity, working on bringing some kind of harmony like theirs into the frequent chaos of mine. To me this is part of the command to love one another as he loved us.

Does this make transactional analysis a spiritual concept - I cannot say, I just know that where there is LOVE there is God, and I find a lot of love-situations in TAI.

Like that other psychologist Carl Jung said: Bidden or unbidden, God is there.

Hope I haven't confused you too much.

Love and Regards

Elizabeth

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