A SUMMARY OF TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
CONCEPTS I USE
By Fanita English
(From “How Did You Become a Transactional Analyst?“ Transactional Analysis Journal, Vol. 35 , #1 Jan 2005)
“How did you become a transactional analyst?” I am often asked that question when I tell people what I do. I answer that originally my training as a therapist was in Freudian psychoanalysis and included eight years of personal psychoanalysis. I practiced as such for l4 years, treating both children and adults. Increasingly, the process seemed overly ponderous, time consuming and therefore not cost effective for patients, but I could find no better techniques.
Then, in l965, I read Dr. Eric Berne’s (l961) "Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy” and soon after I took time off from my practice in Chicago to go to California to train with the late David Kupfer at the then recently founded Transactional Analysis Training Institute in Carmel. While there I also had many stimulating contacts with Berne and personally experienced what many, including myself, call the life-saving value of “TA”. On returning to Chicago I transformed my practice to Transactional Analysis, started doing workshops to teach this method, and have been a dedicated transactional analyst ever since, although nowadays, partially retired, I limit myself to conducting workshops in various countries.
