about Transactional Analysis

What is TA?
Who was Eric Berne?
A history of TA in New Zealand
Why study Transactional Anaysis
TA training in New Zealand

What is TA?

TA or Transactional Analysis, to use its full name, is the brainchild of Eric Berne MD (1910-1970) and some of his colleagues and followers. Eric called himself a social psychiatrist. His focus was on how people behaved and interacted with each other. What people exchanged when interacting he called transactions. Some transactions build people up, contribute to living and enable healthy community. Some, drag people down, spoil life and lead to unhealthy relations. The discipline he developed for analysing transactions he called Transactional Analysis, TA.

To develop this discipline of understanding what was going on between people Berne had to consider what was going on inside each person taking part. Out of his background of training in psychoanalysis Eric worked on the notion of the ego. From his observations of his patients he concluded each person has consistent sets, patterns or states of his or her ego which they tend to use regularly in similar situations or with similar sorts of people.

So he developed a model for understanding human  personality based on three broad categories of states of the ego, Parent, Adult and Child Ego States. People interact with each other from their own particular style of one or other of these three ego states, shifting between them according to the outside situation and what is going on inside them.

Transactions take place within the context of time. Berne included the time factor in his analysis. He identified several types of short term sequences of transactions people engaged in with each other without being fully conscious of the seemingly predictable outcome which ended up with the players experiencing various degrees of hurt. These short sequences he called Games. These games fit into a long term life style he called a Script. In childhood each person begins to shape the life script he or she will live out without being aware of the impact of what they are doing. It is the script which is the major influence on the sorts of transactions people engage in when they interact with each other.

So TA is a theory of personality and social interpersonal relations which may be used in situations of mutual consent for personal growth and change and social development.

A full introduction to the foundational theory of TA is offered in any course described as being a TA101 which is a worldwide standard course by internationally approved teachers. Or in the current edition of the book by Ian Steward and Vann Joines, TA Today A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis, Lifespace Publishing, Nottingham, UK or Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.

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Who Was Eric Berne?

Born Eric Lennard Bernstein in 1910, in Montreal, Canada, he was the only son of Jewish parents. His father was a GP, his mother a writer. At 9, his beloved father died; and Lenny grew up a brilliant but awkward teenager. He qualified in medicine in 1935, but facing job discrimination he changed his name and moved to New York to train in psychiatry. During the War, he served as an Army psychiatrist, and began running therapy groups.

He spent 6 years training to be a Freudian psychoanalyst, and wrote an excellent book in 1947, The Mind in Action, which he later revised and re-published as A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. From the start he was concerned to “de-mystify” the field of psychiatry. He started to write professional articles based on his own observations, beginning with a series on Intuition and Ego States. But when he applied for membership of the Psychoanalytic Institute in 1956 he was considered too unorthodox.

From then on, he developed his own approach to Group Therapy, based on observing transactions. He moved to San Francisco and set up regular clinical seminars for practitioners, where passionate discussion of theory took place. This led to his book, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, in 1961. But it was Games People Play in 1964 which really made him famous, and led to the mass popularity of TA in the 70s.

In all, Berne wrote eight books, edited the TA Bulletin for 8 years, and co-founded the International TA Association, before his heavy schedule of work led to the heart attack that killed him prematurely in 1970. His followers set up the Transactional Analysis Journal and the annual Eric Berne Memorial Scientific Awards, to maintain the new impetus, and a steady stream of writers have continued the development of TA thinking.

Today, TA continues as a growing worldwide movement, with its largest membership now in the European Association, and strong growth around the Pacific Rim. 

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A History of TA in New Zealand

TA was first taught by Dr Ian MacDougall in Wellington in the mid-late 1970s. Ian was supported by Ken Mellor from Melbourne and by the early 1980s he had students, including Peter Reid, Margie Barr-Brown and Gordon Hewitt, passing their clinical membership examinations in the International Transactional Analysis Association, ITAA. As a result of these achievements and his own studies Ian became New Zealand’s first full teaching member of the ITAA. At the invitation of several strongly interested people in Christchurch, including Charlotte Daellenbach, Paul Morreau and Helen Campbell, Ian made regular trips to that city and nurtured a group of students through to their clinical membership. Ian is now retired from TA activity but has left a legacy of strong centres of TA training and interest in Wellington and Christchurch.

Evan Sherrard returned to Auckland from the USA as a provisional teaching member of the ITAA in 1976 and began teaching TA101 courses there and in other provincial centres and cities as far as Christchurch and Dunedin. As part of his work in Presbyterian Social Services he ran 202 training groups over several years. That agency sponsored the visit to New Zealand of many overseas leaders in TA, including Bob and Mary Goulding, Ken Mellor, George Thomson, Marge Reddington, Muriel James and others. Evan was the founding teacher in the AUT programme of psychotherapy and two years of TA teaching was included as an option for students in that course of study.

Improving standards for completion of requirements for Teaching Membership in ITAA made it increasingly difficult for New Zealanders to finish. Ken Mellor was no longer providing advanced leadership in TA and the prospective teachers in New Zealand, Evan in Auckland, Charlotte in Christchurch and Gordon and Peter in Wellington were on their own. Robin Maslen from Adelaide, a senior teaching member of ITAA, recognised their need and generously made several trips to New Zealand to help them complete their requirements. In 1989 Charlotte Daellenbach of the Christchurch Training Institute made it possible for them to meet many of these requirements by arranging a week-long residential TA training workshop in which all the TA Provisional Teaching Members of the ITAA in New Zealand were able to practise under Robin Maslen’s supervision.

These residential training events are still held in November every second year. They are held at lovely locations such as Pudding Hill, Sumner, Hanmer Springs, and Wainui Heights in the Akaroa Harbour and Tatum Park. These and other training programmes and conferences have resulted in a growing community of enthusiastic trainees and successful graduates who are Certified Transactional Analyst members of the ITAA. In 1991, under Peter Reid’s leadership this community was formally incorporated as the New Zealand Transactional Analysis Association. Since then many New Zealand members of NZTAA have contributed as office-bearers in ITAA, including Gordon Hewitt, Charlotte Daellenbach, Sean Manning and Geraldine Lakeland.

Working in cooperation with Australian trainers we have held combined Australia-New Zealand TA conferences in each alternate year, usually around November, in a different city of one or other country.  In 1992 Auckland hosted an international ITAA conference and Sydney hosted one in 2001. Australasia has been fortunate with our regional and international conferences because they have brought many of the world’s significant leaders in TA as guest speakers and workshop leaders to enrich us; leaders such as Richard Erskine, Marilyn Zalcman, Vince Gilpin, Helena Hargaden, Keith Tudor and Charlotte Sills.  Moves are now afoot to develop a stronger regional structure for the administration of TA in Australia and NZ.

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Why study Transactional Analysis?

TA provides a clear and simple outline of human personality and interaction, based on down-to-earth observation. The basic concepts can be shown in diagrams and described in plain language, understood even by children. Therefore it can provide a “common language” between counsellor and client, or members of a group or family or organisation, to discuss their patterns of behaviour. It is being used in many different cultures world-wide.

The core philosophy of “I’m OK, you’re OK,” affirms the value of each human being, and provides a key ethical standard for relationships, in non-sectarian language. TA has a holistic approach to relationships, applying to cognition (script beliefs), behaviour, emotion and spirituality (physis). It enables communication patterns to be analysed in detail in any system, both within and between individuals. It insists that everyone learn to think clearly.

As well as simple basics, TA theory provides depth in a comprehensive range of applications, from couple work to classrooms to corporate management. For keen students, there are international exams to become a Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA) in Counselling, Psychotherapy, Education or Organisational Work. You may even go further and become internationally accredited as a Teacher and Supervisor (TSTA). Added to all of this are regular Training events and Conferences, where trainees soon make an international network of friends.

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TA training in New Zealand

There are TA training centres in all four main cities of New Zealand. They are connected by strong cooperative personal links, and very loose formal structures. Together they consider themselves forming the New Zealand Transactional Analysis Training Institute, which has its different centres of activity or campuses in the four main centres, each having its own formal legal entity. Under this banner the centres work collectively to interface with bodies such as the New Zealand Educational Qualifications Authority.

The New Zealand Transactional Analysis Training Institute has elected to follow the training procedures and standards set and administered by the Training and Certification Council of Transactional Analysis as contained in the Training and Certification Manual. This Council is an independent body closely associated to the International Transactional Analysis Association. This T&C Council sets the standards and administers the examination process for certified membership recognised by the ITAA. Exams are held in New Zealand. All the New Zealand trainers are members of the ITAA and are accountable to it to follow the code of ethics and complaints procedures of that organisation.
Note: anyone may teach TA; however, only students training with a certified Teaching or Provisional Teaching members of the ITAA, EATA, or WPATA can have their training credited by the T&C Council if they wish to advance to an internationally recognised certified membership.

TA is applied in four fields: psychotherapy, counselling, organisations and education. Certification is specific to one of these fields. Trainees need to identify which of the four fields they are preparing to qualify in. Training offers generic theory and practice of TA applicable to all fields and goes on with training in the specific field of the trainee’s interest. Trainers are limited, with special exceptions, to train others only in the field in which they are certified.

The attainment of a CTA (Certified Transactional Analyst) level of membership in ITAA or EATA (European Association of Transactional Analysis) is recognised by some internationally reputable Universities as the equivalent of a Masters level of academic achievement. One such is Middlesex University of Great Britain which offers an MSc degree to qualifying TA trainees who enrol for a prescribed but flexible course of extramural study taken in New Zealand leading to CTA membership in the ITAA. This programme is being arranged by the Wellington TA Training Centre.

Auckland: training is arranged by The Auckland Transactional Analysis Training Institute, ATATI, for details contact us. Principal Trainers: Evan Sherrard, Margaret Bowater and Janet Redmond all three accredited by ITAA. We also have two organisational consultants accredited in the use of TA, Anne Tucker in Auckland and Amanda Lacy in the Bay of Plenty.

Various training courses are offered by our trainers through different agencies in Auckland:

(i) Through her private company EPRATA, Janet Redmond offers Stage 1 TA (100 hours), a foundational course for intending trainees; and Stage 2 TA (100 hours) to complete a thorough Introduction to the major concepts of TA. Each group meets normally for 2 days a month. Further information from janetredmond@gmail.com.

(ii) The Human Development and Training Institute of NZ, based in Remuera, offers a highly-regarded Diploma in Counselling and Family Therapy, which includes 150 hours of TA training, beginning with a short TA 101. Counsellors from other programmes may enrol for the TA courses where there are vacancies. Enquire info@hdandtinstitute.co.nz.

(iii) Auckland University of Technology offers a semester course expanding on the TA 101 as an option at Level 7 in the Bachelor of Health Science, open to trainees in the health professions.

In addition to the formal courses above, ATATI organises a monthly programme of TA Interest Seminars on the 3rd Monday evening of the month at St Luke’s Community Centre, 130 Remuera Rd, where TA practitioners in many fields present aspects of their work for discussion. Open entry, $20 at the door. Enquiries to Margaret Bowater on mbowater@clear.net.nz.


Wellington: training is arranged by Gordon Hewitt and Geraldine Lakeland.

Christchurch: training is arranged by Charlotte Daellenbach.

Dunedin: training is arranged by Sean Manning.

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