TAJ July 2007 Abstracts

Transactional analysis often regards the experience of "feeling stuck" as the manifestation of an impasse, an intrapsychic conflict and/or interpersonal roadblock. This paper provides a developmental perspective on impasses. It examines the relationship between the individual experience of stuckness and the contemporary social context, and it discusses whether and how such experiences might present opportunities for developing new capacities and meanings of the self.

The Health System: Metaphor and Meaning
Trudi Newton
pp. 195-205

The conceptual basis of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003) is a starting point for considering the relationship between familiar transactional analysis models and the avowed transactional analysis philosophy of "I'm OK, You're OK" (and "They're OK"). Identifying some of the incongruities embedded in transactional analysis language and diagrams offers an opportunity for a fresh perspective that integrates some less well-known transactional analysis ideas, many of which were developed by educational and organizational practitioners. A new systemic model is described that focuses on the contribution transactional analysis can make to describing and enabling an understanding of what is involved in a healthy developmental process, including growth, learning, thriving, and emotional literacy. This model is derived from an idea developed by Hewson (1990), and it identifies concepts from early and more recent transactional analysis literature that image the supporting of healthy development. It includes preventive and restorative cycles. The intention of this article is to stimulate readers to explore and discuss the notion of developmental transactional analysis and to involve everyone in a cocreative process as "transactional analysis designers" (Summers & Tudor, 2000).

Wonderful World, Beautiful People: Reframing Transactional Analysis as Positive Psychology
Giles Barrow
pp. 206-209

The author reports on innovative work with the ego state model and, specifically, the implications for practice when the conventional model is inverted. The article goes on to explore the possibilities for promoting growth and development using a reframing of core transactional analysis concepts. Finally, the author offers a connection between transactional analysis and the emerging field of positive psychology.

The Permission Wheel
Laurie Hawkes
pp. 210-217

In the 1980s, one of the main figures of transactional analysis in France, Gysa Jaoui, designed an elegant way of graphically representing the main limits of a person's life script. She called it the "permission wheel" ("la roue des permissions") because the circular shape of the diagram shows how large or small one's permission or freedom is in various areas of living. This article describes the concepts underlying the permission wheel and how to use the diagram as one way of understanding clients and planning treatment.

Connecting with the Guru Within: Supervision in the Indian Context
Sashi Chandran
pp. 218-226

This article describes supervision in India, past and present, and then presents, schematically, the idea of the "guru within." The links between the guru within and the Integrated Adult in transactional analysis are highlighted. The author proposes that connecting with the guru within in supervision brings about a meaningful and productive outcome.

Social Dreaming in a Transactional Analysis Context
Servaas van Beekum and Kathy Laverty
pp. 227-234

We all dream, individually and collectively. The latter is called "social dreaming," an established practice in a number of groups and societies. For example, elders in some tribes gather to share dreams in order to find direction. In the analytic world, social dreaming was discovered to be an important way of increasing awareness of aspects of the collectively held unconscious. In this article, the concept of the social dreaming matrix is explored along with the way it was applied and experienced during the 18th biannual transactional analysis conference held in Sydney, Australia, in 2006. Themes and issues from the conference experience are discussed.

Surrender as a Group Norm
Ken Woods
pp. 235-239

Freud described that each of us has an innate libidinal drive and an innate aggressive drive, but he failed to anchor these within the context of the drive to surrender to the group norm or conscience. This article addresses the consequences of failing to surrender to the innate drive to surrender to the group norm, good or bad, and the peace derived from surrender to a group norm, whether good or bad.

Book Review Section
pp. 240-241

Letter to the Editor
p. 242

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