ABSTRACT
Treatment sequence models are widely used in TA practice, as a conceptual framework to understand the types of stages and associated tasks that a client and therapist are likely to move through on the therapeutic journey. In practice, many transactional analysts develop their own synthesis of two or more of these sequences to understand the different stages of the therapeutic work. Although these models appear on the surface to be rather different from each other, they contain a number of similarities in that they all identify the beginning stages of therapy to comprise building a working alliance and then move to deeper, restructuring levels of work later in the therapy. Mostly they assume that decontamination precedes deconfusion, although this view of therapy has recently been challenged by a number of TA authors, primarily those from the relational approach, who consider deconfusion to be occurring from the very outset of therapy (Hargaden and Sills, 2002). These models can be helpful in giving the therapist a sense of the progression of therapy, and develop their patience in waiting for a client to be ready to move onto another stage of the therapeutic process. However, they can be unhelpful, and even limiting in that they can give the impression that therapy is a linear process and that clients move through stages sequentially, when in reality therapy is more circular, or perhaps more accurately, spiral in its unfolding. If therapy is conceptualized as a ¯uid and an unfolding process, then these models can be helpful for providing a `roadmap' of where one is in the therapy, and what might need to come next. Table 56.1 below aligns four sequences. TA therapists can choose from, or combine these sequences to create their own `therapy roadmap'.
