ABSTRACT
Barnes provides criteria suitable for defining when a particular transactional analysis approach can be regarded as a “school”. From a philosophic point of view, transactional analysis is a movement of humanistic psychology. Which, therefore, rejects a strictly “medical” concept of recovery: the problem presented by the patient is approached all as a starting point for the growth of the psychophysical potential of the human being. The chapter examines the central idea of transactional analysis as psychotherapy, following the methodological lines of its original Bernean roots. The ultimate result that derives from all the foundations of Berne’s work is that transactional analysis is situated within the modern psychoanalytic movement. From this stems the proposal that Bernean theory should be recognised as a real transactional psychoanalysis. Once transactional analysis is situated in the present psychoanalytic movement, different consequences result, of a cultural, philosophical, theoretical, and applied nature.
