ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the therapeutic relationship, co-created through transactions. It addresses the three main areas or foundations of transactional analysis: ego states, scripts, and games. A transactional analysis model of therapeutic relationships needs to be based on the analysis of transactions in the therapeutic relationship: a co-creative transactional relationship. If client and therapist agree to contain the familiar transferential meanings within the therapeutic frame, then they can enact, explore, clarify, and understand their co-created transference. Partial transferential transactions are transactions in which one party is in Adult and the other is not. In a critical review of script theory, Bill Cornell suggested that script, as presented in most transactional analysis literature, is "overly reductionistic and insufficiently attentive to the formative factors in healthy psychological development". The application of game theory to pathological process is well described in the transactional analysis literature: for example, degrees of game, the drama triangle, Formula G, the Goulding-Kupfer game diagram, and the bystander role.
