Transactional Analysis Meets Psychedelics: Understanding Ego States for Awareness and Healing

In this blog, we will explore a corner stone to our program, Dr. Eric Berne’s theory of Transactional Analysis (TA). Understanding your EGO state is key to behavioral analysis. Without this knowledge people struggle to recognize the issues they are experiencing or have experienced in their lives. It is very difficult to overcome your problems, which are often your programs, unless you are aware of the source.

TA is a theory of personality and behavior which helps us understand the psychological make-up of individuals. It was formulated by an American Psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne in 1958. Berne observed that as you watch and listen to people you can see them change before your eyes. The following paragraphs will provide a brief overview of TA and how it works.

During a conversation with someone, the person starting the communication will give the ‘transaction stimulus,’ and then the person receiving this stimulus (or message of communication) will give the ‘transaction response.’

TA is the method used to analyze this process of transactions in communication with others. It requires us to be aware of how we feel, think, and behave during interactions with others.

TA recognized that the human personality is made up of three “ego states,”; each of which is an entire system of thought, feeling, and behavior from which we interact with each other. The Parent, Adult, and Child ego states and the interaction between them form the foundation of transactional analysis theory.

The egos developed so we could adapt to our environmental states. We should honor the reasons they were developed which primarily is a defense mechanism to keep us safe. To what extent they are relevant to us now is the question we learn to ask ourselves when we are observing the parent and child ego states. The seat of our creativity is the adult ego state it has a here and now approach. The parent and child egos tend to kick in when we are in challenging situations.

To break free of our conditioning, the first step is awareness and a re-examining of the circumstances in which you may or may not have felt wounded. To find an awareness of why you are doing something. Looking at our emotions and feelings in a reflective way of thinking gives us the capacity to observe if we are reacting to the here and now or there and now. There is a similarity to mindfulness where you can bring yourself to the present moment. Learning to recognize that HOW you respond is all you have power over. You don’t want to feel like you are a constant victim of someone else. TA gives you power when you might otherwise feel powerless.

In summary, Dr. Berne wanted to empower people by showing them how important awareness is to understand why we behave and think the way we do. It teaches us how to get along with other people, to adopt communication patterns that are healthy. and to understand how to think about the content of our ego states. We learn the importance of accessing more of our adult ego state so we respond rather than react.

Having a means of logically identifying our programming and patterns opens the doorways to our abilities to heal ourselves. The greater our awareness the more we can utilize the power of microdosing. To learn more about TA and how Zenchroniity is combining this theory with psychedelics reach out to us.