While the emphasis in psychoanalytic theory in the latter part of the last century tended to be on individual psychology, Canadian-born psychiatrist Eric Berne focused on interpersonal relationships and interactions. He observed that these interactions followed a limited set of patterns or ‘transactional rules’. In an enormously influential book titled The Games People Play (1964) Berne described how these patterns were recognizable by the technique of transactional analysis.
In any ‘play’, each actor takes the part of one of three “ego states”: the Parent (either dominant and authoritative, or nurturing); the Adulthood (the voice of reason, and reality); or the Childhood (either natural and uninhibited, or willing to adapt to the needs of others). Each of these parts of ourselves has its own way of handling situations. What happens in a transaction between two people depends upon the roles they play, for instance, Parent to Child, or Adult to Adult.
