These are questions of worth, identity, and value that the individual perceives he or she has or does not have, resulting in the various combinations of "I'm OK", or "I"m not OK". This evaluation of worth or demerit does not occur in a vacuum. The messages we have received from others at a formative stage deeply influence our sense of value and worth.
"What's that supposed to mean?", the husband blurts out in roaring shock. "I have no idea what you're talking about", the wife huffs in frosty innocence, "I merely pointed out it looks like you're off to play golf again".
Is the husband really that shocked by his wife's subtle dig? And is his wife really that offended by his flash of temper?
The idea of transaction analysis is a theory of personality and systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and change that has been around since the 1950's. It describes how we all develop into being the people that we are today by going back to the ego-state model, that is to say the Parent-Child-Adult model, from which we draw all our trait characteristics and behavioral patterns.
In the Psychological Mind-Game, both parties begin the communication in the Adult Role, or at least from the same Ego State. In the immediate conversation cited above, the opening exchange was probably fairly superficial, most likely characterized as a Reciprocal Transaction in which both parties communicate at a superficial level from the same ego state.
Transaction Analysis is a social psychology which focuses on a person's external behavior. Moreover. Transaction Analysis is a system that deals on understanding people's interaction or socialization with his fellow being. Eric Berne, a Canadian-born US psychiatrist developed Transaction Analysis in the late 1950's.
