Transactional Analysis : Complementary Transactions

In the last lesson I introduced the idea of the Parent, Adult, and Child ego states and how during communication or relating to another person it is your three ego states that are relating to the other person's three ego states. The possibilities of various combinations are huge.

But let's do a sample conversation you may be familiar with. Two people, A and Z living together meet at the kitchen sink one morning. A starts it: "It really bugs me that you always leave your dirty dishes from the night before. Responsible adults would do their dishes properly." Z replies: "What's your problem. They're my dishes so quit bugging me." A: "You should do them right after eating so they don't get all hard and difficult to wash." Z: "Take a hike ya jerk." So A says: "And I resent your attitude. If it wasn't for me this place would be a pig sty. You should be grateful to me for all the work I do around here."

If you were A or Z and interested in improving the relationship such that this conversation didn't happen repeatedly, you'd need to study the way it happened to see how you could have done it differently. To study relationships, TA breaks communications into discreet parts called transactions.

So in the above sample, the first transaction is from A. We call it the opening transaction: "It really bugs me that you always leave your dirty dishes from the night before. Responsible adults would do thier dishes properly." Sound familiar - like mom or dad? A is in Parent. And who is mom or dad talking to? A child. So it is directed at Z's Child ego state. An opening transaction like this will often stimulate the complementary response. So the responding transaction: "What's your problem. They're my dishes so quit bugging me." is coming from Z who is in Child. Thus the ego state A addressed did in fact respond - a complementary transaction sequence. The series continues as long as the transactions are complementary. A stays in Parent and Z stays in Child for the rest of our sample.

This sample shows how transactions can flow back and forth when they are complementary. To interrupt this flow either A or Z could use a crossed transaction. And that's the next lesson.