Transactional Analysis

Authoritarian Conditioning
and the Failure of Transactional Analysis
By Anonymous
(1973)

The master-slave relationship that was an American institution until a century ago is still being replayed every day, but in a less obvious way. From the workplace and the armed forces to the family and the school Americans relate in a dominant-subservient way. Perhaps this is desirable - even essential, but psychologists and sociologists consider it unhealthy. Analytical techniques have been devised to cope with this phenomenon. One currently popular method is called Transactional Analysis.

There has been considerable confusion during the application of the Freudian model of individual behavior to the model of the individual during the transactional relationship. To a certain extent these two models do overlap but basically, one deals with individual behavior while the other is a social interaction theory. The value of these models is that they describe the human being as a union of separate and conflicting components and roles.

In the Freudian model the personality is made up of three factors: the "ego," the "superego," and the "id." The "ego" coincides with what we call consciousness. The "id" and the "superego" are unconscious. The "id" forms the instinctual drives (the "libido" as a reservoir of repressed sexual impulses), and the "superego" consists of the barriers which dam up these impulses. The superego is like an internal policeman, born of the constraint imposed upon the child by the parents and educators. Now, as Freud observed, educators strive to bring up children according to the dictates of their own superegos. In these circumstances, he says: "A child's superego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parent but of its parents' superego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgments of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation." (Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (London: Hogarth Press, 1933), pp. 90-91.)(1)

In the Transactional Analysis model the human personality consists of three "selves" -- the impulsive "Child," the socially-conditioned "Parent," and the logical "Adult." -- any of which may be in control of a person during a social situation (called a transaction). From the view of the "transactionalists," the child records the stimuli from parents and educators on his "Parent," the memory-bank of external messages which are "taught" and then recorded as truth. According to Dr. Thomas A. Harris," These examples - coercing, forcing, sometimes permissive but more often restrictive - are rigidly internalized as a voluminous set of data essential to the individual's survival in the setting of a group, beginning with the family and extending throughout life in a succession of groups necessary to life...Any external situation in which the little person feels himself to be dependent to the extent that he is not free to question or to explore produces data which is stored in the "Parent." (2) By the time this little person matures, the authoritarian conditioning process acts upon the adult, writes George Orwell, as "A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role,"(3)

The "Parent" is the reservoir of the culturally-conditioned acceptance of authority and in this "civilizing" process, the "Parent" performs a similar function to that of the "superego" of the Freudian model. It is the daily source of the belief in both domination and subjection. The acceptance of the unequal relationship between a master and a slave is the result of conditioning which is "taught" and recorded in the "Parent." So the transactional diagram of a relationship between a master and a slave is: "Parent-Parent." The labeling of this transaction by personifying the social roles is misleading, inasmuch as a transaction between equals is implied here. While a "Parent-Child" transaction might superficially lead someone to believe that a domination-subjugation relationship is taking place, what is actually diagrammed is the clash between the authoritarian conditioning (played back by the "Parent"), on the one hand, and the instinctual feelings, such as frustration and alienation (replayed in the "Child"), on the other. (4) The "Child" does not play back the concept of "submission to authority." Human beings must be "taught" to give and obey orders and to generally subordinate themselves to those with superior resources, and this philosophy is internalized in the "Parent." Transactional Analysis falls short by obscuring the antagonism that exists between a master and a slave by diagramming this relationship as a "Parent-Parent" transaction, rather than emphasizing what is more significant, that is, the unequal character of the relationship.

The "transactionalists" conclude that everyone should strive for "Adult-Adult" transactions because this would resolve the "irrationalities" found in the "Parent" and "Child" roles. The "Adult" is the "referee" that consciously finds out how much of what has been "taught" and "felt" is true. (5) Although it seems desirable to encourage the "Adult" role to appear in all social transactions, many forms of chain-of-command type of social and economic organizations, such as the conventional factory and office, require that authoritarian concepts be accepted and utilized. A transaction between a boss and a worker comes about with the boss dictating the terms and conditions which the worker is not free to question. Nevertheless, it is diagrammed by the "transactionalists" : "Parent-Parent."

The fact that socio-economic transactions, themselves, are not the result of effectively free association explains why the "Parent" role exists and why the "Adult" role does not emerge. Transactional analysis again falls short by overlooking the circumstances underwhich the transaction came about, that is, whether or not it was the product of free and voluntary association.

"The goal of Transactional Analysis," says Dr. Harris, "is to enable a person to have freedom of choice, the freedom to change at will, to change the responses to recurring and new stimuli."(6) As we have seen, the transactional model makes it difficult to visualize the process through which individuals abrogate their freedom, by mislabeling and by neglecting the significant elements. The most important failure of the Transactional model lies in the detachment of the two roles involved, the role played by one is not affected by or determined by the other. In reality, though, during the transaction between a boss and a worker, the boss only "becomes" an authority if and when the worker simultaneously accepts and submits to that authority. If the worker did not replay his "parent," which constantly presses him into a passive role, the symbiotic interrelationship between the boss-worker, as between a leader-follower, could not exist, because one role depends upon the other.(7) Individuals cannot free themselves unless they stop believing in the superiority of others. By divorcing the roles of the two individuals in this transaction and permitting them to form independently of each other leads one to expect that the inferior partner, having the necessary autonomy, would refuse to put up with his subjugation. But this is not the case. Any struggle for freedom presupposes a struggle against imposed authority, and in a "Parent-Parent" transaction, this means a struggle within oneself to overcome one's own submissiveness, as well as, a struggle against the external authority. This struggle must also be waged against the Transactional model which only adds confusion to the existing difficulty in understanding "authoritarian conditioning."

The self-perpetuating process of authoritarian conditioning, as replayed in the "Parent" or emanating from the "superego," is the primary barrier in the way of freedom. This is what the "transactionalists" minimize and oversimplify. This may be understandable, in as much as, enterprising analysts must be aware that "if large sections of the population were constantly questioning the principles of hierarchy, the authoritarian organization of production, the wage system, or other fundamental aspects of the social structure," to quote Maurice Brinton, "no ruling class could maintain itself in power for long." But instead, the oppressed defend their established order, wrote Dr. Wilhelm Reich, "Because this order molds the psychic structure of all members of society it reproduces itself in people... the first and most important place of reproduction of the social order is the patriarchal family which creates in children a character structure which makes them amenable to the later influence of an authoritarian order... this characteriological anchoring of the social order explains the tolerance of the suppressed toward the rule of the upper class, a tolerance which sometimes goes as far as the affirmation of their own subjugation.... "(8)

In the family the child is "taught" to show respect for his parents just as a worker is expected to show respect for his boss (but this analogy is no longer permitted due to the definition that "Transactionalists" apply to the role of "Parent" and "Child"). As the worker subordinates himself to the boss to the satisfaction of his "superego," his "id" becomes frustrated.

As the multitudes of social interactions require authoritarian relationships, it is naove to believe that an individual can unilaterally free himself from all dominant-subservient relationships. He alone cannot eliminate the "Parent-Parent" tension, nor his own "superego-id" frustration. There can be no resolution so long as society requires unequal relationships or interactions that are coerced by social or economic necessity. "Transactionalists" may get rich and famous by urging their patients to adapt a positive "Adult" attitude. But by doing so they are merely trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

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1. Michel Cattier, The Life and Work of Wilhelm Reich (NY: Horizon Press, 1971), pp. 105-06, 51-52, 67. See also, Maurice Brinton, "The Irrational in Politics," Solidarity pamphlet * 33 (Bromley, Kent, England).
2. Thomas A. Harris, MD., I'm OK--You're OK (NY: Harper & Row,1969),pp. 20-24
3. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (NY: Books, 1969), p. 263; (G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier,1937, p. 49 ).
4. I'm OK--You're OK, pp. 24-27.
5. Ibid., pp. 58-59, 29-33.
6. Ibid., p. 58.
7. Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom (NY:Discus/Avon,1970) p. 180, 186.
8. W. Reich, character Analysis (London: Vision Press Ltd.,1958), p. xxiii. See also, "Authoritarian Conditioning" and "The Irrational in Politics," SRAF pamphlet (Oct 1970).