We welcome new NATAA members from Singapore, and congratulate them as new TA Practitioners.
Dr. Jessica Leong Lai Cheng, TSTA who is a Transactional Analysis Practitioner Instructor, has certified 34 individuals have met the requirements that are required for the TAP Certificate. We are delighted to know that we have new TA friends and colleagues in Singapore!
Networking is a priority for our NATAA community. Like your group, we seek to keep up with the latest advances in TA theory and practice, as well as share the TA message at home, at work, and at school. We have our TA Circles that may be a resource for you in your particular area of interest. Our groups include, Psychotherapy, Coaching and Self-Development, and Social Justice. We are adding to our TA resources regularly (including online TA workshops), and welcome your suggestions, blog posts, photos, stories, and links for TA resources.
We welcome you to NATAA!
Sincerely,
Catherine O’Brien,
GC of NATAA
TAP Instructor and LMFT
Knowing how to play is one of the characteristics found in NATAA members, and especially, our Council. We spent two days meeting in Tucson this spring, covering everything from membership and budget to social media and visions for the future. We even beamed in Cheryl Leong from San Francisco by laptop for part of the meeting. Thanks to Dianne Maki for making comfortable and fun arrangements. As you can see, we enjoy each other’s company as well as our productive work.
“The OK Boss” is one of Muriel James’ many reader-friendly guides on how to apply TA to everyday life situations. As she states in the introduction, “ At one time or another, almost everyone is a boss: Parents, spouses, teachers, and employers”. Here, she shows you how you can become an OK boss using TA techniques, using stories and familiar workplace scenarios that so many can relate to. The objective is for the reader to recognize the bossing styles of others and of themselves, to understand their behaviors, and their OK and not OK attitudes at work and at home.
Bossing Styles:
The Critic—from (not OK) Critical Dictator to (OK) Informed Critic
The Coach—from (not OK) Benevolent Dictator to (OK) Supportive Coach
The Shadow–from (not OK) Loner to (OK) Liberator
The Analyst—from (not OK) Computer to (OK) Communicator
The Pacifier—from (not OK) Milquetoast to (OK) Negotiator
The Fighter—from (not OK) Punk to (OK) Partner
The Inventor—from (not OK) Scatterbrain to (OK) Innovator
With each bossing style, Muriel James covers the personalities (ego states), how each type gives strokes, transaction patterns, games bosses play, life positions/scripts bosses act, appropriate contracts and time structuring. At the end of each chapter, there are 3 areas touched upon. Self Discovery: Analyzing yourself and your behaviors. What to do: How to change, with the underlying message of ‘you have the power to make different choices for different outcomes’. Guidelines for effective and efficient bossing: Characteristics of the OK boss in relation to the area discussed.
“The OK Boss” is an older text, but certainly a gem. A little of the wording may show as a bit dated, however the material is easily applied to today’s workplaces. It’s a book not only for the bosses in the world, but also for those who have a ‘boss’ in their lives.
My favorite part was seeing the many illustrations sprinkled throughout each section. I loved how the structural diagrams were made to look like side profiles of faces, and the expressions and thought bubbles really brought the concepts to life.
I first heard of Claude as the author of the Warm Fuzzy Tale, and of Games Alcoholics Play, but when I read my first article in Issues in Radical Therapy, the publication of the Radical Psychiatry movement, I was completely won over. I was already attuned to the issues of American imperialism and feminism from a personal and political point of view. To read his explanation of the difference between native power and position power was to grasp how my work with clients could be connected with the kinds of social change in which I fervently believed. Between Claude’s work on relationships, including No Power Plays and No Secrets, and his partner Hogie wyckoff’s work on true equality, I found inspiration for linking personal and social change to which I adhere to this day. Claude’s brilliant understanding of how the whole system maintains artificial scarcities of power, strokes, etc. to control people, is something I wish we could transmit to every child growing up anywhere in the world.
As I got to know people in ITAA and became a friend as well as follower, I valued Claude’s advice. When I considered my run for President of ITAA in the mid-eighties, I consulted Claude to see what he thought. I wasn’t sure that ITAA was a good vehicle for my leadership. He pointed out that it was the vehicle that was available to me, and encouraged me to run.
I often observe the irony that people teach what they need to learn, from Eric Berne on down. In Claude’s case, I noticed his ability to show people the stroke economy, to encourage Permission for giving and receiving strokes, while he tended not to take strokes in for himself. On at least one occasion, I made it a personal mission to insist that he take in the strokes that people had for him. I took great pleasure in holding him to his principles, and watching him receive even a small portion of his due.
While he could appear crusty, and would willingly argue over key points of TA, Claude was truly loving and caring, and made the effort to travel and teach where he was invited. I know he loved his ranch in Northern California, and that he joined with others in social experiments both on the land and in his Bay Area office. He continued to write and develop ideas that challenged the status quo throughout his life. Claude contributed to the liberation of the human spirit, and I hope that in his passing, he felt the satisfaction of a life well lived and a legacy that will continue to ripple outward.
