Transactional Analysis

Origins and Founder

Eric Berne, a Canadian-born psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis, created TA in the late 1950s. He drew on Sigmund Freud’s view that childhood shapes adult personality.

Breaking Away From Psychoanalysis

Freud wrote for clinicians, in technical language. Berne wanted something a client could use directly: three “ego states” called Parent, Adult, and Child.

He was not alone. Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, and Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy, had trained as psychoanalysts too. Each built a different system.

Psychoanalysis, in other words, kept producing its own alternatives. Their shared training shows how far its influence reached, seeding a whole generation of therapies that grew away from it.

As the historian Robert Fancher (1996) puts it, “Freud remains a dominating figure, for or against whom virtually all therapists feel compelled to take a stand.”

Berne took a stand by making psychoanalysis practical rather than abandoning it, the same choice Perls and Ellis had already made in their own ways.

From Theory to Bestseller

Berne set out his idea of ego states in 1957, in a paper called Ego States in Psychotherapy. He named the method a year later, in 1958.

Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961) gave TA its first full statement. Games People Play (1964) then turned it into a bestseller.

Berne believed the way we were parented directly shapes the three ego states.

He also proposed that many dysfunctional behaviors stem from self-limiting decisions made in childhood as survival strategies. The pattern becomes a script. This unconscious life script is a mental blueprint that shapes how we live, relate, and respond to challenges.

The goal of TA therapy is to help individuals rewrite their life script, replacing destructive or limiting patterns with healthier, more cooperative behaviors.

Other psychologists later expanded the system. Thomas Harris popularized the four “life positions” in I’m OK – You’re OK (1969), and Claude Steiner developed script theory and the “stroke economy” in Scripts People Live (1974).

Ego States

In Transactional Analysis, the Ego States are three distinct ways we think, feel, and behave.

• The Parent holds the rules, values, and attitudes we learned from authority figures.
• The Adult is our rational, problem-solving self that focuses on the present.
• The Child carries our emotions, creativity, and early coping patterns from childhood.

In daily life, we switch between these states – sometimes within the same conversation.

By understanding these three ego states and their subcategories, you can:

• Identify unhelpful patterns in yourself and others.

• Shift toward more productive communication styles.

• Balance structure, empathy, logic, and creativity in your relationships.

Transactions

Complementary Transactions

A complementary transaction happens when the reply comes from the exact ego state the first person was expecting, so the conversation flows smoothly without any confusion or clash.

When this complementary transaction happens from an adult-to-adult state, it is thought to be the best type of communication, as it is respectful and reduces conflicts.

For example, if you ask from an Adult state, “What time does the meeting start?”, the other person’s Adult state might answer, “It starts at 2 p.m.” That’s complementary.

Your question and their answer are in sync.

The same applies if someone in a Child state says, “I’m worried about my test,” and gets a Nurturing Parent reply, “You’ll do great, you’ve studied hard.”

It’s important to note that “complementary” describes the structure of the exchange, not whether it’s healthy. Structure isn’t the same as health.

A Critical Parent criticism met by an Adapted Child apology is still complementary because it follows the expected pattern, even if it’s unhelpful.

While complementary transactions keep conversation moving, their quality depends on the ego states involved.

In TA, Adult-to-Adult complementary transactions are considered the healthiest because they’re respectful, balanced, and based on the present situation rather than past conditioning.

Crossed Transactions

Crossed transactions occur when the sender’s message is aimed at one ego state, but the receiver replies from a different one. In other words, the communication lines don’t match.

This mismatch creates tension or misunderstanding, which can be visualized in TA diagrams as arrows that cross rather than run parallel.

In a crossed transaction, it requires one or both of the people in the interaction to shift ego states for communication to be able to carry on.

For example, imagine a customer complaining about a recent purchase.

They speak in a Critical Parent tone, using belittling language, assuming the mistake was intentional, and threatening to report you.

Their goal is to pull you into a Child position: apologetic, submissive, and reinforcing their authority.

If you respond instead from your Adult state – calm, factual, and focused on solving the problem – you break their expected pattern.

This creates a crossed transaction. To move forward, one or both parties must adjust their ego state.

TA holds that responding from the Adult state can help guide the other person back into their Adult state as well.

This shift transforms a potentially hostile or defensive exchange into a more respectful, problem-solving Adult-to-Adult conversation, which is generally the healthiest and most effective form of communication.

Ulterior Transactions

Ulterior transactions occur when a sender delivers two messages at the same time – one overt and one hidden.

On the surface, the message appears to come from the sender’s Adult state to the receiver’s Adult state, suggesting a straightforward, rational exchange.

Beneath the surface, however, there’s a subtle message coming from the sender’s Parent or Child state, aimed at the receiver’s corresponding Parent or Child state.

This means the transaction operates on two levels at once: the open, explicit message and the hidden, psychological message.

The hidden message can be intentional or unconscious, but it often has more influence on how the receiver actually responds.

For example, a teacher or friend might say, “You can choose to study subjects that lead to becoming a doctor; however, it’s very hard and requires a lot of intelligence.”

Outwardly, this sounds like a respectful Adult-to-Adult statement with a cautionary note.

But underneath, the real intent may be different. It aims to trigger the listener’s Rebellious Child, prompting the thought, “I’ll prove I’m smart enough to do it,” and pushing them to work harder as a result.

In TA, ulterior transactions are not just about words.

Tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions can all carry the hidden message. Recognizing these subtle cues is essential for understanding the true dynamics of an interaction.

Strokes, Time-Structuring and Games

Berne argued that people have a biological “recognition hunger”: a need to be noticed and responded to.

He called a single unit of that recognition a stroke – a word, a glance, a touch, or a nod.

What Is a Stroke?

Strokes can be positive (“warm fuzzies,” such as praise or affection) or negative (“cold pricks,” such as criticism or insults).

They can also be conditional, given for what you do, or unconditional, given for who you are.

People will seek negative strokes rather than no strokes at all. Being ignored, Berne held, feels worse than being criticized.

This helps explain why some people provoke conflict rather than risk being overlooked. A child who cannot get praise may act out just to be noticed at all. Negative attention still counts as attention.

Claude Steiner (1974) described a cultural “stroke economy”: a set of restrictive rules that keeps people stroke-deprived.

The rules: don’t give strokes freely, don’t ask for them, and don’t refuse ones you don’t want. They are rarely stated aloud, but most people learn them anyway.

Structuring Time to Get Strokes

Because strokes matter so much, Berne proposed that people structure their time to obtain them.

He set out six ways of doing this, running from the least to the most intimate.

• Withdrawal: no transaction at all, such as daydreaming through a meeting.
• Rituals: safe, stereotyped exchanges, like saying “how are you?” in passing.
• Pastimes: light, patterned small talk with little personal risk.
• Activities: work directed towards a shared goal.
• Games: ulterior, patterned exchanges with a hidden emotional payoff.
• Intimacy: open, game-free, authentic exchange.

Games rank high on this list for a reason. They are a reliable, if costly, way of getting strokes and filling time.

Withdrawal and rituals cost the least emotionally. Intimacy costs the most, but pays out the richest, most durable strokes of all.

Games and the Drama Triangle

In Berne’s technical sense, a game is a recurring series of ulterior transactions with a concealed motive and a predictable “payoff.”

Players are not fully aware they are doing it.

Games People Play (1964) catalogues dozens, each with a memorable name. “Why Don’t You – Yes But” is help offered and serially rejected.

Each game has a hidden payoff. “Kick Me,” for instance, is behavior that provokes the punishment the player expects.

Berne’s pupil Stephen Karpman (1968) modeled the shifting roles inside many games as a drama triangle, with three positions.

• Persecutor: blames, criticizes, and controls – “it’s all your fault.”
• Rescuer: steps in to help uninvited, keeping the other one-down and dependent.
• Victim: feels oppressed and helpless, and invites either persecution or rescue.

The drama comes from the switch. Players move around the triangle mid-game.

A Rescuer suddenly turns Persecutor, or a Victim flips to Persecutor, producing the moment of surprise and the payoff.

Recognizing a habitual triangle role, and stepping out of it into the Adult state, is a core practical goal of TA.

Life Script

In transactional Analysis, a life script is an unconscious plan for living – an internal “storyline” created in childhood that guides a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors well into adulthood.

A life script is a powerful, invisible influence on how we live.

It begins in childhood from a mix of external messages and internal decisions, and it shapes much of our adult behavior until we consciously choose to rewrite it.

Scripts also have themes or roles people play – such as rescuer, victim, rebel, caretaker, which can repeat across relationships, careers, and life stages.

Examples

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1. Winner’s Script

• Theme: “I can succeed and be happy.”

• Childhood Messages: Encouraging and supportive: “You can do it,” “You’re lovable.”

• Adult Pattern: Seeks opportunities, perseveres through challenges, and maintains healthy relationships.

• Example: A person who changes careers mid-life to follow their passion, trusting they can adapt and thrive.

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2. Non-Winner’s Script

• Theme: “I’ll get by, but I won’t aim too high.”

• Childhood Messages: “Don’t take risks,” “Be satisfied with what you have.”

• Adult Pattern: Avoids challenges, chooses safe paths, and often settles for “good enough” rather than stretching potential.

• Example: Someone who stays in a secure but unfulfilling job for decades to avoid uncertainty.

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3. Loser’s Script

• Theme: “Things never work out for me.”

• Childhood Messages: “You’ll never amount to much,” “Why can’t you be like your brother?”

• Adult Pattern: Repeats self-sabotaging behaviors, interprets setbacks as proof of inadequacy.

• Example: Someone who consistently leaves projects unfinished, reinforcing a belief they can’t succeed.

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4. “Always” Scripts

• Theme: Rigid rules: “I must always…” or “I must never…”

• Childhood Messages: “Always be polite,” “Never cry,” “Always finish what you start.”

• Adult Pattern: Follows rules even when they no longer serve them, leading to stress or missed opportunities.

• Example: Turning down a dream opportunity because “you don’t quit what you’ve started,” even if the current path is harmful.

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5. Hero/Martyr Script

• Theme: “I must sacrifice myself for others.”

• Childhood Messages: “Put others first,” “Don’t be selfish.”

• Adult Pattern: Over-gives, neglects own needs, and may feel resentful when unappreciated.

• Example: Always taking on extra work to help others, even at the cost of personal health.

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6. Rebel Script

• Theme: “No one can control me.”

• Childhood Messages: May react to overly strict parenting with internal defiance: “Don’t tell me what to do.”

• Adult Pattern: Resists authority, avoids commitments, and may sabotage opportunities that require structure.

• Example: Quitting a job suddenly after a minor disagreement with a manager.

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7. “Until” or “After” Scripts

• Theme: Happiness or success is conditional on meeting certain requirements or enduring certain hardships.

• Childhood Messages: “You can relax after you’ve worked hard,” “You can have fun when your chores are done.”

• Adult Pattern: Postpones enjoyment or fulfillment until a self-imposed condition is met.

• Example: Refusing to take a vacation “until” they hit a certain income goal, then setting a new one.

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How Scripts Show Up in Adult Life

• Relationships: Choosing partners who confirm the beliefs in the script (e.g., “I’m not worthy” leading to accepting disrespect).

• Career: Setting goals that align with early messages (e.g., “You must always work hard” leading to overwork or burnout).

• Self-Esteem: Interpreting successes or failures in ways that match the script’s predictions.

Even harmful scripts can feel “safe” because they are familiar. People may unconsciously recreate situations that match their script, even when they consciously want something different.

Life Positions

Out of early experience, each person also settles into a basic stance towards self and others – a life position. This then colors their scripts and games (Berne, 1962, 1972; Harris, 1969).

Ernst (1971) mapped these on a grid: the “OK Corral.”

• I’m OK – You’re OK: trust and game-free relating. This is the goal position.
• I’m OK – You’re not OK: blaming and one-up, which can turn persecutory.
• I’m not OK – You’re OK: self-deprecating and withdrawing.
• I’m not OK – You’re not OK: hopeless and futile.

Thomas Harris (1969) argued that a young, dependent child typically starts from “I’m not OK – You’re OK.” The goal is to help someone choose “I’m OK – You’re OK” instead, as an adult decision rather than a childhood conclusion.

How Life Scripts Form

Life scripts develop from a complex mix of early experiences, emotional needs, and interpersonal messages:

1. Parental Messages – These are the beliefs, attitudes, and rules absorbed from parents or caregivers, either directly through spoken instructions (“Always be polite,” “You can’t trust people”) or indirectly through behavior, tone, and emotional responses.

2. Injunctions – Restrictive, often unconscious messages that tell the child what not to do or be (e.g., “Don’t fail,” “Don’t feel,” “Don’t be important”). Injunctions may be conveyed subtly through disapproval, withdrawal of affection, or critical comments.

3. Drivers – Positive-sounding but pressure-filled rules like “Be perfect,” “Try hard,” “Hurry up,” or “Please others.” These create a sense that love or acceptance must be earned.

4. Child’s Interpretation – In the Child ego state, the young person interprets these messages emotionally, not logically. They make early decisions about how to act in order to feel safe, accepted, or in control.

5. Reinforcement – Over time, life events, parental reactions, and the individual’s own choices reinforce the original script, making it feel like “the way life is” rather than a set of learned responses.

How is Transactional Analysis used in therapy?

The main aim of TA therapy is to strengthen the client’s Adult ego state.

This allows them to respond to situations with clarity, balance, and awareness, rather than reacting automatically from their Parent or Child states.

Therapists achieve this through skillful questioning and practical tools that help clients identify what triggers them to shift into Parent or Child modes.

The target is always the Adult state. Together, they develop strategies for returning to, and staying in, the Adult state during challenging interactions (Berne, 1958).

TA places strong emphasis on the influence of childhood, particularly the formative years from birth to age five.

These early experiences shape our beliefs, behaviors, and social responses, making our upbringing and parenting environment a central focus of therapy.

A key method in TA is script analysis. It explores life scripts – the unconscious belief systems and worldviews we formed as children to make sense of our environment.

These scripts are shaped by:

• Reinforcements – The praise or criticism we received for certain behaviors.

• Life messages – Core beliefs like “Only lucky people become rich” or “You have to suffer to succeed.”

• Modeled behavior – Patterns we copied from parents or authority figures.

• Injunctions – Subtle, limiting messages such as being told to “be quiet” when adults are speaking, which can lead to beliefs like “No one wants to hear me.”

In therapy, clients examine how these early influences affect their current communication, relationships, and self-image.

The Parent–Adult–Child structural diagram, developed by Berne, is a key visual tool in TA.

It helps clients see how these three states operate within them and how they shift between states in different situations.

TA can be applied flexibly. It may be brief and solution-focused, helping clients address specific issues quickly, or it can be used in longer-term therapy for deeper exploration of unconscious patterns.

Its versatility extends beyond psychotherapy, with applications in couples and family counseling, education, nursing, and even business or sales training – anywhere improved communication and healthier relationships are goals.

Improving Relationships

Transactional Analysis can improve relationships by helping people understand and change the patterns in how they communicate and respond to one another.

• Identifying ego states: TA teaches individuals to recognize whether they are speaking or reacting from the Parent, Adult, or Child state. By becoming aware of these states, couples, friends, or colleagues can avoid slipping into unhelpful roles, like Critical Parent or Rebellious Child, that cause conflict.

• Promoting Adult-to-Adult communication: TA encourages balanced, respectful exchanges based on facts and present realities rather than past conditioning. This reduces misunderstandings and creates space for problem-solving.

• Breaking “games” and negative cycles: In TA, “games” are recurring, dysfunctional interaction patterns. Recognizing and stopping these games can prevent repeated arguments or manipulative dynamics that erode trust.

• Improving emotional recognition: Understanding the concept of strokes, units of recognition, helps partners give each other more positive reinforcement. This strengthens emotional bonds.

• Challenging life scripts: TA explores early decisions and beliefs formed in childhood that affect adult relationships. By rewriting unhelpful scripts, people can choose healthier, more supportive ways of relating.

In short, TA helps people communicate more clearly, reduce defensiveness, and build stronger, more respectful connections, whether in romantic relationships, friendships, families, or workplace teams.

Critical Evaluation

Transactional Analysis has genuine strengths and genuine limitations. The list below summarizes both, then looks at what recent research adds.

Strengths

• Accessibility: its plain-language Parent-Adult-Child model gives clients an immediately usable tool for observing their own interactions, without needing a background in psychology.
• Self-awareness and communication: naming ego states and games helps people catch destructive patterns in the moment and shift toward Adult-to-Adult relating.
• Versatility: the same framework applies across psychotherapy, couples and family work, parenting, education, nursing, and organizational coaching.
• Some outcome support: a body of small controlled trials reports genuine gains in intimacy, parenting, and self-esteem from brief TA interventions.

Limitations

• Weak empirical base: ego states, scripts, and games are hard to define or measure objectively, making the theory difficult to falsify.
• Limited high-quality evidence: compared with CBT, TA has few large randomized controlled trials.
• Jargon and theoretical overload: later additions of scripts, injunctions, and game names have eroded Berne’s original simplicity.
• Overlap with other therapies: many TA ideas resemble psychodynamic, CBT, and schema-therapy concepts.
• Demands on the client: TA requires a fair degree of introspective capacity, motivation, and personal responsibility.
• Cultural considerations: its ideal of autonomous individual choice reflects a Western, individualist value set.

Weak Empirical Base

Central TA concepts – ego states, scripts, games – are difficult to define operationally or to measure objectively. That is the core problem.

It makes the theory hard to falsify, the same charge leveled at Freud’s psychodynamics. That charge is an old one. TA inherits it along with the rest of its psychoanalytic ancestry.

Much of the classic support for TA is clinical and anecdotal rather than experimental. A therapist’s case notes can illustrate a concept vividly.

They cannot, on their own, test whether the concept is true.

This is not a flaw unique to TA.

It is the standard criticism of any theory built mainly from clinical observation rather than controlled measurement.

It applies with particular force to constructs, like “ego state,” that are hard to pin down operationally.

Limited High-Quality Outcome Evidence

Relative to CBT, TA has few large randomized controlled trials. That gap matters.

The trials that do exist are typically small, brief, single-region, and short on follow-up. The pattern repeats across the trials described below: samples of 15 to 35 people, from a single country.

None of them used an active comparison group, which would rule out the effect of simply attending any structured program. A single active-control trial would settle a lot.

Effectiveness claims have to be made cautiously as a result. A gain shown in 15 or 20 participants in one country is suggestive, not conclusive.

This does not mean TA fails to work. Growth is real.

The evidence base, while growing, is not yet as deep as the trial literature behind more heavily-studied therapies.

Overlap With Other Therapies

Many TA ideas overlap with approaches developed elsewhere. That is not a small point.

The unconscious, early-determined patterns TA describes echo psychodynamic theory. Its “drivers” resemble the maladaptive core beliefs CBT targets.

Its ego states parallel the “modes” used in schema therapy.

TA’s redecision technique, developed with the Gouldings, explicitly fuses TA with Gestalt therapy. Its scripts also resemble the personal stories narrative therapy works with. The parallel is striking.

The difference is that narrative therapy externalizes the story, rather than treating it as an internal plan fixed in childhood.

This raises a fair question: how much does TA add beyond a memorable relabeling of ideas developed elsewhere?

Proponents have an answer. The vocabulary is the contribution.

It is the same insight, but in words a client can use without training. Critics remain unconvinced that relabeling is enough.

Cultural Considerations

TA’s core life-position ideal – “I’m OK, You’re OK” – assumes a self that chooses freely and answers mainly to itself. That is a broadly Western, individualist idea of a healthy self.

How well it transfers to more collectivist cultures, where identity and duty sit more with family or community, is under-examined. This gap is easy to miss.

The pattern in the evidence base makes it sharper, not softer. Most of the modern outcome trials described below come from Iran and Turkey, not from Western settings.

Either the individualist ideal travels further than critics assume, or these trials are testing TA’s techniques without fully importing its philosophy of selfhood. No one knows yet.

The evidence so far cannot tell us which. That leaves an open question for any TA program exported to a collectivist setting.

Contemporary Research

Modern TA outcome research is dominated by small controlled trials of brief, typically eight-session, TA group training, concentrated in Iran and Turkey.

Nayeri, Lotfi, and Noorani (2014) worked with 15 couples who attended eight 90-minute group TA sessions. Intimacy was low at the start.

After completing the program, all couples showed significant improvements in intimacy, with gains still present three months later.

Alkasir et al. (2017) provided eight TA sessions to 20 married women.

Results showed significant reductions in marital discord, conflict, and controlling behaviors, including economic, emotional, and intimidation-based control, along with higher marital satisfaction. The skills transferred elsewhere too.

Saberinia and Niknejadi (2019) gave 15 mothers of children with oppositional defiant disorder eight weekly TA sessions.

The program significantly improved mother-child relationships, reduced conflict, and stopped recurring “games” by encouraging more frequent Adult-to-Adult interactions.

Eghbali, Mousavi, and Hakima (2017) found TA training helped mothers shift toward a healthier authoritative parenting style, in Baumrind’s terms. The effect did not stop there.

This led to better child well-being compared with authoritarian or permissive approaches.

Torkaman et al. (2020) reported that eight weekly TA sessions significantly improved self-esteem in 35 prisoners.

Ertem and Eker (2016) showed that psychiatric nurses trained in TA concepts communicated more effectively with patients, who felt more relaxed and responded better to treatment.

These studies support TA’s practical value. But most are small, short-term, single-region, and lack long follow-up or active comparison groups.

This evidence base remains methodologically limited next to the large trial literature behind CBT.

Two developments partly offset that picture.

Vos and van Rijn (2022) conducted a systematic review and exploratory meta-analysis of TA treatments and their predictors, starting to synthesize the scattered outcome literature at review level. This synthesis is new.

Separately, an earlier practice-based evaluation in routine UK services found TA broadly comparable to Gestalt, integrative, and person-centered therapies for anxiety and depression (van Rijn & Wild, 2013).

That is Western, real-world evidence, alongside the mostly Iranian and Turkish trials described above.

A third, older study places TA within the wider psychotherapy-outcome literature.

• Aim: Smith and Glass (1977) asked whether psychotherapy works at all, and whether any one approach, TA among them, beats the others.
• Method: a meta-analysis pooling 833 effect sizes from controlled outcome studies across seven therapy approaches, including TA.
• Findings: the average client receiving therapy was better off than 75% of untreated controls, but there were negligible differences between therapy types.
• Conclusion: psychotherapy in general works, but TA showed no distinctive advantage over the other approaches – the classic “dodo-bird” verdict of broad equivalence rather than any special efficacy of its own.

References

Alkasir, E., Jafarian Dehkordi, F., Mohammadkhani, P., Soleimani Sefat, E., & Atadokht, A. (2017). Effectiveness of Transactional Analysis Group Training in Reducing Control-oriented Behaviors of Spouse in Marital Conflicts. Iranian Rehabilitation Journal, 15 (1),57-64

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Saberinia, S., & Niknejadi, F. (2019). The Effectiveness of Transactional Analysis on Parent-Child Relationship in Mothers of Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Avicenna Journal of Neuropsychophysiology. 6 (2), 83-90

Smith, M. L., & Glass, G. V. (1977). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. American Psychologist, 32(9), 752-760.

Steiner, C. M. (1974). Scripts people live: Transactional analysis of life scripts. Grove Press.

Torkaman, M., Farokhzadian, J., Miri, S., Pouraboli, B. (2020). The effect of transactional analysis on the self-esteem of imprisoned women: a clinical trial. BMC Psychology, 8 (3)

van Rijn, B., & Wild, C. (2013). Humanistic and integrative therapies for anxiety and depression: Practice-based evaluation of transactional analysis, gestalt, and integrative psychotherapies and person-centered counseling. Transactional Analysis Journal, 43(2), 150-163.

Vos, J., & van Rijn, B. (2022). The effectiveness of transactional analysis treatments and their predictors: A systematic literature review and explorative meta-analysis. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Advance online publication.