The lifeworld (as Habermas and we call real life) of an analyst confronts, sometimes comically, the statements of their knowledge. As in the emblematic movie scene from the film Festen (The Celebration), a work of the Dogma 95 movement of cinematic realism, from 1998. In it, the character who studies anthropology, Helene, travels to her father’s birthday party. On the way, she shows an autonomy and centeredness that can be attributed to her anthropological practice. Yet when she arrives at the party and meets her parents and the family stories again, she loses control to the point of screaming.

It is a relentless lesson. Studying analysis or anthropology is not about obtaining a farewell to the human condition. Studying these analytic subjects, whether transactional analysis or any other approach, is an attempt at understanding, work to gain some understanding of the pain felt every day, not to become immune to it.

Although the transactional analysis (TA) literature intensely reinforces the idea that a cure is possible, we must quickly reach the conclusion that these cures are not broad enough to extinguish in the individual their encounters with discomfort and suffering. The proposal of a reality altered by new knowledge is what makes the introductory TA course, “TA 101,” a rebellious proposition amid so many invitations and proposals of saving actions. In it, no promise is made that textual content, automatically and effortlessly, can bring relief to a participant’s life. The proposal in TA 101 is one of accountability. It is a moment when participants can ask themselves in what ways they are implicated in the stories they live.

This journey of accountability and learning is long and deep. Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy suggests that, although the basic principles can be absorbed in a few weeks, “at least a year of weekly seminars, with daily practice,” is needed to acquire the necessary clinical tact (our translation). This reinforces the idea that knowledge is a prerequisite but not the destination. The aim is for the client to be, to some level, “as well informed about the specific factors under study as a trainee therapist” (our translation), which turns analysis into a collaborative pact of exploration, not a passive cure.

Training in transactional analysis is consistent enough that we can devote an entire life to it, to understanding, carrying out and improving the theory. In the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), founded by Berne, alone, there are members from more than 40 countries, many of whom keep active participation in the analytic community even after retirement. The materials found in various parts of the world on how transactional understanding diagrams human relationships are extremely rich.

Within this body of theory, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, also by Berne, came to occupy the role of founding work, something like what happened with Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Although it is not, in fact, Berne’s first work, it deals with an original base. Yet that base, by itself, is insufficient to sustain the practice of transactional analysis today. Even so, it remains recommended reading for those who truly want to engage with transactional understanding. This book, together with others, forms the theoretical framework. As Games People Play points out, the theory needed for analyzing games, for example, is presented in summary form, and the reader seeking depth is referred to another volume, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. This shows a progressive architecture of knowledge, in which initial understanding creates the demand for deepening.

The very definition of transactional analysis, as a “theory of personality and social action, and a clinical method of psychotherapy” (our translation), shows that knowledge is central. Sex in Human Loving is categorical in stating that knowledge of the discipline of transactional analysis is “necessary to become aware of one’s own ego states” (our translation). The cornerstones (the Parent, Adult and Child ego states) need to be understood so they can be identified in ourselves and in others. Without this guide, we navigate our own transactions blind.

However, we return to the question that opens this text: what constitutes an analyst? Certainly not a certificate, nor school hours or scientific academy. If all TA knowledge could be introjected automatically into an individual, that would not make them an analyst. The film’s character Helene had the knowledge but not the integration. True training, what truly forges an analyst, is one-to-one contact. It is in relationship, in the living, present exchange with the other, that theory becomes wisdom. Of all Berne’s contributions, we consider his perception of what happens in groups perhaps his most divine capacity for understanding. He understood that the psyche reveals itself and transforms in interaction.

Therefore, the analyst is not one who has rid themselves of the human condition but one who, armed with a robust theory and deep self-analysis, dares to approach it, in their own life and in the other’s. It is a craft that is never completed, a training that lasts a lifetime.

P.S.: I thank Juliano Dallarmi Mion for selecting and editing the images that make up this article.