Effects of Transactional Analysis Group Therapy on Ego States and Ego State Perception

Abstract

This study investigated the effects on participants' ego state responses and their perception of each other's ego states of a 5-day therapy group using transactional analysis as its theoretical foundation. Twenty-eight third-year psychology students of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines, participated in the study. In a pretest-posttest-control group design, 15 participants were assigned to the experimental group that underwent a group therapy patterned after the Gouldings' (1977) redecision therapy, while the remaining 13 students were assigned to the control group. Two posttests were conducted, one immediately following the therapy session and the other 6 weeks after it. Ego states were measured by the Adjective Checklist (ACL) developed by Gough and Heilbrun (1983). Ego state perception was measured by Dusay's (1977) egogram. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) indicated significant changes in the ego states after the first posttest: Hotelling's T = .69584, F (5, 22) = 3.06171, p < .03, and a near significance, Hotelling's T = .57286, F (5, 22) = 2.52059, p < .059 in the follow-up posttest. Ego states were also perceived to have changed significantly after 6 weeks. The observed pattern seemed to be increasing Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Natural Child ego states and decreasing Critical Parent and Adapted Child ego states. These ego state changes also seemed to be validated by a repeated measures MANOVA, which yielded significant effects on the experimental participants' perception of each others' ego states as measured by the egogram: Hotelling's T = 2.809, F (5, 10) = 5.619, p < .01. Results are discussed in the context of the pattern of ego state changes. Also considered is the limitation of the nomothetic approach in this particular study.