TAST Handbook

Transactional Analysis Self Therapy (TAST) Handbook

TAST Originator : 

Ajit Karve from Pune, India is the originator of TAST. He has a BTA from the Institute for Counselling and Transactional Analysis, Kochi India. TAST is the product of his 15 years research to formulate an effective system to actualise goals of TA practice in self-help mode. 

Definition of TAST : 

Transactional Analysis Self Therapy is a set of systematic practices to live life, free of life script impositions.

Map and Territory : 

Transactional Analysis is a map that helps psychotherapists understand and treat a variety of mental, psychological, emotional, behavioural and relationship issues on the basis of personality structure and its anomalies.

TAST 'Script Activation System' provides a map listing contributing mechanisms that sustain script. Practitioners use prescribed methods to safely deactivate the script.

Goals of TAST : 

TAST practices afford personal growth, personal change, personality development, game free interactions, script free living, a non-talking mind, healing dysfunctional ego states, freedom from thinking / feeling log-jams and thinking / feeling down-spins.

TAST Ruling Principles : 

Script is a survival mechanism. Therefore its components are best not tweaked (treated piecemeal) till a healthy personality is installed. 

Start slow, be patient, reach far. Practitioners are aware that script cure takes anywhere between two and seven years to accomplish.

Self therapy is focused to enable divine forces to implement cure. Therefore, practitioners carefully proceed in a structured manner. Dysfunctional aspects are dealt with after getting a healthy personality installed.

TAST Practices Overview :

TAST practitioners recognise that script has inertia and maintains its homeostasis. They also recognise that script is a neuro-psychic survival mechanism. Attempts to administer script cure are therefore likely to prove  ineffective. TAST practices are thus aimed to first make the script amenable to change, then to establish a healthy personality structure and last to render the life-script promoting systems ineffective in generating payoffs, rackets and psychological trading stamps. Lasting script cure results.

The TAST self therapy proceeds through three stages.

TAST First Stage - TAST practitioners engage in some twenty plus practices to soften the existing neuro-psychic system through a period of one year. It renders the system amenable to accept new methods of thinking, feeling, doing, acting, behaving, perceiving, evaluating, assessing, concluding and responding. This is done by observing - do no harm; and implementing sane, safe, effective, appropriate and win-win generating responses.

TAST Second Stage : Practitioners take up activities to build a healthy personality with Acquiescent Free Child, Permissive Parent and Empowered Adult as its structural components. 

TAST Third Stage : Practitioners are now empowered to deal with over fifty script activating and script promoting mechanisms to prevent generation of pay-offs, rackets and psychological trading stamps. The script is thus rendered ineffective. It is akin to diverting canal water away from irrigating a crop, leaving the crop to dry / die.

TAST Beliefs : 

1. What is erected can be dismantled. A new robust structure can be erected in lieu. 

2. Personality and Script are two faces of the same coin.

 3. Humans can call upon the future to influence its past (Berne 1953). Therefore, one can take to new practices and enjoy a better future. 

4. Payoffs, Rackets and Psychological Trading Stamps are the principal contributors in helping script achieve its goal / payoff.

6. The Child that made script decisions in childhood is available in present times to scrap unhealthy decisions and incorporate new ones.

7. Fate and destiny are forces that throw situations at us and force us to make choices on an ongoing basis.

TAST Core Model :  

The Script Activating System Diagram lists script activating and script sustaining items that generate  payoffs, rackets and psychological trading stamps.

The Script Activating System Diagram

TAST Values : 

1. Do no harm. It means engaging in practices ensuring that they do not harm self, another or others. 

2. Therapist treats, God Cures. Taking to practices that help nature to restore mental, emotional and psychological health. 

3. Start slow, be patient, go far. 

4. Installing a healthy structure before treating the dysfunctional one. Remaining mindful of the fact that script is a survival mechanism. 

5. Patience - TAST is not a quick fix solution providing methodology. The treatment could take anywhere from two to seven years. 

Pre-qualification : 

Knowledge of TA concepts, terms, ideas and theory contents is a pre-requisite. TAST practitioners need to have read and be well versed with contents of TA books : TA Today, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, What Do You Say After You Say Hello and Principles of Group Treatment.

Volitional Approach : 

TAST advocates a volitional approach. It means having an empowering drive to be determined, dedicated and committed to achieve the end, which is script-free living. 

Fate and destiny : 

Fate is a life circumstance that becomes created for us without our contribution. Changes in laws and rules that affect our life significantly, constitutes fate. So also  death of a significant other, loss of job because of changed economic conditions or market factors, or outbreak of war constitutes fate.

Destiny is the end we generate based on choices and decisions we made in childhood and make in particularly challenging circumstances later in life. It is destiny that we nurture when we fail to implement sane, safe, effective and appropriate responses and also when we fail to make new choices and decisions.

The cards game of solitaire demonstrates how fate and destiny get us to meander through our life, based on choices we make in response to every presenting sets of options.

TAST Terms

Racket : Anything scripty. Thinking, feeling, emoting, acting, doing, performing, perceiving, evaluating, assessing, concluding, responding, interacting are rackets when they are scripty. 

Script Directives : Script Directives are incorporations. They get selectively planted in P¹ with support of A¹ mostly in our childhood.

Farming : Engaging in activities that produce payoffs, rackets and psychological trading stamps.

Harvest : Produce of payoffs, rackets and psychological trading stamps.

Introject : Taken in whole much like a frog swallows insects and a snake swallows its prey.

Incorporation : Wilfully receiving and selectively incorporating beliefs, values, behaviours, patterns, methods and practices.

Reality Contributors : Situations, problems, difficulties, conditions of life and living, challenges, conflicts, traps, events, occurrences, incidents, happenings, accidents, possessions (Jamesian) and people are the principal contributors of realities. 

Adult Reality Testing : Effecting reality testing by an Empowered Adult with Permissive Parent and Acquiescent Free Child support.

Ego State : Ego States can be empowering as well as debilitating. 

Empowering Ego States help respond to reality situations : to end situations, solve problems, tide over difficulties, endure conditions, face challenges, accept conflicts, walk out of traps, and deal with people, events, occurrences, incidents, happening and accidents similar to the quote: ‘neither a victor nor vanquished be’.

Debilitating Ego States are units of experience that are based on reading distorted and imagined reasoning, as well as meaning and understanding into an experience to make it real. This is on the basis of illusion, distortion and imagination lacking age appropriate Adult capacities. 

Meaning : The word meaning has six meanings - lexicographic, non-lexicographic, philosophical, psychological, semiotic and existential. Appropriating meaning generates distortion. We read meaning according to our disposition. Reinforcing of life position occurs and a scripty view of reality gets generated thereby. 

Self Responsibility : 1. Assuming responsibility to meet own needs. 2. Assuming responsibility to implement TAST practices and simultaneously working to stall production of payoffs, rackets and psychological trading stamps.

Social Control : It is the ability to resist the urge to manipulate another / others in damaging or destructive ways. It is also the ability to resist the manipulation by another / others in damaging or destructive ways. 

Ho’o Ponopono : Ho’o Ponopono means “setting relationships right” (Clarke’s TA Dictionary p.233). It is used in five types of relationships. 1. Where there are problems between two unrelated persons; 2. Where issues between two family members need to be resolved; 3. Where issues between two families need to be resolved.; 4. Helping resolve issues that affect the community; and 5. Where issues of the spirit need to be resolved. This is done by: 1. Practice of Meditation; 2. Visualisation in service of peaceful end; 3. Forgiveness; 4. Reaching to an agreement of closure; and 5. Mutual restitution which promotes forgetting the matter.

Controls : Payoffs, injunctions and provocations that control scripty behaviour. (Glossary - Hello 1971) 

Penfield’s six findings : 1. Human brain acts like a (tape) recorder. We may forget experiences. The brain as yet holds their recordings. 2. The brain records events with feelings. They stay locked with each others. 3. It is possible for human beings to remain in two states simultaneously - one the recalled and the other the observed. 4. Hidden experiences are vivid and affect how we feel at the time of replaying. 5. Subjects recall past events with meaning and understanding attached relevant to the time prevailing. 6. There is a certain connection between mind and body. Fear is accompanied by sweating, dry mouth, trembling and nausea, anger with trembling.

Activated dysfunctional ego states deny persons from enjoying capacity for OK-ness, capacity to use age appropriate Adult thinking and making new decisions.

Free Child : A functional ego state that promotes freedom from script.

Permissive Parent : Permissive Parent is an endocrinologically programmed Parent.

Empowered Adult : An Adult which can implement age appropriate Adult Reality Testing with support of the Acquiescent Free Child and Permissive Parent.

Rewards of TAST Practice

1. Acquiring a non-talking mind.

2. Bringing the mind to where the body is.

3. Generating the moment, entering the moment and being in that moment.

4. Living without converting experiences into artefacts and then woefully preserving them for posterity.

5. Giving up artefacts - These are self worth, value, dignity, esteem and beliefs which adversely impact mental, psychological and emotional health and well being.

6. Utilising opportunities every moment offers, to create a future and destiny we desire to live.

7. Giving up harvesting pay-offs, rackets and psychological trading stamps.

8. Living in the Child most of the time and quickly moving to Adult to deal with realities.

9. Affording others to think, feel, emote, act, do, behave and at the same time exercising options to think, feel, emote, act, do, behave appropriately, observing TAST principles of: do no harm, and generating sane, safe, effective, appropriate, and win-win responses.

10. Using the moment to convert every possibility into a rewarding opportunity to promote script free living.

TAST Practices

Tap here for : Link to TAST Practices

--------------------