She was finishing her sentence when she froze, screaming, “You never listen to anything I say!” Her son blinked, surprised by the way she sounded, rather than what she had said. That kid’s mother sounded exactly like his grandpa, thirty years from now in the same kitchen! And there is no doubt that it was borrowed, older, and sharper. It’s something that pretty much everyone has, and psychology knows the reason why. That little, weird moment illustrated in the above anecdote is the core of Transactional Analysis (TA), a theory of personality and communication developed in the 1950s by psychiatrist Eric Berne.
TA says that every person carries three ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting inside them, called ego states. These ego states are parent, child, and adult. These states guide us quietly in how we speak to our boss, argue with a partner, or comfort a friend. In this article, we explain what these ego states are, how they are expressed in everyday language, and how recognising them can increase the clarity and serenity of our interactions.
What is Transactional Analysis?
Transactional Analysis began when Eric Berne started exploring fresh answers to traditional psychoanalysis, which he found too easy and too complicated for ordinary use (Lapworth & Sills, 2011). Instead of spending years on a couch discussing childhood in abstract terms, Berne wanted a model that ordinary people could understand and apply the same day they learned it. He noticed that when two people talk, they are exchanging something phenomenal which he identified as “transactions,” small units of social contact where one person’s message is met with the other person’s response (Berne, 1961).
Berne proposed that each of us operates from one of three ego states at any given moment. An ego state is a recurrent pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that occurs over and over again, almost like switching among three internal characters (Clarkson & Gilbert, 1988).
How Parent, Adult, and Child Ego States Work
The Parent state consists of the rules, warnings, and habits that a person learned from their caregivers. The Adult state calmly handles information, similar to someone considering facts before making a choice. The Child state contains a person’s genuine feelings, curiosity, and reactions from childhood. These can still appear even in fully grown adults (Heathcote, 2017).
This idea became widely known to the public through the bestselling book of Thomas Harris, which popularised the phrase “I’m OK, you’re OK” to describe healthy relationships built on mutual respect between adult states (Harris, 1967). Later researchers extended Berne’s original model, including work on how much energy a person tends to invest in each ego state, a concept known as the egogram (Dusay, 1972). Decades of clinical use have since confirmed that recognising these states can help people manage conflict, from marriage counselling to parenting support (Real, 2022).
The substance that makes TA appealing, even today, is that it does not require years of training to use (Kicks, 2025). One doesn’t have to be a therapist to notice that a colleague’s tone has shifted from calm to cutting mid-conversation, a lot like a kid who’s being scolded. This everyday usefulness is part of why the model endures across the workplace, classrooms, and homes decades after Berne first wrote it down.
Read More: Conflict Resolution Strategies and Skills
The Three Ego States: Parent, Adult, and Child
1. The Parent ego
The Parent ego is made up of recorded messages from the authority figures in a person’s early life, mostly parents and teachers (Heathcote, 2017). When someone lectures a coworker about being late or automatically says “always wash your hands before eating,” they are speaking from the Parent state. This state has two sides. The Nurturing Parent comforts and protects, saying things like, “Take your time, you will get there.” The Critical Parent is judgmental and corrective, saying things like, “You should have known better.” Both sides can be useful in small doses, but a critical parent who dominates a conversation often makes the other person feel small.
2. The Adult ego state
The Adult ego state is the part of a person that collects facts, checks reality, and responds to the now rather than old habits (Berne, 1961). If someone hears a friend say that their flight was delayed and calmly asks what time the new one lands and if they need a ride, they are speaking from their Adult.
3. The Child ego state
The Child ego state is where an individual stores their feelings and playful nature from when they were kids. This part of every human being is divided into two parts. There is the Free Child, who’s happy and says what is on their mind. For example, the Free Child will laugh really loudly at a joke without caring what other people think. Then there is the Adapted Child, who learned how to behave based on what the people taking care of them wanted.
The Adapted Child will do things like stay quiet in a meeting even when they disagree because they are afraid of getting in trouble, just like they were when they were little. When people are stressed, they often act like their Adapted Child without realising it. They might react to something their boss says in the way they used to react when their parents were upset with them. The Child ego state, and especially the Adapted Child, can really influence how people behave when they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
How Ego States Shape Everyday Conversations
Every conversation is really an exchange between ego states, and Berne called these exchanges transactions (Berne, 1961). A transaction is “complementary,” meaning it flows smoothly, when the response comes back to the same ego state that sent the message. For example, if a colleague speaks Adult to Adult by asking “can you send me the report by five,” and you reply Adult to Adult with “yes, it’s already in your inbox,” the exchange feels easy and finished.
Problems appear in what Berne called a “crossed transaction,” where the response comes from an unexpected ego state (Giovanni, 2026). Imagine a partner asks, Adult to Adult, “Do you know where I put my keys?” If the other person snaps back, Critical Parent to Child, “You always lose everything,” the conversation suddenly feels tense, even though the original question was neutral. The person who was hoping for a simple adult answer is now being treated like a scolded child, and the exchange often turns into an argument neither person intended.
Read More: The Science of Adolescent Egocentrism
Beyond Conversations: Strokes, Games, and Life Scripts
TA also highlights our need for recognition, which Berne called “strokes”: any form of attention, verbal or physical, positive or negative (Newton, 2026). A simple “good morning” or a compliment on someone’s work is a positive stroke, while sarcasm or criticism is a negative one. People really want attention, like plants need sunlight to grow. So, some individuals might start arguments without realising it, just to get someone to react to them.
This is something that writers have talked about; they call it “games” and “life scripts”. They are like patterns that people follow in relationships and conflicts (Karpman, 1968; Woollams & Brown, 1979). There is one pattern that is well known, called the “drama triangle”. When people conflict, they can switch between being the guy, the helper, and the victim without even knowing they are doing it. This is why people can have the argument over and over again, and it can feel really weird (Karpman, 1968).
One simple thing that can help with communication is noticing when a conversation is not going well. It can slip from being a conversation between two adults to being like a parent talking to a child. When this happens, people can choose to respond in a way like an adult. This can be as simple as taking a moment before responding to something mean. Ask yourself, “Am I going to respond like a kid or like a calm adult who is really listening to what the other person is saying?”
Conclusion
Transactional Analysis gives us a simple map for something everybody does constantly without thinking. When anyone has a problem with someone, like when they snap at their partner for asking a question or have a bad conversation with their manager, it is usually because our ego states are not matching. The time a conversation starts to feel bad, the pair in dialogue should stop and think about which part of them is talking. Is it the part of them that stays calm and checks the facts?
If they answer from that part, it might make things better. Sometimes making this small change can make a difference. It can make talking to people feel like a normal conversation between people who are equal rather than a fight. Everyday communication can feel less stressful when we do this. Individuals can have conversations when they use the adult part of their ego, like the part that stays calm and checks the facts, to talk to people.
References +
- Berne, E. (1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. Grove Press. https://doi.org/10.1037/11495-000
- Clarkson, P., & Gilbert, M. (1988). Berne’s Original Model of Ego States: Some Theoretical Considerations. Transactional Analysis Journal, 18(1), 20–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/036215378801800105
- Davidson, C., & Mountain, A. (n.d.). Transactional analysis – Eric Berne. BusinessBalls. https://www.businessballs.com/emotional-intelligence/transactional-analysis-eric-berne/
- Dusay, J.M. (1972). Egograms and the constancy hypothesis. Transactional Analysis Journal, 2(3), 37–41.
- Giovanni. (2026, May 22). Complementary and crossed transactions: Why conversations break down. The Metis Institute. https://metisinstitute.co.uk/transactions-transactional-analysis-complementary-crossed/
- Harris, T. A. (1967). I’m OK, you’re OK: A practical guide to transactional analysis. Harper & Row.
- Heathcote, A. (2017). Eric Berne’s development of ego state theory: Where did it all begin and who influenced him?. Transactional Analysis Journal, 40(3–4), 254–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/036215371004000310
- Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), 39-43.
- Kicks, A. (2025, December 16). What is transactional analysis? A complete guide to TA therapy. Annabel Kicks Humanistic Therapy. https://www.kickstherapy.com/blog/what-is-transactional-analysis-therapy
- Lapworth, P. & Sills, C. (2011). Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective. London: SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0-85702-908-9.
- Newton, C. (2026). Transactional analysis – Part II (The games we play). Claire Newton. https://www.clairenewton.co.za/my-articles/transactional-analysis-part-ii-the-games-we-play.html
- Real, T. (2022). Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. Rodale Books.
- Woollams, S., & Brown, M. (1979). TA: The Total Handbook of Transactional Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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