Piotr Jusik PTSTA-C
María Renée Gándara CTA-P
Field of audience: C,P

Language: English
Level of audience: All

Many transactional analysts navigate intercultural landscapes, and diversity awareness is crucial to our legacy and legitimacy. However, sometimes it can become a performative exercise where we try to appease an imaginary Parent figure, which drains the joy from TA practice. Equally, our sense of legitimacy depends on the context and our personal experiences, both of which can be subject to biases (Batts, 1982). As a result we may lose contact with our spontaneity when we get too preoccupied with getting it right.

The interactive workshop is an invitation to reconnect with the pleasure that arises from intercultural collaboration. Our identities are a rich tapestry of conscious and unconscious narratives that reflect personal and global stories, some of which are clearly outdated and limiting. Through a robust Integrating Adult (Tudor, 2003) we can decide what needs to be left behind and more importantly, what serves us well in the here and now to engage creatively with our clients. By co-creating shared frames of reference (Jusik, 2022) and accounting for differences with joy and mutual admiration, we can pave the way for practising TA that allows our professional identities to flourish. The participants will have an opportunity to connect their feelings, thoughts and somatic experiences in response to group discussions and expressive exercises (Toro,2012). They will have a felt sense of their growth and development as transactional analysts, with their complex identities that include the richness that the world has to offer.

By cultivating empathy, cultural self-awareness and authenticity, it is possible to build stronger relationships in a world full of diversity. It is through a process of respectful negotiation and striking a balance between our individual and collective identities that we strengthen our resources (Fassbind-Kech, 2013) and expand our cultural frames of reference (James, 1994).