Transactional Analysis Podcast

In this episode of the Transactional Analysis Podcast, hosts Jr-Earn Lam and Sarah Lowes speak with Cat Cornthwaite (PTSTA-E), an Educational Transactional Analyst working with schools and training institutes to support their relational practice.
Cat taught English in mainstream schools for around thirteen years before moving into training and consultancy full time. Her focus is the educational encounter, and in particular what has to be in place before an encounter can be transformative at all. She draws on the existing TA models together so that we can work from a place of awareness, rather than allowing script beliefs to take hold and lead the encounter.
The conversation turns to the work now at the heart of her practice. Following Kirsten Olson’s Wounded by School, Cat distinguishes educational wounds from both educational trauma and trauma-informed education. These are the injuries sustained through the experience of the education system, long-lasting, often hidden, and surfacing again in us as adult learners. 
Cat draws on the hospicing work she is developing with Beatrijs Dijkman to describe the alternative: sitting with what is no longer serving us while honouring what it once did for us, asking what it is doing in the present, and asking what it will serve in those who come after us.
You’ll hear them explore:
How the existing TA models can be drawn together to invite an encounter that is truly transformative.
What we each bring as individuals, how we then exist as a group, the wider systems always at play, and the educational object we have gathered around.
Working where the system feels stifling: looking to the health, the tension between what we hope to be doing and what we feel we have to do, and why that difficulty cannot be ignored.
Reflections on the educational script adult learners arrive with.
A script activity with a room of teachers who felt entirely on the same page, until they were asked what they had understood education to be for.
Educational TA beyond the surface: the nature of education itself and the wisdom of the educator.
Hospicing the wound: the work of tending, and an honouring of what was, what is, and what will be.
Guest Information
Cat Cornthwaite (PTSTA-E)
Cat Cornthwaite is an Educational Transactional Analyst working with schools and training institutes to support their relational practice. She taught English in mainstream education for approximately thirteen years before moving into training and consultancy full time. Her area of expertise is the educational encounter.
Cat first came across TA in 2018. Difficulties with her institution’s approach to staff training led her to look at externally funded courses through the teaching union, one of which was a TA 101 delivered by Giles Barrow as a two-day residential with a follow-up day six months later. She was immediately hooked, both by the course itself and by its transformative effect on her, her practice and those she worked with, and wrote to Giles as soon as it finished to ask about further training.
Her current focus is educational wounds: how the system itself wounds, and how we might tend those wounds so that we can encounter education differently. Cat lives in Glossop, Derbyshire, with her partner and two young children.
Email: c.y.cornthwaite@gmail.com
Website: https://encountering-education.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cat-cornthwaite-a43534352
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Thank You To Our Partners
This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the United Kingdom Association for Transactional Analysis. We’re proud to have the UK Association for Transactional Analysis (UKATA) as our Patronage Partner. UKATA is a vibrant professional body committed to supporting the growth and ethical practice of Transactional Analysis in the UK and beyond. They support practitioners, trainees, and the public through professional standards, events, and access to TA education. Learn more: www.uka4ta.co.uk
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In this special episode of the Transactional Analysis Podcast, hosts John Fleming and Matt Taylor are joined by Aya Konoike, an organisational development and DEI consultant based in Kamakura, Japan, and a Shugendo practitioner of over thirteen years - to introduce Contemplative TA: a somatic, experiential integration of Shugendo, Zen and transactional analysis.
Built from Aya’s own practice, Contemplative TA sets out to reconnect what modern, individualist life tends to split apart, mind from body, self from other, people from the natural world. It’s learned somatically rather than cognitively, through movement and ritual as much as reflection, and grounded in a distinctly Japanese understanding of presence, nature and connection.
It’s a warm, wide-ranging and often moving conversation about what transactional analysis still offers a fast, commodifying world.
You’ll hear them explore:
Aya's own journey into discovering TA
An exploration of Contemplative TA: a somatic, experiential integration of Shugendo, Zen and TA, built around the integrating Adult and "negative capability"
Presence as connection to your resources, and the Japanese idea of "ba"
Shugendo, and Aya's own training and experience
Why "contemplative" needn't mean "still," and what that opens up
How Aya's view of nature parts ways with eco-TA: not using nature to grow ourselves, but remembering we already belong to it
"Worldly" versus "global" (after Henry Mintzberg)
TA as a "catalyst" between a capitalist world and ancient wisdom
Japanese references mentioned in the episode
- Shugendo: 修験道
- Dewa Sanzan: 出羽三山
- Ba: 場
- Uketamo: うけたもう
- Shinto: 神道
Literature mentioned
Barrow & Marshall (2023), Transactional Analysis Journal 53(1)
Guest Information
Aya Konoike (PTSTA-O)
Aya Konoike is an organisational development and DEI consultant based in Kamakura, Japan, working with both Japanese and international companies on diversity, equity and inclusion, workplace transformation and organisational culture change. Alongside this she facilitates management training and leadership development programmes, and offers one-to-one counselling. She is also a Sendatsu (senior guide) in Shugendo, supporting practitioners who travel from abroad to undertake training.
A practitioner of Zen for around twenty years and of Shugendo for over thirteen, she has drawn these traditions together with TA to create Contemplative TA -a somatic, experiential approach built around presence, connection to the natural world, and the cultivation of the integrating Adult.
Email: konoike@six-eight.jp
Website: https://six-eight.jp/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayak-sixeight/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ritzcats/
Support The TA Podcast
Want to help keep the podcast accessible for everyone? Join our community of supporters:
 https://www.patreon.com/TransactionalAnalysisPodcast
Or leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode.  Leaving a review allows more people to discover the podcast. Simply scroll down to ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts and click: write a review.
Your support makes it all possible. Thank you.
Follow Us On Social Media:
Instagram: @ta_podcast
Facebook: podcast.ta
TikTok: @ta_podcast
LinkedIn: ta-podcast
Website: https://www.tapodcast.com
Email: info@tapodcast.com
Thank You To Our Partners
This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the United Kingdom Association for Transactional Analysis. We’re proud to have the UK Association for Transactional Analysis (UKATA) as our Patronage Partner. UKATA is a vibrant professional body committed to supporting the growth and ethical practice of Transactional Analysis in the UK and beyond. They support practitioners, trainees, and the public through professional standards, events, and access to TA education. Learn more: www.uka4ta.co.uk
We are also supported by our wonderful Patreon supporters.

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In this episode of the Transactional Analysis Podcast, hosts John Fleming and Matt Taylor are joined by Dr. Valerie Batts, Ph.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Founding Director, Interim Board Chair, VISIONS and a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA-P) who has spent over fifty years applying TA as a lens on power, culture, and social change.
Valerie traces her path into TA from a young student activist in 1973, where she helped incarcerated young men learn “I’m OK, You’re OK,” ego states and games as a way of interrupting the negative messages they carried about themselves and about the system.
That experience set the course for a rich career spent applying a cultural lens and a power analysis to the work of clinicians, clients, educators, and organisations.
In this episode, Valerie draws on these experiences which make for a rich, powerful exploration of power, oppression and social justice.
You’ll hear them explore:
How Valerie first encountered TA in 1973, teaching “I’m OK, You’re OK” to incarcerated young men and what it revealed about power and equity
Valerie’s thoughts around TA through a political and social activism lens
The VISIONS model and its four interlocking levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional (systemic), and cultural
“Modern oppression” read through TA: child-Adult contamination, early decisions and the dance of privilege and lack of privilege
Why the discounting of TA may mirror a wider discounting of mental health.
How pathologising a person’s script can itself be a form of oppression 
Righteous anger as an alternative to violence and culture as the water a fish cannot see
What TA still offers in challenging, polarised times and how to keep the work alive and relevant 
Guest Information
Dr. Valerie Batts (TSTA-P) is the founding Director and a senior consultant at VISIONS-Inc. (Vigorous Interventions in Ongoing Natural Settings), the organisation she co-founded in 1984. In that role she provides coaching and supervision to leaders across companies, local government, and faith-based institutions. She also maintains a small private psychotherapy practice focused on supporting clients who have historically not had access to effective, culturally responsive mental health care, and she chairs the board of an emerging community-based gun-violence interruption programme in the rural North Carolina community where she lives - work that builds on a career-long commitment to criminal justice reform.
A Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst, Valerie first encountered TA in 1973 as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, mentored by her first TA trainer, Josephine Bowens Lewis. Her work focuses on helping others recognise, understand, appreciate, and use similarities and differences at four interlocking levels — the personal, interpersonal, systemic (institutional), and cultural - and her particular area of expertise is applying a cultural lens and a power analysis to TA practice.
Link to Website: https://www.visions-inc.org
Support The TA Podcast
Want to help keep the podcast accessible for everyone? Join our community of supporters:
https://www.patreon.com/TransactionalAnalysisPodcast
Or leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode — leaving a review allows more people to discover the podcast. Simply scroll down to ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts and click: write a review.
Your support makes it all possible. Thank you.
Follow Us On Social Media:
Instagram: @ta_podcast
Facebook: podcast.ta
TikTok: @ta_podcast
LinkedIn: ta-podcast
Website
https://www.tapodcast.com
Email
info@tapodcast.com
Thank You To Our Partners
This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the United Kingdom Association for Transactional Analysis. We’re proud to have the UK Association for Transactional Analysis (UKATA) as our Patronage Partner. UKATA is a vibrant professional body committed to supporting the growth and ethical practice of Transactional Analysis in the UK and beyond. They support practitioners, trainees, and the public through professional standards, events, and access to TA education. Learn more: www.uka4ta.co.uk
We are also supported by the European Association for Transactional Analysis, and our wonderful Patreon supporters.
Support the show

In this episode of the Transactional Analysis Podcast, hosts John Fleming and Matt Taylor speak with Graeme Summers and Keith Tudor, the co-developers of Co-Creative Transactional Analysis (TA) and recipients of the 2020 Eric Berne Memorial Award for this contribution to TA. 
In this conversation, they trace the origins of Co-Creative TA - from shared questions in training, to years of tussling over theory, to a framework that has shaped how practitioners across psychotherapy, education, coaching, and organisational work understand the heart of TA.
You'll hear them explore:
What Co-Creative TA is and what it is deliberately not
The three principles: we-ness, shared responsibility, and present-centred development
How social constructivism and field theory informed their re-reading of Berne
Why health psychology (psychosanology) matters as much as pathology in TA practice
The difference between transactional analysis and transactional design
The integrating adult and why Graeme now wants to talk about the ‘disintegrating Adult’ too
Why Co-Creative TA is a meta-perspective rather than a school, and what that means for trainees and practitioners
Disclaimer: In this episode, Graeme and Keith are expressing their personal opinions and is not speaking on behalf of any company or organisation.
Guest Information
Keith Tudor
Keith Tudor TSTA(Psychotherapy, CTA(Psychotherapy) is Professor of Psychotherapy  at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand, where he is also co-Lead of Moana Nui Psychological Therapies Research Group. A Certified and Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst in psychotherapy, Keith has worked in and around TA for over 40 years, with more than 100 publications on TA to his name. He maintains a thriving private practice and works across the TA and person-centred worlds as a therapist, supervisor, trainer, and educator.
Graeme Summers
Graeme Summers is an executive coach who has worked at London Business School for over 21 years, partnering with senior leaders at the intersection of psychology and leadership effectiveness. A co-developer of Co-Creative Transactional Analysis, Graeme is a certified Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy) who, prior to his coaching career, worked as a TA psychotherapist and served as Director of Training at the Counselling and Psychotherapy Training Institute in Edinburgh.
Link to Website: https://www.co-creativity.com
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graemesummers/
Support The TA Podcast
Want to help keep the podcast accessible for everyone? Join our community of supporters:
https://www.patreon.com/TransactionalAnalysisPodcast
Your support makes it all possible. Thank you.
Follow Us On Social Media:
Instagram: @ta_podcast
Facebook: podcast.ta
TikTok: @ta_podcast
LinkedIn: ta-podcast
Website
https://www.tapodcast.com
Email
info@tapodcast.com
Thank You To Our Partners
This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the United Kingdom Association for Transactional Analysis. We’re proud to have the UK Association for Transactional Analysis (UKATA) as our Patronage Partner. Learn more: www.uka4ta.co.uk
We are also supported by the European Association for Transactional Analysis, and our wonderful Patreon supporters.
Support the show

In this episode of the Transactional Analysis Podcast, hosts James Longwell and Parul Arora speak with Lorena Adami (CTA-C), a Transactional Analyst in the counselling field based in Italy, about her integration of cinema, storytelling, and TA.
Lorena shares how her background in cinema and media led her to develop what she calls “CineCounselling”, sparked in part by noticing the shared language of script in both film and TA. 
Together, they explore how metaphor, scenes, characters, and shared cultural reference points can support clients and groups to find words, create distance when needed, and expand perception in the counselling context.
You’ll hear them explore:
How Lorena connects movie script and life script 
The concept of what Lorena calls “CineCounselling”
Why cinema can offer a symbolic language when a client can’t yet find words
Using film to create the right distance to speak about self through story
A group example using a movie to explore the free child, creativity, and expression with students
Lorena’s view of TA counselling as empowerment for the client
How movie scenes can make TA concepts more accessible
Guest Information
Lorena Adami (CTA-C) is a Transactional Analyst in the counselling field, based in Italy. She works in private practice and also supports people and groups across educational, organisational, and non-profit contexts through experiential learning, training, and consultancy.
Her approach integrates Film Studies, Transactional Analysis, and Spirituality & Management, using narrative and cinematic language to foster reflection, communication, and relational learning. She is developing CineCounseling, a flexible and co-creative model that uses film and storytelling to explore emotions, relationships, and new perspectives within groups and systems.
Website: https://msha.ke/lorenaadami#about
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorena-adami-counselling/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/la_cinecounselor/
Support Us 
Want to help keep the podcast accessible for everyone?Join our community of supporters: patreon.com/TransactionalAnalysisPodcast
Or leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode - leaving a review allows more people to discover the podcast - scroll down to ratings and reviews on apple podcasts and click: write a review.
Your support makes it all possible. Thank you.
Follow Us On Social Media:
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Facebook: podcast.ta
TikTok: @ta_podcast
Linkedin: ta-podcast
Connect With Us
website: www.tapodcast.com
email: info@tapodcast.com 
Thank You To Our Partners
This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the United Kingdom Association for Transactional Analysis. We’re proud to have the UK Association for Transactional Analysis (UKATA as our Patronage Partner. UKATA is a vibrant professional body committed to supporting the growth and ethical practice of Transactional Analysis in the UK and beyond.
They support practitioners, trainees, and the public through professional standards, events, and access to TA education. Learn more: www.uka4ta.co.uk
We are also supported by the European Association for Transactional Analysis, and our wonderful Patreon supporters.
Support the show