Working title of dissertation: Social construction of autonomy in Transactional analysis tradition

The focus of the study will be on elaboration of certain Transactional analysis (TA) ideas with the constructionist sensitivity. In this dissertation some TA grounding concepts will be put in the questions for the purpose of rethinking its pragmatic and contextual validity. The social constructionist presumption is that the meaning attached to the certain ideas, such as the constricting narrative or life script and the idea of the personal independence, is neither directly derived from the individual mental representation of the concepts, nor from the dominant theoretical explanations. The context of the research would be couple counseling discourse in the perspective of contemporary Serbian partnership styles. The main objective is to learn on the potential of TA oriented psychotherapy to provide the context for the clients to create their own treatment goals, new identities, meanings or life options.

In order to explore that subject and answer the research questions, two methodological lines will be followed. One fragment of the study will be to deconstruct denotation of the concept of autonomy in the tradition of humanistic psychotherapy, and the concept of script cure in the discourse of TA. The other segment of research will be based on interpretative analysis of data collected through interviews for the purpose of exploring and identifying local connotative meanings and pragmatic value of mentioned theoretical concepts. Sample will include four couples. Two of them had experience with the TA group therapy for couples. Besides that, all four of them have fairly similar background. The dissertation will integrate the reflexive account with the intention to contextualize and relativize the stated observations regarding interviewees.

Possibly, findings and conclusions of this work could become a base for the revision of the concept “script cure” from the position of postmodern therapy. The reconsideration will have focus on overcoming the implied antagonism between those two theoretical models, model of autonomy and a model of life script.

Kristina works as an associate lecturer at the Faculty for Media and Communication on the course Psychology of Communication. She is also an initiator and a project coordinator of the Counseling department established at Belgrade Youth Cultural Center. The launch of this program, as a long term project, has been an answer to a recognized need for the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in Serbia through mobilization of community resources for the actions that will affirm the culture of prevention.