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

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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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