Metarelations of Transactional Analysis

Metarelations of Transactional Analysis
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The symmetrical relations of transactional analysis are formalised here for meta-analysis. For things A and B, let their relation be A NNNN B so that each N stands for a binary variable whose truth value is either 0 or 1. Each N stands for a different variable so that:

1st N means "I'm Not OK, You're Not OK"
2nd N means "I'm Not OK, You're OK"
3rd N means "I'm OK, You're Not OK"
4th N means "I'm OK, You're OK"

The symmetrical relations of transactional analysis are therefore:

A 0000 B
A 0110 B
A 1001 B
A 1111 B

It's probably easier to begin the meta-analysis of transactional analysis from symmetrical relations because directionality usually increases complexity according to previous experience.

In order to meta-analyse transactional relations we should interpret them as variables and then impose the object relations on these variables. But if we had only one notation, the result could look like this:

0110 1111 0110

This form is difficult to understand because the relations and the variables look exactly the same. In order to tell the difference between a relation and a variable one would have to count its index number in the expression. If that number would be even, the expression would refer to a variable, but odd numbers would refer to a relation. It would be bothersome to count this.

Therefore, in order to meta-analyse transactional analysis it would be useful to have two notations. One notation refers to a transactional analysis relation as a variable and the other would refer to that relation as a relation. I recommend the following notation:

A INC B means A 0000 B
A COM B means A 0110 B
A CPR B means A 1001 B
A IDN B means A 1111 B