The concept of impasse was first conceptualized in the transactional literature as an intrapsychic process that inhibited or blocked internal communication among states of the ego. The authors present an understanding of impasse as an interpersonal process that disrupts the work of the professional dyad in promoting self-understanding and development. As the working relationship deepens, it develops an unavoidable intimacy or closeness, with many of the same pleasures and problems that attend any close relationship. In this often turbulent interpersonal field, points of impasse result from the mutual evocation of each person's unconscious relational patterns, which Berne called protocols. The character of any impasse is, therefore, unique to each therapeutic couple and operates principally at an unworded, body level. Once an impasse has developed, resuming productive work depends on realizing what each person does, what each avoids, and how each becomes stuck when addressing the vulnerabilities and intimacies of this work. These concepts are illustrated with material from a clinical case.

Understanding social pain dynamics can help explain and resolve avoidant and aggressive interpersonal behaviors that have an intense, intractable quality, typically accompanied by loss of Adult ego state functioning. The necessarily interpersonal nature of these pain dynamics can also involve and disable the professional, which has implications for working with these affective and behavioral dilemmas.

Eric Berne proposed but never fully elaborated his ideas about nonconscious human processes and their role in developing a sense of self. In the early work of contemporary psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, there are parallels to Berne's thinking that can be used to more fully develop Berne's vision of human functioning and maturing.

The author describes his experience of observing a transactional analysis training group focused on work with highly challenging clients. This encounter precipitated his inquiry into the nature and effect of researching. Drawing on Bion's psychoanalytic concept of “containing”–with its aspects of receiving, thinking, and interpreting–the author hypothesizes how an engaged approach to research into human functioning might actually be therapeutic or growth-enhancing for the individual or group being studied. Such engagement requires the researcher's ability to structure experiences both bodily and mentally on the path to understanding and affecting human capacities.

Being part of the transactional analysis community can provoke the challenge of living in groups and can provide the means of growth into viable, satisfying membership. The author considers how this cultural aspect of transactional analysis—its demands and its gifts—contributed significantly to reversing his own lifelong habit of withdrawal and cutoff from group life.