A social work study on the effect of transactional analysis on the improvement of intimacy attitude

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of group counseling using transactional analysis on the improvement of intimacy attitude in some depressed patients in city of Esfahan, Iran. In this paper, semi-experimental design with pretest posttest control groups was conducted among 30 patients. The sample was selected through available sampling method among the depressed patients referred to psychiatric centers. They were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The measurement instrument is intimacy attitude scale (IAS) questionnaire by Amidon et al. (1983) [Amidon, E., Kumar, V. K., & Treadwell, T. (1983). Measurement of intimacy attitudes: The intimacy attitude scale-revisited. Journal of personality assessment, 47(6), 635-639.] and the Beck depression inventory (BDI). The pretest and posttest scores of the intimacy attitude scale questionnaire were analyzed in both experimental and control groups. For statistical analysis of data, repeated measures analysis of variance was carried out. The research findings indicated that group counseling using transactional analysis increases the level of intimacy attitude in depressed individuals. It also increases the emotional intimacy, but it does not increase the mental intimacy.