At the EATA General Assembly on September 16, 2024, Dr. José Manuel Martínez Rodríguez, TSTA-P, was honored with the EATA Silver Medal Award for his tireless dedication to promoting and supporting Transactional Analysis (TA) theory and practice in Spain.
What are Dr. Rodríguez’s thoughts on receiving this recognition?
“It is an honor for me to receive this EATA Silver Medal. I never thought I would receive it one day. I am right now very grateful and moved. So, thank you very much.
When I look back I see how much Transactional Analysis and its philosophy has influenced my life. I began my training in Transactional Analysis in 1987, a long time ago. I had just finished my specialty in Psychiatry and was starting my professional career. Transactional Analysis was a discovery that helped me understand many clinical situations for which I had previously not found an answer.
It immediately became the basis of my clinical practice, my orientation in my relationships and my passion. I identified myself since then as a Transactional Analyst and I rooted my relationships around the core principles of Transactional Analysis.
In my country it was the time of deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients living in hospitals, a time when we defended the civil rights of people with psychoses and other mental health problems. Then came the turn of neurobiology, in which mental health problems tended to be understood as primarily generated by organic brain conditions. This is the prevailing view still to this day. In this professional landscape Transactional Analysis has always helped me put order in the midst of a wide variety of contrasting, sometimes contradictory medical, psychological, and social ways of understanding mental health problems.
Over time I got certified as TSTA in the field of Psychotherapy. I have used Transactional Analysis theories and methods with my clients, I have used Transactional Analysis principles in my organizational design and management of mental health networks in Spain. I have taught Transactional Analysis in training courses in our Institute in Valladolid, I have taught it at University, I have talked about it in a big number of Conferences and participations at National and International no TA Conferences. I have written articles about TA in no TA Journals. My priority was to show our principles and theories outside, to broadcast our knowledge in different professional environments.
Entering the professional world of Transactional Analysis has allowed me to meet wonderful people and have unforgettable experiences that I carry with me.
I want to express my gratitude to the team of people who applied for the nomination, and to those who evaluated the application. I am impressed by their work, their enthusiasm, their love and the way I have been brought here by their conjoint effort. This award strengthens my energy to continue working with Transactional Analysis and for the international community of Transactional Analysts.
In Spain we are nowadays going through difficult times because the Department of Health classified Transactional Analysis as a pseudo therapy in 2011. Through a series of ongoing reports we managed to get out of this classification, but we are still seen as a suspicious technique waiting for an evaluation of the scientific evidence that supports our interventions. That means that we are expected to show Randomized Controlled Trials to demonstrate its efficacy. We are now arguing that there are alternatives to evaluating psychotherapy, closer than Randomized Controlled Trials to the nature of psychotherapy, that we should use instead.
It is being a hard, very long process, that I trust we will successfully conclude. This Silver Medal helps me to restore my energy to continue working on the defence and dissemination of Transactional Analysis.
Thank you again for this great honor.”
Dr. José Manuel Martínez Rodríguez. TSTA-P
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