A quick recap of a few definitions in the world of transactional analysis.
In transactional analysis three broad ego states are defined. The parent, The child and The adult state. As the name suggests, each of these ego states has its own unique identity and every individual exhibits one or more of these ego states at a given point in time.
A transaction is a relation, a communication established between two people. Each transaction essentially has two parts , one the stimulus and the other response. These transactions can happen between one ego state to the other.
One of the trickier transactions to analyze is the Angular or the Covert transaction. In this communication, on the outer cover it seems to be a simple conversation where one ego state is trying to invoke another straight forward response. But in reality it is covertly trying to address another ego state and if the respondent does not see this, then the conversation fails to have the intended result. Here the stimulus tries to kindle another ego state by implying certain hidden context in the communication.
As usual let us take an example to understand this behavior a little better. Mark, Lisa and Anthony are good friends. Mark has a crush on Lisa and Anthony is aware of this. One day Lisa decides to go out with Anthony on a date. Mark walks up to Anthony and says " I hear you are going on a date with Lisa. That is great! I hope you have a pleasant evening". On the onset it seems like a harmless conversation, where Mark's statement is in its adult state. If the response from Anthony turns out to be "Thank you Mark!" then this is more of an adult-to-adult conversation. Here the transaction actually fails, because the ego which was covertly addressed by the stimulus was that of the child ego state.
Instead if Anthony had responded by saying "Is there a problem Mark ? Lisa did ask me out you know !" , now here Anthony has invoked the child ego state, which was exactly the target by the stimulus, thus making this a successful covert transaction where the stimulus in the adult state has secretly invoked the child state to respond.
Angular transactions are not direct and generally a rational sounding statement provokes or is devised to hook some other ego state which is the ulterior purpose of the transaction.
