Transaction, as has been described previously, implies that the
person and the environment influence each other mutually in the
course of an encounter. Lazarus (1981) states that although
"system" would be appropriate as a general term, he prefers the term
transaction because "system is general while transaction is clearly
concerned with a specific kind of system, namely, a person-
environment relationship in an adaptational encounter (1981, p.
13)." To understand such an encounter, attention must be paid to
process, to what happens over time or across encounters in addition
to what is stable in the person-environment relationship. Lazarus