ADDITIONAL THEORIES

E R I C B E R N E – T R A N S A C T I O N A L A N A LY S I S

T H O M A S H A R R I S – A U T H O R , I ’ M O K AY, Y O U ’ R E O K AY

by: Nesty V Libato

ERIC BERNE (MAY 10, 1910 – JULY 15, 1970)
➢ Eric Berne was born on May 10, 1910 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as Eric Lennard Bernstein
➢ A Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining
human behavior.
➢ Berne's theory of transactional analysis was based on the ideas of Freud but was distinctly different.
❑ Freudian psychotherapists focused on talk therapy as a way of gaining insight to their patient's
personalities.
❑ Berne believed that insight could be better discovered by analyzing patients’ social transactions.
➢ Berne was the first psychiatrist to apply game theory to the field of psychiatry.
➢ Berne mapped interpersonal relationships to three ego-states of the individuals involved: the Parent,
Adult, and Child state. He then investigated communications between individuals based on the current
state of each. He called these interpersonal interactions transactions and used the label games to refer to
certain patterns of transactions which popped up repeatedly in everyday life.
➢ In 1956, after 15 years of psychoanalytic training, Berne was refused admission to the San Francisco
Psychoanalytic Institute as a fully-fledged psychoanalyst. He interpreted the request for several more
years of training as a rejection and decided to walk away from psychoanalysis. Before the end of the year,
he had written two seminal papers, both published in 1957.

➢ In the first article, Intuition V: The Ego Image, Berne referenced P. Federn, E. Kahn, and H. Silberer, and
indicated how he arrived at the concept of ego states, including his idea of separating "adult" from
"child.“

➢ The second paper, Ego States in Psychotherapy, In this second article, he developed the tripartite scheme
used today (Parent, Adult, and Child), introduced the three-circle method of diagramming it, showed how
to sketch contaminations, labeled the theory, “structural analysis," and termed it "a new
psychotherapeutic approach.
➢ A few months later, he wrote a third article, titled Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of
Group Therapy, which was presented by invitation at the 1957 Western Regional Meeting of the American
Group Psychotherapy Association of Los Angeles. With the publication of this paper in the 1958 issue of
the American Journal of Psychotherapy, Berne's new method of diagnosis and treatment, transactional
analysis, became a permanent part of the psychotherapeutic literature. In addition to restating his
concepts of ego states and structural analysis, the 1958 paper added the important new features of
transactional analysis proper (i.e. the analysis of transactions), games, and scripts.

➢ His seminar group from the 1950s developed the term transactional analysis (TA) to describe therapies
based on his work. By 1964, this expanded into the International Transactional Analysis Association. While
still largely ignored by the psychoanalytic community, many therapists have put his ideas in practice.

➢ In the early 1960s he published both technical and popular accounts of his conclusions. His first full -length
book on TA was published in 1961, titled Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. Structures and
Dynamics of Organizations and Groups (1963) examined the same analysis in a broader context than one-
on-one interaction.
➢Parent, Adult, Child
 EGO State sending the Signal

Parent

Child

Adult
➢ To analyze a transaction, you see and feel what is being said.

➢ Transaction analysis is a language within a language, a language in true meaning and

feeling. It can help you in every situation.

1. To be able to understand more clearly, what is going on.

2. We give ourselves choices of what ego state to adapt. Which signal s to send and where to
send it.
➢ This enables us to make the most of all our communications. Therefore to create, develop
and maintain better relationship.
GAMES
PEOPLE
PLAY

The book clearly presented everyday examples of the

ways in which human beings are caught up in the games
they play.
THOMAS HARRIS

Written and published in UK in 1970,

still have validity until today.

✓ I'm Okay, you're Okay

✓ I'm Okay, you're not Okay
✓ I'm not Okay, you're Okay
✓ I'm not Okay, you're not Okay
THOMAS HARRIS
➢ William Thomas Harris III (born September 22, 1940 in Jackson, Tennessee) is an American writer, best
known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter.
➢ He was introverted and bookish in grade school and then blossomed in high school. While in college,
he worked as a reporter for the local newspaper, the Waco Tribune-Herald, covering the police beat. In
1968

✓ Novelist Stephen King remarked that if writing is sometimes tedious for other authors, to Harris it is
like "writhing on the floor in agonies of frustration", because for Harris, "the very act of writing is a
kind of torment".
✓ Novelist John Dunning said of Harris, "All he is, is a talent of the first rank.”
Thank you