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Eric Berne was born May 10, 1910 in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada, as Leonard Bernstein, the son of David Hiller Bernstein, MD, a general
practitioner, and Sarah Gordon Bernstein, a professional writer and editor. His
only sibling, his sister Grace, was born five years later. The family
immigrated to Canada from Poland and Russia. Both parents graduated from McGill
University, and Eric, who was close to his father, spoke fondly of how he
accompanied his father, a physician, on medical rounds. Dr. Bernstein died of
tuberculosis at age 38. Mrs. Bernstein then supported herself and her two
children working as an editor and writer. She encouraged Eric to follow in his
father's footsteps and study medicine. He received an M.D. and C.M. (Master of
Surgery) from McGill University Medical School in 1935. |
Pre-War Years
Berne interned in the United States at Englewood Hospital in
New Jersey. In 1936 he began his psychiatric residency at the Psychiatric
Clinic of Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked for two years.
Some time around 1938-39, Berne became an American citizen and shortened his
name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne. His first appointment was as
Clinical Assistant in Psychiatry at Mt. Zion Hospital, New York City, a post he
held until 1943 when he went into the Army Medical Corps. In 1940 Berne had
established a private practice in Norwalk, Connecticut. There he met and
married his first wife, Elinor, with whom he had two children, Ellen and David.
From 1940-1943 he also commuted from his Westport home to practice concurrently
in New York City. In 1941 he began training as a psychoanalyst at the New York
Psychoanalytic Institute and became an analysand of Paul Federn.
Army Medical Corps
Because of the demand for army psychiatrists during World
War II, Dr. Berne served from 1943-46 in the AUS Medical Corps, rising from
first lieutenant to major. His assignments included Spokane, Washington, Ft.
Ord, California and Bingham City, Utah. During the latter two years he
practiced group therapy in the psychiatric wards of Bushnell General Hospital.
When discharged from the army in 1946, Berne, now divorced, decided to relocate
in Carmel, California, an area he had fallen in love with when stationed at
nearby Fort Ord. Before the year was out he completed writing The
Mind in Action and signed a contract for its publication with Simon and
Schuster of New York. That same year he resumed his psychoanalytic training at
the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1947 he became the analysand of
Eric Erikson, with whom he worked for two years.
Family Life in California
Soon after beginning analysis with Erikson, Berne met a
young divorcee, Dorothy de Mass Way, whom he wanted to marry. Erikson said Eric
could not marry until after finishing his didactic analysis, and so it was not
until 1949 that Eric and Dorothy exchanged vows and set up home in Carmel.
Dorothy brought three children to the marriage, and she and Eric eventually had
two sons of their own, Ricky and Terry. Eric loved the pater familias role,
relishing in his large group of offspring and tending to be, if anything,
overly permissive, a nurturing parent more often than an authoritarian one.
However, he also knew how to make time for his writing. He had an isolated
study built at the far end of his large garden, well out of earshot of his
youngsters. In that study he did most of his writing between 1949 and 1964,
when he and Dorothy divorced on the friendliest of terms. During these seminal
years in Carmel, Eric kept up a demanding pace. He took an appointment in 1950
as Assistant Psychiatrist at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and
simultaneously began serving as a Consultant to the Surgeon General of the US
Army. In 1951 he added the job of Adjunct and Attending Psychiatrist at the
Veterans Administration and Mental Hygiene Clinic, San Francisco. These three
appointments were in addition to his private practices in both Carmel and San
Francisco.
Break with Psychoanalysis & the Creation of
Transactional Analysis
Probably the most significant traces of the origins of
transactional analysis are contained in the first five of six articles on
intuition Berne wrote beginning in 1949. Already, at that early date, when he
was still working to gain the status of psychoanalyst, he dared to defy
Freudian concepts of the unconscious in his writings. When he began training in
1941 at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and later when he resumed his
training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, Berne obviously
believed that becoming a psychoanalyst was important. However, in the end that
coveted title was withheld; his 1956 application for membership was turned down
with the verdict that he wasn't ready, but, perhaps after three or four more
years of personal analysis and training he might reapply. For Eric the
rejection was galvanizing, spurring him to intensify his long-standing ambition
to add something new to psychoanalysis. He set to work, determined to develop a
new approach to psychotherapy by himself. Before 1956 was out, he had written
two seminal papers based on material read earlier that year at the Psychiatric
Clinic, Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and at the Langley Porter
Neuropsychiatric Clinic, U.C. Medical School: "Intuition V: The Ego
Image": and "Ego States in Psychotherapy." Using references to P.
Federn, E. Kann, and H. Silberer, in the first article Berne indicated how he
arrived at the concept of ego states and where he got the idea of separating
"adult" from "child." In the next 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." The
third article, titled "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective
Method of Group Therapy," was written a few months later and 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, transactional
analysis, the name of Berne's new method of diagnosis and treatment, became a
permanent part of the psychotherapeutic literature. In addition to restating
his concepts of P-A-C, structural analysis, and ego states, the 1957 paper
added the important new features of games and scripts.
The Seminars
From the beginning, Berne used his regular Thursday evening
clinical seminars in Monterey as a testing ground for his new theory and
methods. In 1950-51 he began a Tuesday evening seminar in San Francisco; this
became incorporated in February 1958 as the San Francisco Social Psychiatry
Seminars in order to handle funds required for the publication of the
Transactional Analysis Bulletin, which first appeared in January 1962 with
Berne as editor. In 1964 Berne and his San Francisco and Monterey seminar
colleagues decided to create a Transactional Analysis Association, naming it
the International Transactional Analysis Association in recognition of the
growing number of Transactional Analysis professionals outside the USA. The new
organization was designated successor to the San Francisco Social Psychiatry
Seminars, and the San Francisco seminar changed its name to the San Francisco
Transactional Analysis Seminar in recognition of the fact that it was only one
of the many branches of the ITAA.
The Last Years
The years from 1964 to 1970 were restless ones for Berne.
After his second divorce his personal life became chaotic as he longed to find
another mate. His frustration in this area led him to work longer hours at his
writing, but when he did remarry Torre Peterson in 1967, he did not give up any
of his increasingly complex writing commitments. By early 1970 he was once
again divorced. In June, 1970, Berne suffered the first of two heart attacks. A
few weeks before the first heart attack, on May 10, his 60th birthday, Berne
had told his friends how well he felt. He had just sent his manuscript of
What do You Say After You Say Hello to Grove Press, and was pleased
about how it had turned out. He actually allowed himself some weekends of pure
play, with no writing. However, on June 26, he suffered sharp pains that went
through his chest and back which turned out to be caused by a heart attack. He
was hospitalized and was making a slow recovery but three weeks later, while
working on the galleys of What do You Say After You Say Hello in his
hospital bed, he suffered another heart attack this time a massive one, which
caused his death. Eric died on July 15, 1970. Eric Berne is buried at the
El Carmelo Cemetery. in Pacific Grove,
California
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ITAA
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