Eric Berne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Eric Berne
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Eric Lennard Bernstein
May 10, 1910 |
| Died | July 15, 1970 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Known for | Developed the theory of Transactional analysis |
| Spouse(s) |
Ruth Harvey
(m. 1942; div. 1945)Dorothy DeMass Way
(m. 1949; div. 1964)Torre Peterson
(m. 1967; div. 1970) |
| Children | 4 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychiatry |
| Influences | Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Wilder Penfield, René Spitz |
| Influenced | Thomas Anthony Harris, Albert Mehrabian, Claude Steiner |
Eric Berne (May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was 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 and Carl Jung 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.
Contents
Background and education (1927–1938)
Eric Berne was born on May 10, 1910, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as Eric Lennard Bernstein. He was the son of David Hillel 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 in Montreal. Eric was close to his father and spoke fondly of how he accompanied his father on rounds, traveling by horse-pulled sleigh on cold Montreal winters to visit patients.
Berne's father died of tuberculosis when Berne was 11. His mother then supported herself and her two children working as an editor and writer. She encouraged her son to follow in his father's footsteps and to study medicine. Berne received his baccalaureate degree in 1931 and an M.D. and C.M. (Master of Surgery) from McGill University Medical School in 1935.
Berne came to the United States in 1935 when he began an internship at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey. After completing his one-year internship in 1936, he began his psychiatric residency at the Psychiatric Clinic of Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked for two years.
In 1939, Berne became an American citizen and shortened his name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne.
In 1949, he was admitted as a Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association.
Career (1938–1970)
From 1938 to 1940, Berne was an assistant physician at Ring Sanitarium, Arlington Heights, Massachusetts.
From 1940 to 1943 he was employed as a psychiatrist in a sanitarium in Connecticut, and concurrently as a clinical assistant in psychiatry at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York. He also maintained a private practice.
In 1943, during World War II, Berne joined the United States Army Medical Corps and served as a psychiatrist. He rose from the rank of Lieutenant, to Captain, and then to Major. His assignments included Spokane, Washington, Ft. Ord, California and Brigham City, Utah.
After his discharge in 1946, Berne settled in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He lived in a four-bedroom, three bath Victorian house on the eastern side of Carpenter Street, in the second house located south from 2nd Avenue. The house dates back to 1888, originally built for surveyor Davenport Bromfield while he mapped the streets of Carmel City. It is one of the oldest structures in town, now listed on the Carmel Inventory Of Historic Resources as the "Eric Berne House." From 1949 to 1964, Berne had a private practices in both Carmel and San Francisco and kept up a demanding pace of research, teaching in addition.
Berne resumed his psychoanalytic training that he had begun in New York City, prior to the War, at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. During 1947–1949 Berne studied under Erik Erikson. 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 accepted a position of Adjunct and Attending Psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration and Mental Hygiene Clinic, San Francisco.
The years from 1964 to 1970 were restless ones for Berne. His personal life became chaotic and he concentrated on his writing.
Games People Play
Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships is a bestselling 1964 book by Berne that has sold more than five million copies. The book describes both functional and dysfunctional social interactions.
The essence of games described by Berne are that they are not zero-sum games (i.e. one must win at the other's expense), where the person who benefits from a transaction wins the game. On the contrary, the "games people play" usually pay all of the players off, even those who ostensibly are the losers, since they are about psychic equilibrium or promoting adopted self-damaging social roles instead of rational benefits. These payoffs are not consciously sought by the players but they are leading to the ultimate unconscious life script of each as set by their parental family interactions and favored emotions.
Despite having been written for professional therapists, the book became a New York Times bestseller and made Berne famous. The book clearly presented everyday examples of the ways in which human beings are caught up in the games they play. .....
Berne said that "any social intercourse (…) has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all", so, people need any form of "stroking" (a physical contact, e.g., exchange) to live.
Name and pseudonyms
In 1943 he changed his legal name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne.
Berne had an irrepressible sense of humour, which was particularly evident in his writing. ..... While at McGill he wrote for several student newspapers using pseudonyms. He continued to write under pseudonyms such as Cyprian St. Cyr ("Cyprian Sincere") in whimsical articles in the Transactional Analysis Bulletin.
Personal life
Berne was married three times. His first wife was Ruth Harvey (the Jorgensen biography used the pseudonyms of "Elinor" and "McRae" to protect the privacy of Berne’s first wife). They married in 1942, had two children, and divorced acrimoniously in 1945. In 1949 he married Dorothy DeMass Way, with whom he also had two children before their divorce in 1964. After his popular success, Eric married a third time, to Torre Peterson in 1967. The couple took up residence in Carmel, California, where he wrote, but he continued some clinical work in San Francisco. This marriage also ended in divorce, in early 1970.
Death
Berne died of a heart attack in Carmel on July 15, 1970. He was 60 years old.
See also
In Spanish: Eric Berne para niños
- Claude Steiner
- Karpman drama triangle
- Mind games
- Script analysis
