Eric Berne

Eric Berne (born May 10, 1910 in Montreal as Eric Lennard Bernstein, † July 15, 1970 in Monterey , California) was a Canadian - American psychiatrist . Berne developed transaction analysis (TA) as a psychotherapeutic procedure that he derived from psychoanalysis.

Life

Berne was the first child of the physician David Bernstein († 1921) and the journalist Sara Gordon Bernstein. The Canadian couple had a second child named Grace (* 1914). Eric Berne studied medicine at McGill University in Montreal, where he graduated in 1931 and received his doctorate in 1935. During his studies he wrote under pseudonyms for student newspapers. After graduation, he took up an internship in psychiatry at Yale University , where he studied psychoanalysis with Paul Federn . Berne finished his education in 1938 and took American citizenship in 1939. In 1943 he changed his name to Eric Berne .

During the Second World War , Berne served in a medical unit in the US Army . He left the army in 1945 with the rank of major . After the war he continued his studies with Erik Erikson in San Francisco .

Eric Berne was married to Ruth Harvey (one daughter, one son) from 1942 to 1945, to Dorothy DeMass Way (two sons) from 1949 to 1964 and to Torre Peterson for the third time from 1967 to 1970. He had a daughter and three sons.

On July 15, 1970, he died of a heart attack in a Monterey hospital. He was buried in El Carmelo Cemetery in Pacific Grove , Monterey County , California .

Psychiatric work

Project intuition

Berne worked for ten years with intuition in the diagnostic process. His interest arose when, in the position of an army psychiatrist, he had to work on the files of thousands of army dismissals and tried a little game for his own entertainment: He asked the men the questions “Are you nervous?” And “Were you have you ever seen a psychiatrist? ”and tried to guess the occupation of the person from the answers. He was especially right with mechanics and farmers. He wrote down the experiences and discoveries he made in a series of essays on the subject of intuition. The work led to the concept of transaction analysis.

Transaction analysis concept

As a doctor, Berne had learned to diagnose psycho-pathological issues, to classify his patients from the perspective of psychiatry and to tell them how they should be based solely on his medical position . It was unfamiliar to him and also did not fit his prescribed role to trust his immediate perception and to include it accordingly in his practical work. At that point he stopped "paraphrasing the old tune" and began "really listening to the patient." In this way he was able to integrate his knowledge of intuition into therapeutic work. Instead of using the terms and categories of the trained psychiatrist and declaring someone to be a serious case of latent homosexuality or a paranoid schizophrenic, for example , he tuned himself into the person in question and, with the help of his intuition, got a picture of him.

Discovery of the ego states

Finally, Berne discovered that every person has an ego image from childhood. He called the ego images ego states (ego states) . Later he distinguished the ego state from childhood from the ego state of the adult, which the person in question outwardly represents and which is most clearly visible to the outsider. Berne distinguished between two adult ego states: one, which he called the adult ego state and classified as rational, and a second, not necessarily rational, the parent ego state, which he classified as of the parents understood derived.

Ego image as a basic concept

As a result, he used the ego image in his therapeutic practice. He was able to establish that with his direct knowledge (intuitions) he built up a much more effective and helpful relationship to the feelings and experiences of his patients than with diagnostic terms, as he was used to as a psychiatrist. He succeeded in capturing an ego image in each patient that related to their childhood. In this way he was able to gradually incorporate the patient's self-image as a child into every anamnesis . According to Berne, patients' childhood self-images can be outlined in a few words, such as "A little blonde girl stands in front of an enclosed garden full of daisies" for a woman or "a boy in the passenger seat while his father drives at top speed" for a man .

See also

• Reparenting

Completed theory

Berne continued his observations with patients and gained more and more distance from the content of his earlier training. He discovered the importance of cuddles and time structuring, and observed transactions, games, pastimes, and eventually scripts. By the late 1960s, his theory was almost fully developed. In the end he gave up the usual psychiatric diagnosis altogether. According to a joke of his about the way people are diagnosed, they are referred to as passive when they are less and sociopaths when they are more initiative than the therapist. Theoretically, Berne always remained connected with psychoanalysis; over the years, however, it became less important for his thinking. In the end, it had no meaning at all in his group work.

Concept of human behavior and healing

Originally he was of the opinion that transactional analysis could only help to better control interpersonal behavior (social control), i.e. H. the acting out to control, psychoanalysis while to make the real therapeutic work is able. Gradually he came to believe that transactional analysis played the main role in the healing of the patient and that only the difficult process of script analysis was reserved for psychoanalytic technique. Finally, he also performed script analysis without using psychoanalytic methods. His psychoanalytic background was only recognizable in occasional case reports.

Therapy of disturbed sexuality

In his series of lectures on the types and rules of love , Berne presents the partner relationship between man and woman from different angles as a child-child relationship . He warns against sexual contact with minors, complains about the frequent transition of sexual sensations into aggression and war and postulates as Remedies for competing for the best care for the offspring.

Aftermath

The asteroid (23110) Ericberne , discovered on January 2, 2000, was named after him in August 2001.

Publications

• The mind in action. Simon & Schuster, New York 1947.
• A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. Grove Press, New York 1957 (major revision of The mind in action ).
  • Consultation hours for the soul: psychiatry and psychoanalysis made understandable. German by Wolfram Wagmuth. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-498-00427-1 .
• Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. Grove Press, New York 1961.
  • Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. Translated from the American by Ulrike Müller. Junfermann, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-87387-423-7 .
• The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. Grove Press, New York 1963.
  • Structure and dynamics of organizations and groups. The translation from the American was done by Wolfram Wagmuth. Kindler, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-463-02201-X .
• Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationship. Grove Press, New York 1964.
  • Adult Games: Psychology of Human Relationships. German by Wolfram Wagmuth. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1967; New edition: 2002, ISBN 3-499-61350-6 (rororo 61350 rororo non-fiction book).
• Principles of Group Treatment. Oxford University Press, New York 1966.
  • Basics of group treatment: thoughts on group therapy & intervention techniques. From the American by Ulrike Müller. Junfermann, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 978-3-87387-424-4 .
• Sex in Human Loving. Simon & Schuster, New York 1970, ISBN 0-671-20771-7 .
  • Game types and rules of love: Psychological analysis of the partner relationship. Transferred from the American by Edelgard and Gerd Stöhr. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16848-0 .
• What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The psychology of human destiny. Grove Press, New York 1972, ISBN 0-394-47995-5 .
  • What do you say after saying “hello”? Psychology of human behavior. Kindler, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-463-02192-7 .
• Intuition and Ego States: The Origins of Transactional Analysis. A Series of Papers. Ta Press, San Francisco 1977, ISBN 0-89489-001-8 .
• The Happy Valley ; 1968, Random House Publisher, ISBN 0-394-47562-3 .
• A Montreal Childhood ; 2010, Seville (Spain), Editorial Everyone. ISBN 978-84-937032-4-0 .
• Transactional Analysis of Intuition: A Contribution to Ego Psychology. From the American by Anthony Young and Ulrich Henzel-Winterfeld. Junfermann, Paderborn 1991, ISBN 3-87387-003-7 .

literature

• Elizabeth W. Jorgensen: Eric Berne, Master Gamesman: a Transactional Biography. Grove, New York 1984, ISBN 0-394-53846-3 .
• Claude Steiner: How to change life plans (Original title: Scripts People Live, translated by Stefan Mitzlaff). 11th edition. Junfermann , Paderborn 2005, ISBN 978-3-87387-192-2 (= Innovative Psychotherapy and Human Sciences, Volume 13).

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Dr. Eric Berne Dies on Coast; Author of 'Games People Play' , The New York Times, July 16, 1970
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Eric Berne, El Carmelo Cemetery , findagrave.com
4. ↑ John M. Dusay 1971
5. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 43194

Web links

• Literature by and about Eric Berne in the catalog of the German National Library
• English-language website on the person and work of Eric Bernes