"Therapy Should Be Like a Poker Game," Eric Berne Liked to Say, "The

"Therapy should be like a poker game," Eric Berne liked to say, " the result is what counts. " He was skilled at getting results with both his poker hands and his patients. He believed therapists should cure or they shouldn't be therapi'sts. In one of his last lectures, he charged that many psychiatrists are losers who simply cultivate the losing habits of their patients. Berne's own success came after a bitter disappointment and years of tire less work. In the middle of his career, he turned away from the psychoanalytic es tablishment he had long respected, and began to work out the principles of a new therapy that dealt . with here-and now social interaction in layman's lan guage. The result was Transactional Analysis, the best-selling books: Games People Play and What 00 You Say After You Say Hello?, and unofficial status as the public's first analyst-laureate. Berne was born Eric Lennard Bern stein in 1910, and grew up in a poor Jewish section of Montreal, Canada. His father and his grandfather were physi cians, and Eric was always close to the practice of healing. His father's office was on the first floor of their home. Eric often made house calls with him, riding along in a horse-drawn sleigh. Eric was only 10 when his father died, but had already decided to follow him into medicine. Berne's mother was a poet who worked as a writer and editor for local newspapers to support Eric and his younger sister. She encouraged him in his plans to become a doctor, but by the time he went to college he had caught her iFiterest in writing as well . He studied English, psychology and pre-med at McGill University, and received a B.A. in ·1931 . In 1935, McGill awarded him an M.D. and a Master of Surgery degree. He came to the United States to take his internship at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey and then a psychiatric resi dency at the Yale University Medical School. Faced with the anti-Semitism of America's prewar years, he changed his aspired to become a member'of the Psy oversimplified. He charged back that name to Berne and began a private psy choanalytic Institute, the bastion of tradj they overcomplicated, and argued that chiatric practice in Norwalk,' Con tional psychoanalysis. He continued to psychiatry needed a language that both necticut. He soon married, and joined work toward that goal until 1956, when therapist and patient could understand. the staff of Mt. Zion Hospital in New his application for membership was de He continued to set high standards for York. In 1941 he began training at the nied (Erik Erikson has also never been himself, and grew quicker to anger at New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and admitted). By then , Berne had 15 yea'rs psychiatrists who moaned in staff con went through analysis under Paul Fed of training and experience behind him, ferences about why they couldn't cure ern, a former colleague of Freud. and he suspected it was his unwillingness their patients. "I think Freud would con Two years later Berne was in the Army to give up some unorthodox ideas and sider most analysts today nothing but Medical Corps, making 30-second diag techniques that lay behind the Institute's picture hangers, " he said . And when the noses and experimenting with group refusal to admit him. He was hurt that he Psychoanalytic Institute offered him the therapy techniques. He found that his had been unable to get his ideas across membership he had long sought, he de split-second judgments often were more to the men he respected, and their rejec clined with thanks. accurate than those made from careful tion doubled his resolve to make his own He followed Games with Principles of examination, and began to observe his contribution to psychiatry. Group Treatment, Sex in Human Loving, own intuition as he worked. His early In the next two years, he wrote a a children 's book called The Happy Val ideas about nonverbal communication series of papers that developed and ex ley, and What Do You Say After You Say and intuition laid the groundwork for his plained the basic pri nciples of Transac Hello? But Berne's strenuous schedule research on Child Ego-states and the tional Analysis. His Tuesday evening took a heavy toll on his personal life and birth of Transactional Analysis. seminars became the San Francisco So his health . He and Dorothy were di When he left the military in 1946, he cial Psychiatry Seminars, Inc. The in vorced in 1964, and he began to work was again a bachelor and half-way corporation allowed Berne. to publish even longer hours. He still sought female through his first book. He settled in Car and edit the Transactional Analysis Bul companionship, however, and married mel, California, and finished The Mind In letin. He went to the South Pacific three Torri Rosecrans in 1967. He gave up Action, an introduction to psychology summers in a row to study socialization nO.ne of his writing commitments, and at and psychiatry now revised and in print and mental illness in various island cul one time was working on six books. as A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and tures. And with his typewriter contin Early in 1970 he and Torri were di Psychoanalysis. uously fed from a huge roll of paper, he vorced, and he died of a heart attack in He also resumed his own education at began to present TA to the public. July of that year. th~ San Francisco Psychoanalytic In Tra n sa c tiona I Ana Iys is in Ps y He had finished the manuscript of stitute and began a training analysis with chotherapy appeared in 1961 and was What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Erik Erikson. He met Dorothy De Mass soon followed by The Structure and Dy just before he died, but it was not pub Way and almost immediately wanted to namics of Organizations and Groups, lished until early in 1972. In it, he breaks marry her, but Erikson told them to wai and Games People Play. Games ap new ground with a discussion of script, a until he finished analysis. They took his peared without fanfare, but slowly rose notion he and his collegues were drawn advice, and were married in 1949. The to the best-seller lists and brought Berne to from their study of games. They found next year, he took a position with San popular recognition. In that book, Berne that the pattern each person plays out Francisco's Mt. Zion Hospital, and re labeled and displayed his collection of during his life is often set in the first few opened a private practice. over a hundred maneuvers people use years of childhood, and began to call Throughout the '50s he worked seven with each other to win hidden payoffs. this pattern a life script. days a week, commuting 125 miles be His readers found themselves on every Berne came to believe that every tween Carmel and San Francisco. He page, their games described in simple script is recorded in the world 's myth- . taught , wrote , conducted therapy language and given earthy titles like ology. "The life of every human being," groups, saw private patients, consulted "Rapo," "Ain't It Awful," and "Gee he said, "is already charted in Bulfinch with the Army, and held seminars each You're Wonderful,Mr. Murgatroyd. " or Graves." He called people with win Tuesday nlght with several younger ther Berne soon found himself on the ning scripts " princes" and those stuck apists. In his groups and seminars he pages of Life and Newsweek, and fur with losers, "frogs." "My business," he tested and discussed the ideas that were ther estranged from many fellow psy said, "is turning frogs into princes." to become central to TA. He had always ch i atrists who charged that he -Gary Gregg .

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