Transactional Analysis : A Brief History

Eric Berne M.D. had worked for many years in private practice as a psychiatrist by the time he completed his psychoanalytic training with Paul Federn and Erik Erikson in 1956. During those early 1950s, he developed his ideas concerning the TA model that we know today, and in November 1957 he published and presented a paper to the American Group Psychotherapy Association titled "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of Group Therapy".

In 1961 he wrote and published the first book dedicated to the subject: Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. in 1962 he began publishing The Transactional Analysis Bulletin which in 1971 was renamed the Transactional Analysis Journal (and continues to this day). He followed that in 1963 with publication of  The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. In 1964 Berne and his TA colleagues formed the International Transactional Analysis Association in recognition of the growing population of TA clinicians around the world.

And it was 1964 when he published Games People Play. This landmark best seller has over 5 million copies in print and as I write this page in 2005, his book is in it's 43rd printing!

Although this book brought TA into the spotlight of public attention, it was the on-going successful clinical use of TA that resulted in it's huge world wide popularity by therapists. Even when the mass media corrupted the TA model and castrated it's potency through simplifications, clinicians who were serious and looked below the public offerings saw a powerful model and tools for effecting therapeutic goals. Indeed even the now popular notion of therapeutic goals was spawned by Berne in 1966 as therapeutic contracts.

Many commonly used terms and ideas originated with TA, such as psychological games, inner child, warm fuzzies, re-parenting, self parenting, I'm OK You're OK. The following mini-lessons are short descriptive pages that give the basic TA ideas. Consider it an introductory series or a TA 100. Keep in mind that I'm not describing the techniques used in therapy, simply the model that supports those techniques. (For more on how therapy proceeds with a TA therapist, contact me.)