Eric Berne

Eric Berne
Berne at his wedding in 1942
Born
Eric Lennard Bernstein

(1910-05-10)May 10, 1910
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DiedJuly 15, 1970(1970-07-15) (aged 60)
Known forTransactional analysis
Spouses
Ruth Harvey
(m. 1942; div. 1945)
Dorothy DeMass Way
(m. 1949; div. 1964)
Torre Peterson
(m. 1967; div. 1970)
Children4
Scientific career
FieldsPsychiatry

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.