Berne (1961/1987) described transactional analysis as a systematic phenomenology that incorporates the values of existentialism. Although there are few overt references to the existential school in Berne's popular writings, it is evident from a number of passages in his books that he embraced a profoundly existential-phenomenological attitude in his approach to psychotherapy. This article discusses the development and major tenets of existential phenomenology, their impact on psychotherapy, and how they can be readily integrated and recognized within the key concepts of transactional analysis. For example, transactions constitute intersubjectivity, ego states and life positions represent Being-in-the-world, games manifest inauthentic Being or bad faith, and script denotes the existential project and possibilities-for-Being-in-the-world. A clinical vignette helps to synthesize the two approaches and highlights how each conceptualizes the therapeutic relationship. The article concludes that transactional analysis is a system that describes human existence at both the ontic and ontological levels and that it can be readily construed as embracing the existential perspective. This may be an attribute of all major systems of psychotherapy, and, therefore, psychotherapy integration might be better achieved by the use of an expanded and enriched language taken from a range of such systems.
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