Eric Berne's Politics: “The Great Pyramid”

Abstract

Eric Berne's politics have been an enigma to many in transactional analysis. His responses to political statements in the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars were decisively unsympathetic, and the author's assumption has been that Berne was avowedly apolitical. However, recently unearthed information invites reevaluation of that assumption and reveals, hidden in plain sight, that Berne's strong preferences were populist, in favor of equality, individual freedom, and open discussion. These views have profoundly influenced the collective attitude of transactional analysis as a democratic, egalitarian, and cooperative movement, which transactional analysis tools are ideally suited to implement. These qualities of transactional analysis, in addition to its cutting-edge theory and methods, explain its attractiveness around the world.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Berne

(1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. New York: Grove Press.

Berne

(1964). Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. New York: Grove Press.

Berne

(1966). Principles of group treatment. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berne

(1969). Editorial comment. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 8 (29), 7–8.

Berne

(2004). Remembering Eric Berne. The Script, 34 (8),1.

Harris

(1967). I'm OK—you're OK: A practical guide to transactional analysis. New York: Avon.

Schlegel

(1998). What is transactional analysis? Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, 269–287.

Steiner

(1974). Scripts people live: The analysis of life scripts. New York: Grove Press.

Steiner

(2003). Emotional literacy: Intelligence with a heart. Fawnskin, CA: Personhood Press.

10.

Reich

(1936). The sexual revolution. New York: Farrar Strauss.