BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS Pertemuan 02

Matakuliah : L0302 / Analisa Transaksional

Tahun : 2010

Learning Outcomes

Mahasiswa dapat menjelaskan tentang dasar-dasar teori transaksional analysis

A. Mengenal Eric Berne, penggagas TA

          1.   Who was Eric Berne?           2.   Development of Ideas           3.   Books written by Eric Berne

1. Who was Eric Berne? … part.1

• Eric Berne was born May 10, 1910 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as Leonard Bernstein, the son of David Hiller Bernstein, MD, a general practitioner, and Sarah Gordon Bernstein, a professional writer and editor.

• His only sibling, his sister Grace, was born five years later. • The family immigrated to Canada from Poland and Russia. • Both parents graduated from McGill University, and Eric, who was

close to his father, spoke fondly of how he accompanied his father, a physician, on medical rounds.

• Dr. Bernstein died of tuberculosis at age 38. • Mrs. Bernstein then supported herself and her two children working

as an editor and writer. • She encouraged Eric to follow in his father's footsteps and study

medicine. He received an M.D. and C.M. (Master of Surgery) from McGill University Medical School in 1935

Who was Eric Berne? … part.2• Berne interned in the United States at Englewood Hospital in New

Jersey. • In 1936 he began his psychiatric residency at the Psychiatric Clinic of

Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked for two years. • Some time around 1938-39, Berne became an American citizen and

shortened his name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne.• His first appointment was as Clinical Assistant in Psychiatry at Mt. Zion

Hospital, New York City, a post he held until 1943 when he went into the Army Medical Corps.

• In 1940 Berne had established a private practice in Norwalk, Connecticut. There he met and married his first wife, Elinor, with whom he had two children,

• Ellen and David. From 1940-1943 he also commuted from his Westport home to practice concurrently in New York City. In 1941 he began training as a psychoanalyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and became an analysand of Paul Federn.

Who was Eric Berne? … part.3• Soon after beginning analysis with Erikson, Berne met a young divorcee, Dorothy de

Mass Way, whom he wanted to marry. • Erikson said Eric could not marry until after finishing his didactic analysis, and so it was

not until 1949 that Eric and Dorothy exchanged vows and set up home in Carmel.• Dorothy brought three children to the marriage, and she and Eric eventually had two

sons of their own, Ricky and Terry. Eric loved the pater familias role, relishing in his large group of offspring and tending to be, if anything, overly permissive, a nurturing parent more often than an authoritarian one.

• However, he also knew how to make time for his writing. He had an isolated study built at the far end of his large garden, well out of earshot of his youngsters. In that study he did most of his writing between 1949 and 1964, when he and Dorothy divorced on the friendliest of terms.

• During these seminal years in Carmel, Eric kept up a demanding pace. He took an appointment in 1950 as Assistant Psychiatrist at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and simultaneously began serving as a Consultant to the Surgeon General of the US Army. In 1951 he added the job of Adjunct and Attending Psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration and Mental Hygiene Clinic, San Francisco. These three appointments were in addition to his private practices in both Carmel and San Francisco.

2. Development of Ideas … part.1

• Leaving psychoanalysis half a century ago, Eric Berne presented transactional analysis to the world as a phenomenological approach replacing Freud's philosophical construct with observable data.

• His theory built on the science of Penfield and Spitz along with the neo-psychoanalytic thought of people such as Paul Federn, Weiss, and Erikson.

• By moving to an interpersonal motivational theory, he placed it both in opposition to the psychoanalytic traditions of his day and within what would become the psychoanalytic traditions of the future.

• From Berne, transactional analysts have inherited a determination to create an accessible and user-friendly system, an understanding of script or life-plan, ego states, transactions, and a theory of groups.

2. Development of Ideas …part.2

• They also inherited troubled aspects of his thinking and personality, especially his rebelliousness and antagonism toward the psychoanalysis of his day.

• They have inherited misunderstandings arising from the ill-informed equation of the ego states of transactional analysis with the psychoanalytic constructs of id, ego, and superego, and from the consequences of the popularity of his book Games People Play which resulted in the vulgarization of some of its concepts.

• These problems have been compounded by the isolationist and elitist attitude that permeated the beginnings of transactional analysis as it established its own standards for competency-based credentialing without taking into account other training or certification in occupational fields—while at the same time paradoxically cultivating the “pop psychology” image that appealed to mental health clients and other consumers in organizations and education.

3. Books written by Eric Berne• The Mind in Action (1947); • A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and

Psychoanalysis (1957); • Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (1961); • Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and

Groups (1963); • Games People Play (1964); • Principles Group Treatment (1966); • Sex in Human Loving (1970); and • What Do You Say After You Say Hello (1971).

B. Growth of Transactional Analysis … part 1

• Transactional analysis was originally developed by the late Eric Berne (1961), who was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

• TA evolved out of Berne’s dissatisfaction with the slowness of psychoanalysis in curing people of their problems.

• Berne’s major objections to psychoanalysis were that it was time consuming, complex, and poorly communicated to clients.

• Historically, TA developed as an extension of psychoanalysis with concepts and techniques especially designed for group treatment.

• Berne discovered that by using TA his clients were making significant changes in their lives. As his theory of personality evolved, Berne parted ways with psychoanalysis to devote himself full time to the theory and practice of TA (Dusay, 1986).

Growth of Transactional Analysis … part 2

• Four phases in the development of TA have been identified by Dusay and Dusay (1989).

• The first phase (1955-1962) began with Berne’s identification of the ego states (Parent, Adult, and Child), which provided a perspective from which to explain thinking, feeling, and behaving.

• He decided that the way to study personality was to observe here-and-now phenomena such as the client’s voice, gestures, and vocabulary.

• These observable criteria provide a basis for inferring a person’s past history and for predicting future problems.

• The second phase (1962-1966) focused on transactions and “games.” It was during this period that TA became popular because of its straightforward vocabulary and because people could recognize their own game

Growth of Transactional Analysis … part 3

• At this time TA was primarily a cognitive approach, with little attention given to emotions.

• The third phase (1966-1970) gave attention to lifescripts and script analysis.

• A lifescript is an internal plan that determines the direction of one’s life.

• The fourth phase (1970 to the present) is characterized by the incorporation of new techniques into TA practice (such as those from the encounter group movement, Gestalt therapy, and psychodrama).

• TA is moving toward more active and emotive models as a way of balancing its early emphasis on cognitive factors and insight (Dusay & Dusay, 1989).