Matakuliah
Tahun
: L0302 / Analisa Transaksional
: 2010
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSACTIONAL
ANALYSIS
Pertemuan 02
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
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•
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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 hereand-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).