Afterburn (psychotherapy) Afterburn (psychotherapy) Afterburn is a psychological term coined by Eric Berne, who defined it as "the period of time before a past event is assimilated". Eric Berne, the founding father of transactional analysis, used the term "afterburn" to indicate the effect an atypical past event continues to exert on a person's daily schedule, activities and mental state even "after" it is over: to "those occasions when it disturbs normal patterns for an appreciable period, rather than being assimilated into them or excluded from them by repression and other psychological mechanisms". For Berne, afterburn is the flip side of reachback, which
Eric Berne said that ‘any social intercourse (…) has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all’, so, people need any form of ‘stroking’ (a physical contact, e.g., exchange) to live. In 1943 he changed his legal name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne. Berne had an irrepressible sense of humour, which was particularly evident in his writing. For example, in his article entitled "Who was condom?" Berne wrote about the contraceptive, the condom, and whether a man named "Condom" ever existed. While at McGill he wrote for several student newspapers using pseudonyms. He continued to write under pseudonyms such as