Eric Berne Eric Berne Eric Berne (May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who, in the middle of the 20th century, created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior. Berne’s theory of transactional analysis was based on the ideas of Freud but was distinctly different. Freudian psychotherapists focused on talk therapy as a way of gaining insight to their patient’s personalities. Berne believed that insight could be better discovered by analyzing patients’ social transactions. Berne was among the first psychiatrists to apply game theory to the field of psychiatry, along with the famed
Eric Berne psychiatric residency at the Psychiatric Clinic of Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked for two years. In 1939, Berne became an American citizen and shortened his name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne. In 1949, he was admitted as a Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association. From 1938-40, Berne was an assistant physician at Ring Sanitarium, Arlington Heights, Massachusetts. From 1940-43 he was employed as a psychiatrist in a sanitarium in Connecticut, and concurrently as a clinical assistant in psychiatry at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York. He also maintained a private practice. In 1943, during World