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
Suzanne Berne Suzanne Berne Suzanne Berne (born 1961 Washington, D.C.) is an American novelist known for her foreboding character studies involving unexpected domestic and psychological drama in bucolic suburban settings. She attended Georgetown Day School. She was educated at Wesleyan University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She presently lives with her family near Boston and has taught at both Harvard University and Wellesley College. She is associate English professor at Boston College. She currently lives in Boston with her husband and two girls. Her debut novel, "A Crime in the Neighborhood", won Great