Eric Berne on the ideas of Freud but were distinctly different. Freudian psychotherapists focused on patient’s personalities. Berne believed that insight could be better discovered by analyzing patients’ social transactions. Berne mapped interpersonal relationships to three ego-states of the individuals involved: the "Parent, Adult," and "Child" state. He then investigated communications between individuals based on the current state of each. He called these interpersonal interactions "transactions" and used the label "games" to refer to certain patterns of transactions which popped up repeatedly in everyday life. The origins of transactional analysis can be traced to the first five of Berne’s six articles on
Eric Berne in the cold Montreal winters with his father to visit patients. Berne's father died of tuberculosis when Berne was 11. His mother then supported herself and her two children working as an editor and writer. She encouraged her son to follow in his father’s footsteps and to study medicine. Berne received his baccalaureate degree in 1931 and an M.D. and C.M. (Master of Surgery) from McGill University Medical School in 1935. Berne came to the United States in 1935 when he began an internship at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey. After completing his one-year internship in 1936, he began his