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 War II, Berne joined the United States Army Medical Corps and served as a psychiatrist. He rose from the rank of Lieutenant, to Captain, and then to Major. His assignments included Spokane, Washington, Ft. Ord, California and Brigham City, Utah. After his discharge in 1946, he settled in Carmel, California, and resumed his psychoanalytic training that he had begun in New York City, prior to the War, at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. In 1947-1949 Berne studied under Erik Erikson. From 1949 and 1964, Berne had a private practices in both Carmel and San Francisco and kept up