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 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