Eric Berne a demanding pace of research, teaching in addition. He took an appointment in 1950 as Assistant Psychiatrist at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and simultaneously began serving as a Consultant to the Surgeon General of the US Army. In 1951, he accepted a position of Adjunct and Attending Psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration and Mental Hygiene Clinic, San Francisco. The years from 1964 to 1970 were restless ones for Berne. His personal life became chaotic and he focused on his writing. Berne created the theory of transactional analysis as a way to explain human behavior . Berne’s theory was based
Eric Berne said that ‘any social intercourse (…) has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all’, so, people need any form of ‘stroking’ (a physical contact, e.g., exchange) to live. In 1943 he changed his legal name from Eric Lennard Bernstein to Eric Berne. Berne had an irrepressible sense of humour, which was particularly evident in his writing. For example, in his article entitled "Who was condom?" Berne wrote about the contraceptive, the condom, and whether a man named "Condom" ever existed. While at McGill he wrote for several student newspapers using pseudonyms. He continued to write under pseudonyms such as