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Berne (Eric L.) Papers (1904-2007)
MSS.2013.19
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
University of California, San Francisco Archives & Special Collections
Title: Eric L. Berne Papers
Creator:
Bernstein, David H. (David Hillel Bernstein)
Creator:
Berne, Eric L., Dr. (Eric Lennard Berne)
Creator:
International Transactional Analysis Association
Identifier/Call Number: MSS.2013.19
Identifier/Call Number: 23
Physical Description:
13.0 Linear Feet
(17 document boxes, 4 oversized flat boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1904-2007
Date (inclusive): 1930-1970
Abstract: The materials in this collection were created by Eric L. Berne (1910-1970), a San Francisco-based psychiatrist and author,
and by the International Transactional Analysis Association. The collection also includes one scrapbook and one article written
by Berne's father, David Hillel Bernstein, M.D. Records relate to Berne's family life, education, and early travels; his professional
and creative writing; and his psychiatric practice and development of the theory of Transactional Analysis (TA). Materials
include correspondence, diaries, legal records, certificates, clippings, notebooks and scrapbooks, manuscripts and typescripts,
patient notes, photographs, audio-visual recordings, and artifacts. Materials in the collection date from 1904-2007.
Language of Material: Materials primarily in English
Travel ephemera in Series I, Personal Files, contains materials in Italian, German, Turkish, Dutch, French, Romanian, Polish,
Portuguese, and Hungarian.
Books transferred from this collection to the Eric Berne Rare Books collection are written in German, Italian, Swedish, Bosnian,
Finnish, Czech, Polish, Japanese, and French.
This collection was placed on deposit with UCSF Archives and Special Collections in February 2014 by the Eric Berne family
and the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA).
The materials in this collection were created by Eric L. Berne (1910-1970), a San Francisco-based psychiatrist and author,
and by the International Transactional Analysis Association. The collection also includes one scrapbook and one article written
by Berne's father, David Hillel Bernstein, M.D. Records relate to Berne's family life, education, and early travels; his professional
and creative writing; and his psychiatric practice and development of the theory of Transactional Analysis (TA). Materials
include correspondence, diaries, legal records, certificates, clippings, notebooks and scrapbooks, manuscripts and typescripts,
patient notes, photographs, audio-visual recordings, and artifacts. Materials in the collection date from 1904-2007.
Collection is open for research.
The UCSF Archives and Special Collections policy places access restrictions on material with privacy issues for a specific
time period from the date of creation. Access to records that contain personal and confidential information about an individual
or individuals is restricted for 75 years from date of creation or until the death of the individual mentioned in the records,
whichever is longer. Medical records are restricted for 50 years after an individual's date of death, if known. If the date
of death is unknown, access is restricted for 100 years from the individual's date of birth or 100 years from the date of
record creation, whichever occurs first. Access restrictions are noted at the file level. Please contact the UCSF Archivist
for information on access to these files.
The collection is arranged in the following 8 series: Series I. Personal Files (1904-1972); Series II. Writings (1927-1968);
Series III. Clippings and Reviews (1941-1968); Series IV. Professional Practice (1934-1959); Series V. Transactional Analysis
(1962-2007); Series VI. Audio-Visual Material (1964-1989); Series VII. Artifacts (1967); and Series VIII. Restricted Material
(1935-1942).
The collection was processed by Kate Tasker in 2013-2014. Detailed processing and digitization for these materials were made
possible by generous support from 17 TA Associations worldwide and many individual donors through the International Transactional
Analysis Association.
Related materials documenting Berne's development of Transactional Analysis and his work with the International Transactional
Analysis Association may be found in the following collections in this repository: MSS 82-0 (Eric L. Berne Papers, 1939-1971);
MSS 89-12 (Eric L. Berne Papers, 1931-1970); MSS 2003-12 (Eric L. Berne Papers, 1933-1971); MSS 2005-08 (Eric L. Berne Papers,
1929-1970); and MSS 2013-18 (Eric L. Berne Papers [International Transactional Analysis Association Audio Recordings], 1963-1970).
Eric L. Berne (1910-1970) was a practicing psychiatrist, lecturer and author. Best known for his development of the theory
of Transactional Analysis, Berne published dozens of scholarly articles in the field of psychoanalysis and was the author
of eight major books, including the bestseller
Games People Play. He was a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association,
a Corresponding Member of the Indian Psychiatric Society, and a member of the American Medical Association and the American
Group Psychotherapy Association. He served as a consultant in psychiatry at Mt. Zion Hospital and at the McAuley Neuropsychiatric
Institute (St. Mary's Hospital) in San Francisco, and was an Associate Psychiatrist and Lecturer in Psychiatry at the University
of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
Berne founded the International Transactional Analysis Association in 1964 to advance his teachings and to organize a community
of fellow practitioners. The ITAA currently has approximately 1,000 members worldwide.
Eric Lennard Bernstein was born May 10, 1910 in Montreal, Quebec, to parents David Hillel Bernstein, M.D., and Sara Gordon
Bernstein. His father was a general practitioner and worked from an office in the family's home on Sainte Famille Street.
Sara Bernstein was a professional writer and editor. Both parents graduated from McGill University, which Berne later attended.
He had one sister, Grace, born in 1915. Dr. Bernstein died in 1920 of tuberculosis when Berne was only 9 years old; his mother
never remarried, and worked as a teacher and newspaper reporter to support the family.
Berne enrolled at McGill University to study English, and worked at the Royal Montreal Golf Club to help pay his tuition.
Known as "Lennie" to his classmates, he earned scholarships in mathematics and psychology and wrote for the college literary
magazine under fanciful nom de plumes such as Ramsbottom Horseley, Lennard Gandalac, Cynical St. Cyr, Peter Pinto, and Count
Gandalac. He earned his B.A. in 1931 and continued at McGill to earn his M.D. and C.M. (Master of Surgery) degrees in 1935.
Berne came to the United States in 1935 for a one-year internship at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey, followed by a two-year
residency program in psychiatry at the Psychiatric Clinic of Yale University School of Medicine. After completing his residency
in 1938 he traveled to Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey to study psychiatric illnesses and mental hospital facilities in different
parts of the world. This research continued throughout his professional life, and he published studies including "Psychiatry
in Syria" (1939), "Some Oriental Mental Hospitals" (1949), "Difficulties of Comparative Psychiatry: The Fiji Islands" (1959),
"The Cultural Problem: Psychopathology in Tahiti" (1960) and "A Psychiatric Census of the South Pacific" (1960).
In 1938-1939 Berne became an American citizen and shortened his name to Eric Berne. He began practicing psychiatry at the
Wadsworth Sanitarium and at a private practice in Norwalk, Connecticut. He continued training at the New York Psychoanalytic
Institute under Dr. Paul Federn, an Austrian psychoanalyst whose research in "ego psychology" influenced Berne's development
of Transactional Analysis. Berne married Ruth Harvey in 1942, with whom he had two children. The marriage ended in divorce
in 1946.
In 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as a 1st Lieutenant and was assigned to Baxter General Hospital in Spokane,
WA and later to Fort Ord Regional Hospital near Monterey, CA. He advanced to the rank of Major before leaving the service
in 1946. After World War II Berne settled in nearby Carmel-by-the-Sea, a small community of artists and free-thinkers. He
began working on his first book,
The Mind in Action, which was published by Simon and Schuster in 1947. Berne continued his formal training as a psychoanalyst at the San Francisco
Psychoanalytic Institute, under the tutelage of prominent psychologist Erik Erikson.
In 1947 Berne met Dorothy de Mass Way, a recently divorced young woman with three children, at one of the intellectual salons
he hosted at his home in Carmel. They married on Christmas Eve, 1948. Berne and Dorothy had two sons, Eric Jr. and Terence.
Berne continued to write and publish articles, spending hours in his separate study. He accepted an appointment as Assistant
Psychiatrist at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco while simultaneously serving as a Consultant to the Surgeon General of
the U.S. Army. He also worked as Adjunct and Attending Psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration and Mental Hygiene Clinic
in San Francisco in addition to his private practices in San Francisco and Carmel.
By 1950 his approach to psychotherapy and analysis had diverged from more traditional practices, and he terminated his study
at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. He began developing his own school of thought which eventually became Transactional
Analysis. Berne viewed social interactions as basic exchanges, or "transactions" between people, who acted from one of three
ego-states (Parent, Adult, or Child) in order to get what they want. Berne termed these common transactions "games" and analyzed
them using frank and often humorous titles like "Why Does This Always Happen to Me" (WAHM) and "Let's You and Him Fight" (LYAHF).
By 1958 he had published three seminal articles outlining the theory of Transactional Analysis: "Intuition V: The Ego Image"
(1957); "Ego States in Psychotherapy" (1957); and "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of Group Therapy" (1958).
Beginning in 1950-1951 Berne led evening seminars in Carmel to bring friends and followers together to discuss and test his
new methods. In San Francisco he formalized this practice and organized the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars (SFSPS),
which incorporated in 1962 and began publishing the
Transactional Analysis Bulletin with Berne as editor. Two years later the organization became the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA)
to include practitioners from around the country and around the world.
In 1964 Berne published
Games People Play to share his theories and methods with psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. It achieved spectacular success
as a popular self-help book, selling over 2 million copies and spending 111 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Berne's
professional success took a toll on his personal life, and he divorced his second wife Dorothy in 1964. He continued writing
and publishing articles and books, including
Principles of Group Treatment (1966) and
Sex in Human Loving (1970), based on a lecture he presented at the Jake Gimbel Sex Lecture Series at the Langley-Porter Psychiatric Clinic at
the University of California, San Francisco. He married a third time in 1967, to Torre Peterson Rosenkranz, but divorced in
1970. Berne was completing the manuscript for his final book,
What Do You Say After You Say Hello? when he was hospitalized with chest pains. Eric Berne died from a massive heart attack on July 15, 1970. He is buried in
the El Carmelo Cemetery in Pacific Grove, California.
Eric L. Berne Papers, 1904-2007, MSS 2013-19. Archives and Special Collections, University of California, San Francisco
Copyright has not been assigned to the Library & Center for Knowledge Management. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from material must be submitted in writing to the UCSF Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the
Library & Center for Knowledge Management as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.
26 books and 30 psychiatry journals were transferred to the Eric Berne Rare Books collection. Please search the UCSF Library
Catalog with call number "BERNE" for specific titles.
Duplicate titles and unrelated publications have been discarded.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Psychotherapy
Psychiatry
Transactional analysis