Eric Berne
Eric Berne was a Canadian-born psychiatrist best known as the creator of transactional analysis. Eric was born on May 10, 1910 as Eric Lennard Bernstein in Montreal, Canada.He and his sister Grace, who was five years younger than Eric, were the children of a physician and a writer, David and Sara Gordon Bernstein.David Bernstein died in 1921, and the children were raised by their mother.
Bernstein attended Montreal's McGill University, graduating in 1931 and earning his M.D., C.M. in 1935.While at McGill he wrote for several student newspapers using pseudonyms. He followed graduation with a residency in psychiatry at Yale University, where he studied psychoanalysis under Paul Federn.
In 1943 he changed his legal name to Eric Berne.He continued to use pseudonyms, such as Cyprian St. Cyr ("Cyprian Sincere"), for whimsical articles in the Transactional Analysis Bulletin.
Berne's training was interrupted by World War II and his service in the Army Medical Corps, where he was promoted to the rank of Major. After working at Bushnell Army Hospital in Ogden, Utah, he was discharged in 1945.
“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours”
“A loser doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses but talks about what he’ll do if he wins and a winner doesn’t talk about what he’ll do if he wins but knows what he’ll do if he loses.”
“Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”
“The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.”
“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”
“We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.”
“Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others”