Beyond Games and Scripts

A classic - Berne, one of the enfants terrible of psychology in the 1960s and 1970s, created a framework of psychological understanding based on unpretentious terminology for interpersonal transactions stemming from intrapersonal entities - and for several years, his school of Transactional Analysis gained clinical and popular adherents. Geared toward brief therapy with patients taking much of the responsibility for understanding simple but key concepts of interpersonal relationships, TA also foreshadowed parts of Family Systems psychological philosophy (which is to say that someone familiar with Bowen Systems Theory, for example, will see some familiar concepts presented with different terminology). This book - Beyond Games and Scripts - is a collection of essays and other material from Berne, illuminating some pieces of his body of work and revealing something of Berne himself. I recommend it for anyone who has read and appreciated "Games People Play," "What do you say after you say hello", or other work by Eric Berne or his disciple Claude Steiner ("Games Alcoholics Play", "Scripts People Live", etc). Note that one popular TA book, "I'm OK, You're OK", was written by Thomas Harris - who later was viewed as something of an apostate by Berne and Steiner. Strict Freudians tend to write Berne off as hopelessly trivial; perhaps his unconventional lay-person-centered terminology and his desire to avoid pretention and obfuscation at all costs causes Freudians to protest that things can never be as simple as Berne portrays. However, it's fair to say that a large number of current non-Freudian psychotherapists make at least occasional use of Berne's theories and terminology, even if their specialties are within different schools. For individuals seeking their own psychological insights, I would recommend Berne and Steiner right along with Bradshaw, Dyer, and Chopra.

I read Eric Berne's books back in the sixties, & as I reread them now they are just poignant. I found them very helpful & recommend them.They are sound psychology & yet easy to understand by the layman.

I was just about to add another plot element to a script that wasn't mine when I read this book. Thank you Drs. Steiner and Berne for rescuing me from a life that wasn't my own!