Development of Transactional Analysis

Leaving psychoanalysis half a century ago, Eric Berne presented transactional analysis to the world as a phenomenological approach replacing Freud's philosophical construct with observable data. His theory built on the science of Penfield and Spitz along with the neo-psychoanalytic thought of people such as Paul Federn, Weiss, and Erikson. By moving to an interpersonal motivational theory, he placed it both in opposition to the psychoanalytic traditions of his day and within what would become the psychoanalytic traditions of the future.
From Berne, transactional analysts have inherited a determination to create an accessible and user-friendly system, an understanding of script or life-plan, ego states, transactions, and a theory of groups.
They also inherited troubled aspects of his thinking and personality, especially his rebelliousness and antagonism toward the psychoanalysis of his day. They have inherited misunderstandings arising from the ill-informed equation of the ego states of transactional analysis with the psychoanalytic constructs of id, ego, and superego, and from the consequences of the popularity of his book Games People Play which resulted in the vulgarization of some of its concepts.
These problems have been compounded by the isolationist and elitist attitude that permeated the beginnings of transactional analysis as it established its own standards for competency-based credentialing without taking into account other training or certification in occupational fields—while at the same time paradoxically cultivating the “pop psychology” image that appealed to mental health clients and other consumers in organizations and education.