Canadian-born psychiatrist (1910-1970)
Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist.
ERIC BERNE
Life Magazine, December 18, 1970
The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.
ERIC BERNE
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
The successful man is the one whose images correspond most closely to reality, because then his actions will lead to the results which he imagines. A man's failures depend upon the fact that his images do not correspond to reality, whether he is dealing with marriage, politics, business, or the horse races.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
It is most clearly in matters of love that people show the quality of their mental images and how they handle the problem of trying to make reality and images correspond. Some men, for example, have such rigid images of the ideal woman that they must marry that they will have no compromise. They never meet anyone who fits perfectly into the pattern they have in mind, so either they never marry or else they marry again and again, hoping that eventually they will find a woman of low melting point who will pour herself into the long prepared mould.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
The position is, then, that at any given moment each individual in a social aggregation will exhibit a Parental, Adult or Child ego state, and that individuals can shift with varying degrees of readiness from one ego state to another.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
Though the individual himself may change his images as gradually as time passes, he does not like to have others change them for him before he is ready. That is why people shout and become anxious during an argument. The better the logic of the opponents, the more anxious they make the individual for the safety of his cherished images, and the louder he shouts to defend them.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
The big celebration, the wedding or housewarming, takes place not when the debt is discharged, but when it is undertaken. What is emphasized on TV, for example, is not the middle-aged man who has finally paid off his mortgage, but the young man who moves into his new home with his family, proudly waving the papers he has just signed and which will bind him for most of his productive years. After he has paid his debts--the mortgage, the college expenses for his children and his insurance--he is regarded as a problem, a "senior citizen" for whom society must provide not only material comforts but a new "purpose."
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
A great man is one who either helps to find out what the world is really like, or else tries to change the world to match his image. In both cases he is trying to bring images and reality closer together by changing one or the other.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
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.
ERIC BERNE
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.
ERIC BERNE
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
In the old days, would-be conquerors often executed messengers who brought them bad news. It was not the messengers' fault that they had to disturb the emperor's image of himself as a world conqueror, but unfortunately they did, and they suffered the consequence of the anxiety they aroused. It is still worth a man's neck to disturb an emperor's image. Nowadays the ax falls more subtly and the execution may be postponed, but sooner or later it comes.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
What is called "adjustment" depends on the ability to change one's images to correspond to a new reality. Most people can change some images but not others. A religious person may be willing and able to adjust to any change but a change in religious outlook. A good business executive may be able to change his image of a business situation in a few minutes on the basis of new information brought from the market, but be unable to change his image of how children should be raised on the basis of information brought from the nursery school. A poor businessman may not be able to change his image of a business situation as rapidly as the market changes, but be able to change his image of his wife from time to time as she changes in reality, so that his marriage is a continued happy success. (It may be judged from this that flexibility is often more important than intelligence for success in any field.)
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
A man in love is a man under the strong influence of a highly charged image which even if it is far different from the reality as other people see it, nevertheless guides his ideas, feelings, and behavior.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action
Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner.
ERIC BERNE
Sex in Human Loving
There is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play