Eric Berne was born in 1910 in Montreal, Canada. He moved to New York to train as a psychiatrist in the 1930s and was in high demand during the Second World War for the obvious reason that war impacts on mental health. At the end of the war, Berne moved to San Francisco, where he developed a new idea about everyday relationships. In 1964, he wrote a book called The Games People Play in which he stated that anyone can have mental health problems in their daily lives because of their relationships with other people.

Before Berne made this statement, most psychiatrists believed that all personal problems came from a person’s mind. This was the view of Freud, who believed that experiences in early life, and in childhood particularly, had deep and lasting effects on people’s minds and often led them to try not to remember unpleasant things which had happened to them, resulting in problems in their relationships with people. However, Berne’s studies led him to believe that these arise because of the transactions between people themselves.

Berne pointed out that people often play games with the people around them on a day-to-day basis – with their friends, family and workmates. By definition, games are normally played for fun, but Berne’s games are not fun. Berne said people make themselves feel better by making another person feel worse. Despite some early opposition, it is widely accepted today by professionals that people play these transactional games. Although it is clear that we have a huge number of transactions of many different kinds with a wide range of people every day, Berne believed that relationships always come down to just three possible behaviour patterns.

Firstly, according to Berne, during a transaction, a person can behave as a Parent. He explained that he saw a Parent as a person who can try to look after another person or try to control him or her. These are clearly the main roles that parents are expected to take when they are bringing up a child. Secondly, a person can act as a Child, in which role two possible reactions are again possible. A child can obey or rebel. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of children start by obeying their parents in everything when they are very young, but then begin to rebel, perhaps when they become teenagers, moving toward independence from their parents. Finally, a person can behave as an Adult. In Berne’s system, Adults do not take on any of the roles of a Parent or a Child. They respond to whatever stimulus they receive in a rational way.

For example, imagine a conversation between a husband and a wife. They are both adults, of course, but either or both might not behave like an Adult in terms of Berne’s characterisations. If the husband says, ‘Have you seen my watch?’, that could be the statement of an Adult. The wife might reply as an Adult with something like, ‘It’s in the bathroom.’ Or, because of a cause unrelated to the question, such as anger with her husband for something which happened earlier in the day, she might behave like a Parent, saying, ‘Why don’t you look after your things properly?’ She could even behave like a Child and say something like, ‘I didn’t take it,’ even though the original statement held no suggestion of accusation. Inevitably, if a person acting as an Adult receives the response of a Parent or a Child, they might give up their behaviour appropriate to an Adult and respond in turn as a Parent or a Child, with something which causes further damage to the relationship. Clearly, responses which are not Adult can easily lead to a growth in disagreement between two people, whether a couple, friends or workmates, and perhaps, in the end, to a complete breakdown in a relationship.

Berne’s theory has proved to be very powerful in mainstream therapy for mental health issues and is now frequently applied to areas of education and business management. But to my mind, it is also a powerful insight for anyone who wants to have better relationships in the home, in a social context or in the workplace. Before someone responds to a particular statement from a Parent, Child or Adult in any transaction, it’s good for them to ask themselves, ‘How can a person be an Adult in this conversation?’ It seems that Adult responses have the best chance of ensuring that any relationship flourishes.