What do you say if you don’t say “unconscious”?: Dilemmas created for transactional analysis by Berne’s shift away from the language of unconscious experience

This chapter explores enduring, yet under-developed ideas in the work of Eric Berne, in which he began to articulate innate psychological forces in human nature that motivated people toward maximum health, self-expression, and autonomy. I argue that the under-development of these ideas in Berne’s thinking is related to his pessimistic assessment of peoples’ willingness to be truly autonomous, that is, the pressures of script outweighed the desire to pursue one’s own nature. I elaborate Berne’s ideas, link them to research in resilience and intrinsic motivation, and offer suggestions as to the applications of these ideas among the diverse applications of transactional analysis.