When I was 28 years old (in 2000), I received an unexpected promotion at work. I moved from the role of project administrator to general manager of a division within a holding company. The number of employees increased quickly to almost 100 people, with a wide range of tasks and communication. As I stepped into this role, I realized that I lacked knowledge and skills in management, so I went to a bookstore to look for books on management and communication, like a true “old school” person.

It was a large bookstore in our Kyiv city, in Podil. I don’t remember how much time I spent there, looking through the shelves of available books, until I reached the psychology section. At that time, this field was not very popular in our country and there were not many books. Maybe that is why a shiny black cover with the title Games People Play (Berne, 1964) immediately caught my attention.

I opened the book and started flipping through it. There were unfamiliar diagrams, circles with arrows, and then I saw a familiar word, “transaction” (Berne, 1964, p. 42). I became curious why a banking term appeared in a psychology book, so I bought it.

I cannot say that reading was easy or exciting. On the contrary, much of it was difficult to understand. However, the concept of transaction became key for me. Through analyzing hidden levels, I gradually began to understand psychological games.

This book did not give me management knowledge. However, it taught me to listen, to clarify, and to agree on work aspects in open communication, to make contracts with others.

Ten years later, a tragedy happened in my family. I lost my sister due to suicide. This completely changed my life. I lost my sense of meaning and, trying to put myself back together, I turned my focus to psychology.

I explored different approaches such as Bodynamic therapy, Gestalt, systemic constellations, and art therapy. I gained interesting and useful knowledge, but I was searching for structure. I wanted to bring everything that had happened in my life into one whole picture and make sense of my experience.

I shared my thoughts with a colleague and remembered the book Games People Play, which still holds an important place on my bookshelf. At that moment, I discovered that training in transactional analysis (TA) was available in Ukraine. I remember my surprise and, at the same time, a feeling of joy, as if I was about to meet a close friend.

That is how I came to TA. And that is how I met Eric Berne.

I was fascinated by the story about recruits, and I began to experiment in order to understand how intuition and analysis can work together. This later helped me in my role as a profiler.

I often heard that Berne had a rebellious character, but I wanted to form my own impression. There were not enough photos or stories, so I started looking for more information and found an interview by David Prow, a science editor for National Educational Television (NET).

I saw a reserved man who showed very few emotions or gestures. He spoke quite fast, but clearly. His voice was a deep baritone, and in every tone I could feel physis.

Then he laughed. I noticed how his ego states shifted from Adult to Child. His face became lively and his eyes playful.

When he was asked about applying TA in his own life, he spoke again from the Adult ego state about his mistakes in raising children: “Sometimes I really run that through and say, ‘What did I do?’ And I may decide, ‘Gee whiz, I thought I was coming on straight Adult, but I guess there was a lot of Parent in there, so that’s why he reacted the way he did.’ And so then I try to correct it, and very often, when things go wrong, I find it comes in very handy in my own life” (NET, 1966).

So, Dr. Berne, maybe these are my projections and transference, but I feel your vulnerability. I like your directness and honesty. Your depth and structure resonate with me. And I also love people with a sense of humor.

At the end, I would like to say a few words about the book. However important the book Games People Play was for me, my favorite became The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups (Berne, 1963), in which the author writes that “the language has been kept as simple as possible” (p. viii).

I am not sure what exactly the author meant, whether he really believed this, or perhaps it was his small, humorous, hidden transaction. But every time I return to this book, I discover something new and feel inspired to continue exploring TA, learning it more deeply, and sharing it with others.