When The Script migrated to its new digital platform in January 2026, one article stood out for its profound depth. Featuring Pamela Levin’s work on how the inner child remains physically alive within people, it was an extraordinarily strong piece for a debut edition and immediately recognized as a treasure for readers. An extensive exchange of conversations over recent months culminated in the interview presented below. While some interludes were omitted to fit the publishing format, the core of the dialogue remains intact.

Levin made history by shattering the rigid medical hierarchies of the 1960s, becoming the first registered nurse to teach clinical transactional analysis alongside theory founder Dr. Eric Berne. In this revealing interview, she shares the behind-the-scenes story of how she courageously confronted Berne to inject a pioneering feminist perspective into the era's psychiatric practices, and she details her revolutionary view that childhood stages healthily repeat throughout adulthood. Read the full conversation for profound insights into breaking limiting life scripts, liberating the "Free Child" ego state and harnessing the power of authentic emotional connections for true personal transformation.

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Sgarbe: Ms. Levin, your history as the first registered nurse to become a clinical teaching member of the ITAA is truly inspiring. Considering the medical hierarchy of the 1960s, there is a natural curiosity about how Dr. Berne, a psychiatrist, welcomed and valued the unique, caring perspective that your nursing background brought to the table.

Pamela: Yes, Eric was both encouraging and respectful of nurses. Several times in the Tuesday night seminars (then called the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars), when presenting a case, he would remark, “If you want to know what’s going on with a patient, ask a nurse!” Then he’d give a current example involving that patient. It often involved him interpreting a patient’s behavior as being due to one thing, only to find out when asking the nurses that it was due to quite another, and he had misinterpreted it.

Sgarbe: Building on this discussion of professional backgrounds, we encounter a distinct divergence between Transactional Analysis and traditional Psychoanalysis. While Freud championed "lay analysis"—opening the field to philosophers and non-medical practitioners—TA has historically maintained more defined clinical boundaries, often restricting clinical practice to health professionals. From your long-term perspective, do you believe these boundaries should be expanded? Furthermore, do you think the current model, which strictly categorizes practitioners—such as the distinction between Psychotherapy (CTA-P) and Organizational (CTA-O) certifications—might eventually be revised to allow for a more integrated approach?

Pamela: I have always wanted TA certifications to be competency-based rather than degree- and license-based. I fought for that back when all these categories and requirements were being put in place (early ’70s). To me, TA is a powerful approach for improving lives and relationships regardless of whether or not one has a psychiatric diagnosis. That said, it is crucial to establish and maintain safety and standards.

At the time, people who had been in TA 101 and groups with me and Virginia Hilliker (a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley and former office manager of the fledgling ITAA) started GroupHouse. Ours was a personal growth model; we didn’t “treat psychiatric illness.” To us, the promise and value of TA was around non-pathologizing of people and relationships.

Our TA groups were highly popular, and as we trained leaders in TA who then began their own groups, GroupHouse grew beyond Berkeley and the Bay Area. Some TA people there reacted as if these places were their territory (which is why we jokingly referred to territories where TA trainers operated as “Kentucky Fried TA”). They threatened our GroupHouse leaders with being legally charged with practicing medicine without a license. These same people were also taking over positions of authority and leadership in the ITAA and authored policies that blocked anyone without a degree and license from advancing in TA membership. Their intimidation was so effective that our leaders quit.

Around the same time, Claude became involved in a Radical Psychiatry collective in Berkeley. They were also training leaders in TA. Perhaps because Claude was seen as Eric’s professional “favorite son,” or because he held high authority in the TA world, or because Radical Psychiatry leaders weren’t impinging on others’ perceived territory, they were not threatened with legal action to my knowledge.

At the time, my impression was that a big motivation for degree requirements concerned therapists developing sexual relationships with clients, a problem which was just coming to light at the time. Unfortunately, as history has borne out, degrees and licenses are completely ineffective for preventing that.

Now, looking at the various requirements and advanced member categories, I don’t find where anyone interested in TA for personal growth would find a home. While the current categories may be a bit more rigid than necessary, I believe we need these areas of greater specialization. I’m not interested in learning how to run a TA-based classroom for 6-year-olds, for example, or how to address corporate organizational dysfunction, and I’m sure someone who is interested in those doesn’t care to find out how to address buried trauma in adults. I think we need both — specialization with integration.

Sgarbe: Your groundbreaking work, Cycles of Power, beautifully illustrated how childhood stages repeat in adulthood. Thinking back to your early days studying with Dr. Berne in 1966, did you already have a gentle intuition that his structural model might be missing this more fluid, continuous dimension of human development?

Pamela: No, I had no clue. When I first heard of the three ego states, it was as if someone turned on the lights in my brain. At that time, I had so many thoughts, feelings, conflicts, and wants all churning around in my mind. Understanding ego states gave me the sorting system I needed. I have no proof, of course, but I’m sure that new organization changed the wiring in my brain in a positive way!

Sgarbe: In your writing, you touchingly describe the need for a "diet of nurturing strokes" for healthy growth. Since Dr. Berne wrote so extensively about stimulus hunger, it is intriguing to consider his potential reaction. Do you feel he would have warmly embraced your insight that these nutritional needs change so drastically as we move through different life cycles?

Pamela: Yes, I’m sure he would. Sometimes after the seminar, Eric would involve us in experiments (entirely voluntary, of course). One he set up several times was the “intimacy experiment,” where two people would sit in front of each other, practically knee-to-knee (20 inches apart, as I recall), and look at each other for 20 minutes without talking. Each time, the two people—even those who seemed to have no commonalities—became bonded and maintained a more emotionally intimate relationship afterward.

On this particular night, he did a stroking experiment. We all sat in a circle, and each of us was to give him one stroke, whatever occurred to us. All of the strokes given were about his abilities or his character. I was searching for something I wanted to say. I wanted it to be sincere, so when it came to me, I said, “I love you.” He was taken aback in the best way—everyone was, I think. The energy changed in the room; his face and body startled and then relaxed. It took a moment for him and everyone else to recognize I meant it in a most platonic, non-sexual way—an unconditional stroke. So, he clearly experienced the difference between strokes for doing and strokes for being.

Sgarbe: It is striking how the fear of vulnerability often leads us to dilute the potency of our recognition. We frequently witness a retreat from the profound "I love you" into the safety of automated, almost "plastic" strokes—platitudes like "a hug makes my day" or the common refrain of "we are like a family." These substitutes seem to simulate a connection that, if genuine, could radically transform communal life, yet they often serve as barriers to it. In a social landscape so cluttered with these hollow surrogates, how does one maintain the sobriety and inner conviction to remain truly authentic? How do we ensure our strokes retain their transformative power rather than becoming mere social currency?

Pamela: Yes, the purpose of these “plastic strokes,” etc., seems to be about creating sufficient emotional distance to establish feeling safe. Their purpose seems to be creating distance to establish emotional safety. To actually feel safe means learning to have and maintain good personal boundaries. When I came to TA, I thought boundaries were those created by other people to control my relationship with them. I had no idea what a healthy personal boundary was.

I learned that everyone has a need and a right to feel safe. To maintain that for ourselves requires each of us to listen to and honor the signals from our gut and heart. That’s where the signals to “watch out” or “something’s not right here” or even just “uh-oh!” originate. It was personally transformative to discover that I didn’t have to stay in an encounter or environment where I didn’t feel safe. I stopped blaming myself for feeling unsafe (“You’re just insecure!”) and started looking around for what might be creating that feeling in the environment. That was and continues to be revelatory. It’s like Eric said: It’s learning to think like a Martian.

Sgarbe: You have elegantly outlined how, during severe life transformations, people often regress to the "Being" stage of immobilization. Looking at Dr. Berne’s own history of breaking away from the psychoanalytic establishment, does it seem to you that he might have been going through this very phase of identity recycling himself?

Pamela: Vinicius, I wouldn’t use the term “regress” here, but rather “return.” People maintain their adult functioning but return to the needs and tasks of the Being stage (though, yes, some also regress). Anyone who separates—whether from a person, a family, or a social system of some kind—carries out the same developmental tasks as a two-year-old, and afterward needs to carry out the developmental tasks of updating their Identity, the same tasks as four-year-olds. So, yes, of course. Eric was human, built like all of us.

Sgarbe: Your 1977 article on how traditional gender roles restricted both men and women was quite ahead of its time. One wonders about the receptivity of the era: Did you find Dr. Berne open to this kind of vanguard feminist thought within transactional analysis, or was this a trailblazing path you mostly had to navigate on your own?

Pamela: At first, I was navigating this feminist awakening on my own; it was a deeply personal process. I may have signaled something about that during the seminars or conferences, but I don’t remember specifically. Several times during the four years I studied with him, Eric repeated Freud’s question, “What do women want?” He obviously didn’t have satisfactory answers. I’m sure that question was motivated both by his need to understand his female patients and by the stress in his marriage (to Torie at the time).

He had been working on the Sex in Human Loving manuscript and wanted female reviewers, and since I was there, he asked me. I was so incensed by what I read that I suspect my pen practically burned up the page while writing replies. I handed it back to him at the seminar and thought, “Well, there goes my TA career!” Each week, I expected to be given the boot, but nothing happened. Finally, I went up to him after the seminar and asked him what he thought. He said, “Oh, Pamela, thank you so much for doing that. What if Betty Friedan had gotten a hold of me in the press!” I was shocked, stunned, and thrilled that he so welcomed my no-holds-barred comments.

He responded by rewriting the section on “Female Power.” Since the manuscript had already been submitted to Grove Press, he handled the rest by carrying out a dialogue in the footnotes between E.B. (Eric Berne) and E.W. (Emancipated Woman), where he combined my comments with those of a couple of other women reviewers. He was waking up to sexism and patriarchy. He then asked me to present a paper on “The Woman Question” at the Summer Conference in Monterey that August, which he intended to discuss afterward. Unfortunately, he died in July, only weeks before the conference.

Sgarbe: Despite your early challenge to Berne, gender inequality remains a stark reality in 2026, from high femicide rates to the domestic "double burden." Cultural expectations still echo Proverbs 14:1: "The wise woman builds her house." In light of your work, how can Transactional Analysis now foster a deeper consciousness regarding not only women’s social struggles, but the honoring of "femininity" within every human being?

Pamela: There’s an old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” In other words, much as we might like, we don’t have control over other people, only over ourselves. The second-wave feminism insisted that “the personal is political,” which means that each person who develops and exercises personal agency becomes a force that shifts the culture. The environment that motivates change in women’s social struggles, for example, is created each time we stop making someone else comfortable with engaging in toxic masculinity, because change is motivated by discomfort.

The process of developing personal agency means coming to terms with how we’re actually made — our own human nature. Every human has both masculine (linear, hierarchical relating) aspects and feminine ones (cyclical, partnership relating). “Cycles of Power” revealed this feminine aspect that had been buried for so long.

People in audiences where I was teaching this material often began to cry. They told me it was because they were awakening to the fact that we’re not supposed to outgrow the stages of childhood; we’re supposed to continue to repeat them in a more sophisticated form throughout life. It’s the basic growth process of nature as it exists in us, the feminine in ourselves. Their tears were those of relief — they’d been trying to make their childhood stages go away in their adult lives, weren’t succeeding and had believed something was wrong with them. Finding out that repeating these ongoing stages in adulthood was not only normal, but also healthy and OK was a deep healing experience.

Perhaps our TA community is ready to engage in an active, healing dialogue with each other about the power dynamics between men and women. Turning thus to look at the effects of patriarchy on all of us instead of turning a blind eye is a great place to start.

Starting in 1970, at TA conferences, we first had the Women’s Caucus (which later became the Social Action Committee). Later the Men’s Caucus began. Now that we’ve met separately, perhaps we’re ready to begin talking with each other. What do healthy relationships between the sexes — ones in which all parties can exercise agency and no one person impinges on the agency of another — look like? As we heal ourselves and our relationships with each other, we change the culture.

We have an example from our own history. Eric had requested that I present a paper on “The Woman Question,” which he was going to discuss, but he died in July. The ITAA conference was a little over a month later in August. Unbeknownst to me, his discussion was replaced by five men who were to give their opinion on women’s experience! We women simply refused to accept that. We broke our internalized “Don’t Be Angry” injunction, and as we each exercised agency over our own internal rage, we translated it into community action, the waves of which have affected the growth of TA internationally. For example, because of owning and channeling our rage, we established a rule that to be legally constituted, every ITAA examining board had to have at least one woman. We began with breaking a “Don’t Be Angry” injunction, exercised individual agency over our rage and in so doing opened opportunities in TA for women around the world. It’s a historical example of how the personal is political.

Sgarbe: It takes a certain courage to gently point out the social blind spots of a highly respected founder, as you did with some of Dr. Berne's views. On a personal and diplomatic level, what was the experience like to challenge someone you so deeply admired while still honoring his foundational theory?

Pamela: In short, it was terrifying! My childhood lessons conditioned me to believe that if you speak truth to power, you will suffer. But behind that highly adapted conditioning, I always wondered if there might ever be a place where I could speak my truth and be heard. I found that with Eric.

Sgarbe: Your book, Becoming the Way We Are, offers such an uplifting focus on reclaiming personal power. Since Dr. Berne's concept of the life script can sometimes feel a bit deterministic, was part of your motivation to offer a warmer, more hopeful sense of agency to the Child ego state?

Pamela: Well, life scripts by their very nature are deterministic, which is what is so limiting about them. I didn’t feel a need to change or modify that; I just wanted to fix it, both for me and for my clients. We wanted to move from set internal pain, conflicts, and limitations to the freedom of being and expression promised by the Free Child ego state. My motivation was all about that—how do we free ourselves from that internal pain and constraint and become who we really are? Becoming the Way We Are summarized those discoveries.

Sgarbe: You place such a beautiful emphasis on community structure and mutual support. Thinking about those formative years of transactional analysis, how much did the lively San Francisco seminars help fulfill your own structure hunger, and perhaps even Dr. Berne's?

Pamela: Finding Eric through Games People Play, and then in person through the seminars and conferences, was like finding home after a long and thirsty journey. I found a place where I fit, I found my professional career, and I found like-minded people who turned out to exist all over the world. On a graph, the trajectory of my adult life and the growth of Transactional Analysis around the globe would be the same line. I can’t begin to describe how profoundly my life was, and continues to be, affected by Eric, TA, and the TA community.

Of course, like all human beings, Eric too would have experienced structure hunger. Developing TA and the highly organized life he lived to respond to its phenomenal worldwide growth would have satisfied that structure hunger and then some! In his personal life, he would have experienced phases of high structure hunger, such as when his marriage fell apart and, later, his health. I'm sure all "euhemeri-in-the-making" experience structure hunger—it's part of the human condition. I'm not sure about after that!