Aleksandra Bubera Ninić, MD, psychiatrist, certified transactional analyst (CTA), teaching and supervising transactional analyst (TSTA), prepared interview with Richard Erskine, PhD, TA teacher, the only three-time winner of the Eric Berne Award for the development of TA and the founder of Relational Integrative Psychotherapy, on 21st February 2024. about his work and upcoming workshop in Belgrade, Serbia, 23-24th May 2024.

In this interview Richard talks about how he succeeds to be motivated to work and teach after 50+ years of practice, about his educational background in psychotherapy, his identity within psychotherapy field, how come that he founded new psychotherapy approach, why he wrote some of his books and what is going to happen at his in person workshop in Belgrade, Serbia, May 2024.

You can see workshop details here

Philosophical principles of Integrative psychotherapy are:

1. All people are equally valuable.

2. All human experience is organized physiologically, affectively and/ or cognitively.

3. All human behavior has meaning in some context.

4. Internal and external contact is essential to human functioning.

5. All people are relationship-seeking and interdependent throughout life.

6. Humans have an innate thrust to grow.

7. Humans suffer from relational-disruptions not “psychopathology”.

8. The inter-subjective process of psychotherapy is more important than the content of the psychotherapy.

Relational needs are:

1. Security: having our physical and emotional vulnerc bilities protected

2. Validation and affirmation within the relationship: affect, fantasy and construction of meaning are significant

3. Acceptance by a stable and dependable other person: reliable information and protection from one’s own exaggerations or escalations

4. Confirmation of personal experience: mutuality of shared experience

5. Self-definition: acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s own uniqueness

6. To make an impact: influencing and effecting a change

7. To have the other initiate: initiation of interpersonal contact; to take responsibility

8. To express love: gratitude, thankfulness, giving affection