Foundation Year 


About the Course

For the academic year 2025/26 we will be offering 2 Foundation Year Groups, one Group will be in person at Berne House on Saturdays and Sundays and one Group will be online on Wednesdays and Thursdays. See Psychotherapy Foundation Year for details.

The major focus of this one-year part-time course (twenty days of training) is on providing an in-depth awareness of TA and its applications in counselling and other interpersonal fields within the helping professions. As well as considering the major theories of TA and their applications, it also includes practical, experiential and skills-development work, and provides an experience of personal development.


  • Who is it for?

    The Foundation Year is an essential first step into further TA training and is a valuable source of TA techniques and tools for those who wish to further their knowledge and expertise in TA.

  • Qualification and Accreditation

    Upon successful completion of the Foundation course you will receive the Berne Foundation Certificate and the TA101 certificate of the European Association for Transactional Analysis.

  • Course Content

    • What is TA?

    • Attachment Model – the secret of life!

    • Underlying values of TA – what is important?

    • The life and publications of Eric Berne

    • The development of TA

    • Ego States – who am I?

    • Contaminations and Exclusions – how reality gets distorted

    • Symbiosis – how do we relate with others through dependency?

    • Transactions – how do we communicate with each other?

    • Hungers and strokes – what you concentrate on is what you get!

    • Time structuring

    • Psychological sweatshirts

    • Our Frame of Reference – filtering reality

    • Discounting – avoiding solving problems

    • Psychological trading stamps –expressing our feelings

    • Rackets – how do our feelings get distorted?

    • The Racket/Script System

    • Life Positions –How OK am I in relation to you?

    • Games people play – how do we repeat the same destructive patterns in relationships?

    • Life Scripts – how can we make life predictable?

    • Miniscripts – how we adapt to ensure our acceptance

    • Physis – How we grow and change

    • Autonomy and Homonomy – the goals of TA


  • Eligibility and Entry

    No previous academic qualification is required for entry to the Foundation course. If you apply for a place on the course, you will be contacted to arrange an admission interview, which will be face to face or by telephone.

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Summary

Course Cost


Fees 2025/26

Details on Psychotherapy Foundation Year page

Course Dates

Dates 2025/26

Details on Psychotherapy Foundation Year page

Tutors

Details on Psychotherapy Foundation Year page

Our Core Philosophy

At The Berne Institute we recognise that people come into TA training with widely differing experiences of clinical practice, theoretical knowledge and formal academic learning, and that they differ widely also in their current personal resources and skills. Our courses therefore honour the uniqueness of each individual’s learning and experience and their different learning styles, pace and areas of competence.

The philosophy and practice of Homonomy that respects our mutuality and interconnectedness has been recently integrated into the Berne Institute philosophy. The aim is to expand the focus in our theory and practice from individual change to include a focus on the wider implications of our work on the whole community and our planet. 


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