Postcards From a Critical and Social Edge: Acceptance Speech for the 2025 Eric Berne Memorial Award

This article, which is an expanded version of the author’s acceptance speech delivered at the World TA Conference in Montpellier, France, in August 2025, discusses the four elements of the citation of this Eric Berne Memorial Award. Following some acknowledgments, as an introduction to these elements, the article begins by making the case for the necessity of criticism and the importance of the social world on and in transactional analysis (TA). The article then discusses the author’s contribution to revitalizing the critical and social edge of TA and to advancing this edge or edges. This is followed by some consideration of the author’s critiquing of TA from within and without. The article concludes with some reflections of the significance of the award.