Thomas Anthony Harris (April 18, 1910 – May 4, 1995) was an American

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

who became famous for his self-help manual '' I'm OK, You're OK'' (1967).THOMAS A. HARRIS Psychiatrist and Author
obituary in

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

, May 7, 1995 The book was a bestseller and its name became a

cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...

during the 1970s.

Career

Harris received his Bachelor of Science degree from the

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

in 1938, and his M. D. from the

Temple University School of Medicine The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM), located on the Health Science Campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, is one of 7 schools of medicine in Pennsylvania conferring the M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree. It also ...

in 1940. After graduation, he joined the Navy as a medical intern. He was aboard the submarine tender when it was attacked at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and sustained permanent hearing loss as a result. Upon completion of his internship in 1942, Harris began his training in Psychiatry at

St. Elizabeth's Hospital St. Elizabeths Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Southeast, Washington, D.C. operated by the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health. It opened in 1855 under the name Government Hospital for the Insane, the first federally oper ...

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

He returned to the Navy after completing his residency. Toward the end of the war, he served as Chief Psychiatric Officer on the hospital ship . Harris ultimately became Chief of the Psychiatry Branch of the Navy, and ended his service as a Commander in 1954. Following his retirement, Harris became Chief of the Department of Institutions in Washington state. During this time, he played a critical role in defusing a riot at the maximum security prison in Walla Walla. However, he soon grew tired of bureaucratic work, and opened a private psychiatric practice in

Sacramento, CA ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

in 1956. Harris was a long-time friend and associate of

Eric Berne Eric Berne (May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior. Berne's theory of transactional analysis was based on the ideas of Freud but ...

, the founder of

Transactional Analysis Transactional Analysis (TA) is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social interactions (or “transactions”) are analyzed to determine the ego state of the communicator (whether parent-like, childlike, or adult-like) as a b ...

, beginning when both men were among the few psychiatrists in the

U.S. military The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

. He was also a founding member of Berne's San Francisco Transactional Analysis Seminar, which met weekly for over a decade, and which developed the main concepts of TA. A Teaching Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association, Harris was an early advocate for

group therapy Group psychotherapy or group therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. The term can legitimately refer to any form of psychotherapy when delivered in a group format, i ...

and TA in preference to traditional

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

, for which he was trained by

Harry Stack Sullivan Herbert "Harry" Stack Sullivan (February 21, 1892, Norwich, New York – January 14, 1949, Paris, France) was an American Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who held that "personality can never be isolated from the complex interpersonal ...

Publications

During 1985, Harris published ''Staying OK'', a sequel to ''I'm OK, You're OK'', written with his wife, the journalist and lecturer Amy Bjork Harris (born 1929).Keeping the Adult in Control
by John Leo in

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

, May 27, 1985

Sources

External links

Information on Dr. Thomas A. Harris and I'm OK - You're OK
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Thomas Anthony 1910 births 1995 deaths American psychiatrists 20th-century American physicians Transactional analysis Temple University School of Medicine alumni American self-help writers

Career

Publications

See also

Sources

External links