EATA 50 Years

It is not easy to describe my early experience of EATA, and even pre-EATA. Looking back, it feels as if I was a little kid in the summer of 1975. In fact, I was 20 years old when the first TA conference in Europe was held in Villars-sur-Ollon at Club Med.

It was a fabulous experience, discovering so many different people “speaking” TA. It was amazing to see the many possibilities a conference could offer. Every workshop was new and exciting. Meeting European TA colleagues from other countries was equally inspiring. It felt as though a whole new world was beginning to open up.

People like Michael Reddy really made an impression on me. I loved his humility. I still remember his story about starting out as a therapist: “When I think about my first sessions, I turn pink with embarrassment.” Hearing that was incredibly liberating.

Someone had written on a board: THERAPIST // THE RAPIST and went on to explain how professionals should be extremely careful with clients’ boundaries. Carlo Moiso was there too, enthusiastically embracing people and engaging intellectually with everyone he met. His long black hair gave him something of a Rasputin-like air. Tom Frazier generously shared his kindness, both with the conference organisation and with anyone who wanted to talk about TA. And of course there was Fanita English, our polyglot European-American, an incredibly vivacious woman with a powerful presence. A number of Europeans came together with the idea of creating a European association.

My memories are somewhat hazy, but I recall volunteering to be the contact person in France, as using English came easily to me. Throughout the following year there was quite a bit of correspondence, although I did not continue for long because I was a broke and overworked student. Meanwhile, in France, following that conference, we founded our own TA association, IFAT (Institut Français d’Analyse Transactionnelle). By the time the second conference in Europe was held in Enschede, the Netherlands, I was fortunate enough to serve as a semi-official interpreter for a small group of French speakers, whispering translations to them from the back of the room. After that came the annual conferences in Austria, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy and elsewhere.

By the time we returned to Villars in 1984 for another conference at the same Club Med, the staff had identified a particularly amusing aspect of our community. I found them hilarious as they mimicked us, delighted to see one another again after one or several years apart. We would reconnect with people whose faces we recognised instantly, while discreetly trying to catch a glimpse of their name tags because we were not entirely sure we remembered their names. The staff perfectly imitated our enthusiastic greetings: opening our arms wide for a hug while simultaneously sneaking a look at the name tag!

So many wonderful people returned year after year: Jenni Hine and Margareta Robinson from Switzerland, Janne Blarke from Denmark, and Raymond Hostie, who played such an important role in the French-speaking TA community.

He founded the French-language journal Actualités en Analyse Transactionnelle and later wrote the wonderful book Analyse Transactionnelle: l’âge adulte. Sur les traces d’Eric Berne vingt ans après (Transactional Analysis: The Adult Age. In Eric Berne’s Footsteps Twenty Years Later).

Of course, I am naming only a few of the people whose faces emerge from my memories today. But even these are enough to remind me what rich and remarkable years those were.