Berne was born May 10, 1910 as Eric

Berne was born May 10, 1910 as Eric Lennard Bernstein in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to a Jewish family. He and his sister Grace, five years, were the children of a physician, David, and a writer, Sara Gordon Bernstein.[1 David Bernstein died in 1921. Thenceforth the mother raised her two children alone.[Bernstein received his baccalaureate degree from McGill University in 1931, and his doctorate degree inmedicine and surgery in 1935. While at McGill he wrote for several student newspapers using pseudonyms. He followed graduation with aresidency in psychiatry at Yale University, where he studied psychoanalysis under Paul Federn.He completed his training in 1938 and became an American citizen in 1939.