French-American author, practicing psychologist and disciple of Eric Berne, one of the founders of radical therapy. Steiner’s books include, “Games Alcoholics Play,” 1970, “Scripts People Live,” 1976, and “People’s Power Plays,” 1981.
His Austrian-born Jewish mother and Christian father fled from Hitler’s invasion of France in 1939, escaping to Spain with Claude and his younger sister Katherine. After the birth of another son, Miguel, the Steiner family immigrated to Mexico where Claude was enrolled in a Catholic School. He entered the United States in 1952 to attend Santa Monica City College in California where he studied engineering and physics while he worked as an auto mechanic. He later transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and changed his major to psychology and child development. He met Eric Berne in 1957, and at Berne’s urging, continued his studies, earning his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan in 1965.
Much of Steiner’s focus after his graduation in 1965 centered on the importance of emotions in our lives, in particular, the emotion of love. His interest in personal power and power plays led him to give up his clinical work for a time in order to travel as a journalist in Mexico and Central America where he studied the effects of U.S. propaganda on the local population. He is the author of the well-known children’s fable, “The Warm Fuzzy Tale,” 1969, and for three years, he was senior editor for “Propaganda Review.”
Steiner is married to Jude Hall. They have three children, Mimi, Eric and Denali, as well as several grandchildren.