Games People Play Part 7

Variations of C & R are 'Auditors and Robbers', played by embezzlers with the same rules and the same payoff; 'Customs and Robbers', played by smugglers, etc. Of special interest is the criminal variation of 'Courtroom'. Despite all his precautions, the professional may occasionally be arrested and brought to trial. For him' Courtroom' is a procedure, which he carries out according to the instructions of his legal advisers. For the lawyers, if they are compulsive winners, 'Courtroom' is essentially a game played with the jury in which the object is to win, not lose, and this is regarded as a constructive game by a large segment of society.

Ant.i.thesis. This is the concern of qualified criminologists rather than psychiatrists. The police and judiciary apparatus are not ant.i.thetical, but are playing their roles in the game under the rules set up by society.

One thing should be emphasized, however. Research workers in criminology may joke that some criminals behave as though they enjoyed the chase and wanted to be caught, or they may read the idea and agree in a deferential way. But they show little tendency to consider such an 'academic' factor as decisive in their 'serious' work. For one thing, there is no way to unmask this element through the standard methods of psychological research. The investigator must therefore either overlook a crucial point because he cannot work it with his research tools, or else change his tools. The fact is that those tools have so far not yielded one single solution to any problem in criminology. Researchers might therefore be better off discarding the old methods and tackling the problem freshly. Until C & R is accepted not merely as an interesting anomaly, but as the very heart of the matter in a significant percentage of cases, much research in criminology will continue to deal with trivialities, doctrines, peripheral issues or irrelevancies.1 a.n.a.lYSIS.

Thesis: See if you can catch me.

Aim: Rea.s.surance.

Roles: Robber, Cop (Judge).

Dynamics: Phallic intrusion, e.g., (1) Hide-and-seek, tag. (2) Crime.

Social Paradigm: Parent-Child.

Child: 'See if you can catch me.'

Parent: 'That's my job.'

Psychological Paradigm: Parent-Child.

Child: 'You must catch me.'

Parent: 'Aha, there you are.'

Moves: (1) W: Defiance. B: Indignation. (2) W: Concealment. B: Frustration. (3) W: Provocation. B: Victory.

Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological material indemnification for old wrong. (2) External Psychological counterphobic. (3) Internal Social See if you can catch me. (4) External Social I almost got away with it (Pastime: They almost got away with it.) (5) Biological notoriety. (6) Existential: I've always been a loser.

2 HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF HERE.

Thesis. The historical evidence is that those prisoners survive best who have their time structured by an activity, pastime or a game. This is apparently well known to political police, who are said to break some prisoners down simply by keeping them inactive and in a state of social deprivation.

The favoured activity of solitary prisoners is reading or writing books, and the favoured pastime is escape, some of whose pract.i.tioners, such as Casanova and Baron Trenck, have become famous.

The favoured game is 'How Do You Get Out of Here?' ('Want Out'), which may also be played in state hospitals. It must be distinguished from the operation (see page 44) of the same name, known as 'Good Behaviour'. An inmate who really wants to be free will find out how to comply with the authorities so as to be released at the earliest possible moment. Nowadays this may often be accomplished by playing a good game of 'Psychiatry', Group Therapy Type. The game of 'Want Out', however, is played by inmates or by patients whose Child does not want to get out. They simulate 'Good Behaviour', but at the critical point they sabotage themselves so as not to be released. Thus in 'Good Behaviour' Parent, Adult and Child work together to be discharged; in 'Want Out' Parent and Adult go through the prescribed motions until the critical moment, when the Child, who is actually frightened at the prospect of venturing into the uncertain world, takes over and spoils the effect. 'Want Out' was common in the late 1930s among recently arrived immigrants from Germany who became psychotic. They would improve and beg for release from the hospital; but as the day of liberation approached, their psychotic manifestations would recur.

Ant.i.thesis. Both 'Good Behaviour' and 'Want Out' are recognized by alert administrators and can be dealt with at the executive level. Beginners in group therapy, however, are often taken in. A competent group therapist, knowing these are the most frequent manipulations in psychiatrically oriented prisons, will be watching for them and will ferret them out at an early phase. Since 'Good Behaviour' is an honest operation, it may be treated as such, and there is no harm in discussing it openly. 'Want Out', on the other hand, requires active therapy if the frightened inmate is to be rehabilitated.

Relatives. A close relative of 'Want Out' is an operation called 'You've Got to Listen'. Here the inmate of an inst.i.tution or the client of a social agency demands the right to make complaints. The complaints are often irrelevant. His main purpose is to a.s.sure himself that he will be listened to by the authorities. If they make the mistake of thinking that he expects the complaints to be acted on and cut him off as too demanding, there may be trouble. If they accede to his demands, he will increase them. If they merely listen patiently and with signs of interest, the 'You've Got to Listen' player will be satisfied and cooperative, and will not ask for anything more. The administrator must learn to distinguish 'You've Got to Listen' from serious demands for remedial action.2 'b.u.m Rap' is another game that belongs in this family. A straight criminal may holler 'b.u.m Rap' in a real effort to get out, in which case it is part of the procedure. The inmate who plays 'b.u.m Rap' as a game, however, does not use it effectively to try to get out, since if he gets out he will no longer have much excuse to holler.

3 LET'S PULL A FAST ONE ON JOEY

Thesis. The prototype of this game is 'The Big Store', the big-time confidence game, but many small grifts and even the badger game are FOOJY. No man can be beaten at FOOJY unless he has larceny in his veins, because the first move is for Black to tell White that dumb-honest-old-Joey is just waiting to be taken. If White were completely honest, he would either back off or warn Joey, but he doesn't. Just as Joey is about to pay off, something goes wrong, and White finds that his investment is gone. Or in the badger game, just as Joey is about to be cuckolded, he happens to walk in. Then White, who was playing his own rules in his own honest way, finds that he has to play Joey's rules, and they hurt.

Curiously enough, the mark is supposed to know the rules of FOOJY and stick to them. Honest squawking is a calculated risk of the con mob; they will not hold that against White, and he is even allowed a certain lat.i.tude in lying to the police to save his face. But if he goes too far and accuses them falsely of burglary, for example, that is cheating, and they resent it. On the other hand, there is little sympathy for a con man who gets into trouble by working a mark who is drunk, since this is improper procedure, and he should know better. The same applies if he is stupid enough to pick a mark with a sense of humour, since it is well known that such people cannot be trusted to play the straight man in FOOJY all the way down the line through the terminal game of 'Cops and Robbers'. Experienced con men are scared of marks who laugh after they have been taken.

It should be noted that a practical joke is not a game of FOOJY, because in a practical joke Joey is the one who suffers, while in FOOJY Joey comes out on top, and White is the one who suffers. A practical joke is a pastime, while FOOJY is a game in which the joke is arranged to backfire.

It is evident that FOOJY is a three- or four-handed game, with the police playing the fourth hand, and that it is related to 'Let's You and Him Fight'.

NOTE.

Thanks are due to Dr Franklin Ernst of the California Medical Faculty at Vacavilie, Mr William Collins of the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco, and Mr Laurence Means of the California Inst.i.tution for Men at Tehachapi, for their continued interest in studying the game of 'Cops and Robbers' and for their helpful discussions and criticisms.

REFERENCES.

1. Frederick Wiseman, in 'Psychiatry and the Law: Use and Abuse of Psychiatry in a Murder Case' (American Journal of Psychiatry, 118:289299, 1961) gives a clear and tragic example of a hard form of 'Cops and Robbers'. It concerns a 23-year-old-man who shot his fiancee and then turned himself in. This was not easy to arrange, since the police did not believe his story until he had repeated it four times. Later, he said: 'It just seemed to me that all my life I was bound to end up in the chair. If that was the way it was, that was the way it would be.' The author says it was farcical to expect a lay jury to understand the complex psychiatric testimony that was offered at the trial in technical jargon. In game terms, the central issue can be stated in words of no more than two syllables: A nine-year-old boy decides (for reasons clearly brought out at the trial) that he is bound to end up in the chair. He spends the rest of his life headed toward this goal, and using his girl friend as a target, in the end he sets himself up.

2. For further information about 'Cops and Robbers' and games played by prison inmates, see: Ernst, F. H., and Keating, W. C., 'Psychiatric Treatment of the California Felon', American Journal of Psychiatry, 120:974979, 1964.

11 Consulting Room Games GAMES that are tenaciously played in the therapeutic situation are the most important ones for the professional game a.n.a.lyst to be aware of. They can be most readily studied first hand in the consulting room. There are three types, according to the role of the agent: 1. Games played by therapists and case workers: 'I'm Only Trying to Help You' and 'Psychiatry'.

2. Games played by professionally trained people who are patients in therapy groups, such as 'Greenhouse'.

3. Games played by lay patients and clients: 'Indigent', 'Peasant', 'Stupid' and 'Wooden Leg'.

1 GREENHOUSE.

Thesis. This is a variation of 'Psychiatry', which is played hardest by young social scientists, such as clinical psychologists. In the company of their colleagues these young people tend to play 'Psychoa.n.a.lysis', often in a jocular way, using such expressions as 'Your hostility is showing' or 'How mechanical can a defence mechanism get ?' This is usually a harmless and enjoyable pastime; it is a normal phase of their learning experience, and with a few originals in the group it can become quite amusing. (This writer's preference is, 'I see National Parapraxis Week is here again.') As patients in psychotherapy groups some of these people are apt to indulge in this mutual critique more seriously; but since it is not highly productive in that situation, it may have to be headed off by the therapist. The proceedings may then turn into a game of 'Greenhouse'.

There is a strong tendency for recent graduates to have an exaggerated respect for what they call 'Genuine Feelings'. The expression of such a feeling may be preceded by an announcement that it is on its way. After the announcement, the feeling is described, or rather presented before the group, as though it were a rare flower which should be regarded with awe. The reactions of the other members are received very solemnly, and they take on the air of connoisseurs at a botanical garden. The problem seems to be, in the jargon of game a.n.a.lysis, whether this one is good enough to be exhibited in the National Feeling Show. A questioning intervention by the therapist may be strongly resented, as though he were some clumsy-fingered clod mauling the fragile petals of an exotic century plant. The therapist, naturally, feels that in order to understand the anatomy and physiology of a flower, it may be necessary to dissect it.

Ant.i.thesis. The ant.i.thesis, which is crucial for therapeutic progress, is the irony of the above description. If this game is allowed to proceed, it may go on unchanged for years, after which the patient may feel that he has had a 'therapeutic experience' during which he has 'expressed hostility' and learned to 'face feelings' in a way which gives him an advantage over less fortunate colleagues. Meanwhile very little of dynamic significance may have happened, and certainly the investment of time has not been used to maximum therapeutic advantage.

The irony in the initial description is directed not against the patients but against their teachers and the cultural milieu which encourages such over-fastidiousness. If properly timed, a sceptical remark may successfully divorce them from foppish Parental influences and lead to a less self-conscious robustness in their transactions with each other. Instead of cultivating feelings in a kind of hothouse atmosphere, they may just let them grow naturally, to be plucked when they are ripe.

The most obvious advantage of this game is the external psychological, since it avoids intimacy by setting up special conditions under which feelings may be expressed, and special restrictions on the responses of those present.

2 I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU

Thesis. This game may be played in any professional situation and is not confined to psychotherapists and welfare workers. However, it is found most commonly and in its most florid form among social workers with a certain type of training. The a.n.a.lysis of this game was clarified for the writer under curious circ.u.mstances. All the players at a poker game had folded except two, a research psychologist and a businessman. The businessman, who had a high hand, bet; the psychologist, who had an unbeatable one, raised. The businessman looked puzzled, whereupon the psychologist remarked facetiously: 'Don't be upset, I'm only trying to help you!' The businessman hesitated, and finally put in his chips. The psychologist showed the winning hand, whereupon the other threw down his cards in disgust. The others present then felt free to laugh at the psychologist's joke, and the loser remarked ruefully: 'You sure were helpful!' The psychologist cast a knowing glance at the writer, implying that the joke had really been made at the expense of the psychiatric profession. It was at that moment that the structure of this game became clear.

The worker or therapist, of whatever profession, gives some advice to a client or patient. The patient returns and reports that the suggestion did not have the desired effect. The worker shrugs off this failure with a feeling of resignation, and tries again. If he is more watchful, he may detect at this point a twinge of frustration, but he will try again anyway. Usually he feels little need to question his own motives, because he knows that many of his similarly trained colleagues do the same thing, and that he is following the 'correct' procedure and will receive full support from his supervisors.

If he runs up against a hard player, such as a hostile obsessional, he will find it more and more difficult to avoid feeling inadequate. Then he is in trouble, and the situation will slowly deteriorate. In the worst case, he may come up against an angry paranoid who will rush in one day in a rage, crying:'Look what you made me do!' Then his frustration will come strongly to the fore in the spoken or unspoken thought: 'But I was only trying to help you!' His bewilderment at the ingrat.i.tude may cause him considerable suffering, indicating the complex motives underlying his own behaviour. This bewilderment is the payoff.

Legitimate helpers should not be confused with people who play 'I'm Only Trying to Help You' (ITHY). 'I think we can do something about it', 'I know what to do', 'I was a.s.signed to help you' or 'My fee for helping you will be..' are different from 'I'm only trying to help you'. The first four, in good faith, represent Adult offers to put professional qualifications at the disposal of the distressed patient or client; ITHY has an ulterior motive which is more important than professional skill in determining the out come. This motive is based on the position that people are ungrateful and disappointing. The prospect of success is alarming to the Parent of the professional and is an invitation to sabotage, because success would threaten the position. The ITHY player needs to be rea.s.sured that help will not be accepted no matter how strenuously it is offered. The client responds with 'Look How Hard I'm Trying' or 'There's Nothing You Can Do to Help Me'. More flexible players can compromise: it is all right for people to accept help providing it takes them a long time to do so. Hence therapists tend to feel apologetic for a quick result, since they know that some of their colleagues at staff meetings will be critical. At the opposite pole from hard ITHY players, such as are found among social workers, are good lawyers who help their clients without personal involvement or sentimentality. Here craftsmanship takes the place of covert strenuousness.

Some schools of social work seem to be primarily academies for the training of professional ITHY players, and it is not easy for their graduates to desist from playing it. An example which may help to ill.u.s.trate some of the foregoing points will be found in the description of the complementary game 'Indigence'.

ITHY and its variants are easy to find in everyday life. It is played by family friends and relatives (e.g., 'I Can Get It For You Wholesale'), and by adults who do community work with children. It is a favourite among parents, and the complementary game played by the offspring is usually 'Look What You Made Me Do'. Socially it may be a variant of 'Schlemiel' in which the damage is done while being helpful rather than impulsively; here the client is represented by a victim who may be playing 'Why Does This Always Happen To Me?' or one of its variants.

Ant.i.thesis. There are several devices available for the professional to handle an invitation to play this game, and his selection will depend on the state of the relationship between himself and the patient, particularly on the att.i.tude of the patient's Child.

1. The cla.s.sical psychoa.n.a.lytic ant.i.thesis is the most thoroughgoing and the most difficult for the patient to tolerate. The invitation is completely ignored. The patient then tries harder and harder. Eventually he falls into a state of despair, manifested by anger or depression, which is the characteristic sign that a game has been frustrated. This situation may lead to a useful confrontation.

2. A more gentle (but not prim) confrontation may be attempted on the first invitation. The therapist states that he is the patient's therapist and not his manager.

3. An even more gentle procedure is to introduce the patient into a therapy group, and let the other patients handle it.

4. With an acutely disturbed patient it may be necessary to play along during the initial phase. These patients should be treated by a psychiatrist, who being a medical man, can prescribe both medications and some of the hygienic measures which are still valuable, even in this day of tranquillizers, in the treatment of such people. If the physician prescribes a hygienic regimen, which may include baths, exercise, rest periods, and regular meals along with medication, the patient (1) carries out the regimen and feels better (2) carries out the regimen scrupulously and complains that it does not help; (3) mentions casually that he forgot to carry out the instructions or that he has abandoned the regimen because it was not doing any good. In the second and third case it is then up to the psychiatrist to decide whether the patient is amenable to game a.n.a.lysis at that point, or whether some other form of treatment is indicated to prepare him for later psychotherapy. The relationship between the adequacy of the regimen and the patient's tendency to play games with it should be carefully evaluated by the psychiatrist before he decides how to proceed next.

For the patient, on the other hand, the ant.i.thesis is, 'Don't tell me what to do to help myself, I'll tell you what to do to help me.' If the therapist is known to be a Schlemiel, the correct ant.i.thesis for the patient to use is, 'Don't help me, help him.' But serious players of 'I'm Only Trying to Help You' are generally lacking in a sense of humour. Ant.i.thetical moves on the part of a patient are usually unfavourably received, and may result in the therapist's lifelong enmity. In everyday life such moves should not be initiated unless one is prepared to carry them through ruthlessly and take the consequences. For example, spurning a relative who 'Can Get It For You Wholesale' may cause serious domestic complications.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

Thesis: n.o.body ever does what I tell them.

Aim: Alleviation of guilt.

Roles: Helper, Client.

Dynamics: Masochism.

Examples: (1) Children learning, parent intervenes. (2) Social worker and client.

Social Paradigm: Parent-Child.

Child: 'What do I do now?'

Parent: 'Here's what you do.'

Psychological Paradigm: Parent-Child.

Parent: 'See how adequate I am.'

Child: 'I'll make you feel inadequate.'

Moves: (1) Instructions requested Instructions given. (2) Procedure bungled Reproof. (3) Demonstration that procedures are faulty Implicit apology.

Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological martyrdom. (2) External Psychological avoids facing inadequacies. (3) Internal Social 'PTA', Projective Type; ingrat.i.tude. (4) External Social 'Psychiatry', Projective Type. (5) Biological slapping from client, stroking from supervisors. (6) Existential All people are ungrateful.

3 INDIGENCE.

Thesis. The thesis of this game is best stated by Henry Miller in The Colossus of Maroussi: 'The event must have taken place during the year when I was looking for a job without the slightest intention of taking one. It reminded me that, desperate as I thought myself to be, I had not even bothered to look through the columns of the want ads.'

This game is one of the complements of 'I'm Only Trying to Help You' (ITHY) as it is played by social workers who earn their living by it. 'Indigence' is played just as professionally by the client who earns his living in this manner. The writer's own experience with 'Indigence' is limited, but the following account by one of his most accomplished students ill.u.s.trates the nature of this game and its place in our society.

Miss Black was a social worker in a welfare agency whose avowed purpose, for which it received a government subsidy, was the economic rehabilitation of indigents which in effect meant getting them to find and retain gainful employment. The clients of this agency were continually 'making progress', according to official reports, but very few of them were actually 'rehabilitated'. This was understandable, it was claimed, because most of them had been welfare clients for several years, going from agency to agency and sometimes being involved with five or six agencies at a time, so that it was evident that they were 'difficult cases'.

Miss Black, from her training in game a.n.a.lysis, soon realized that the staff of her agency was playing a consistent game of ITH Y, and wondered how the clients were responding to this. In order to check, she asked her own clients from week to week how many job opportunities they had actually investigated. She was interested to discover that although they were theoretically supposed to be looking a.s.siduously for work from day to day, actually they devoted very little effort to this, and sometimes the token efforts they did make had an ironic quality. For example, one man said that he answered at least one advertis.e.m.e.nt a day looking for work. 'What kind of work?' she inquired. He said he wanted to go into saleswork. 'Is that the only kind of ad you answer?' she asked. He said that it was, but it was too bad that he was a stutterer, as that held him back from his chosen career. About this time it came to the attention of her supervisor that she was asking these questions, and she was reprimanded for putting 'undue pressure' on her clients.

Miss Black decided nevertheless to go ahead and rehabilitate some of them. She selected those who were able-bodied and did not seem to have a valid reason to continue to receive welfare funds. With this selected group, she talked over the games ITHY and 'Indigence'. When they were willing to concede the point, she said that unless they found jobs she was going to cut them off from welfare funds and refer them to a different kind of agency. Several of them almost immediately found employment, some for the first time in years. But they were indignant at her att.i.tude, and some of them wrote letters to her supervisor complaining about it. The supervisor called her in and reprimanded her even more severely on the ground that although her former clients were working, they were not 'really rehabilitated'. The supervisor indicated that there was some question whether they would retain Miss Black in the agency. Miss Black, as much as she dared without further jeopardizing her position, tactfully tried to elicit what would const.i.tute 'really rehabilitated' in the agency's opinion. This was not clarified. She was only told that she was 'putting undue pressure' on people, and the fact that they were supporting their families for the first time in years was in no way to her credit.

Because she needed her job and was now in danger of losing it, some of her friends tried to help. The respected head of a psychiatric clinic wrote to the supervisor, stating that he had heard Miss Black had done some particularly effective work with welfare clients, and asking whether she might discuss her findings at a staff conference at his clinic. The supervisor refused permission.

In this case the rules of 'Indigent' were set up by the agency to complement the local rules of ITHY. There was a tacit agreement between the worker and the client which read as follows: W. 'I'll try to help you (providing you don't get better).'

C. 'I'll look for employment (providing I don't have to find any).

If a client broke the agreement by getting better, the agency lost a client, and the client lost his welfare benefits, and both felt penalized. If a worker like Miss Black broke the agreement by making the client actually find work, the agency was penalized by the client's complaints, which might come to the attention of higher authorities, while again the client lost his welfare benefits.