Games People Play Part 9

Thesis. This is a more worthy variant of 'I'll Show Them'. There are two forms of Til Show Them'. In the destructive form White 'shows them' by inflicting damage on them. Thus he may manoeuvre himself into a superior position, not for the prestige or the material rewards but because it gives him power to exercise his spite. In the constructive form White works hard and exerts every effort to gain prestige, not for the sake of craftsmanship or legitimate accomplishment (although those may play a secondary role), nor to inflict direct damage on his enemies, but so that they will be eaten with envy and with regret for not having treated him better.

In 'They'll Be Glad They Knew Me', White is working not against but for the interests of his former a.s.sociates. He wants to show them that they were justified in treating him with friendliness and respect and to demonstrate to them, for their own gratification, that their judgement was sound. In order for him to have a secure win in this game, his means as well as his ends must be honourable, and that is its superiority over 'I'll Show Them'. Both 'I'll Show Them' and 'They'll Be Glad' can be merely secondary advantages of success, rather than games. They become games when White is more interested in the effects on his enemies or friends than he is in the success itself.

PART THREE.

BEYOND GAMES.

13 The Significance of Games 1. GAMES are pa.s.sed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children; they in turn, unless there is a successful intervention, will teach them to his grandchildren. Thus game a.n.a.lysis takes place in a grand historical matrix, demonstrably extending back as far as one hundred years and reliably projected into the future for at least fifty years. Breaking this chain which involves five or more generations may have geometrically progressive effects. There are many living individuals who have more than two hundred descendants. Games may be diluted or altered from one generation to another, but there seems to be a strong tendency to inbreed with people who play a game of the same family, if not of the same genus. That is the historical significance of games.

2. 'Raising' children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social cla.s.ses favour different types of games, and various tribes and families favour different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.

3. Games are sandwiched, as it were, between pastimes and intimacy. Pastimes grow boring with repet.i.tion, as do promotional c.o.c.ktail parties. Intimacy requires stringent circ.u.mspection, and is discriminated against by Parent, Adult and Child. Society frowns upon candidness, except in privacy; good sense knows that it can always be abused; and the Child fears it because of the unmasking which it involves. Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of games.

4. People pick as friends, a.s.sociates and intimates other people who play the same games. Hence 'everybody who is anybody' in a given social circle (aristocracy, juvenile gang, social club, college campus, etc.) behaves in a way which may seem quite foreign to members of a different social circle. Conversely, any member of a social circle who changes his games will tend to be extruded, but he will find himself welcome at some other social circle. That is the personal significance of games.

NOTE.

The reader should now be in a position to appreciate the basic difference between mathematical and transactional game a.n.a.lysis. Mathematical game a.n.a.lysis postulates players who are completely rational. Transactional game a.n.a.lysis deals with games which are un-rational, or even irrational, and hence more real.

14 The Players MANY games are played most intensely by disturbed people; generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play. Curiously enough, however, some schizophrenics seem to refuse to play games, and demand candidness from the beginning. In everyday life games are played with the greatest conviction by two cla.s.ses of individuals: the Sulks, and the Jerks or Squares.

The Sulk is a man who is angry at his mother. On investigation it emerges that he has been angry at her since early childhood. He often has good 'Child' reasons for his anger: she may have 'deserted' him during a critical period in his boyhood by getting sick and going to the hospital, or she may have given birth to too many siblings. Sometimes the desertion is more deliberate; she may have farmed him out in order to remarry. In any case, he has been sulking ever since. He does not like women, although he may be a Don Juan. Since sulking is deliberate at its inception, the decision to sulk can be reversed at any period of life, just as it can be during childhood when it comes time for dinner. The requirements for reversing the decision are the same for the grown-up Sulk as for the little boy. He must be able to save face, and he must be offered something worthwhile in exchange for the privilege of sulking. Sometimes a game of 'Psychiatry' which might otherwise last several years can be aborted by reversing a decision to sulk. This requires careful preparation of the patient and proper timing and approach. Clumsiness or bullying on the part of the therapist will have no better result than it does with a sulky little boy; in the long run, the patient will pay the therapist back for his mishandling just as the little boy will eventually repay clumsy parents.

With female Sulks the situation is the same, mutatis mutandis, if they are angry at father. Their Wooden Leg ('What do you expect of a woman who had a father like that?') must be handled with even more diplomacy by a male therapist. Otherwise he risks being thrown into the wastebasket of 'men who are like father'.

There is a bit of Jerk in everyone, but the object of game a.n.a.lysis is to keep it at a minimum. A Jerk is someone who is overly sensitive to Parental influences. Hence his Adult data processing and his Child's spontaneity are likely to be interfered with at critical moments, resulting in inappropriate or clumsy behaviour. In extreme cases the Jerk merges with the Toady, the Show-off, and the Cling. The Jerk is not to be confused with the bewildered schizophrenic, who has no functioning Parent and very little functioning Adult, so that he has to cope with the world in the ego state of a confused Child. It is interesting that in common usage 'jerk' is an epithet applied to men only, or in rare cases to masculine women. A Prig is even more of a Square than a Jerk; Prig is a word usually reserved for women, but occasionally it is said of men of somewhat feminine tendencies.

15 A Paradigm CONSIDER the following exchange between a patient (P) and a therapist (T): P. 'I have a new project being on time.'

T. 'I'll try to cooperate.'

P. 'I don't care about you. I'm doing it for myself.... Guess what grade I got on my history test!'

T. 'B+.'

P. 'How did you know?'

T. 'Because you're afraid to get an A.'

P. 'Yes, I had an A, and I went over my paper and crossed out three correct answers and put in three wrong ones.'

T. 'I like this conversation. It's Jerk-free.'

P. 'You know, last night I was thinking how much progress I've made. I figured I was only 17 per cent Jerk now.'

T. 'Well, so far this morning it's zero, so you're ent.i.tled to 34 per cent discount on the next round.'

P. 'It all began six months ago, that time I was looking at my coffeepot and for the first time I really saw it. And you know how it is now, how I hear the birds sing, and I look at people and they're really there as people, and best of all, I'm really there. And I'm not only there, but right now I'm here. The other day I was standing in the art gallery looking at a picture, and a man came up and said, "Gauguin is very nice, isn't he?" So I said: "I like you too." So we went out and had a drink and he's a very nice guy.'

This is presented as a Jerk-free, game-free conversation between two autonomous Adults, with the following annotations: 'I have a new project being on time.' This announcement was made after the fact. The patient was nearly always late. This time she wasn't. If punctuality had been a resolution, an act of 'will power', an imposition of the Parent on the Child, made only to be broken, it would have been announced before the fact: 'This is the last time I'll be late.' That would have been an attempt to set up a game. Her announcement was not. It was an Adult decision, a project, not a resolution. The patient continued to be punctual.

'I'll try to cooperate.' This was not a 'supportive' statement, nor the first move in a new game of 'I'm Only Trying to Help You.' The patient's hour came after the therapist's coffee break. Since she was habitually late, he had fallen into the habit of taking his time and getting back late himself. When she made her declaration, he knew she meant it, and made his. The transaction was an Adult contract which both of them kept, and not a Child teasing a Parental figure who because of his position felt forced to be a 'good daddy' and say he would cooperate.

'I don't care about you.' This emphasizes that her punctuality is a decision, and not a resolution to be exploited as part of a pseudo-compliant game.

'Guess what grade I got.' This is a pastime which both were aware of and felt free to indulge in. There was no need for him to demonstrate how alert he was by telling her it was a pastime, some thing she already knew, and there was no need for her to refrain from playing it just because it was called a pastime.

'B+.' The therapist reckoned that in her case this was the only possible grade, and there was no reason not to say so. False modesty or a fear of being wrong might have led him to pretend that he did not know.

'How did you know?' This was an Adult question, not a game of 'Gee You're Wonderful', and it deserved a pertinent answer.

'Yes, I had an A.' This was the real test. The patient did not sulk with rationalizations or pleas, but faced her Child squarely.

'I like this conversation.' This and the following semi-facetious remarks were expressions of mutual Adult respect, with perhaps a little Parent-Child pastime, which again was optional with both of them, and of which they were both aware.

'For the first time I really saw it.' She is now ent.i.tled to her own kind of awareness and is no longer obliged to see coffeepots and people the way her parents told her to. 'Right now I'm here.' She no longer lives in the future or the past, but can discuss them briefly if it serves a useful purpose.

'I said: "I like you too." She is not obliged to waste time playing 'Art Gallery' with the newcomer, although she could if she chose to.

The therapist, on his part, does not feel obliged to play 'Psychiatry'. There were several opportunities to bring up questions of defence, transference and symbolic interpretation, but he was able to let these go by without feeling any anxiety. It did seem worthwhile, however, to ascertain for future reference which answers she crossed out on her examination. During the rest of the hour, unfortunately, the 17 per cent of Jerk left in the patient and the 18 per cent left in the therapist showed from time to time. In summary, the proceedings given const.i.tute an activity enlightened with some pastime.

16 Autonomy THE attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.

Awareness. Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way, and not the way one was taught. It may be a.s.sumed on good grounds that seeing and hearing have a different quality for infants than for grownups,1 and that they are more aesthetic and less intellectual in the first years of life. A little boy sees and hears birds with delight. Then the 'good father' comes along and feels he should 'share' the experience and help his son 'develop'. He says: 'That's a jay, and this is a sparrow.' The moment the little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. He has to see and hear them the way his father wants him to. Father has good reasons on his side, since few people can afford to go through life listening to the birds sing, and the sooner the little boy starts his 'education' the better. Maybe he will be an ornithologist when he grows up. A few people, however, can still see and hear in the old way. But most of the members of the human race have lost the capacity to be painters, poets or musicians, and are not left the option of seeing and hearing directly even if they can afford to; they must get it secondhand. The recovery of this ability is called here 'awareness'. Physiologically awareness is eidetic perception, allied to eidetic imagery.2 Perhaps there is also eidetic perception, at least in certain individuals, in the spheres of taste, smell and kinesthesia, giving us the artists in those fields: chefs, perfumers and dancers, whose eternal problem is to find audiences capable of appreciating their products.

Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. A good ill.u.s.tration of possibilities in American life, is driving to work in the morning in a hurry. The decisive question is: 'Where is the mind when the body is here? and there are three common cases.

1. The man whose chief preoccupation is being on time is the one who is furthest out. With his body at the wheel of his car, his mind is at the door of his office, and he is oblivious to his immediate surroundings except insofar as they are obstacles to the moment when his soma will catch up with his psyche. This is the Jerk, whose chief concern is how it will look to the boss. If he is late, he will take pains to arrive out of breath. The compliant Child is in command, and his game is 'Look How Hard I've Tried'. While he is driving, he is almost completely lacking in autonomy, and as a human being he is in essence more dead than alive. It is quite possible that this is the most favourable condition for the development of hypertension or coronary disease.

2. The Sulk, on the other hand, is not so much concerned with arriving on time as in collecting excuses for being late. Mishaps, badly timed lights and poor driving or stupidity on the part of others fit well into his scheme and are secretly welcomed as contributions to his rebellious Child or righteous Parent game of 'Look What They Made Me Do'. He, too, is oblivious to his surroundings except as they subscribe to his game, so that he is only half alive. His body is in his car, but his mind is out searching for blemishes and injustices.

3. Less common is the 'natural driver', the man to whom driving a car is a congenial science and art. As he makes his way swiftly and skilfully through the traffic, he is at one with his vehicle. He, too, is oblivious of his surroundings except as they offer scope for the craftsmanship which is its own reward, but he is very much aware of himself and the machine which he controls so well, and to that extent he is alive. Such driving is formally an Adult pastime from which his Child and Parent may also derive satisfaction.

4. The fourth case is the person who is aware, and who will not hurry because he is living in the present moment with the environment which is here: the sky and the trees as well as the feeling of motion. To hurry is to neglect that environment and to be conscious only of something that is still out of sight down the road, or of mere obstacles, or solely of oneself. A Chinese man started to get into a local subway train, when his Caucasian companion pointed out that they could save twenty minutes by taking an express, which they did. When they got off at Central Park, the Chinese man sat down on a bench, much to his friend's surprise. 'Well,' explained the former, 'since we saved twenty minutes, we can afford to sit here that long and enjoy our surroundings.'

The aware person is alive because he knows how he feels, where he is and when it is. He knows that after he dies the trees will still be there, but he will not be there to look at them again, so he wants to see them now with as much poignancy as possible.

Spontaneity. Spontaneity means option, the freedom to choose and express one's feelings from the a.s.sortment available (Parent feelings, Adult feelings and Child feelings). It means liberation, liberation from the compulsion to play games and have only the feelings one was taught to have.

Intimacy. Intimacy means the spontaneous, game-free candidness of an aware person, the liberation of the eidetically perceptive, uncorrupted Child in all its navete living in the here and now. It can be shown experimentally3 that eidetic perception evokes affection, and that candidness mobilizes positive feelings, so that there is even such a thing as 'one-sided intimacy' a phenomenon well known, although not by that name, to professional seducers who are able to capture their partners without becoming involved themselves. This they do by encouraging the other person to look at them directly and to talk freely, while the male or female seducer makes only a well-guarded pretence of reciprocating.

Because intimacy is essentially a function of the natural Child (although expressed in a matrix of psychological and social complications), it tends to turn out well if not disturbed by the intervention of games. Usually the adaptation to Parental influences is what spoils it, and most unfortunately this is almost a universal occurrence. But before, unless and until they are corrupted, most infants seem to be loving,4 and that is the essential nature of intimacy, as shown experimentally.

REFERENCES.

1. Berne, E., 'Intuition IV: Primal Images & Primal Judgments', Psychiatric Quarterly, 29: 634658, 1955.

2. Jaensch, E. R., Eidetic Imagery, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1930.

3. These experiments are still in the pilot stage at the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars. The effective experimental use of transactional a.n.a.lysis requires special training and experience, just as the effective experimental use of chromatography or infra-red spectrophotometry does. Distinguishing a game from a pastime is no easier than distinguishing a star from a planet. See Berne, E., 'The Intimacy Experiment', Transactional a.n.a.lysis Bulletin, 3: 113, 1964; 'More About Intimacy', ibid., 3: 125, 1964.

4. Some infants are corrupted or starved very early (marasmus, some colics) and never have a chance to exercise this capacity.

17 The Attainment of Autonomy PARENTS, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, think, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained and are necessary during the first two or three decades of life for biological and social survival. Indeed, such liberation is only possible at all because the individual starts off in an autonomous state, that is, capable of awareness, spontaneity and intimacy, and he has some discretion as to which parts of his parents' teachings he will accept. At certain specific moments early in life he decides how he is going to adapt to them. It is because his adaptation is in the nature of a series of decisions that it can be undone, since decisions are reversible under favourable circ.u.mstances.

The attainment of autonomy, then, consists of the overthrow of all those irrelevancies discussed in Chapters 13, 14 and 15. And such overthrow is never final: there is a continual battle against sinking back into the old ways.

First, as discussed in Chapter 13, the weight of a whole tribal or family historical tradition has to be lifted, as in the case of Margaret Mead's villagers in New Guinea;1 then the influence of the individual parental, social and cultural background has to be thrown off. The same must be done with the demands of contemporary society at large, and finally the advantages derived from one's immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Then all the easy indulgences and rewards of being a Sulk or a Jerk, as described in Chapter 14, have to be given up. Following this, the individual must attain personal and social control, so that all the cla.s.ses of behaviour described in the Appendix, except perhaps dreams, become free choices subject only to his will. He is then ready for game-free relationships such as that ill.u.s.trated in the paradigm in Chapter 15. At this point he may be able to develop his capacities for autonomy. In essence, this whole preparation consists of obtaining a friendly divorce from one's parents (and from other Parental influences) so that they may be agreeably visited on occasion, but are no longer dominant.

REFERENCE.

1. Mead, M., New Lives for Old, Gollancz, 1956.

18 After Games, What?

THE sombre picture presented in Parts I and II of this book, in which human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait, is a commonplace but not the final answer. For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all cla.s.sifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy. But all three of these may be frightening and even perilous to the unprepared. Perhaps they are better off as they are, seeking their solutions in popular techniques of social action, such as 'togetherness'. This may mean that there is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.

Appendix

The Cla.s.sification of Behaviour

AT any given moment a human being is engaged in one or more of the following cla.s.ses of behaviour: CLa.s.s I. Internally programmed (archaeopsychic). Autistic behaviour.

Orders: (a) Dreams.

(b) Fantasies.

Families: i. Extraneous fantasies (wish fulfilment).

ii. Autistic transactions, Unadapted.

iii. Autistic transactions, Adapted (with neopsychic programming).

(c) Fugues.

(d) Delusional behaviour.

(e) Involuntary actions.

(e) Involuntary actions.

Families: i. Tics.

ii. Mannerisms.

iii. Parapraxes.

(f) Others.

CLa.s.s II. Probability programmed (neopsychic). Reality-tested behaviour.

Orders: (a) Activities.

Families: i. Professions, trades, etc.

ii. Sports, hobbies, etc.

(b) Procedures.

Families: i. Data processing, ii. Techniques.

(c) Others.

CLa.s.s III. Socially programmed (partly exteropsychic). Social behaviour.

Orders: (a) Rituals and ceremonies.

(b) Pastimes.

(c) Operations and manoeuvres.

(d) Games.