What You Will Learn From Games People Play

Do you realise that you and all the people you know play games with each other – all the time? It can be sexual games with a love interest, competitive games with our friends, power games with our boss, or marital games with our spouse. Regardless of the subject matter or the setting, these games are deeply integrated into our daily lives that we become oblivious to them. Developed by Eric Berne, Games People Play is an original, wise, and witty analysis of the psychology behind human relationships through these phenomena. This week, Ashto and Jonesy delve into Berne’s investigation and learn how we actively or unconsciously participate in such a competitive form of social interaction.

The Ego States We Play In

Structural analysis of the games

From time to time, observations of spontaneous social activity reveal that people show noticeable changes in posture, viewpoint, voice, vocabulary, and other behaviours. Shifts in feeling often accompany these behavioural changes. In a given individual, a particular set of behaviour patterns corresponds to their state of mind while another set is related to a different psychic attitude, often inconsistent with the first. These changes generate the idea of ego states.

An ego state may be described phenomenologically as a coherent system of feelings and operationally as a set of cohesive behaviour patterns. Each individual seems to have a limited repertoire of such ego states, which are not roles but psychological realities. This repertoire can be sorted into the following categories:

• Parent

The parent have two main functions: first, it enables the individual to act effectively as the parent of actual children, thus promoting the survival of the human race. Secondly, it generates many automatic responses, which conserves a great deal of time and energy. There are standard procedures to complete a lot of things, which free adults from the necessity of making innumerable trivial decisions.

• Adult

The adult is necessary for survival. It processes data and computes the probabilities, which are essential for dealing with the outside world effectively. For example, crossing a busy highway requires processing a complex series of velocity data. The action is suspended until the computations indicate a high probability of safely reaching the other side.

• Child

The child contains intuition, creativity, spontaneous drive and enjoyment.

At any given moment, you will exhibit a parent, adult, or child state as part of your social interaction. All three aspects of the personality have high survival and living value. It is only when one of them disturbs the healthy balance that intervention becomes necessary.

Transactional analysis

In this book, conversations are referred to as transactions. The most straightforward transactions are those in which both stimulus and response arise from adults. For instance, a doctor is assessing a patient on the operating table. She decides that the scalpel is the right tool to use next, so she says ‘scalpel’ and holds her hand to the assisting nurse. The nurse picks up the scalpel, estimates the distance from his hand to the doctor’s, calculates the force required, and places the scalpel in the middle of the palm of the doctor exactly where expected.

Another simpler example is a Child-Parent transaction. A child has a fever and stays home from school and is lying on the couch. The child asks for a glass of water; the nurturing parent brings it over.

Both of these transactions are complementary. The response is appropriate and follows the natural order of healthy human relationships. Communication will proceed smoothly as long as transactions are complementary, and  as long as transactions are complementary, communication can proceed indefinitely.

Communication is broken off when a crossed transaction occurs. The most common crossed transaction that causes most of the social difficulties in the world is where the Stimulus is Adult-Adult (an adult ego state speaking to another adult), but the Response is Child-Parent (coming from a child ego state speaking to a parent).

Adult-Child issue example

For example, the conversation starter of Adult-Adult interaction may be: ‘Do you know where my cuff links are?’ An Adult-Adult response would be ‘on the desk.’ However, there may often be a flare-up, and the response may sound more like a Child-Parent interaction. For example, ‘Why do you always blame me for losing everything?’ or ‘You’re always criticising me, just like my mother did.’ As the stimulus doesn’t match the answer, this scenario becomes an example of crossed transactions.

The root of the games that people play

Simple Complementary Transactions most commonly occur in superficial working and social relationships. People go about their days in the simple transactions of AA-AA (colleagues discussing problems), PP-PP (gossiping), and PC-CP (bosses reprimanding their direct reports and the reports putting their tail between their legs). However, when more than one ego state is involved, these transactions become more complex. Nulterior transactions, this transaction category is the basis for the game we play with others. For example, a car salesman says, ‘Car A is better than Car B, but you can’t afford it.’ The salesman’s statement is two statements combined into one. ‘Car A is better than Car B’ is a simple adult statement that relies on facts and data. ‘You can’t afford it’ carries the ulterior transaction. The car salesman’s well-trained and experienced Adult character targets the buyer’s Child character. The customer’s internal response would be: ‘Regardless of the financial consequences, I’m not going to let this arrogant fellow tell me what I can or can’t afford… I’m not going to let him think less of me. I’m going to prove that I’m as good as anyone else that walks in this door – I’m going to buy Car A.’

The Game

A Game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome. With its repetitive nature, the game is a set of transactions that carries a concealed motivation. Games are different from other social interactions because of the following two elements:

1. The ulterior quality
2. The payoff

Every game is dishonest, and the outcome has a dramatic quality. To distinguish this further, you can have an ‘operation’, a normal parcel of social engagement. For example, if someone asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. But if someone asks for reassurances, and puts the giver at a disadvantage, that is a game.

A game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff, it becomes apparent that these operations were manoeuvers in a game. These people know they are playing games; their actions and words are designed to lead their opponent into their trap. Interestingly, innocent people also play unconscious games by engaging in duplex transactions they’re not fully aware of.

Examples of a game

The most common game played between spouses is colloquially called ‘If It Weren’t For You.’ The following scenario illustrates how the game unfolds:

Mrs Green complained that her husband severely restricted her social activities, and she never got to learn how to dance. Mr and Mrs Green went to counselling, and Mr Green said that although he forbade her from dancing, he never meant to restrict his wife socially; ultimately, Mrs Green was always allowed to do whatever she wanted. So Mrs Green finally signed up for dance classes, only to discover that she did not only suck at dancing but also had zero interest in dancing, almost to the point where she had a phobia of dance floors.

Whether or not it’s dancing for you, inevitably, there is something in your relationships that prompts you to think:

• ‘If it weren’t for you, I’d be a movie star.’
• ‘If it weren’t for you, I’d play in a band.’
• ‘If it weren’t for you, I’d have more friends, hobbies, and money.’

In reality, the other person is not holding you back from anything – you’re just using them as an excuse. As it turned out in the case of Mr and Mrs Green, perhaps Mr Green did forbid her from going dancing. But in this case, he was only stopping her from doing something she said she wanted but didn’t want to do. Mr Green stopped her from doing something she was terrified of, and in doing so, he even prevented her from realising that she was afraid of it. Perhaps this controlling nature but always knowing better was why Mrs Green’s inner child had shrewdly chosen such a tyrannical husband.

The game of “If It Weren’t For You” usually requires two players – a restricted partner and a domineering partner. The restricted partner may take the Adult role (“It’s best that I do what they say”) or slip into a petulant Child and complain about the constant restrictions. The domineering partner either acts as an Adult (‘It’s best that you do what I say.’) or slips into a Parent (‘You’d better do what I say, or else…’).