Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [15]
It remains to distinguish games from the one remaining type of social action which so far has not been discussed. An operation is a simple transaction or set of transactions undertaken for a specific, stated purpose. If someone frankly asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. If someone asks for reassurance, and after it is given turns it in some way to the disadvantage of the giver, that is a game. Superficially, then, a game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff it becomes apparent that these ‘operations’ were really manoeuvres; not honest requests but moves in the game.
In the ‘insurance game’, for example, no matter what the agent appears to be doing in conversation, if he is a hard player he is really looking for or working on a prospect. What he is after, if he is worth his salt, is to ‘make a killing’. The same applies to ‘the real estate game’, ‘the pajama game’ and similar occupations. Hence at a social gathering, while a salesman is engaged in pastimes, particularly variants of ‘Balance Sheet’, his congenial participation may conceal a series of skilful manoeuvres designed to elicit the kind of information he is professionally interested in. There are dozens of trade journals devoted to improving commercial manoeuvres, and which give accounts of outstanding players and games (interesting operators who make unusually big deals).Transactionally speaking, these are merely variants of Sports Illustrated, Chess World, and other sports magazines.
As far as angular transactions are concerned – games which are consciously planned with professional precision under Adult control to yield the maximum gains – the big ‘con games’ which flourished in the early 1900s are hard to surpass for detailed practical planning and psychological virtuosity.1
What we are concerned with here, however, are the unconscious games played by innocent people engaged in duplex transactions of which they are not fully aware, and which form the most important aspect of social life all over the world. Because of their dynamic qualities, games are easy to distinguish from mere static attitudes, which arise from taking a position.
The use of the word ‘game’ should not be misleading. As explained in the introduction, it does not necessarily imply fun or even enjoyment. Many salesmen do not consider their work fun, as Arthur Miller made clear in his play, The Death of a Salesman. And there may be no lack of seriousness. Football games nowadays are taken very seriously, but no more so than such transactional games as ‘Alcoholic’ or “Third-Degree Rapo’.
The same applies to the word ‘play’, as anyone who has ‘played’ hard poker or ‘played’ the stock market over a long period can testify. The possible seriousness of games and play, and the possibly serious results, are well known to anthropologists. The most complex game that ever existed, that of ‘Courtier’ as described so well by Stendhal in The Charterhouse of Parma, was deadly serious. The grimmest of all, of course, is ‘War’.
2 · A TYPICAL GAME
The most common game played between spouses is colloquially called ‘If It Weren’t For You’, and this will be used to illustrate the characteristics of games in general.
Mrs White complained that her husband severely restricted her social activities, so that she had never learned to dance. Due to changes in her attitude brought about by psychiatric treatment, her husband became less sure of himself and more indulgent. Mrs White was then free to enlarge the scope of her activities. She signed up for dancing classes, and then discovered to her despair that she had a morbid fear of dance floors and had to abandon this project.
This unfortunate adventure, along with similar ones, laid bare some important aspects of the structure of her marriage. Out of her many suitors she had picked a domineering