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External psychological advantage is the avoidance of the feared situation by playing the game. This is especially obvious in IWFY, where it is the outstanding motivation: by complying with the husband’s strictures, the wife avoids the public situations which she fears.

Internal social advantage is designated by the name of the game as it is played in the individual’s intimate circle. By her compliance, the wife gains the privilege of saying ‘If it weren’t for you’. This helps to structure the time she must spend with her husband; in the case of Mrs White, this need for structure was especially strong because of the lack of other common interests, especially before the arrival of their offspring and after the children were grown. In between, the game was played less intensively and less frequently, because the children performed their usual function of structuring time for their parents, and also provided an even more widely accepted version of IWFY, the busy-housewife variation. The fact that young mothers in America often really are very busy does not change the analysis of this variation. Game analysis only attempts to answer this question without prejudice: given that a young woman is busy, how does she go about exploiting her busyness in order to get some compensation for it?

External social advantage is designated by the use made of the situation in outside social contacts. In the case of the game ‘If It Weren’t For You’, which is what the wife says to her husband, there is a transformation into the pastime ‘If It Weren’t For Him’ when she meets with her friends over morning coffee. Again, the influence of games in the selection of social companions is shown. The new neighbour who is invited for morning coffee is being invited to play ‘If It Weren’t For Him’. If she plays, well and good, she will soon be a bosom friend of the old-timers, other things being equal. If she refuses to play and insists on taking a charitable view of her husband, she will not last long. Her situation will be the same as if she kept refusing to drink at cocktail parties – in most circles, she would gradually be dropped from the guest lists.

This completes the analysis of the formal features of IWFY. In order to clarify the procedure further, the analysis of ‘Why Don’t You – Yes But’, which is the most common game played at social gatherings, committee meetings and psychotherapy groups the world over, should be consulted (page 101).

3 · THE GENESIS OF GAMES

From the present point of view, child rearing may be regarded as an educational process in which the child is taught what games to play and how to play them. He is also taught procedures, rituals and pastimes appropriate to his position in the local social situ­ation, but these are less significant. His knowledge of and skill in procedures, rituals and pastimes determine what opportunities will be available to him, other things being equal; but his games determine the use he will make of those opportunities, and the out­comes of situations for which he is eligible. As elements of his script, or unconscious life-plan, his favoured games also determine his ultimate destiny (again with other things being equal): the payoffs on his marriage and career, and the circumstances sur­rounding his death.

While conscientious parents devote a great deal of attention to teaching their children procedures, rituals and pastimes appro­priate to their stations in life, and with equal care select schools, colleges and churches where their teachings will be reinforced, they tend to overlook the question of games, which form the basic structure for the emotional dynamics of each family, and which the children learn through significant experiences in everyday living from their earliest months. Related questions have been dis­cussed for thousands of years in a rather general, unsystematic fashion, and there has been some attempt at a more methodical approach in the modern orthopsychiatric literature; but without the concept of games there is little