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By Root 539 0

or payoff. The principal function of the preliminary moves is to set up the situation for this payoff, but they are always designed to harvest the maximum permissible satisfaction at each step as a secondary product. Thus in ‘Schlemiel’ (making messes and then apologizing) the payoff, and the purpose of the game, is to obtain the forgiveness which is forced by the apology; the spillings and cigarette burns are only steps leading up to this, but each such trespass yields its own pleasure. The enjoy­ment derived from the spilling does not make spilling a game. The apology is the critical stimulus that leads to the denouement. Otherwise the spilling would simply be a destructive procedure, a delinquency perhaps enjoyable.

The game of ‘Alcoholic’ is similar; whatever the physiological origin, if any, of the need to drink, in terms of game analysis the imbibing is merely a move in a game which is carried on with the people in the environment. The drinking may bring its own kinds of pleasure, but it is not the essence of the game. This is demon­strated in the variant of ‘Dry Alcoholic’, which involves the same moves and leads to the same payoff as the regular game, but is played without any bottles (page 66).

Beyond their social function in structuring time satisfactorily, some games are urgently necessary for the maintenance of health in certain individuals. These people’s psychic stability is so pre­carious, and their positions are so tenuously maintained, that to deprive them of their games may plunge them into irreversible despair and even psychosis. Such people will fight very hard against any antithetical moves. This is often observed in marital situations when the psychiatric improvement of one spouse (i.e., the aban­donment of destructive games) leads to rapid deterioration in the other spouse, to whom the games were of paramount importance in maintaining equilibrium. Hence it is necessary to exercise prudence in game analysis.

Fortunately, the rewards of game-free intimacy, which is or should be the most perfect form of human living, are so great that even precariously balanced personalities can safely and joyfully relinquish their games if an appropriate partner can be found for the better relationship.

On a larger scale, games are integral and dynamic components of the unconscious life-plan, or script, of each individual; they serve to fill in the time while he waits for the final fulfilment, simultaneously advancing the action. Since the last act of a script characteristically calls for either a miracle or a catastrophe, depen­ding on whether the script is constructive or destructive, the corresponding games are accordingly either constructive or des­tructive. In colloquial terms, an individual whose script is oriented towards ‘waiting for Santa Claus’ is likely to be pleasant to deal with in such games as ‘Gee You’re Wonderful, Mr Murgatroyd’, while someone with a tragic script oriented towards ‘waiting for rigor mortis to set in’ may play such disagreeable games as ‘Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch’.

It should be noted that colloquialisms such as those in the previ­ous sentence are an integral part of game analysis, and are freely used in transactional psychotherapy groups and seminars. The expression ‘waiting for rigor mortis to set in’ originated in a dream of a patient, in which she decided to get certain things done ‘before rigor mortis set in’. A patient in a sophisticated group pointed out what the therapist had overlooked: that in practice, waiting for Santa Claus and waiting for death are synonymous. Since collo­quialisms are of decisive importance in game analysis, they will be discussed at length later on.

5 · THE CLASSIFICATION OF GAMES

Most of the variables used in analysing games and pastimes have already been mentioned, and any of them can be used in classifying games and pastimes systematically. Some of the more obvious classifications are based on the following factors:

1. Number of players: two-handed games (Frigid Woman), three-handed games (Let’s You and Him Fight), five-handed