Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [22]
2. Currency used: words (Psychiatry), money (Debtor), parts of the body (Polysurgery).
3. Clinical types: hysterical (Rapo), obsessive-compulsive (Schlemiel), paranoid (Why Does This Have to Happen to Me), depressive (There I Go Again).
4. Zonal: oral (Alcoholic), anal (Schlemiel), phallic (Let’s You and Him Fight).
5. Psychodynamic: counterphobic (If It Weren’t for You), projective (PTA), introjective (Psychiatry).
6. Instinctual: masochistic (If It Weren’t for You), sadistic (Schlemiel), fetishistic (Frigid Man).
In addition to the number of players, three other quantitative variables are often useful to consider:
1. Flexibility. Some games, such as Debtor and Polysurgery, can be played properly with only one kind of currency, while others, such as exhibitionistic games, are more flexible.
2. Tenacity. Some people give up their games easily, others are persistent.
3. Intensity. Some people play their games in a relaxed way, others are more tense and aggressive. Games so played are known as easy and hard games, respectively.
These three variables converge to make games gentle or violent. In mentally disturbed people, there is often a noticeable progression in this respect, so that one can speak of stages. A paranoid schizophrenic may initially play a flexible, loose, easy game of first-stage ‘Ain’t It Awful’ and progress to an inflexible, tenacious, hard third stage. The stages in a game are distinguished as follows:
(a) A First-Degree Game is one which is socially acceptable in the agent’s circle.
(b) A Second-Degree Game is one from which no permanent irremediable damage arises, but which the players would rather conceal from the public.
(c) A Third-Degree Game is one which is played for keeps, and which ends in the surgery, the courtroom or the morgue.
Games can also be classified according to any of the other specific factors discussed in the analysis of IWFY: the aims, the roles, the most obvious advantages. The most likely candidate for a systematic, scientific classification is probably one based on the existential position; but since knowledge of this factor is not yet sufficiently advanced, such a classification will have to be postponed. Failing that, the most practical classification at present is probably a sociological one. That is what will be used in the next section.
NOTES
Due credit should be given to Stephen Potter for his perceptive, humorous discussions of manoeuvres, or ‘ploys’, in everyday social situations,2 and to G. H. Mead for his pioneering study of the role of games in social living.3 Those games that lead to psychiatric disabilities have been systematically studied at the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars since 1958, and this sector of game analysis has recently been approached by T. Szasz.4 For the role of games in the group process, the present writer’s book on group dynamics should be consulted.5
REFERENCES
1. Maurer, D. W., The Big Con, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., New York, 1940.
2. Potter, S., Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1947.
3. Mead, G. H., Mind, Self and Society, Cambridge University Press, 1935.
4. Szasz, T., The Myth of Mental Illness, Secker & Warburg, 1961.
5. Berne, E., The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, Pitman Medical, 1963.
PART TWO
A THESAURUS OF GAMES
Introduction
THIS collection is complete to date (1962), but new games are continually being discovered. Sometimes what appears to be another example of a known game turns out, on more careful study, to be an entirely new one, and a game which appears to be new often turns out to be a variation of a known one. The individual items of the analyses are also subject to change as new knowledge accumulates; for example, where there are several possible choices in describing dynamics, the statement given may turn out later not to have been the most cogent one. Both the list of games and the items given in the analyses, however, areadequate for clinical work.
Some of the games