Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [25]
Present experience indicates that the payoff in in ‘Alcoholic’ (as is characteristic of games in general) comes from the aspect to which most investigators pay least attention. In the analysis of this game, drinking itself is merely an incidental pleasure having added advantages, the procedure leading up to the real culmination, which is the hangover. It is the same in the game of Schlemiel: the mess-making, which attracts the most attention, is merely a pleasure-giving way for White to lead up to the crux, which is obtaining forgiveness from Black.
For the Alcoholic the hangover is not as much the physical pain as the psychological torment. The two favourite pastimes of drinking people are ‘Martini’ (how many drinks and how they were mixed) and ‘Morning After’ (Let me tell you about my hangover). ‘Martini’ is played, for the most part, by social drinkers; many alcoholics prefer a hard round of psychological ‘Morning After’, and organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous offer him an unlimited opportunity for this.
Whenever one patient visited his psychiatrist after a binge, he would call himself all sorts of names; the psychiatrist said nothing. Later, recounting these visits in a therapy group, White said with smug satisfaction that it was the psychiatrist who had called him all those names. The main conversational interest of many alcoholics in the therapeutic situation is not their drinking, which they apparently mention mostly in deference to their persecutors, but their subsequent suffering. The transactional object of the drinking, aside from the personal pleasures it brings, is to set up a situation where the Child can be severely scolded not only by the internal Parent but by any parental figures in the environment who are interested enough to oblige. Hence the therapy of this game should be concentrated not on the drinking but on the morning after, the self-indulgence in self-castigation. There is a type of heavy drinker, however, who does not have hangovers, and such people do not belong in the present category.
There is also a game ‘Dry Alcoholic’, in which White goes through the process of financial or social degradation without a bottle, making the same sequence of moves and requiring the same supporting cast. Here again, the morning after is the crux of the matter. Indeed, it is the similarity between ‘Dry Alcoholic’ and regular ‘Alcoholic’ which emphasizes that both are games; for example, the procedure for getting discharged from a job is the same in both. ‘Addict’ is similar to ‘Alcoholic’, but more sinister, more dramatic, more sensational and faster. In our society, at least, it leans more heavily on the readily available Persecutor, with Patsies and Rescuers being few and far between and the Connexion playing a much more central role.
There are a variety of organizations involved in ‘Alcoholic’, some of them national or even international in scope, others local. Many of them publish rules for the game. Nearly all of them explain how to play the role of Alcoholic: take a drink before breakfast, spend money allotted for other purposes, etc. They also explain the function of the Rescuer. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, continues playing the actual game but concentrates on inducing the Alcoholic to take the role of Rescuer. Former Alcoholics are preferred because they know how the game goes, and hence are better qualified to play the supporting role than people who have never played before. Cases have been reported of a chapter of A.A. running out of Alcoholics to work on; whereupon the members resumed drinking, since there was no other way to continue the game in the absence of people to rescue.1
There are also organizations devoted to improving the lot of the other