Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [34]
An everyday form of ‘Corner’ which is played by the whole family and is most likely to affect the character development of the younger children occurs with meddlesome ‘Parental’ parents. The little boy or girl is urged to be more helpful around the house, but when he is, the parents find fault with what he does – a homely example of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. This ‘double-bind’ may be called the Dilemma Type of ‘Corner’.
‘Corner’ is sometimes found as an etiological factor in asthmatic children.
Little girl: ‘Mummy, do you love me?’
Mother: ‘What is love?’
This answer leaves the child with no direct recourse. She wants to talk about mother, and mother switches the subject to philosophy, which the little girl is not equipped to handle. She begins to breathe hard, mother is irritated, asthma sets in, mother apologizes and the ‘Asthma Game’ now runs its course. This ‘Asthma’ type of ‘Corner’ remains to be studied further.
An elegant variant, which may be called the ‘Russell-Whitehead Type’ of ‘Corner’, sometimes occurs in therapy groups.
Black: ‘Well, anyway, when we’re silent nobody is playing games.’
White: ‘Silence itself may be a game.’
Red: ‘Nobody was playing games today.’
White: ‘But not playing games may itself be a game.’
The therapeutic antithesis is equally elegant. Logical paradoxes are forbidden. When White is deprived of this manoeuvre, his underlying anxieties come quickly to the fore.
Closely allied to ‘Corner’ on the one hand, and to ‘Threadbare’ on the other, is the marital game of ‘Lunch Bag’. The husband, who can well afford to have lunch at a good restaurant, nevertheless makes himself a few sandwiches every morning, which he takes to the office in a paper bag. In this way he uses up crusts of bread, leftovers from dinner and paper bags which his wife saves for him. This gives him complete control over the family finances, for what wife would dare buy herself a mink stole in the face of such self-sacrifice? The husband reaps numerous other advantages, such as the privilege of eating lunch by himself and of catching up on his work during lunch hour. In many ways this is a constructive game which Benjamin Franklin would have approved of, since it encourages the virtues of thrift, hard work and punctuality.
2 · COURTROOM
Thesis. Descriptively this belongs to the class of games which find their most florid expressions in law, and which includes ‘Wooden Leg’ (the plea of insanity) and ‘Debtor’ (the civil suit). Clinically it is most often seen in marital counselling and marital psychotherapy groups. Indeed, some marital counselling and marital groups consist of a perpetual game of ‘Courtroom’ in which nothing is resolved, since the game is never broken up. In such cases it becomes evident that the counsellor or therapist is heavily involved in the game without being aware of it.
‘Courtroom’ can be played by any number, but is essentially three-handed, with a plaintiff, a defendant and a judge, represented by a husband, a wife and the therapist. If it is played in a therapy group or over the radio or TV, the other members of the audience are cast as the jury. The husband begins plaintively, ‘Let me tell you what (wife’s name) did yesterday. She took the …’ etc., etc. The wife then responds defensively, ‘Here is the way it really was … and besides just before that he was … and anyway at the time we were both …’ etc. The husband adds gallantly, ‘Well, I’m glad you people have a chance to hear both sides of the story, I only want to be fair.’ At this point the counsellor says judiciously, ‘It seems to me that if we consider …’ etc., etc. If there is an audience, the therapist may throw it to them with: ‘Well, let’s hear what the others have