Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [45]
Second, in clinical practice it is found that people who favour YDYB belong to that class of patients who eventually request hypnosis or some sort of hypnotic injection as a method of speeding up their treatment. When they are playing the game, their object is to demonstrate that no one can give them an acceptable suggestion – that is, they will never surrender; whereas with the therapist, they request a procedure which will put them in a state of complete surrender. It is thus apparent that YDYB represents a social solution to a conflict about surrender.
Even more specifically, this game is common among people who have a fear of blushing, as the following therapeutic exchange demonstrates:
Therapist: ‘Why do you play “Why Don’t You – Yes But” if you know it’s a con?’
White: ‘If I’m talking to somebody I have to keep thinking of things to say. If I don’t, I’ll blush. Except in the dark. I can’t stand a lull. I know it, and my husband knows it, too. He’s always told me that.’
Therapist: ‘You mean if your Adult doesn’t keep busy, your Child takes the chance to pop up and make you feel embarrassed?’
White: ‘That’s it. So if I can keep making suggestions to somebody, or get him to make suggestions to me, then I’m all right, I’m protected. As long as I can keep my Adult in control, I can postpone the embarrassment.’
Here White indicates clearly that she fears unstructured time. Her Child is prevented from advertising as long as the Adult can be kept busy in a social situation, and a game offers a suitable structure for Adult functioning. But the game must be suitably motivated in order to maintain her interest. Her choice of YDYB is influenced by the principle of economy: it yields the maximum internal and external advantages to her Child’s conflicts about physical passivity. She could play with equal zest either the shrewd Child who cannot be dominated or the sage Parent who tries to dominate the Child in someone else, but fails. Since the basic principle of YDYB is that no suggestion is ever accepted, the Parent is never successful. The motto of the game is: ‘Don’t get panicky, the Parent never succeeds.’
In summary, then: while each move is amusing, so to speak, to White, and brings its own little pleasure in rejecting the suggestion, the real payoff is the silence or masked silence which ensues when all the others have racked their brains and grown tired of trying to think of acceptable solutions. This signifies to White and to them that she has won by demonstrating it is they who are inadequate. If the silence is not masked, it may persist for several minutes. In the paradigm, Green cut White’s triumph short because of her eagerness to start a game of her own, and that was what kept her from participating in White’s game. Later on in the session, White demonstrated her resentment against Green for having abridged her moment of victory.
Another curious feature of YDYB is that the external and internal games are played exactly the same way, with the roles reversed. In the external form, the one observed clinically, White’s Child comes out to play the role of the inadequate help-seeker in a many-handed situation. In the internal form, the more intimate two-handed game played at home with her husband, her Parent comes out as the wise, efficient suggestion-giver. This reversal is usually secondary, however, since during the courtship she plays the helpless Child side, and only after the honeymoon is over does her bossy Parent begin to emerge into the open. There may have been slips as the wedding approached, but