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around somatic and psychic equilibrium. They are related to the following factors: (1) the relief of tension; (2) the avoidance of noxious situations; (3) the procurement of stroking; and (4) the maintenance of an established equilibrium. All these items have been investigated and discussed in great detail by physiologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. Translated into terms of social psychiatry, they may be stated as (1) the primary internal advantages; (2) the primary external advantages; (3) the secondary advantages; and (4) the existential advantages. The first three parallel the ‘gains from illness’ described by Freud: the internal paranosic gain, the external paranosic gain, and the epinosic gain, respectively.11 Experience has shown that it is more useful and enlightening to investigate social transactions from the point of view of the advantages gained than to treat them as defensive operations. In the first place, the best defence is to engage in no transactions at all; in the second place, the concept of ‘defences’ covers only part of the first two classes of advantages, and the rest of them, together with the third and fourth classes, are lost to this point of view.

The most gratifying forms of social contact, whether or not they are embedded in a matrix of activity, are games and intimacy. Prolonged intimacy is rare, and even then it is primarily a private matter; significant social intercourse most commonly takes the form of games, and that is the subject which principally concerns us here. For further information about time-structuring, the author’s book on group dynamics should be consulted.12

REFERENCES

1. Berne, E., Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, Evergreen, 1961.

2. Spitz, R., ‘Hospitalism: Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood’, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 1: 53–74, 1945.

3. Belbenoit, Rene, Dry Guillotine, Cape, 1938.

4. Seaton, G. J., Scars on my Passport, Hutchinson, 1951.

5. Kinkead, E., Why they Collaborated, Longmans, 1960.

6. French, J. D., ‘The Reticular Formation’, Scientific American, 196: 54–60, May 1957.

7. The ‘colloquialisms’ used are those evolved in the course of time at the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars.

8. Levine, S., ‘Stimulation in Infancy’, Scientific American, 202: 80–86, May 1960.

Levine, S., ‘Infantile Experience and Resistance to Physiological Stress’, Science, 126:405, 30 August 1957.

9. Huizinga, J., Homo Ludens, Routledge, 1949.

10. Kierkegaard, S., A Kierkegaard Anthology (ed. R. Bretall), Princeton University Press, 1947, pp. 22ff.

11. Freud, S., ‘General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks’, Standard Edn, n, Hogarth Press, London, 1955.

Freud, S., ‘Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’, ibid., VI, 1953.

12. Berne, E., The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, Pitman Medical, 1963.

PART ONE

ANALYSIS OF GAMES

1 · Structural Analysis

OBESERVATION of spontaneous social activity, most productively carried out in certain kinds of psychotherapy groups, reveals that from time to time people show noticeable changes in posture, view-point, voice, vocabulary, and other aspects of behaviour. These behavioural changes are often accompanied by shifts in feeling. In a given individual, a certain set of behaviour patterns corresponds to one state of mind, while another set is related to a different psychic attitude, often inconsistent with the first. These changes and differences give rise to the idea of ego states.

In technical language, an ego state may be described phenome-nologically as a coherent system of feelings, and operationally as a set of coherent behaviour patterns. In more practical terms, it is a system of feelings accompanied by a related set of behaviour patterns. Each individual seems to have available a limited repertoire of such ego states, which are not roles but psychological realities. This repertoire can be sorted into the following categories: (1) ego states which resemble those of parental figures; (2) ego states which are autonomously directed towards objective appraisal of reality