Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [53]
Antithesis. This is the concern of qualified criminologists rather than psychiatrists. The police and judiciary apparatus are not antithetical, but are playing their roles in the game under the rules set up by society.
One thing should be emphasized, however. Research workers in criminology may joke that some criminals behave as though they enjoyed the chase and wanted to be caught, or they may read the idea and agree in a deferential way. But they show little tendency to consider such an ‘academic’ factor as decisive in their ‘serious’ work. For one thing, there is no way to unmask this element through the standard methods of psychological research. The investigator must therefore either overlook a crucial point because he cannot work it with his research tools, or else change his tools. The fact is that those tools have so far not yielded one single solution to any problem in criminology. Researchers might therefore be better off discarding the old methods and tackling the problem freshly. Until C & R is accepted not merely as an interesting anomaly, but as the very heart of the matter in a significant percentage of cases, much research in criminology will continue to deal with trivialities, doctrines, peripheral issues or irrelevancies.1
ANALYSIS
Thesis: See if you can catch me.
Aim: Reassurance.
Roles: Robber, Cop (Judge).
Dynamics: Phallic intrusion, e.g., (1) Hide-and-seek, tag. (2) Crime.
Social Paradigm: Parent-Child.
Child: ‘See if you can catch me.’
Parent: ‘That’s my job.’
Psychological Paradigm: Parent-Child.
Child: ‘You must catch me.’
Parent: ‘Aha, there you are.’
Moves: (1) W: Defiance. B: Indignation. (2) W: Concealment. B: Frustration. (3) W: Provocation. B: Victory.
Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological – material indemnification for old wrong. (2) External Psychological – counterphobic. (3) Internal Social– See if you can catch me. (4) External Social –I almost got away with it (Pastime: They almost got away with it.) (5) Biological – notoriety. (6) Existential: I’ve always been a loser.
2 · HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF HERE
Thesis. The historical evidence is that those prisoners survive best who have their time structured by an activity, pastime or a game. This is apparently well known to political police, who are said to break some prisoners down simply by keeping them inactive and in a state of social deprivation.
The favoured activity of solitary prisoners is reading or writing books, and the favoured pastime is escape, some of whose practitioners, such as Casanova and Baron Trenck, have become famous.
The favoured game is ‘How Do You Get Out of Here?’ (‘Want Out’), which may also be played in state hospitals. It must be distinguished from the operation (see page 44) of the same name, known as ‘Good Behaviour’. An inmate who really wants to be free will find out how to comply with the authorities so as to be released at the earliest possible moment. Nowadays this may often be accomplished by playing a good game of ‘Psychiatry’, Group Therapy Type. The game of ‘Want Out’, however, is played by inmates or by patients whose Child does not want to get out. They simulate ‘Good Behaviour’, but at the critical point they sabotage themselves so as not to be released. Thus in ‘Good Behaviour’ Parent, Adult and Child work together to be discharged; in ‘Want Out’ Parent and Adult go through the prescribed motions until the critical moment, when the Child, who is actually frightened at the prospect of venturing into the uncertain world, takes over and spoils the effect. ‘Want Out’ was common in the late 1930s among recently arrived immigrants from Germany who became psychotic. They would improve and beg for release from the hospital; but as the day of liberation approached, their psychotic manifestations would recur.
Antithesis. Both ‘Good Behaviour’ and ‘Want Out’ are recognized by alert administrators and can be dealt with at the executive level. Beginners in group therapy, however, are often taken in. A competent