Games People Play_ The Psychology of Human Relationships - Eric Berne [64]
The antithesis of the sullen form is a more complicated problem, because the sullen player is trying to provoke not laughter or derision but helplessness or exasperation, which he is well equipped to handle in accordance with his challenge. ‘So do me something.’ Thus he wins either way. If Black does nothing, it is because he feels helpless, and if he does something, it is because he is exasperated. Hence these people are prone also to play ‘Why Don’t You – Yes But’, from which they can get the same satisfactions in milder form. There is no easy solution in this case, nor is there likely to be one forthcoming until the psychodynamics of this game are more clearly understood.
7 · WOODEN LEG
Thesis. The most dramatic form of ‘Wooden Leg’ is ‘The Plea of Insanity’. This may be translated into transactional terms as follows: ‘What do you expect of someone as emotionally disturbed as I am – that I would refrain from killing people?’ To which the jury is asked to reply: ‘Certainly not, we would hardly impose that restriction on you!’ The ‘Plea of Insanity’, played as a legal game, is acceptable to American culture and is different from the almost universally respected principle that an individual may be suffering from a psychosis so profound that no reasonable person would expect him to be responsible for his actions. In Japan drunkenness, and in Russia war-time military service, are accepted as excuses for evading responsibility for all kinds of outrageous behaviour (according to this writer’s information).
The thesis of ‘Wooden Leg’ is, ‘What do you expect of a man with a wooden leg?’ Put that way, of course, no one would expect anything of a man with a wooden leg except that he should steer his own wheel chair. On the other hand, during World War II there was a man with a wooden leg who used to give demonstrations of jitterbug dancing, and very competent jitterbug dancing, at Army Hospital amputation centres. There are blind men who practice law and hold political offices (one such is currently mayor of the writer’s home town), deaf men who practise psychiatry and handless men who can use a typewriter.
As long as someone with a real, exaggerated or even imaginary disability is content with his lot, perhaps no one should interfere. But the moment he presents himself for psychiatric treatment, the question arises if he is using his life to his own best advantage, and if he can rise above his disability. In this country the therapist will be working in opposition to a large mass of educated public opinion. Even the close relatives of the patient who complained most loudly about the inconveniences caused by his infirmity, may eventually turn on the therapist if the patient makes definitive progress. This is readily understandable to a game analyst, but it makes his task no less difficult. All the people who were playing ‘I’m Only Trying to Help You’ are threatened by the impending disruption of the game if the patient shows signs of striking out on his own, and sometimes they use almost incredible measures to terminate the treatment.
Both sides are illustrated by the case of the stuttering client of Miss Black’s, mentioned in the discussion of the game ‘Indigence’. This man played a classical form of ‘Wooden Leg’. He was unable to find employment, which he correctly attributed to the fact that he was a stutterer, since the only