If we talk about adults playing games, we probably think of the bedroom or scheming at work. However, it turns out most of our social interactions are made up of games. At least according to Eric Berne and his book “Games people play”, and today we’re going to have a look at that. Welcome to the Soft Skill channel. My name is Sebastian Jung, and today I’ve got another book review for you. Today we’re going to look at “Games people play” by Eric Berne. Eric Berne was a psychiatrist and his most important creation is transactional analysis. We’ll have a look at that later. In 1964 he published this book, “Games people play”. It was intended for a professional audience, but it became a bestseller. It sold millions of copies worldwide, it was on the bestseller list for multiple years. The book consists of three parts. In the introduction and the first part we get some general information about social interactions, about transactional analysis. And in the second part, the biggest part, several games are described in detail. The third part finally provides some information about how we can stop playing games altogether. In this review I will focus on the actual games so we will only have a brief look at the first and the third part. However, there might be a separate video about transactional analysis at a later point. So let’s talk about social interactions first. According to Berne we are driven by important needs here. We have a need for stimuli, so we want something to happen. We also have a need for attention. This doesn’t need to be someone hugging me and telling me how great I am. It is sufficient that someone notices I’m there and recognizes me and pays attention to me. And we have a need for structure. What does structure mean in this context? Imagine you’re on a date and you are looking at each other and no one knows what to say and there is silence. This would be really uncomfortable. Now, imagine you start having some chit-chat. “Ever been to Paris?” “Oh, yes, I have been to Paris!”, and whatever. This conversation isn’t likely to convey any highly important information. However, it structures your time together because both of you clearly know what to do and you have something going on and that is very comfortable for us. Eric Berne even says every interaction is better than no interaction at all. I’m not sure I agree to this because basically this means someone punching me in the face is better than someone ignoring me. But it’s quite clear that for Eric Berne social interaction plays a major role and that we are driven by important needs here. Berne describes different forms of interaction. I will only talk about three since we don’t have unlimited time here. The first one is intimacy, which includes sex, and according to Berne this is the best kind of interaction. It fulfills all of our needs completely, it is great. However, it is difficult. There are outside issues – for example, we have close and intimate relationships only with very few people. And there are inner problems – because it’s difficult for us to allow for intimacy and we usually tend to avoid intimacy, and therefore we look for alternatives. And one of those alternatives are pastimes. Pastimes are the kind of chit-chat or small talk I mentioned in the date example. “Ever been” is a pastime. Another example for a pastime is “Nowadays”. These conversations like “Oh, nowadays everything is so bad and it was so great in the old days, except for maybe the world wars and some other things, but yeah ...” This kind of conversation that appears again and again in similar forms with different participants. Games are a more complex form of social interaction, more complex than pastimes. And we will look at them in detail in a moment. First, let’s have a look at transactional analysis. What is a transaction? A transaction is a single unit of social interaction. So let’s say person A does or says something and person B reacts to that – this is a single transaction. And we can analyze that. And when we do, one of the most important question concerns the so-called ego states. According to Eric Berne, each of us has three different ego states – parent, adult and child. If we act out of our adult ego state, we are rational and interested in factual information and objective. If we act out of our parent ego state, we act like our own parents used to act or like our own parents wanted us to act. Finally, if we act out of our child ego state, we act like we used to when we were children. This doesn’t mean that the child ego state is less mature or less valuable than the others. Each ego state is important in its own way. Now, if we analyze the transaction, the important question is, who interacts with whom? Do we have an interaction here of adult with adult or is it parent with child, for example? And if transactional analysis is referred to nowadays, it tends to be reduced to this question, is this adult/adult or is this, for example, parent/child? Transactional analysis is, for example, briefly mentioned in Schulz von Thun’s works and there it is about this question. However, in Berne’s work there are further details, we can go deeper. For example, an important aspect is that the answer doesn’t necessarily come from the ego state that was addressed. Berne gives an example here: A husband asks his wife “Do you know where my cufflinks are? ” This is adult to adult, a request for information. And if it is answered by the wife’s adult, the response would be something like “I don’t know,” or “Yes, they are ... wherever.” However, imagine an answer like “You have to take care of your own things, you are not a child anymore.” Here, the wife’s parent would address the husband’s child. And in Berne’s model this is where problems and conflicts arise. If ego states get mixed up and there is a crossed transaction and some chaos, this is where conflicts start. Another interesting aspect is that there may be multiple transactions at the same time. A surface transaction and an ulterior, hidden second transaction. Berne gives an example here of a door-to-door salesman who tries to sell something to a housewife. And the salesman says “This is the best product. However, you can’t afford it.” At first glance, this is adult to adult, he provides information and an appropriate response would be “Yes, you are correct, so I will take the cheaper one.” However, the salesman secretly also addresses the housewife’s child in a way like “Oh, you want the best one, don’t you? Yeah, but you don’t get it. My other customers, they buy the best one. But for you it’s too expensive.” And he expects the child to oppose to this message and to say “Oh, I want the best one as well! I am just as great as your other customers and I will have the best one!” And if he is successful with this trick, the housewife will end up buying the best product even though it’s too expensive for her. This ulterior, second transaction is also quite important for the games we’re going to discuss, because games always have this surface transaction and the second, ulterior transaction. Transactional analysis was made popular by Eric Berne’s book “Games people play”. And there was also another bestseller that dealt with transactional analysis and that was “ I’m OK – You’re OK” by Thomas Harris. Maybe we’ll have a look at that one later. Nowadays, transactional analysis isn’t that important anymore, but it does make appearances every now and then. As I mentioned, it appears in Schulz von Thun’s works briefly. So it’s good to know about it. I’m not sure if it is still used in therapeutic practice, I would think not. And I’m not sure if it still has any relevance in psychological research. Let’s talk about the games. Important hint before we start: If you encounter “games” or “game theory” nowadays, most likely it is about mathematical game theory, not Eric Berne’s psychological game analysis. Those are entirely different, so keep that in mind. Another important hint: When Eric Berne talks about games, this doesn’t mean that they are fun or that they are not serious. Berne refers to professional sports here. A soccer match or a baseball match is quite serious for a lot of people. And for the players it is not fun, but it is their job. Let me give you an example of a game. The game is called “Why Don’t You – Yes But”. It is played by one Ms. White. It could also be a male, but in this example it’s a female. And Berne always refers to the player as “White” and to the other party as “Black”, and if there are more people, then they are also named after colors. So Ms. White has a problem. Her husband always wants to fix everything in the house himself, do all the repairs himself, but he isn’t really good at it, so he causes problems. This is a great example because it evokes memories of countless cartoon scenes, so I have quite a vivid imagination of this situation. Ms. White tells other people about her problem and they try to give advice. They say “Why don’t you try this and that?” And Ms. White blocks this advice, she says “Yes, but it’s not possible for whatever reasons.” They might say “Why don’t you buy decent tools for your husband, so they they might work better?” “Yes, but they are too expensive.” “Why don’t you make your husband take part in a course where he learns to repair things properly?” “Yes, but he doesn’t have the time.” This goes on for a while until everybody runs out of ideas and no one can come up with any further advice. At this point there is silence and this silence signifies Ms. White’s victory. At first glance, this was a transaction adult to adult, a request for information and information was provided. However, actually, this was a transaction from parent to child. The advice givers were acting out of their parent ego states in a way like “Oh, we are so great and knowledgeable. Don’t worry, we will take care of you. We will take care of your problem.” But in the end Ms. White’s child was triumphant by saying “Oh well, you are not so great after all. You couldn’t solve my problem. You are quite inadequate.” And this is Ms. White’s payoff. The one who successfully plays the game always gets a payoff at the end, he wins something. These are two very important characteristics of games: First, that there is always the second, ulterior transaction. And then that there is always a payoff at the end. However, this payoff isn’t necessarily something we would deem desirable. It could be something like punishing ourselves or dwelling in self-pity or confirming a negative opinion about ourselves. So the payoff can be a lot of things and they are not always pleasurable. The ulterior, second transaction and the payoff also differentiate games from other forms of social interactions such as pastimes or also harmless variations of the interaction. Let’s say ... there could quite possibly be a situation where someone asks for advice because he really wants to get advice and he is open for good advice. So that might work out. So not everybody who asks for advice is playing “Why Don’t You – Yes But”. I mentioned that Ms. White won the game. Now, this is a bit of a difficult point because this basically means that the other participants lost. And in this case it didn’t end that well for them because they were proven to be inadequate. However, Berne emphasizes that all participants want to play the game and they all want the game to continue. So this is a point that is a bit difficult to understand for me. Furthermore, people who play certain games, they will willingly switch roles. So, for example, Ms. White will play “Why Don’t You – Yes But” with other people as well. And very likely she plays it at home with her husband, and there she probably takes on the role of the advice giver – which seems an undesirable role because it loses at the end. But still, people take on all roles in the games they play. There is also a possible situation where people play different games that complement each other. Let’s say one person plays “Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a B*tch” and the other person plays “Kick me”. You can probably imagine in what direction this goes and those games complement each other very well. We learn to play games from our parents. We observe our parents playing games with other people or with each other and we mimic their behavior. And this way we learn games, this way games are passed on from from one generation to the next. And games are present in certain social circles or cultural circles, so even though we don’t consciously play those games, we all know how to play the games that are present in our surroundings. Now, game analysis – it doesn’t seem to have been continued after Eric Berne. I couldn’t find any further resource, research, or development about it after his own works. And nowadays it doesn’t appear to be used anymore. And this doesn’t come as a surprise because there are some problems and we will discover them together. Let me give you another example. The game is called “If it weren’t for you”. It is played by Ms. White again, and this time it is specifically a woman. Ms. White has a dominant husband who doesn’t give her a lot of freedom. He expects her to be at home when he returns from work and he doesn’t want her to go out and do things. So she is quite restricted in her activities, so she always says “If it weren’t for you, I could go out and do things and experience things!” And in the example she would like to go out and learn to dance. Now, in this example, at some point, she actually does sign up for dancing lessons. However, then it turns out that she has a morbid fear of dance floors. I’m not sure this happens frequently but well ... So it turns out her husband was actually doing her a favor because, thanks to him, she didn’t have to face her fears, she didn’t even have to realize that she had those fears. However, she obviously was totally ungrateful and kept complaining. “If it weren’t for you, I could do great things!” And this caused a lot of arguments between them, so they didn’t have a lot of sex. And, as we learned before, we tend to avoid intimacy. So being able to avoid sex is a good thing and a bonus. Furthermore, all of her complaints gave her husband a guilty conscience, so he made her a lot of expensive presents which are another bonus for Ms. White. And what we learn from this game is that Eric Berne has quite an outdated and antiquated view of things like gender roles and marriage. And this is quite dominant throughout the book, this appears frequently. My favorite example is one game, it starts in a similar way, the wife does all the stupid and weird and strange things ... and at some point Berne says “Well, but we also have to look at the role the husband plays. Why did he marry that woman?” So this really is ... You will encounter a lot of strange and weird sections. It is not confined to gender roles and marriage. Homosexuality makes a brief appearance, it is still considered as perversion and illness here. And we have a game that is about finding out other people’s dark secrets and an example for such a dark secret is being not 100 % aryan. So we have a lot of antiquated stuff and, unfortunately, these things play a major role in a lot of games, so they are built on a shaky and outdated foundation. Speaking about outdated: Let’s have a look at another game. This one is called “Uproar”. It is played between a strict father and a teenage daughter, and they frequently get into arguments. What they don’t know is that they get into those arguments because there is sexual tension between them. It’s a male and a female so they theoretically could have sex and so there is sexual tension. At the end of the arguments there is always a slamming of doors. And this slamming of doors signifies the fact that they sleep in different rooms, so they can’t have sex. Now, this whole idea of fathers wanting to have sex with their daughters might appear strange to you. And here we clearly see that Berne’s theories and ideas are built on the ones by Sigmund Freud. You might recall that for Freud sex is very important. Basically everything we do is either sex or a sublimation for sex. You might know the oedipus complex which is about sons wanting to do it with their mothers. And so that plays a major role in Freud’s work. You might also have recognized a certain similarity when we talked about transactional analysis. Because Berne has these parent/adult/child ego states, and Freud has the it, ego, and superego. So this is somewhat similar and there are quite a lot of similarities. Problem here, again, is that by now Freud’s work, freud’s theories and ideas – most of them are outdated. Of course, Freud is still an important historical figure and he layed important groundwork and whatever and was important and we still love him. But his specific ideas and theories are outdated by now. And so Eric Berne’s work is built on a shaky and outdated foundation once again. Let’s have a look at the fourth and final example for a game. This game is called “Alcoholic” and you probably have a good idea how that is supposed to be played. You need some bottles of booze and you can imagine the rest. However, this drinking of alcohol is not the actual point of the game, it is a kind of bonus, but it’s not the payoff. The payoff is the morning after where you feel miserable and are frustrated about yourself and other people make complaints and where you have a severe hangover and feel bad and everything. So this is one of those games where the payoff really seems undesirable, where it is about feeling bad about yourself and punishing yourself. Now, I can imagine that this is true and there is this motivation for feeling bad. But couldn’t it also be that the alcoholic is a lonely person who doesn’t get a lot of attention? And if he becomes an alcoholic, some rescuers will turn up? Berne describes the role of the rescuer who tries to get the alcoholic out of his situation and help him and who cares for him. And this is obviously nice, so maybe having those rescuers appear is the actual payoff and this is the motivation. Or maybe the alcoholic is a person who has a lot of responsibilities in daily life, responsibilities at work and at home, and people look up to him and rely on him. And this is quite a heavy burden, so at some point this person wants to escape into a role where there are no responsibilities, where he is a victim, a victim of the addiction, and that is his motivation and his payoff. You see, we can come up with a lot of ideas that all sound somewhat reasonable. And I can’t tell why Berne’s interpretation is that much more solid and reasonable than mine. And you can never prove who is right or wrong because, since it’s all unconscious, the alcoholic himself can’t really deny or confirm any of these ideas. And that is the sore point here. If we say there is an unconscious motivation, then we can’t be proven wrong, we have card blanche for everything. And we can claim that there are most sinister and evil secret motivations. We can even turn the victim into the culprit. So this is quite a difficult and dangerous area where we have to be very, very careful. And I don’t think Eric Berne is to the necessary extent. Let’s have a brief look at the third part of the book, “Beyond games”, that is about how we can stop playing games. Berne says we need to attain autonomy which allows us to make our own decisions rather than playing the games and following the scripts of the games. For that we need awareness, which is the ability to see the world as it really is, rather than how our parents wanted us to see it. To be awake to the present moment, it is similar to mindfulness in some regards, and this is important. And another important thing is spontaneity, the ability to decide in every moment what we want to do next rather than mindlessly, unconsciously following the game’s scripts. And finally, we need to be able to allow for intimacy. Because, as I mentioned, intimacy is the best form of social interaction and if we are able to experience intimacy, we don’t need games as replacements. The whole “Beyond games” section has a big focus on becoming independent from our parents and becoming independent from our parents’ patterns of acting and patterns of thinking and to get rid of that to some extent. So what can I say about the book in the end? We get an introduction to transactional analysis by its creator Eric Berne. Which is nice because, as I said, it makes brief appearances every here and there nowadays still, so it’s good to know about it. The games themselves are quite an interesting and fascinating subject. But due to the problems we discussed this is more of a historical theory that doesn’t have any relevance today and that doesn’t have any practical use. We could maybe use it as inspiration to question our own ways of acting and maybe see if we have certain patterns of acting that we repeat. It doesn’t have to be an entire game, but this is a thing we might want to think about. However, what we certainly should not do is accuse anyone of playing games or of having sinister, ulterior motivations. About the book itself: One problem I noticed is that the descriptions of the games are widely different. On the one hand we have games like “Alcoholic”. There we have a detailed explanation of the game, a script of the steps of the game. We have a description of the roles the participants of the game take on, we have a description of variations of the game. At the end we have an analysis section which is kind of a fact sheet with some facts about the game. So we get a lot of detailed information. On the other hand we have games like “Blemish”. This is the one about finding out other people’s dark secrets. There we don’t even get to know how the game actually works. I can’t tell if the game is about discovering those dark secrets or exploiting dark secrets that you already know. We don’t get to know what the payoff of the game is. There are no descriptions of roles or anything. There is no analysis section, so we don’t get the fact sheet. And it really seems vague and incomplete and we can’t really tell what the game is about. And, yeah, the other games are somewhere in between, so it is a mix of better and worse sections and descriptions. And there is some chaos in regard to the names. As you’ve noticed, Berne gives nice and funny names to all his games like “Why Don’t You – Yes But” or “Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a B*tch”, and, now, this is nice. However, he also gives names to variations of games. And the pastimes we discussed, they also have names. So there are a lot of names and he mentions them frequently. So in the description of one game several other games are mentioned, most of which have not yet been discussed at this point, some of which are never discussed in detail. So there is some chaos and this makes some games difficult to understand. In the end, maybe it’s not so bad that the games don’t work out as planned. Because if there really would be these unconscious patterns in all our social interactions, if we would just play games all day long without knowing it, we would be some kind of robots and this would seriously question our free will. So maybe it’s not so bad it doesn’t work out. Out of the topics we discussed so far the ones most similar are the communication styles and vicious circles by Schulz von Thun. Because there we also take a look at interactions that are a bit more complex than, let’s say, a single statement within a conversation. But Schulz von Thun’s works are more substantial than Berne’s games, so you might want to have a look at that if you are interested in similar content. I mentioned mathematical game theory – if you are interested in that, I will provide a link in the video description to a TED talk by one Dr. Haim Shapira who gives a nice introduction to mathematical game theory. And it’s quite a fun video to watch, so you might want to have a look at that. Now, the games Berne described were often not that pleasant. But I can recommend a game that delivers greatest enjoyment for everybody and that fulfills all your needs. It’s quite simple: You subscribe to the channel and you recommend the channel to a friend who also subscribes and so on, and it is pure enjoyment for everybody. It gets even better if you like the video and if you leave a comment, because I’m quite interested in your feedback.
Games people play by Eric Berne [book review]
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May 16, 2021
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