The Games People Play

By Eric Berne

People play games. The run through little tricks, follow scripts and roles that gratify them, protect their ego, allow them to avoid responsibility for looking at their difficult problems. Sometimes you will do anything to blame someone else for your problems, rather than accepting responsibility and addressing them yourself. Sometimes you will do anything for a little attention, even if it's negative attention.

It can be hard to act as an adult. To tackle your life head on.

The book feels very self evident. I'm a little worried about it's scientific bases though. None the less, it gives you much to think about.

Games People Play is an introduction to transactional analysis. It describes our three ego states-- the Parent, The Adult and the Child. All roles are healthy in the right context. Problems arise when the roles get crossed-- when you don't talk down to an Adult and treat him as a child, when you act like a child, when you need to act like an Adult.

The book contains a list of mind games that we play, some very sophisticated. For example, the game called "alcoholic" is centered around a self identified alcoholic who uses his problem to keeping acting like a child, to acquire attention from those trying to help him, and to avoid taking responsibility for anything important. Wither or not the "alcoholic" actually has a dependency on alcohol is actually a secondary question. What matters is that the alcoholic has an excuse that he can use to avoid dealing with his failings.

As follow ups, I'm going to read "I'm OK, you're OK" and "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional " and "Sham: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless" The first to dig a little deeper into the subject. The second to balance it out. It appears the criticism is that it oversimplifies things and allows people call their troubles diseases and blame others for them. Which is an odd statement. That seams to be the exact problem that the "Games People Play" is trying to point out.