The essential characteristic of human play is not that the emotions are spurious, but that they are regulated. This is revealed when sanctions are imposed on an illegitimate emotional display. Play may be grimly serious, or even fatally serious, but the social sanctions are serious only if the rules are broken. Pastimes and games are substitutes fo

In such a case, we could call these feelings an emotional “racket.” She would be using her distress, like trading stamps, to turn in later for a “prize.”

Unless something or somebody intervenes, he spends the rest of his life stabilizing his position and dealing with situations that threaten it: by avoiding them, warding off certain elements or manipulating them provocatively so that they are transformed from threats into justifications.

In technical language, an ego state may be described phenomenologically as a coherent system of feelings, and operationally as a set of coherent behavior patterns. In more practical terms, it is a system of feelings accompanied by a related set of behavior patterns. Each individual seems to have available a limited repertoire of such ego states, wh

Berne used to talk about psychological “sweat shirts”: The front may say something like “Please love me”—but when the wearer turns around, the back may read, “Not you, stupid.”

can use to advance her script.

Berne labeled networks that develop early in life as Child ego states. When we activate one of these, we act like the child we once were. Networks which represent the internalization of the people who raised us, as we experienced them, Berne named Parent. When in Parent we think, feel, and act like one of our parents or like someone who took their

When one is a member of a social aggregation of two or more people, there are several options for structuring time. In order of complexity, these are: (1) Rituals (2) Pastimes (3) Games (4) Intimacy and (5) Activity, which may form a matrix for any of the others.

What we are concerned with here, however, are the unconscious games played by innocent people engaged in duplex transactions of which they are not fully aware, and which form the most important aspect of social life all over the world.