Games People Play

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.

Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him.

Usually formal rituals precede semi-ritualistic topical conversations, and the latter may be distinguished by calling them pastimes.

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.”

Each type of ego state has its own vital value for the human organism. In the Child reside intuition,3 creativity and spontaneous drive and enjoyment. The Adult is necessary for survival. It processes data and computes the probabilities which are essential for dealing effectively with the outside world.

Social programing results in traditional ritualistic or semi-ritualistic interchanges. The chief criterion for it is local acceptability, popularly called “good manners.”

After stimulus-hunger and recognition-hunger comes structure-hunger.

Each transaction has two parts: a stimulus and a response. Individual transactions are also usually part of a sequence.

The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours. In this existential sense, the function of all social living is to lend mutual assistance for this project.