Games People Play

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

Hopefulness, enthusiasm or a lively interest in one’s surroundings is the opposite of depression; laughter is the opposite of despair.

can use to advance her script.

Procedures may be successful, rituals effective, and pastimes profitable, but all of them are by definition candid; they may involve contest, but not conflict, and the ending may be sensational, but it is not dramatic. Every game, on the other hand, is basically dishonest, and the outcome has a dramatic, as distinct from merely exciting, quality.

Berne defined strokes as the recognition one person gives another, as essential for physical and psychological health.

This may be defined as a series of semi-ritualistic, simple, complementary transactions arranged around a single field of material, whose primary object is to structure an interval of time.

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.

The Parent has two main functions. First, it enables the individual to act effectively as the parent of actual children, thus promoting the survival of the human race.

a game consists of the following sequence of transactions. Person A gives an ostensible message while at the same time giving a hidden message. Person B responds to the hidden message. Person A then switches ego states and has a surprise bad feeling.