The moves of a game correspond roughly to the strokes in a ritual. As in any game, the players become increasingly adept with practice. Wasteful moves are eliminated, and more and more purpose is condensed into each move. “Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction,

By an extension of meaning, “stroking” may be employed colloquially to denote any act implying recognition of another’s presence. Hence a stroke may be used as the fundamental unit of social action. An exchange of strokes constitutes a transaction, which is the unit of social intercourse.

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

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

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.

In Games People Play, Berne describes a game as a patterned and predictable series of transactions which are superficially plausible but actually conceal motivations and lead to a well-defined predictable outcome. They are habitual, dysfunctional methods of obtaining strokes, and the people involved are not fully aware of the two levels of transact

Ego states which deal with the here and now in a nonemotional way are called Adult. When in Adult, we appraise reality objectively and make fact-based decisions, while making sure that Child or Parent emotions or ideas do not contaminate the process.

The possible seriousness of games and play, and the possibly serious results, are well known to anthropologists. The most complex game that ever existed, that of “Courtier” as described so well by Stendhal in The Charterhouse of Parma, was deadly serious. The grimmest of all, of course, is “War.”

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