Games People Play

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

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.

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

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

Steve Karpman noted in the late 1960s that in all drama there needs to be a victim. Moreover, in order to be a victim a person needs either a rescuer or a persecutor. To keep the drama going, people switch roles in regard to each other, or even bring in third parties, forming a drama triangle of interaction.

It has been shown, for example, that very young children need physical strokes to remain alive, although actual physical strokes become less necessary as we learn to exchange verbal and nonverbal ones.

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.”

the payoff of a game reinforces a person’s basic existential position,

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.”