Games People Play

Games People Play came out in 1964 and caught everyone off guard: a psychiatrist wrote about human behavior in street language, almost without jargon, and sold millions of copies. Eric Berne gave the name games to those repeated patterns of conversation that seem normal but end the same bad way.

The fun of the book lies in recognition. You read about the argument that ends in a slammed door, about the coworker who asks for advice and rejects every suggestion, and you think: I know this scene. Berne gives a name to what we live on autopilot, and naming is already halfway to seeing what is going on.

It is worth saying upfront that this is not a self-help manual with step-by-step instructions. It is a catalog of observations, with its own vocabulary, that asks for attentive reading. In this summary, we will go from the basic vocabulary to the most famous games and, at the end, to an honest critique.

The foundation of everything is transactional analysis, the method Berne created from his clinical work. He proposes that each person operates from three ego states: Parent, Adult, and Child. These are not family roles; they are ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that alternate throughout the day.

The Parent stores rules, orders, and prejudices absorbed in childhood, and shows up when you scold someone or take care of them. The Child stores the emotions, tantrums, and joys of when you were little. The Adult weighs facts, calculates probabilities, and decides with its head in the present.

In the same homeowners' meeting, the same neighbor can go from the lecturing Parent, through the pouting Child, to the Adult who calmly reads the minutes. The goal is not to eliminate any state, but to notice who is talking right now. That perception alone already changes the tone of many conversations.

A transaction is the smallest unit of conversation: a stimulus and a response between ego states. When the boss asks, Adult to Adult, whether the report is done, and you answer with dates and data, the transaction is complementary and the conversation flows with no friction at all.

A crossed transaction happens when the response comes from another state. The boss asks as an Adult and you answer as an offended Child, saying she only ever pressures you. There you go: the report vanished from the conversation and a different fight began. Berne saw in these crossings the origin of a good part of the misunderstandings at home and at work.

There is also the transaction with an ulterior message, in which the social sentence says one thing and the tone, the look, or the context says another. Inviting someone over to listen to your record collection may be just music, or it may be another kind of invitation. It is in this hidden layer that games are born.