Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Games are serious business. Opposite to what we usually identify as characteristics of games, fun and a specific goal aren’t them: the main prerequisite for their existence is a framework of rules. These rules can govern such games such as top league football, gambling or war. They can also be found as transactions following specific unspoken rules that hold a specific purpose for all parties involved played in human relationships. These are the games Games People Play is about.
I enjoyed this book. Parts of it were more geared towards therapists and psychologists rather than laypeople with an interest in “the psychology of human relationships”, such as myself. Still, Eric Berne was obviously breaking new ground with his Transactional Analysis, and even if the book is a little rough around the edges and psychology has advanced a lot since the early ’60s, Games People Play is a good starting point for those who are willing to look more deeply into this part of the field. I wonder what new games and further insight on games and transaction analysis has emerged since the writing of the book!
I would give this half a star more just for its third part, “Beyond Games”, where Eric Berne moves on to what people need in order to grow out of games and attain autonomy: awareness (where I even recognised parts mentioned by Anthony de Mello in Awareness), spontaneity and intimacy. His short descriptions for each were, as was already mentioned, quite quotable, but transcribing several pages here would have made it even less likely that this review might be read by anyone. His concluding remarks, however (“After Games, What?”)… Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!
The sombre picture presented in Parts I and II of this book, in which human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait, is a commonplace but not the final answer. For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy. But all three of these may be frightening and even perilous to the unprepared. Perhaps they are better off as they are, seeking their solutions in popular techniques of social action, such as “togetherness”. This may mean that there is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.
Epic final sentence is epic?
As a sidenote: I first came in contact with transactional analysis a few years back through these two excellent introductory videos [1][2] by TheraminTrees and have since wished to know more about this fascinating field. These videos summarise very well the content of this book, so if you’re interested, you can watch them, and if you want more, you can follow them up with this very book.