GAMES people PLAY - The bestseller book illustrated
Learning visually The Psychology of Human Relationship - Part 1
Happy Easter!
As here we enjoy a long weekend, I decided to take a break from the Cognitive biases series and pick up a book I had meant to read for a while, "Games People Play” by M.D. Eric Berne.
The book is about the “Psychology of Human Relationships”; I heard about it first through a colleague’s summary of the book, and then started to realize that many talks and conferences also mentioned concepts from it.
It is a very short book, but as it is aimed toward clinician, the jargon - while well explained - makes it a little hard to read.
As you are now used to, you will find below my illustration of the ideas, simplifying and reducing a bit the concepts but trying to capture their essence.
I haven’t yet finished the book so you can expect a part 2. Maybe that’s a good reason to subscribe, if not done already? It is for you decide 🙂.
INTRODUCTION:
The Games that the book talks about are not video or board games, as you likely imagined 🙂, they are also not “Game Theory” in the mathematical sense.
Games are repetitive patterns of behavior that people use to meet their psychological needs. These games are often harmful, manipulative, with hidden agendas. Therefore the goal is to understand how to avoid them.
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
We all need social interaction for our survival. Our physical contact & emotional connection needs are similar to hunger: fulfilling them only last for a while.
As we become adults we can replace the needed contact by getting Attention, Recognition … In the book it is called a “Stroke”, an exchange of stroke is a Transaction. We will come back to this later.
STRUCTURING TIME
We structure our time around activities which will become the occasion for social contact.
Social Contact provide us with:
Tension relief
The occasion to avoid harmful situation
Exchanging stroke (Attention / Recognition)
The occasion to maintain a situation /position achieved (equilibrium)
EGO-STATE
The author believe we all have different state of mind or attitudes that can be categorized as follows:
The Parent: Acting like your parent figure, or how they would want you to act. That attitude help take quick decisions or raise a child.
The Adult: Acting objectively, processing data & probabilities. That attitude help deal with the world and reconcile the difference between Parent & Child
The Child: Acting like you were as a child, or how you were expected to act. That attitude is what brings charm, freedom, creativity but also obedience or rebellion
None of the ego-state is pejorative, they are all needed and helpful if managed properly.
TRANSACTIONS
In the book, social interactions are described as “Transactions” and consist of:
A Stimulus: Person 1 adopt one of the Ego-state, and talk to a specific ego state of Person 2.
A Response: Person 2 also adopt one of the Ego-state, and talk to a specific ego state of Person 1.
Complementary Transactions: The interaction is aligned, example the Adult - Adult attitude is taken from both persons, or a Parent - Child interaction where each person assume the role the other expect.
Crossed Transactions: The interaction is misaligned, the response from Person 2 doesn’t come from the expected Ego-state from Person 1.
When a crossed transaction happens, a realignment is needed:
Example:
Person 1 talks from Parent - Child perspective,
Person 2 responds as Adult - Adult perspective
If none of them switch, the communication will soon stop.
ULTERIOR TRANSACTIONS:
A more complex form of transactions are those that speak at different levels, for example the communication from Adult-Adult perspective, could be at a Psychological level actually done between Adult - Child.
e.g. Marketer / Advertisers from a surface level may discuss facts and data, but from a psychological level trying to influence the Child Ego-State.
RITUALS & PROCEDURES
Rituals & Procedures are predefined series of transactions. The goal is to exchange “Strokes” (Recognize each other, Give-receive attention)
E.g. an informal greeting ritual (Hi! Hi! How are you ? Good and you? Good? )
There is no real exchange of information but the act is valuable due to the exchange of strokes.
One interesting aspect is that the number of strokes matters:
If you greet each other daily with 8 strokes, any change in strokes in a specific day will look suspicious. Why is he talk to me so much today? or Why didn’t he say hello today?
If you go on vacation and miss 5 days of daily greetings, you will likely have a 40 stroke conversation when you are back, catching up on the missing strokes.
And this is it for today, we haven’t yet reach the meat of the topic : the Games, but let me read that part first and I will share it soon :).
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with others! Seeing the community grow is really a motivation factor for me to keep at it, probably something to do with the stroke received 😉.
If you want to continue the discussion, let me know your thoughts in the comment or via replies, another thing I enjoy very much reading and responding to :).
Cheers!
You can find part 2 here:
https://ludtoussaint.substack.com/p/games-people-play-part-2?r=1bc09s