In part two of the book “Games People Play,” Eric Berne gives us a “Thesaurus of Games” in which he divides all known games into seven broad categories. The first category, Life Games, are close to life scripts in the sense that they can easily become defining characteristics. For example “Alcoholic,” as a game, is distinguished from an addiction (which provides a physiological “benefit”) by the fact that the player can stop by force of will but does not due to the psychological benefit. Other games in this category include: “Debtor,” “Kick Me,” “Now I’ve Got You,” and “See What You Made Me Do.”
Marital games are the second broad category. They are games played by people in an ostensibly sexual relationship in which one or both are fearful of something (usually intimacy) and need to find (usually suboptimal) reissuances from their partner. Some of these games include: “Corner,” “Courtroom,” “Frigid Woman/Man,” “Harried,” “If It Weren’t For You,” “Look How Hard I’ve Tried,” and “Sweetheart.” Party games are played at parties and social gatherings and are often pastimes as well. For example: “Ain’t It Awful,” “Blemish,” “Schlemiel,” and “Why Don’t You – Yes, But.” Another grouping are Sexual games which are played to “exploit or fight off sexual impulses,” and are therefore “perversions of the sexual instincts.” They include “Lets You and Him Fight,” “Perversion,” “Rapo,” “The Stocking Game,” and “Uproar.” Next comes Underworld games. Dumb criminals play “Cops and Robbers,” “How Do You Get Out of Here,” and “Lets Pull a Fast One on Joey.” The Penultimate category are Consulting Room games played between a therapist and a patient. The final category is Good Games which are harmless or helpful fun. For example, “Busman’s Holiday,” “Cavalier,” and “Happy to Help.”
Games have four huge significances for people. First, from a historical perspective, “Games are passed on from generation to generation.” Parents, usually naively, teach their kids what games to play and how to play them. Without an intervention this process will continue. Second, from a cultural perspective, different games are played by different socio-economic and ethic groups. Third, from a social perspective, “Games are sandwiched, as it were, between pastimes and intimacy….Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse.” Finally, from a personal perspective, games are significant because people choose their associates, friends and lovers based on the games they play. Any individual who puts in the effort to change the games they play will lose all his former friends and may be welcomed by new friends who play the new games.
Games are played most intensely by the most disturbed people, whom the author labels either Sulks or Jerks. “The Sulk, is a man who is angry at his mother.” Or a woman who is angry at her father. Sulking is a choice as can be seen when a sulking child changes their mind at the offer of food. At the adult level the Sulk needs to save face and be offered something worthwhile in order to choose not to sulk.
“A Jerk is someone who is overly sensitive to Parental influences.” Almost all people are jerks from time to time, but an intervention is needed when regular living, as in the Adult data processing ability or the Child’s spontaneity are curtailed that the person cannot really function or live.
The goal of life, that is, a good adult life, is autonomy. “The attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.” The author defines awareness as “the capacity to see a coffee pot and hear the birds sing in one’s own way, and not the way one was taught.” A child for example cries with delight upon seeing a bird; an adult parent starts to educate the child about birds thus ruining the child’s perspective through abstraction. While abstraction is necessary to growing up, many lose the ability of immediate awareness that is common among children. “Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.” This awareness is a requirement to be a good painter, poet, musician or any kind of artist. Awareness is an eidetic perception or “eidetic” in any of the other senses. “The aware person is alive because he knows how he feels, where he is and when it is. He knows that after he dies the trees will still be there, but he will not be there to look at them again, so he wans to see them now with as much poignancy as possible.”
“Spontaneity means option, the freedom to choose and express one’s feelings from the assortment available…liberation from the compulsion to play games and have only the feelings one was taught to have.”
Finally, Intimacy, which means, “the spontaneous, game-free candidness of an aware person, the liberation of the eidetically perceptive, uncorrupted Child in all its naiveté living in the here and now.” Experimentally, it can be shown that “eidetic perception evokes affection, and candidness mobilizes positive feelings…. Because intimacy is essentially a function of the natural Child…it tends to turnout well if not disturbed by the intervention of games. Usually the adaptation to Parental influences is what spoils it, and most unfortunately this is almost a universal occurrence. But before, unless and until they are corrupted, most infants seem to be loving, and that is the essential nature of intimacy, as shown experimentally.” Over coming Parental influences is a huge task that needs the whole weight of history, culture, society and personal significance (outlined above) to be undone as well as the “easy indulgences and rewards of being a Sulk or a Jerk have to be given up.” Lastly all the forms of human behaviour and programming must be brought under the control of the will. “In essence, this whole preparation consists of obtaining a friendly divorce from one’s parents…so that they may be agreeably visited on occasion, but are no longer dominant.”
The Intimacy Experiment - The longest most amazing 20 minutes of your life
1st requirement: two people who want more general intimacy.
2nd requirement: both be in comfortable physiologically homeostatic satiation
3rd requirement: stay in constant contact for a minimum of 20 minutes in a well-lit room.
Staying in contact means focusing in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, not the past nor the future.
Rules
The two participants sit facing each other in comfortable chairs. The chairs’ front legs should be 22” to 24” apart.
The two participants have an authentic conversation and must therefore avoid:
“Under proper conditions, the effect of the experience is equivalent to 25 micrograms of LSD. The immediate effects persist for about one week, and the subjects may feel that they have a special relationship to each other for many months.”