Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis. Pdfdrive com

2 · COLLOQUIALISMS
Many colloquialisms used here were supplied by patients. All of them, if used
with due regard to timing and sensibilities, are appreciated, understood and
enjoyed by the players. If some of them seem disrespectful, the irony is directed
against the games and not against the people who play them. The first
requirement for colloquialisms is aptness, and if they often sound amusing, that
is precisely because they hit the nail on the head. As I have tried to show
elsewhere in discussing colloquial epithets, a whole page of learned

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polysyllables may not convey as much as the statement that a certain woman is a
bitch, or that a certain man is a jerk.
1
Psychological truths may be stated for
academic purposes in scientific language, but the effective recognition of
emotional strivings in practice may require a different approach. So we prefer
playing ‘Ain’t It Awful’ to ‘verbalizing projected anal aggression’. The former
not only has a more dynamic meaning and impact, but it is actually more precise.
And sometimes people get better faster in bright rooms than they do in drab
ones.

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REFERENCE
1.
Berne, E., ‘Intution IV: Primal Images & Primal Judgments’, Psychiatric
Quarterly, 29: 634-658, 1955.

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6 · Life Games
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games have an important and probably decisive influence on the destinies of
the players under ordinary social conditions; but some offer more opportunities
than others for lifelong careers and are more likely to involve relatively innocent
bystanders. This group may be conveniently called Life Games. It includes
‘Alcoholic’, ‘Debtor’, ‘Kick Me’, ‘Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch’, ‘See
What You Made Me Do’ and their principal variants. They merge on the one side
with marital games, and on the other with those of the underworld.