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

particularly exasperating variety of ‘Uproar’ (see
Chapter 9
). The ‘wronged’
party can, of course, make a good case for not wanting to make love in a state of
justifiable indignation, and the cornered spouse has no recourse.
Antithesis. This is simple for Mrs White. All she has to do is change her
mind, take her husband by the arm, smile and go along with him (a shift from
Child to Adult ego state). It is more difficult for Mr White, since she now has the
initiative; but if he reviews the whole situation, he may be able to coax her into
going along with him, either as a sulky Child who has been placated or, better, as
an Adult.
‘Corner’ is found in a somewhat different form as a family game involving
the children, where it resembles the ‘double-bind’ described by Bateson and his
associates.
1
Here the child is cornered, so that whatever he does is wrong.
According to the Bateson school this may be an important etiological factor in
schizophrenia. In the present language, then, schizophrenia may be a child’s
antithesis to ‘Corner’. Experience in treating adult schizophrenics with game
analysis bears this out – that is, if the family game of ‘Corner’ is analysed to
demonstrate that the schizophrenic behaviour was and is specifically undertaken
to counter this game, partial or total remission occurs in a properly prepared
patient.
An everyday form of ‘Corner’ which is played by the whole family and is
most likely to affect the character development of the younger children occurs

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with meddlesome ‘Parental’ parents. The little boy or girl is urged to be more
helpful around the house, but when he is, the parents find fault with what he
does – a homely example of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. This
‘double-bind’ may be called the Dilemma Type of ‘Corner’.
‘Corner’ is sometimes found as an etiological factor in asthmatic children.
Little girl: ‘Mummy, do you love me?’
Mother: ‘What is love?’
This answer leaves the child with no direct recourse. She wants to talk
about mother, and mother switches the subject to philosophy, which the little girl
is not equipped to handle. She begins to breathe hard, mother is irritated, asthma
sets in, mother apologizes and the ‘Asthma Game’ now runs its course. This
‘Asthma’ type of ‘Corner’ remains to be studied further.
An elegant variant, which may be called the ‘Russell-Whitehead Type’ of
‘Corner’, sometimes occurs in therapy groups.
Black: ‘Well, anyway, when we’re silent nobody is playing games.’
White: ‘Silence itself may be a game.’
Red: ‘Nobody was playing games today.’
White: ‘But not playing games may itself be a game.’
The therapeutic antithesis is equally elegant. Logical paradoxes are
forbidden. When White is deprived of this manoeuvre, his underlying anxieties
come quickly to the fore.
Closely allied to ‘Corner’ on the one hand, and to ‘Threadbare’ on the other,
is the marital game of ‘Lunch Bag’. The husband, who can well afford to have
lunch at a good restaurant, nevertheless makes himself a few sandwiches every
morning, which he takes to the office in a paper bag. In this way he uses up
crusts of bread, leftovers from dinner and paper bags which his wife saves for
him. This gives him complete control over the family finances, for what wife
would dare buy herself a mink stole in the face of such self-sacrifice? The
husband reaps numerous other advantages, such as the privilege of eating lunch
by himself and of catching up on his work during lunch hour. In many ways this
is a constructive game which Benjamin Franklin would have approved of, since
it encourages the virtues of thrift, hard work and punctuality.