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

ANALYSIS
Thesis: They’ve got to say I’m right.
Aim: Reassurance.
Roles: Plaintiff, Defendant, Judge (and/or Jury).
Dynamics: Sibling rivalry.
Examples: (1) Children quarrelling, parent intervenes. (2) Married couple,
seek ‘help’.
Social Paradigm: Adult-Adult.
Adult: ‘This is what she did to me.’
Adult: ‘The real facts are these.’
Psychological Paradigm: Child-Parent.
Child: ‘Tell me I’m right.’
Parent: ‘This one is right.’ Or: ‘You’re both right.’
Moves: (1) Complaint filed – Defence filed. (2) Plaintiff files rebuttal,
concession, or good-will gesture. (3) Decision of judge or instructions to jury.
(4) Final decision filed.
Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological – projection of guilt. (2) External
Psychological – excused from guilt. (3) Internal Social – ‘Sweetheart’,
‘Furthermore’, ‘Uproar’ and others. (4) External Social – ‘Courtroom’. (5)
Biological – stroking from judge and jury. (6) Existential – depressive position,
I’m always wrong.
3 · FRIGID WOMAN
Thesis. This is almost always a marital game, since it is hardly conceivable that
an informal liaison would present the required opportunities and privileges over
a sufficient length of time, or that such a liaison would be maintained in the face
of it.
The husband makes advances to his wife and is repulsed. After repeated
attempts, he is told that all men are beasts, he doesn’t really love her, or doesn’t
love her for herself, that all he is intersted in is sex. He desists for a time, then
tries again with the same result. Eventually he resigns himself and makes no
further advances. As the weeks or months pass, the wife becomes increasingly
informal and sometimes forgetful. She walks through the bedroom half dressed
or forgets her clean towel when she takes a bath so that he has to bring it to her.

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If she plays a hard game or drinks heavily, she may become flirtatious with other
men at parties. At length he responds to those provocations and tries again. Once
more he is repulsed, and a game of ‘Uproar’ ensues involving their recent
behaviour, other couples, their in-laws, their finances and their failures,
terminated by a slamming door.
This time the husband makes up his mind that he is really through, that they
will find a sexless modus vivendi. Months pass. He declines the negligee parade
and the forgotten towel manoeuvre. The wife becomes more provocatively
informal and more provocatively forgetful, but he still resists. Then one evening
she actually approaches him and kisses him. At first he doesn’t respond,
remembering his resolution, but soon nature begins to take its course after the
long famine, and now he thinks he surely has it made. His first tentative
advances are not repulsed. He becomes bolder and bolder. Just at the critical
point, the wife steps back and cries: ‘See, what did I tell you! All men are beasts,
all I wanted was affection, but all you are interested in is sex!’ The ensuing game
of ‘Uproar’ at this point may skip the preliminary phases of their recent
behaviour and their in-laws, and go right to the financial problem.
It should be noted that in spite of his protestations, the husband is usually
just as afraid of sexual intimacy as his wife is, and had carefully chosen his mate
to minimize the danger of overtaxing his disturbed potency, which he can now
blame on her.
In its everyday form this game is played by unmarried ladies of various
ages, which soon earns them a common slang epithet. With them it often merges
into the game of indignation, or ‘Rapo’.
Antithesis. This is a dangerous game, and the possible antitheses are equally
dangerous. Taking a mistress is a gamble. In the face of such stimulating
competition, the wife may give up the game and try to initiate a normal married
life, perhaps too late, On the other hand, she may use the affair, often with the
help of a lawyer, as ammunition against the husband in a game of ‘Now I’ve Got
You, You Son of a Bitch’. The outcome is equally unpredictable if the husband
undertakes psychotherapy and she does not. The wife’s game may collapse as
the husband grows stronger, leading to healthier adjustment; but if she is a hard
player, improvement on his part may result in divorce. The best solution, if
available, is for both parties to go into a transactional marital group, where the
underlying advantages of the game and the basic sexual pathology can be laid
bare. With this preparation both spouses may become interested in intensive
individual psychotherapy. That may result in a psychological remarriage. If not,
at least each of the parties may make a more sensible readjustment to the
situation than they might have otherwise.

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The decent antithesis for the everyday form is to find another social
companion. Some of the shrewder or more brutal antitheses are corrupt and even
criminal.
Relatives. The converse game, ‘Frigid Man’, is less common, but it takes
much the same general course with some variations in detail. The final outcome
depends upon the scripts of the parties involved.
The crucial point of ‘Frigid Woman’ is the terminal phase of ‘Uproar’. Once
this has run its course, sexual intimacy is out of the question, since both parties
derive a perverse satisfaction from ‘Uproar’ and have no need of further sexual
excitement from each other. Hence the most important item in anti- ‘Frigid
Woman’ is to decline ‘Uproar’. This leaves the wife in a state of sexual
disatisfaction which may be so acute that she will become more compliant. The
use made of ‘Uproar’ distinguishes ‘Frigid Woman’ from ‘Beat Me Daddy’,
where ‘Uproar’ is part of the foreplay; in ‘Frigid Woman’, ‘Uproar’ substitutes
for the sex act itself. Thus in ‘Beat Me Daddy’, ‘Uproar’ is a condition of the
sexual act, a kind of fetish which increases the excitement, while in ‘Frigid
Woman’, once ‘Uproar’ has taken place, the episode is finished.
An early analogue of ‘Frigid Woman’ is played by that type of prissy little
girl described by Dickens in Great Expectations. She comes out in her starched
dress and asks the little boy to make her a mud pie. Then she sneers at his dirty
hands and clothing and tells him how clean she is.

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