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

ANALYSIS
Thesis: Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.
Aim: Vindication.
Roles: Proper Wife, Inconsiderate Husband.
Dynamics: Penis envy.
Examples: (1) Thank you for the mud pie, you dirty little boy. (2)
Provocative, frigid wife.
Social Paradigm: Parent-Child.
Parent: ‘I give you permission to make me a mud pie (kiss me).’
Child: ‘I’d love to.’
Parent: ‘Now see how dirty you are.’
Psychological Paradigm: Child-Parent.
Child: ‘See if you can seduce me.’
Parent: ‘I’ll try, if you stop me.’
Child: ‘See, it was you who started it.’
Moves: (1) Seduction-Response. (2) Rejection-Resignation. (3) Provocation-
Response. (4) Rejection-Uproar.
Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological – freedom from guilt for sadistic
fantasies. (2) External Psychological – avoids feared exhibition and penetration.
(3) Internal Social – ‘Uproar’. (4) External Social – What do you do with dirty
little boys (husbands)? (5) Biological – inhibited sex play and belligerent
exchanges. (6) Existential – I am pure.
4 · HARRIED
Thesis. This is a game played by the harried housewife. Her situation requires
that she be proficient in ten or twelve different occupations; or, stated otherwise,
that she fill gracefully ten or twelve different roles. From time to time semi-
facetious lists of these occupations or roles appear in the Sunday supplements:
mistress, mother, nurse, housemaid, etc. Since these roles are usually conflicting
and fatiguing, their imposition gives rise in the course of years to the condition
symbolically known as ‘Housewife’s Knee’ (since the knee is used for rocking,
scrubbing, lifting, driving and so forth), whose symptoms are succinctly
summarized in the complaint: ‘I’m tired.’
Now, if the housewife is able to set her own pace and find enough

---

satisfaction in loving her husband and children, she will not merely serve but
enjoy her twenty-five years, and see the youngest child off to college with a pang
of loneliness. But if on the one hand she is driven by her inner Parent and called
to account by the critical husband she has chosen for that purpose, and on the
other unable to get sufficient satisfaction from loving her family, she may grow
more and more unhappy. At first she may try to console herself with the
advantages of ‘If It Weren’t For You’ and ‘Blemish’ (and indeed, any housewife
may fall back on these when the going gets rough); but soon these fail to keep
her going. Then she has to find another way out, and that is the game of
‘Harried’.
The thesis of this game is simple. She takes on everything that comes, and
even asks for more. She agrees with her husband’s criticisms and accepts all her
children’s demands. If she has to entertain at dinner, she not only feels she must
function impeccably as a conversationalist, chatelaine over the household and
servants, interior decorator, caterer, glamour girl, virgin queen and diplomat ; she
will also volunteer that morning to bake a cake and take the children to the
dentist. If she already feels harassed, she makes the day even more harried. Then
in the middle of the afternoon she justifiably collapses, and nothing gets done.
She lets down her husband, the children and their guests, and her self-reproaches
add to her misery. After this happens two or three times her marriage is in
jeopardy, the children are confused, she loses weight, her hair is untidy, her face
is drawn and her shoes are scuffed. Then she appears at the psychiatrist’s office,
ready to be hospitalized.
Antithesis. The logical antithesis is simple: Mrs White can fill each of her
roles in succession during the week, but she must refuse to play two or more of
them simultaneously. When she gives a cocktail party, for example, she can play
either caterer or nursemaid, but not both. If she is merely suffering from
Housewife’s Knee, she may be able to limit herself in this way.
If she is actually playing a game of ‘Harried’, however, it will be very
difficult for her to adhere to this principle. In that case the husband is carefully
chosen; he is an otherwise reasonable man who will criticize his wife if she is
not as efficient as he thinks his mother was. In effect, she marries his fantasy of
his mother as perpetuated in his Parent, which is similar to her fantasy of her
mother or grandmother. Having found a suitable partner, her Child can now
settle into the harassed role necessary to maintain her psychic balance, and
which she will not readily give up. The more occupational responsibility the
husband has, the easier it is for both of them to find Adult reasons to preserve
the unhealthy aspects of their relationship.
When the position becomes untenable, often because of official school

---

intervention on behalf of the unhappy offspring, the psychiatrist is called in to
make it a three-handed game. Either the husband wants him to do an overhaul
job on the wife, or the wife wants him as an ally against the husband. The
ensuing proceedings depend on the skill and alertness of the psychiatrist. Usually
the first phase, the alleviation of the wife’s depression, will proceed smoothly.
The second phase, in which she will give up playing ‘Harried’ in favour of
playing ‘Psychiatry’, is the decisive one. It tends to arouse increasing opposition
from both spouses. Sometimes this is well concealed and then explodes
suddenly, though not unexpectedly. If this stage is weathered, then the real work
of game analysis can proceed.
It is necessary to recognize that the real culprit is the wife’s Parent, her
mother or grandmother; the husband is to some extent only a lay figure chosen to
play his role in the game. The therapist has to fight not only this Parent and the
husband, who has a heavy investment in playing his end, but also the social
environment, which encourages the wife’s compliance. The week after the article
appears about the many roles a housewife has to play, there is a How’m I Doing?
in the Sunday paper: a ten-item test to determine ‘How Good A Hostess (Wife)
(Mother) (Housekeeper) (Budgeteer) Are You?’ For the housewife who plays
‘Harried’, that is the equivalent of the little leaflet that comes with children’s
games, stating the rules. It may help to speed up the evolution of ‘Harried’,
which, if not checked, may end in a game of ‘State Hospital’ (‘The last thing I
want is to be sent to a hospital’).
One practical difficulty with such couples is that the husband tends to avoid
personal involvement with the treatment beyond playing ‘Look How Hard I’m
Trying’, because he is usually more disturbed than he cares to admit. Instead he
may send indirect messages to the therapist, through temper outbursts which he
knows will be reported by the wife. Hence ‘Harried’ easily progresses to a third-
degree life-death-divorce struggle. The psychiatrist is almost alone on the side of
life, assisted only by the harried Adult of the patient which is locked in combat
that may prove mortal against all three aspects of the husband, allied with her
own inner Parent and Child. It is a dramatic battle, with odds of two against five,
which tries the skill of the most game-free and professional therapist. If he
quails, he can take the easy way out and offer his patient on the altar of the
divorce court, which is equivalent to saying ‘I surrender – Let’s you and him
fight.’