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

1 · NOTATION
The following notation will be used in the analytic protocols.
Title: if the game has a long name, a convenient abbreviation is used in the
text. Where a game or its variations has more than one name, a cross reference
will be found in the Index of Games. In oral reports it is preferable to use the full
name of the game rather than its abbreviation or acronym.
Thesis: this is restated as cogently as possible.
Aim: this gives the most meaningful choice, based on the writer’s
experience.
Roles: the role of the one who is ‘it’, and from whose point of view the
game is discussed, is given first, in italics.
Dynamics: as with aim.
Examples: (1) this gives an illustration of the game as played in childhood,
the most easily recognizable pertinent prototype. (2) an illustration from adult

---

life.
Paradigm: this illustrates as briefly as possible the critical transaction or
transactions at the social and psychological levels.
Moves: this gives the minimum number of transactional stimuli and
transactional responses as found in practice. These may be expanded, diluted or
ornamented to an unlimited extent in different situations.
Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological – this attempts to state how the
game contributes to internal psychic stability. (2) External Psychological – this
attempts to state what anxiety-arousing situations or intimacies are being
avoided. (3) Internal Social – this gives the characteristic phrase used in the
game as played with intimates. (4) External Social – this gives the key phrase
used in the derivative game or pastime played in less intimate circles. (5)
Biological – this attempts to characterize the kind of stroking which the game
offers to the parties involved. (6) Existential – this states the position from which
the game is typically played.
Relatives: this gives the names of complementary, allied and antithetical
games.
An adequate understanding of a game can only be obtained in the
psychotherapeutic situation. People who play destructive games will come to the
therapist far more frequently than people who play constructive ones. Therefore
most of the games which are well understood are basically destructive, but the
reader should remember that there are constructive ones played by more
fortunate people. And to prevent the idea of games from becoming vulgarized, as
so many psychiatric terms are, it should be emphasized once more that it is a
very precise idea: games should be clearly distinguished, by the criteria given
previously, from procedures, rituals, pastimes, operations, manoeuvres and the
attitudes which arise from various positions. A game is played from a position,
but a position or its corresponding attitude is not a game.