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

ANALYSIS
Thesis: Nobody ever does what I tell them.
Aim: Alleviation of guilt.
Roles: Helper, Client.
Dynamics: Masochism.
Examples: (1) Children learning, parent intervenes. (2) Social worker and
client.
Social Paradigm: Parent-Child.
Child: ‘What do I do now?’
Parent: ‘Here’s what you do.’
Psychological Paradigm: Parent-Child.
Parent: ‘See how adequate I am.’
Child: ‘I’ll make you feel inadequate.’
Moves: (1) Instructions requested – Instructions given. (2) Procedure
bungled – Reproof. (3) Demonstration that procedures are faulty – Implicit
apology.
Advantages: (1) Internal Psychological – martyrdom. (2) External
Psychological – avoids facing inadequacies. (3) Internal Social – ‘PTA’,
Projective Type; ingratitude. (4) External Social – ‘Psychiatry’, Projective Type.
(5) Biological – slapping from client, stroking from supervisors. (6) Existential –
All people are ungrateful.
3 · INDIGENCE
Thesis. The thesis of this game is best stated by Henry Miller in The Colossus of
Maroussi: ‘The event must have taken place during the year when I was looking
for a job without the slightest intention of taking one. It reminded me that,
desperate as I thought myself to be, I had not even bothered to look through the
columns of the want ads.’
This game is one of the complements of ‘I’m Only Trying to Help You’
(ITHY) as it is played by social workers who earn their living by it. ‘Indigence’
is played just as professionally by the client who earns his living in this manner.
The writer’s own experience with ‘Indigence’ is limited, but the following
account by one of his most accomplished students illustrates the nature of this
game and its place in our society.

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Miss Black was a social worker in a welfare agency whose avowed
purpose, for which it received a government subsidy, was the economic
rehabilitation of indigents – which in effect meant getting them to find and retain
gainful employment. The clients of this agency were continually ‘making
progress’, according to official reports, but very few of them were actually
‘rehabilitated’. This was understandable, it was claimed, because most of them
had been welfare clients for several years, going from agency to agency and
sometimes being involved with five or six agencies at a time, so that it was
evident that they were ‘difficult cases’.
Miss Black, from her training in game analysis, soon realized that the staff
of her agency was playing a consistent game of ITH Y, and wondered how the
clients were responding to this. In order to check, she asked her own clients from
week to week how many job opportunities they had actually investigated. She
was interested to discover that although they were theoretically supposed to be
looking assiduously for work from day to day, actually they devoted very little
effort to this, and sometimes the token efforts they did make had an ironic
quality. For example, one man said that he answered at least one advertisement a
day looking for work. ‘What kind of work?’ she inquired. He said he wanted to
go into saleswork. ‘Is that the only kind of ad you answer?’ she asked. He said
that it was, but it was too bad that he was a stutterer, as that held him back from
his chosen career. About this time it came to the attention of her supervisor that
she was asking these questions, and she was reprimanded for putting ‘undue
pressure’ on her clients.
Miss Black decided nevertheless to go ahead and rehabilitate some of them.
She selected those who were able-bodied and did not seem to have a valid reason
to continue to receive welfare funds. With this selected group, she talked over
the games ITHY and ‘Indigence’. When they were willing to concede the point,
she said that unless they found jobs she was going to cut them off from welfare
funds and refer them to a different kind of agency. Several of them almost
immediately found employment, some for the first time in years. But they were
indignant at her attitude, and some of them wrote letters to her supervisor
complaining about it. The supervisor called her in and reprimanded her even
more severely on the ground that although her former clients were working, they
were not ‘really rehabilitated’. The supervisor indicated that there was some
question whether they would retain Miss Black in the agency. Miss Black, as
much as she dared without further jeopardizing her position, tactfully tried to
elicit what would constitute ‘really rehabilitated’ in the agency’s opinion. This
was not clarified. She was only told that she was ‘putting undue pressure’ on
people, and the fact that they were supporting their families for the first time in

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years was in no way to her credit.
Because she needed her job and was now in danger of losing it, some of her
friends tried to help. The respected head of a psychiatric clinic wrote to the
supervisor, stating that he had heard Miss Black had done some particularly
effective work with welfare clients, and asking whether she might discuss her
findings at a staff conference at his clinic. The supervisor refused permission.
In this case the rules of ‘Indigent’ were set up by the agency to complement
the local rules of ITHY. There was a tacit agreement between the worker and the
client which read as follows: W. ‘I’ll try to help you (providing you don’t get
better).’
C. ‘I’ll look for employment (providing I don’t have to find any).
If a client broke the agreement by getting better, the agency lost a client,
and the client lost his welfare benefits, and both felt penalized. If a worker like
Miss Black broke the agreement by making the client actually find work, the
agency was penalized by the client’s complaints, which might come to the
attention of higher authorities, while again the client lost his welfare benefits.
As long as both obeyed the implicit rules, both got what they wanted. The
client received his benefits and soon learned what the agency wanted in return:
an opportunity to ‘reach out’ (as part of ITHY) plus ‘clinical material’ (to present
at ‘client-centred’ staff conferences). The client was glad to comply with these
demands, which gave him as much pleasure as it did the agency. Thus they got
along well together, and neither felt any desire to terminate such a satisfying
relationship. Miss Black, in effect, ‘reached in’ instead of ‘reaching out’, and
proposed a ‘community-centred’ staff conference instead of a ‘client-centred’
one; and this disturbed all the others concerned in spite of the fact that she was
thus only complying with the stated intent of the regulations.
Two things should be noted here. First, ‘Indigence’ as a game rather than a
condition due to physical, mental, or economic disability, is played by only a
limited percentage of welfare clients. Second, it will only be supported by social
workers who are trained to play ITHY. It will not be well-tolerated by other
workers.
Allied games are ‘Veteran’ and ‘Clinic’. ‘Veteran’ displays the same
symbiotic relationship, this time between the Veterans Administration, allied
organizations, and a certain number of ‘professional veterans’ who share the
legitimate privileges of disabled ex-servicemen. ‘Clinic’ is played by a certain
percentage of those who attend the out-patient departments of large hospitals.
Unlike those who play ‘Indigent’ or ‘Veteran’, patients who play ‘Clinic’ do not
receive financial remuneration, but get other advantages. They serve a useful

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social purpose, since they are willing to cooperate in the training of medical
personnel and in studies of disease processes. From this they may get a
legitimate Adult satisfaction not available to players of ‘Indigence’ and
‘Veteran’.
Antithesis. Antithesis, if indicated, consists in withholding the benefits.
Here the risk is not primarily from the player himself, as in most other games,
but from this game being culturally syntonic and fostered by the complementary
ITHY players. The threat comes from professional colleagues and the aroused
public, government agencies and protective unions. The complaints which
follow an exhibition of anti-‘Indigence’ may lead to a loud outcry of ‘Yes, Yes,
How About That?’ which may be regarded as a healthy, constructive operation or
pastime, even if it occasionally discourages candidness. In fact, the whole
American political system of democratic freedoms is based on a licence (not
available under many other forms of government) to ask that question. Without
such a licence, humanitarian social progress becomes seriously impeded.