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

5 · THEY’LL BE GLAD THEY KNEW ME
Thesis. This is a more worthy variant of ‘I’ll Show Them’. There are two forms
of Til Show Them’. In the destructive form White ‘shows them’ by inflicting
damage on them. Thus he may manoeuvre himself into a superior position, not
for the prestige or the material rewards but because it gives him power to
exercise his spite. In the constructive form White works hard and exerts every
effort to gain prestige, not for the sake of craftsmanship or legitimate
accomplishment (although those may play a secondary role), nor to inflict direct
damage on his enemies, but so that they will be eaten with envy and with regret
for not having treated him better.
In ‘They’ll Be Glad They Knew Me’, White is working not against but for
the interests of his former associates. He wants to show them that they were
justified in treating him with friendliness and respect and to demonstrate to
them, for their own gratification, that their judgement was sound. In order for
him to have a secure win in this game, his means as well as his ends must be

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honourable, and that is its superiority over ‘I’ll Show Them’. Both ‘I’ll Show
Them’ and ‘They’ll Be Glad’ can be merely secondary advantages of success,
rather than games. They become games when White is more interested in the
effects on his enemies or friends than he is in the success itself.

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PART THREE
BEYOND GAMES

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13 · The Significance of Games
1. G
AMES
are passed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of
any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to
his children; they in turn, unless there is a successful intervention, will teach
them to his grandchildren. Thus game analysis takes place in a grand historical
matrix, demonstrably extending back as far as one hundred years and reliably
projected into the future for at least fifty years. Breaking this chain which
involves five or more generations may have geometrically progressive effects.
There are many living individuals who have more than two hundred
descendants. Games may be diluted or altered from one generation to another,
but there seems to be a strong tendency to inbreed with people who play a game
of the same family, if not of the same genus. That is the historical significance of
games.
2. ‘Raising’ children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to
play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of
games, and various tribes and families favour different variations of these. That
is the cultural significance of games.
3. Games are sandwiched, as it were, between pastimes and intimacy.
Pastimes grow boring with repetition, as do promotional cocktail parties.
Intimacy requires stringent circumspection, and is discriminated against by
Parent, Adult and Child. Society frowns upon candidness, except in privacy;
good sense knows that it can always be abused; and the Child fears it because of
the unmasking which it involves. Hence in order to get away from the ennui of
pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people
compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of
the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of
games.
4. People pick as friends, associates and intimates other people who play
the same games. Hence ‘everybody who is anybody’ in a given social circle
(aristocracy, juvenile gang, social club, college campus, etc.) behaves in a way
which may seem quite foreign to members of a different social circle.
Conversely, any member of a social circle who changes his games will tend to be
extruded, but he will find himself welcome at some other social circle. That is
the personal significance of games.

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NOTE
The reader should now be in a position to appreciate the basic difference
between mathematical and transactional game analysis. Mathematical game
analysis postulates players who are completely rational. Transactional game
analysis deals with games which are unrational, or even irrational, and hence
more real.

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