| | Games People Play |  | Author: Eric Berne
Publisher: Grove Pr
Category: Book
Buy Used: £12.95
New (1) from £47.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 1112076
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reissue
ISBN: 0345170466
Dewey Decimal Number: 301.11
EAN: 9780345170460
ASIN: 0345170466
Publication Date: March 1978
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Ahead of its time? Too self-assured... December 15, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Eric Berne, post-Freudian psychoanalyst and creator of "Transactional Analysis".
It's fair to say that his theories on social interactions (rituals, pastimes and games as he referred to them) were both interesting and fairly applicable to real world situations, however like Freud, Berne is so self-assured in his own writing tha his book becomes less of a theoretical perspective on social psychology, but a dogmatic text. I also interpreted some latent sexism, but that could just be my reading of the text.
 Good read, get it from a library though November 30, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good book, gets confused on itself in places. Presents some games play which everyone will probably recognise aspects of.Presents some dark ideas as game plays as well which knowing how messy some people are, may have some truth to them. Some ideas are presented with quite alarming alacrity, which could be put down to the author having to have wrestled with some disturbing clients, or if not this then voyeuristic glee.
Read if you need to be either enlightened or reminded of politics and wackness.
 An effort at comprehensible, useful psychology October 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In "Games People Play", Eric Berne:
1) Had moved away from his original psychoanalytic background (having studied with Erik Erikson) and by this time originated transational analysis, which he presents for lay people with this book.
2) Focuses on three "ego states", Parent, Adult, and Child. Each of these ego states is appropriate in certain situations (e.g Parent when teaching a child, Child often for creativity).
3) Presents people as having being driven by stimulus hunger (e.g. the need for strokes, which is shaped into recognition hunger as one gets older.
4) Defines games as one way of satisfying our hungers through social interactions. Other ways include procedures, rituals, and pastimes, all of which are honest ways to relate. Games, however, "a series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome" are basically dishonest, with motivations being concealed.
5) Games may involve 2 players of more. Each step in a game (and hence the e entire set of transactions comprising the game) can be diagrammed by showing which ego states are involved for each player at each step. More than ego state can be involved in a step. Transactions can be complementary (e.g. Adult-Adult), crossed (e.g. Adult-Child directed from one person and Parent-Child directed from the other), or ulterior (e.g. two interactions at one such as Adult-Adult at the social level and Child-Child at the psychological level). Each player may shift ego states at any time. So, given the combinations of ego states, the possible multiple interactions at any one step, and the possibility of multiple steps, a game can become quite complex. Berne presents quite a few games, which he gives simple names to (avoiding psychiatric jargon) and categorizes, e.g. Life Games, Marital Games, and Underworld Games.
6) Berne presents a desired goal beyond games for the individual of autonomy: awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy. It sounds surpisingly like the Tibetan Buddhist teaching Dzogchen.
Major contributions by Berne seem to be the move to simple terms and one simple model and using it to show many examples of how dishonest interaction occurs and can be destructive (but not necessarily, there is room for constructive playfulness). That he was able himself to free himself from all the psychoanalytic teachings he had learned and find and share a simple way of understanding our interactions is no small achievement: "Games People Play" is valuable if only because it models simplicity. As a lay person, I find that helpful.
Valid 40 years later August 20, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
In the 1970s Eric Berne created a new field of human understanding called transactional analysis. This was ground breaking in its day and still is, I have to ask myself the question, why after so long haven't these ideas entered main stream human relationship literature?
Berne provides a very useful framework for understanding what is really going on in complex relationships. I use a modification of this approach in my day to day work changing organisations, we have identified many organisational game types as a result.
Great read, practical and much needed not only in the psychiatrists consulting room but in the workplace.
Stop playing and start living December 28, 2006
17 out of 21 found this review helpful
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Anyone who deals with people and feels that they are playing games with them should ... no MUST read this book and take action.
Each scenario is outlined and then detailed. Eric Berne then gives you ways of challening the person who is playing the game.
However, the key thing to remember is that in the end, you have the ability to walk away from people who insist on playing games.
I was given this book to read when I suffered from too many employees with 'Wooden Legs' - read the chapter on that one and you'll understand why they suddenly all grew new legs after I learnt to challenge them.
Good luck.
LB
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