Games People Play (Eric Berne)

From the man who developed the idea of transactional analysis - that human interactions are between the 'parent', 'child' or 'adult' within each of us.  Originally written in 1964 and it certainly shows its age in terms of the view of women.



Locn. 240 the principle which emerges here is that any social intercourse whatever has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all.
 Locn. 265-66 Belching at meals or asking after another man’s wife are each encouraged or forbidden by local ancestral tradition, and indeed there is a high degree of inverse correlation between these particular transactions. Locn.
2206-12 In this case the rules of ‘Indigent’ were set up by the agency to complement the local rules of ITH Y. 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. Til lookfor employment (providingldon’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.
 Locn. 2482-83 so-called ‘objective’ discussions of this game are practically nonexistent. People who claim to be neutral soon show which side they are neutral on.
 Locn. 2517-19 ‘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.
 Locn. 2632-35 A Chinese man started to get into a local subway train, when his Caucasian companion pointed out that they could save twenty minutes by taking an express, which they did. When they got off at Central Park, the Chinese man sat down on a bench, much to his friend’s surprise. ‘Well,’ explained the former, ‘since we saved twenty minutes, we can afford to sit here that long and enjoy our surroundings.’ 
Locn. 2681-82 human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait,