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This month, I’m going to be learning more about Eric Berne’s theories around games. Games, according to Berne, are one way that we spend our time with others, and like most things we do, it is a way to avoid true intimacy while engaging in social behaviour. Berne theorised that we structured our social time in certain ways that could be categorised easily. He wrote in Games People Play that “a game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome.”

Stripping away the jargon, he’s basically saying that these are patterns of interactions that on the surface have one purpose, but on a deeper level have another purpose. These behaviours are complementary in the sense that if all parties continue to engage, they can continue all the live-long day. It might seem strange to say, since lots of games involve arguments, but I’m sure lots of you can, like me, bicker and argue for as long as anyone else wants to.

In true therapist style, I’ll be focusing on the way these things can go badly, but it’s important to remember that we all do these things, and usually it’s fine. There are even ways to play games in healthy ways that make the world a better place. So if you notice that you do this, you don’t have to worry about being ‘bad’ or needing to fix yourself. It’s just something to notice and understand, and then if you want to do the work to fix it, you can.

Berne came up with seven classifications for games, and today I’m looking at life games.

Life Games

Life games are basically games that people can play over the course of an entire lifetime. They aren’t isolated events; they’re more like lifelong patterns of behaviour. Because they are so over-arching, other games can be played within these games.

Alcoholic

Roles: 

1. Alcoholic – the addict
2. Persecutor – the person who will punish the addict. This is usually a spouse or someone close to them
3. Rescuer – someone who wants to help the addict get better
4. Patsy/Dummy – a well-meaning enabler
5. Connexion – the person who supplies the high

Purpose: Avoiding responsibility, getting attention

This game can be played with anywhere from two to five people. The person closest to the Alcoholic can play Persecutor, Rescuer and Patsy, all at different points of the day, especially at the beginning of the game. Imagine the Alcoholic gets drunk or gambles, whatever their addiction is. The other person can take care of them after the binge (Patsy), then berate, harangue or punish them the next morning (Persecutor), then spend all day finding resources or institutions to help them (Rescuer).

Berne says that the main goal of this game isn’t to indulge the addiction, though that undoubtedly feels good, too. The actual goal is “the psychological torment” the addict gets to put themselves through after a binge. So the actual payoff is the morning after, when the addict tortures themselves by recounting, almost as in a confession, the things they did, or by having the physical pain of a hangover.

Now, here is where the theory starts to make me uncomfortable, and in fact is the whole reason I started to write this. Berne says that 12-step programmes like Alcoholics Anonymous only perpetuate the game. First, Berne says it gives the Alcoholic ample time and space to continue the psychological torment of recounting what they did and how awful it was. Then, if the room full of Rescuers successfully helps them avoid the substance, they can move into the Rescuer role themselves, and the game can continue, just without the first step. 

In the book, Berne makes it clear that he doesn’t buy into the idea that addiction is a medical issue. He thinks an appropriate treatment is script analysis, redecision and relearning. I am only a student, but this just flies in the face of everything I’ve been taught about addiction. I know several people who have been helped with those programmes, and it just seems too simplistic to say it’s 100% based on unconscious decisions people made in their earliest years.

Maybe there’s just no space for equivocation or nuance in a book that is trying to sell a wide, general audience on a relatively new theory of human interaction, but this dismissiveness has made it very hard for me to engage with this part of the theory. But anyway, let’s move on.

Debtor

Roles:

1. Debtor
2. Creditor

Purpose: ?? I’m not sure. Berne didn’t really explain it, and I’m having trouble finding anyone else talking about this one.

This is a life game that is highly prized in our culture. As Berne puts it, we celebrate getting into debt, but not out of it. Weddings, education, mortgages – all of these are worthy of large social celebrations and most of these require hefty loans to achieve – but paying off the debt might be marked with a dinner or a Facebook post.

It becomes even more game-y when it comes to paying. Sometimes the Debtor plays “Try and Collect”, where they stop making payments. If the Creditor tries to collect a few times and gives up, the Debitor wins by not having to pay anymore. If the Creditor keeps persisting and ends up pursuing legal action, the Debtor gets to switch to “Now I Got You, You Son of a Bitch”. In that game, the Debtor gets to ‘catch’ the Creditor being greedy and ruthless, like all creditors, and the Debtor gets to rant and rave about how awful the Creditor is. In that way, the Debtor gets to win, because they get to feel aggrieved and victimised and receive lots of attention.

Berne says the only way out of this game is either to insist on full cash payments, up front, if you’re the Creditor, or laughing at the Creditor if you’re the Debtor. Is there a way to engage with this therapeutically? Presumably Berne would recommend script analysis, redecision and relearning, but he doesn’t give as much space to this life game as Alcoholic.

If I’m honest, I don’t really understand this one. I get the point about our society valuing getting into debt over getting out of it, but again, it feels like a misunderstanding of what really happens. Most people pay their debts. Does this mean that they aren’t playing the game? Or does it mean they are playing the game in a healthy way? 

Kick Me

Roles:

1. The One Who is Kicked
2. The Kicker

Purpose: Avoidance of deeper feelings, attention

There is someone you know who walks around with a metaphorical “Don’t kick me” sign on their back. Eventually, someone will inevitably give in to the temptation, and the person will complain “But the sign said DON’T kick me!” And if no one kicks them, they will become increasingly egregious in their behaviour, until someone eventually caves and kicks them. That is this game in a nutshell. 

If you’re anything like me, someone immediately popped into your head when you thought about this game. These are people who consistently behave terribly until they are dumped, fired or otherwise rejected by people, then they get to play the game ‘Why Does This Always Happen to Me?’ Another interesting version is when they come into some success and then surround themselves with people who will ensure their fortunes are spent.

It seems to me that these people don’t believe that they deserve intimacy or success, which is why they drive it away. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, which reinforces the belief, which then encourages the person to continue playing the game throughout their life.

My supervisor once said to me that if there is a game you instantly want to avoid thinking about, then it’s probably one you play on the regular. Interestingly, Eric Berne wrote only four paragraphs about this game, compared to the seven pages he wrote about Alcoholic.

Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch

Roles:

1. Aggressor
2. Victim

Purpose: Justification for rage, avoiding confronting deeper feelings, reinforcing the idea that others are always out to get you

Berne encourages us to think about this game as a classic game of poker. The Aggressor gets an unbeatable hand – four aces. The Victim tries to bluff, so the Aggressor plays with them a little bit, letting them draw out the bluff before letting the hammer fall.

This is lots of folks’ favourite game, obviously because it’s fun to get to swear in such intellectual spheres. But it’s also incredibly common. I often find myself in arguments, searching not for a solution but for the phrase I can use against the person I’m fighting. I feel like I even think something along the lines of “oooh, I’ve got you now!”

Of course, like most games, it doesn’t help resolve anything. It just keeps us in an endless ‘gotcha’ loop. Because for me, it provides a justification for my rage, and it allows me to be angry about this thing, instead of confronting the deeper sources of my already existing rage. My partner can only get out of this game by refusing to also get angry and sticking strictly to the facts of the argument. For us, what usually happens is that he stays calm long enough for me to realise what I’m doing. Luckily, through therapy I’m learning to shorten the time from anger to pausing and resetting. 

See What You Made Me Do

Roles:

1. Persecutor
2. Victim

Purpose: Vindication and justifiable anger

This game is most commonly played in families – either between spouses or from parents to children. 

The first-degree version of the game is where the Persecutor takes themselves away to do some solitary task that requires concentration. The Victim comes in with an interruption, and the Persecutor slips, messing up their project. The Persecutor then gets to yell “see what you made me do??!!” and angrily kick the Victim out. Of course, it wasn’t the interruption that caused the damage to the project; it was the Persecutor’s immediate anger.

The second-degree version of the game is a little more complex. The Persecutor will defer decisions to the Victim. Either the Persecutor gets to save energy and have a pleasant experience when the Victim chooses what the Persecutor wanted all along, or they get to be angry any time the Victim’s choice is less than ideal. Partners often do this with dinner ideas. One partner will always ask the other where they want to eat or what they want for dinner, and the other will make a suggestion. If it is a suggestion the first partner is happy with, they get the benefit of getting what they want, without having the responsibility of thinking about it. And if the restaurant is bad or the dinner takes too long to cook, the first partner has the benefit of getting to be the aggrieved partner, since it was the second partner’s responsibility to pick well. 

This version of the game can also be played at work, where a manager might ask their subordinate for suggestions. The manager will put those suggestions into action and will either reap the praise if it works, or pass the blame to the others if it fails. This game is only really successfully played in that direction at work. If the subordinate tries to do this to the manager, the subordinate will find themselves out of work quickly.

The best way to address this game is to avoid interrupting the Persecutor in a first-degree game, and to throw the decisions back onto the Persecutor in the second-degree game. This can cause the Persecutor to become agitated, though, so it’s not a way to avoid conflict.

So this is my brief introduction to life games. Tune in soon for my write-ups of Berne’s other kinds of games: marital (or relationship) games, party games, sexual games, underworld games, consulting room games and good games.

It’s funny. I spent ages on my course, trying to think of a way to combine what I’m learning with my new discipline of providing therapy to children and young adults.

Then it occurred to me.

I could write about what I’m learning.

It seemed so obvious, I can’t believe it took me two years to come up with it. On the plus side, it does mean I will be able to trawl through my old notes on weeks that I don’t have lessons to do the most important thing you can do on today’s internet – generate content regularly.

But today I’m going to start with what I will be taught over the coming weekend: object relations. I’m actually going to cover several topics this weekend, but I want to break it down a little bit, for my understanding and hopefully for yours, too.

Object relations

Object relations is nothing to do with objectophilia (which I will not be linking to). iIt is a needlessly confusing name for a concept that I think is pretty straightforward.

It started as an offshoot of Freud’s psychoanalysis but was expanded by Heinz Kohut, Margaret Mahler and many, many others.

Essentially, inside us all we have our understanding of the world. This starts from before we are born because we start perceiving the world before we have been born*. We start forming ideas in our minds of who we are, what the people around us are like, and how that all plays out in the world around us. We attach qualities or adjectives to these ideas based on what we experience. So if we have loving, attentive parents, we attach words like “lovable” and “capable” to our idea of ourselves; words like “kind” and “nurturing” to our idea of both our parents as individuals and to the idea of parents in a more Platonic sense; and qualities like “supportive” and “equal” to relationships that we seek out. If we have abusive parents, we go the opposite way, attaching negative qualities to our ideas of ourselves, others and our relationships.

These ideas are what Kohut, et al, are referring to when they talk about ‘objects’. It’s sort of our mental picture of the people around us, as opposed to the real individual. It’s our mental picture of ourselves, as opposed to what we are objectively like. And it’s our expectations of our place in the world and how we relate to others, as opposed to the reality of how relationships can be.

In the literature, objects are referred to as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but I prefer to say that these ideas can be helpful or unhelpful. And each helpful idea can have an unhelpful side, and vice versa. Like a supportive parent can easily become an enabling one. Or how a harshly critical teacher might push certain students to achieve more than they thought they could. I am absolutely not endorsing this as a method of teaching, by the way, just pointing out that some things can come out of a bad situation, like mushrooms out of cow shit. More stuff grows in supportive, conducive environments, but some stuff can grow in shit.

So basically, we take these ideas, and we go out into the world and make situations that will corroborate or reinforce these ideas, because that’s where we’re most comfortable. We’ll stay in jobs where the boss yells at us if we have a view of ourselves as incompetent and we had parents who yelled at us for all of our mistakes, for example. Or we’ll seek out partners who are supportive and caring if we view ourselves as inherently deserving of love and if we view relationships as places of kindness and nurturing.

You can see, then, how these ideas that we form from the earliest of stages will kind of push us in certain directions. This, incidentally, is where Eric Berne’s ideas about life scripts dovetail in beautifully. And as I am on a course that is centred on the modality of transactional analysis, I feel I have to throw at least one of his concepts in.

So anyway, these ideas push us in certain directions. That is, unless we stop to unpick these ideas to figure out which ideas we find helpful, which we find unhelpful, and how to get rid of the unhelpful ones. And one great place to do that is in the therapy room!

In the therapy room

In the therapy room, a client can:

1. Look at their current patterns of thought and behaviour
2. See how those patterns relate to the ideas they formed in their earliest years
3. Encounter just enough resistance and challenge from the therapist to spur further thought (repeating throughout the process)
4. Decide what is helpful and what is unhelpful
5. Form ways to mitigate or even get rid of the unhelpful ideas
6. Strengthen the helpful ideas and even form new helpful ideas to replace unhelpful ones
7. Bring all this together so they can approach new life situations with new ideas

The therapist will provide the stability, consistency, permissions and modelling the client needs to confront the ideas they formed in the past. For me, this would ideally involve a bit of gratitude for the unhelpful ideas, even as the client works to reject or reform them. Ideas that are now unhelpful were once formed because – at the time and for that person – they seemed to fit with the world as they saw it. It gave them defences against a world that isn’t always as kind as it should be. Of course, children can’t or won’t articulate their ideas quite like that, so personally, I will just endeavour to hold that in mind. A child who needs my help to form new ideas about how adults treat them, for example, isn’t broken. They just formed ideas that helped them get this far, and I will treat those ideas with respect, even as I try to become an example of an adult who treats them with kindness and respect and help them form new ideas.

Object relations and me

Lately I have found myself struggling with the idea of the therapeutic relationship, where I am as important as the client in the therapy room, because of my own ideas. I had ideas about myself, others and relationships that essentially said:

• I have too many thoughts and ideas, and my personality is too much.
• At best, other people are not interested in what I have to say. At worst, it will make them angry.
• It is best, therefore, to keep most of my thoughts and most of my personality to myself. Other people’s needs should take precedence over mine, and the vast majority of a conversation should centre on the other person, if I want to have a good relationship with them.

I thought becoming a therapist would fit into this view of the world beautifully. After all, where is it better to stay silent and let people focus on themselves more than in the therapy room? But it turns out that doing that is massively unhelpful. Or, at least, it’s ineffective, according to object relations theory. In this theory, the therapist need to trigger transference for the client, where the client sees the therapist as an alternative to or reproduction of people in their primary relationships. Once the client sees me as a metaphor for these other people in their lives and sees how I respond differently to them, that client can begin to form new ideas. If I sit passively, doing nothing, I don’t trigger transference, and the process doesn’t even start.

Luckily I’ve been working on these ideas in my own therapy, so I am more able to integrate this theory myself and model more helpful ideas about self to my clients.

I hope this write-up has helped you. It has certainly helped me organise some of my ideas about ideas and objects and how they relate to object relations. Down below, I’ve included a couple of videos that I found helpful, if you’d like to learn more. And if I’ve got something wrong or if you have a different understanding, feel free to kindly share your ideas with me.

And until next time, keep well. Or don’t. I’m a trainee therapist, not a cop.

*This never means it’s all the mother’s fault, and I hate that implication. But it is true that in the womb we can hear voices and our mother’s heartbeat, and we receive her hormones, including hormones relating to stress or relaxation, through the placenta to help us prepare ourselves for the world we are entering. That whole world is not the individual mother’s fault.