Games People Play

Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.

The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours

Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with a minimum effort from the games they play with each other.

Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others

Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy.

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.

Salesman: ‘This one is better, but you can’t afford it.’ Housewife: ‘That’s the one I’ll take.

The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy.

In short, a diamond bracelet is a much more honest instrument of courtship than a perforated stomach. She has the option of throwing the jewelry back at him, but she cannot decently walk out on the ulcer. ("Look How Hard I've Been Trying")

The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.

The position is, then, that at any given moment each individual in a social aggregation will exhibit a Parental, Adult or Child ego state, and that individuals can shift with varying degrees of readiness from one ego state to another.

we shared a common interest in how the past effects people—some let it decide who they are, while others make it part of what they will do.

As this is written, a sow bug crawls across a desk. If he is turned over on his back, one can observe the tremendous struggle he goes through to get on his feet again. During this interval he has a ‘purpose’ in his life. When he succeeds, one can almost see the look of victory on his face. Off he goes, and one can imagine him telling his tale at the next meeting of sow bugs, looked up to by the younger generation as an insect who has made it. And

The essential and similar feature of both procedures and rituals is that they are stereotyped. Once the first transaction has been initiated, the whole series is predictable and follows a predetermined course to a foreordained conclusion unless special conditions arise.

Cowboy: ‘Come and see the barn.’ Visitor: ‘I’ve loved barns ever since I was a little girl.