The key ideas

Games People Play

Eric Berne, 1964

Why do we keep finding ourselves in conversations that end badly? Psychiatrist Eric Berne described them as “games” with a hidden aim and a predictable ending. A classic about three ego states, hidden messages, and finding a way out of the cycle.

Who it is for

For anyone who notices the same arguments and conversations going around in circles and wants to understand what is happening in them.

Everyone carries their parents within them.

What the book is about

Someone asks for advice. You suggest one option, then a second and a third. To each, they reply, “Yes, but…” Ten minutes later, both of you are tired and the problem remains. Oddly, the conversation may have had another aim, and that aim has been achieved.

Eric Berne, an American psychiatrist, noticed that many such conversations followed the same script and ended in the same unpleasant way. He called them games. Games People Play appeared in 1964 and became a bestseller.

An important qualification from the start: this is a psychotherapist’s model, developed through his practice, rather than the result of experiments. The book does not diagnose people. It offers a language for noticing recurring traps in communication, especially your own.

What follows is one chain of ideas from Berne’s book: who is speaking → ulterior transaction → repetition → psychological payoff → why the game persists → autonomy.

Idea 1. Three ego states

Who actually takes part in a conversation? In Berne’s model, it is not simply a person but one of their ego states, stable systems of feelings and related behavior. Everyone has three.

The Parent resembles how significant adults from childhood thought, felt, and behaved: rules, judgments, care, prohibitions. The Adult assesses reality here and now and weighs probabilities. The Child consists of ways of feeling and reacting preserved from childhood: curiosity, hurt, joy, adaptation.

These are neither roles nor ages. Berne says all three are necessary. Difficulties begin when a state appears in the wrong situation and the person does not notice.

A colleague is late for a meeting. “How many times? You’re always doing this!” sounds like the Parent’s voice. “Let’s move the start ten minutes later” sounds like the Adult.

The first link in the chain: because there is more than one state, you can ask not only what a remark says but which state it comes from. That is how a conversation can operate on two levels at once.

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About the author

Eric Berne (1910–1970) was an American psychiatrist born in Montreal. He founded transactional analysis, an approach in psychotherapy that describes communication through the Parent, Adult, and Child states.

All books by this author: Eric Berne

Terms from the book

  • Autonomy
  • stroke
  • Ego states: In Berne’s model, three stable systems of feelings and related behavior: Parent, Adult, and Child. The author’s framework, not a scientific diagnosis.
  • Transaction: Berne’s term for a unit of communication: one person’s remark and another’s response. Ego states communicate through transactions.
  • Ulterior transaction: For Berne, an exchange containing an implied message alongside the overt one. Repeated ulterior transactions form games.
  • Crossed transaction: For Berne, a response from an ego state other than the one addressed. Such a reply often derails a conversation.
  • Payoff: In Berne’s model, the feeling or benefit a game predictably produces at the hidden level.

All terms

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