As Christmas approaches, my thoughts turn to a legendary gentleman with a white beard, famous for his concern with children’s good or bad behaviour, and for his reindeer. I’m talking about Sigmund Freud. (I was lying about the reindeer.) The rest of the time, we can tell ourselves that Freud’s theories were debunked decades ago, but during family dramas over Christmas dinner, or the other arguments that flare when relatives reunite, it’s easier to see how human relations might be a matter of long-suppressed wounds, unconscious resentments and similar forces beyond reason’s grasp. Fifty years ago this year, a maverick Freudian from Canada, Eric Berne, published his own twist on that idea. Games People Play became the self-help sensation of the 60s, and it’s not hard to see why: Berne rips the lid off our family fights, failing marriages and the rest. These aren’t our own unique tribulations, he argues. Instead, they’re just variations on a small number of predictable “games” we all unwittingly play. This week, why not try to catch yourself in the act?
Berne’s approach, “transactional analysis”, holds that we’re always playing one of three roles: parent, child or adult. Unsurprisingly, the ideal way for two grown-ups to interact is adult-to-adult. But that happens rarely. Instead, a boss unconsciously acts like a parent to her underlings, who respond like children, testing her boundaries and throwing fits. Or one spouse will implicitly demand to be parented by the other, only to feel fury when that’s what transpires. Berne’s games have names such as See What You Made Me Do and Look How Hard I’m Trying – and their point, he explains, isn’t their overt content but their covert payoffs. In Why Don’t You, Yes But, person A is facing a dilemma, but finds a reason to reject every suggestion person B makes. When B finally gives up, A is victorious, though the dilemma remains unsolved. In Now I’ve Got You, You Son Of A Bitch, person A locks on to some tiny injustice, then refuses to move on until person B concedes defeat – all because A yearns to assert parental dominance. “Ever since early childhood,” Berne writes of one such player, obsessed with a trivial error in a plumber’s bill, “he had looked for similar injustices, received them with delight, and exploited them with the same vigour.” Remind you of anyone? I bet it does.
Two startling truths emerge. The first is that those shouting matches and passive-aggressive standoffs, which seem so oppositional, can secretly be conspiracies: both people relish a fight, because it lets them reinforce their self-image as the wronged party. The second is Berne’s insistence that game-playing isn’t always bad. To live constantly in the pure, unfiltered intimacy of adult-to-adult relations, he implies, would be too intense to bear. “The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” he writes – and games, in a profound sense, are a tolerable way to pass the time. I wouldn’t say I’m recommending that after dinner on the 25th, you pick a petty fight with a sibling, just for something to do. But I’ll understand if you do. I probably will.
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oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
