[keltic63]

A friend of mine works in domestic violence (at a women's shelter.) To help me with some relationship problems, she told me about a theory of behavior called. Transactional Analysis

Originally Posted by the website

Transactional Analysis became a nation-wide fad in the 1960's due to the best selling success of Eric Berne's book, Games People Play. In this book he assigned engaging names (“Now I’ve got you,” “Kick me,” “I only trying to help.”) for different games. For instance when Jane plays "Why Don' You, Yes But" she asks advice from another but rejects every suggestion so that everyone ends up exasperated. It is the type of conversation which occurs over and over again, especially in therapy groups. It is devious and covert: on the social level, it appears to be a conversation between a person in the Adult ego state asking a question from one or more people who are also in their Adult ego states. What makes it a game is that none of the suggestions are really accepted. The reason for that is that, at the psychological and much more meaningful level, what is really going on is that Jane may need advise but needs strokes even more. Because these strokes are being given in a roundabout way they are not as satisfying as direct strokes would be. This is why the game ends on a note of depressed frustration.

The game "why don't you, yes but" is a frustrating game. All of the advice given is rejected by the person who is asking for help. When the others who have been drawn into the game express their frustration, the player has the "reward" of having his/her existential position reinforced ("nothing ever works out for me. even people who should be able to help are disgusted with me!")

There are other games, and sometimes the games are switched in mid-game. for instance, there's a game called "now I got you, you sob!" entrapment. and one called "kick me"

I can see how keeping these concepts in your mind when dealing with people on a daily basis would be very helpful. If nothing else, when someone is looking for "strokes" you could decide if they were looking for healthy or unhealthy strokes, and choose whether to respond to the behavior.


I was hoping the discussion would help me get the concepts in my head a little more clearly. Anyone ever do any work with this stuff?