Book SummaryGames People Play, by Eric Berne

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Games People Play

If you’ve ever felt the déjà vu of a repeating conflict in a close relationship, or known someone who seems to manufacture their own drama, you’ve probably experienced the “games” that people play.

In this 1964 psychology classic, Dr. Eric Berne sheds light on our unconscious social habits. Many such interactions are healthy and harmless, while others—our “games”—are often destructive to us and our relationships. Fortunately, we can grow beyond our games into a healthier, more fulfilling way of relating.

Games People Play is Berne’s analysis of social interaction. Berne was an MD and psychiatrist who broke off from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition after 15 years of training to pursue his own theory of social psychology.

He wrote Games People Play for clinicians, so to make the ideas more accessible, we’ve minimized the technical jargon and focused on the essence. We'll move from an overview of Transactional Analysis (T.A.)—Berne’s system—through to games, and conclude with his suggestions for growing past your games.

A Crash Course in Transactional Analysis

Berne studied social interaction, usually looking at close relationships. He felt that people's social habits hinted at their underlying psychological issues. These habits imply our stances, deeply rooted beliefs that determine how we relate to others. Uncovering these unconscious stances, and the games they fuel, is how Berne (who died in 1970) helped his patients to grow.

(Shortform note: Despite gaining mainstream popularity, Berne struggled to gain acceptance from the psychoanalytic community. Some consider T.A. a pseudoscience, since his taxonomy of games references categories he theorized more than empirical evidence.)

Let’s look first at the key concepts Berne created to explain social interaction. We’ll discuss his account of its origins in infancy, his model of personality, and how to use T.A. to analyze interactions.

We All Need to Be Seen and Heard

Transactional Analysis begins with the idea that humans need consistent recognition from one another. Berne called this “stroking,” and it stems from the fact that infants will die without literal stroking. By adulthood, though, we’ve learned to make do with more symbolic contact, or recognition.

Our need for recognition is analogous to hunger—if you don’t “feed” it, your physical, mental, and emotional health will decline. Berne cites one study showing that prisoners in solitary confinement develop psychoses and a second that used sensory deprivation to induce temporary psychosis in a lab setting. In other words, lack of social contact leads to psychological starvation.

In order to stave off that starvation, Berne argues, we unconsciously build our days around social interaction. By doing this we help each other gain the recognition we need to stay healthy.

(Shortform note: While we need social recognition to remain healthy, Berne seems to say that all social interaction happens because we need strokes. But this perspective reduces subjective experience to mere biological drives. Applying Berne’s logic to regular hunger, he might say that we eat because we’d die otherwise. But it’s unlikely this is the widespread rationale for eating—and equally incomplete to suggest that we interact solely because we need to survive.)

Exchanges, Sequences, and Ego States

Berne then argues that we can break social interaction down into discrete chunks, like the bars of a piece of sheet music. One chunk is one exchange, a back-and-forth between two individuals.

When you greet your friend—“Hey there! / G’morning!”—that’s one exchange. If you keep chatting, each back-and-forth is another exchange. This is our primary way of giving social recognition.

(Shortform note: Berne doesn’t provide any concrete evidence for the existence of exchanges (he terms them “transactions''). With this in mind, it’s more useful to think of T.A. as a set of mental models than verified truth. Concepts like “strokes'' and “transactions” help to make sense of social interaction, even if they aren’t “real” per se. They make up a mental framework, a set of tools, similar to the way concepts like perspective, line, and composition help you to interpret drawings and paintings.)

You and your friend's exchanges change with your states of mind. Berne proposed that three states of mind, or "ego states," compose the human personality: adult, child, and parent.

• The adult is your rational self. It comes online to handle complex decision-making and other significant calculations and also handles mature adult behavior.
• The child is the source of spontaneous emotions, developing out of early childhood experiences. It stores and plays back significant emotional associations: If you were bullied as a kid, your response to that intense emotional experience is deeply embedded in your personality.
• The parent is all about value judgments and tradition. Everything you inherit from your family about the right and wrong ways to act, think, and feel becomes your parent state—and you’ll pass it on too.

(Shortform note: Berne’s “ego states'' have some parallels with Freud’s model of the psyche. Roughly, the child maps to the Id (impulses and unconscious energies), the adult maps to the Ego (rational calculation and decision-making), and the parent maps to the Superego (handling moral judgment and values). But they also differ—for example, Berne doesn’t attribute all motivation to the libido, Freud’s idea of a psycho-sexual energy that supposedly drives all behavior.)

You’ve probably made some silly mistake before and had a parent or partner reprimand you....

Games People Play Summary Shortform Introduction

If you’ve ever felt caught in a frustratingly habitual argument with your significant other, or known someone who seems to always attract drama, you’ve probably experienced one of the “games” that people play.

In this classic of popular psychology, Dr. Eric Berne sheds light on our unconscious social habits. Many of these interactions are healthy and harmless, while others—our “games”—are often unhealthy, even destructive, to us and our relationships. In Games People Play, Berne offers a lens through which to understand these patterns, and he lays out the steps toward a healthier way of living.

About the Author

Eric Berne was a Canadian-born psychiatrist and author, prominent in the late 1950s and 1960s for creating Transactional Analysis, a new branch of psychiatry. Berne broke from the established approach of the time by focusing on social behavior, a pivot away from individually focused psychoanalysis.

Berne wrote Games People Play in 1964 to bring his approach to the public. It was a surprise hit, and it spent over two years on The New York Times bestseller list.

Soon after its release, Berne and his colleagues founded the International Transactional...

Games People Play Summary Part 1: Introduction to Transactional Analysis

Games People Play is about the many ways that we habitually relate to one another. It describes Transactional Analysis (T.A.), Dr. Eric Berne’s approach to understanding social interaction, and it shows how T.A. makes sense of everything from our ritual greetings to our unconscious social games.

In pioneering T.A., Berne broke from the established psychoanalytic methods of the time to pursue a theory of social psychology. He held an MD from McGill University, interned at Yale University School of Medicine, and spent over 15 years in psychiatric training.

Berne’s theory is a lens through which to look at our social habits. Among other things, it reveals the nature of the unhealthy patterns we enact in our relationships and lives. With the “games” framing, we can learn to identify and move beyond these destructive habits. We can take meaningful steps toward lives of greater intimacy and maturity.

Games People Play was Berne’s breakaway 1964 bestseller, popular despite having been written mainly for other clinicians. It spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and he followed it up with _[What Do You Say After You Say...

Games People Play Summary Part 2: Social Interactions Are Composed of Transactions and Sequences

Now that we've covered the basics, we can discuss “transactions,” Berne’s “basic unit” of social interaction. This section integrates the ideas covered so far: We gain social recognition through transactions, and we can analyze transactions by looking at the ego states that are involved.

We'll define transactions and cover the main types, then show how Berne looked at social interactions as sequences of transactions.

An Exchange Is One Segment of an Interaction

For Berne, a "transaction" is the basic unit of social interaction. Think of it as one back-and-forth between individuals: ”So, how about that weather? / Yup, sure is raining.” From here on, we'll use exchange to refer to a “transaction” because it’s more descriptive.

Berne observes that when two people are together in a social setting, one will inevitably engage the other, and the second will respond. For example, someone sitting next to you in the optometrist's waiting room says, "Hello, what are you here for?" and you respond, "Hi, just my yearly check-up. How about you?" This is one exchange.

(Shortform note: Berne receives criticism similar to that of Freud: that many of his ideas aren’t really...

Shortform Exercise: Notice Exchanges in Your Interactions

Practice seeing social interaction through Berne’s model of exchanges.

Think back to a recent argument you’ve had with someone close to you. Using the idea of exchanges, try to identify where the disrupted exchange happened, and how it derailed communication.

Games People Play Summary Part 3: Operations, Rituals, and Small Talk—Simple Forms of Interaction

So far, we’ve explained Berne’s model of social exchange, showing how he describes interactions in terms of exchanges, strokes, and ego states. In this chapter, we’ll apply these ideas to analyze Berne’s three forms of social interaction—procedures, rituals, and pastimes. Procedures, which we’ll call operations, are the simplest interaction type, while rituals and pastimes (which we’ll call small talk) are more complex.

To fully understand these interactions, we’ll start with Berne’s notion of “programming.” In short, a given interaction follows a “script.” Whether you’re comparing jobs, arguing with your kids, or attending a formal religious ceremony, that interaction unfolds according to a predetermined pattern, which Berne calls a script.

Then we'll explore operations, rituals, and small talk, each of which has a different source of programming. Each of these forms of social interaction (small talk, parties, coworking, and so on) is like a genre in music. Just as there is rock, hip-hop, and country, there are procedures, rituals, pastimes, and games: distinct varieties with distinct characteristics. The specific scripts you inherit determine the procedures,...

Shortform Exercise: How Do You Use Small Talk?

Get to know the social patterns you inhabit, according to Transactional Analysis.

Think back to a recent social event you attended, and consider the small talk you may have engaged in. Since Berne's examples are a bit dated, try to think of the modern versions and name them below.

Games People Play Summary Part 4.1: Diving Deep Into Games

Operations, rituals, and small talk are all simpler forms of social interaction. By analyzing them, we’ve seen how an interaction is a sequence of exchanges, and how our beliefs shape the behaviors we enact. Now that we’ve covered these simpler interactions, we can move on to games. Games are more complex but, because we’ve explained small talk, we only need to add a bit more detail: specifically, about the deceptive nature of games.

Part 4.1 explains what games are and why they matter to each of us. We’ll then explore a reworked catalog of games to update Berne’s “thesaurus” with contemporary examples.

In Part 4.2, we’ll discuss the basic pattern that games follow and the purposes they serve in our lives. Finally, Part 4.3 will explain how to use Berne’s recommended strategies for identifying and overcoming your own unhealthy games.

Defining Games

Games as Natural Phenomena

A game is a set, stereotypical pattern of interaction, Berne says. Think of it as an “act” that someone puts on—for example, a husband who regularly explodes, apologizes, then acts like it never happened. This pattern can occur across thousands of households, and so can any other...

Games People Play Summary Part 4.2: How Games Work

Now that we’ve defined games and looked at Berne’s categories, let’s clarify how they work. To clear up Berne’s clinical jargon, we’ve distilled out the basic pattern that games follow. Below we’ll explore their main characteristics.

You Play a Game From a “Position”

As we covered in our section on pastimes, a “position” is an unconscious, deeply held belief. If you hold the belief that “life is basically pointless,” you’ll behave in ways that reflect that belief, according to Berne. (Again, we’ll call these stances.)

You play any game in accord with such an underlying belief. It gives rise to a hidden motive, and that causes you to seek situations that reinforce the belief.

For example, the above belief might yield a game where Player A is always apathetic or depressed. A family member or friend tries to cheer him up, but Player A cynically refuses—“Don’t bother trying; are you even happy yourself?” His stagnant energy makes those around him less cheerful, “proving” to himself that “life is pointless, no one is happy anyway.”

(Shortform note: Dysfunctional relationship habits don’t necessarily come from just beliefs. For example, Mr. Vesuvius’ [angry outbursts...

Games People Play Summary Part 4.3: How to Identify and Overcome Unhealthy Games

Now that we’ve explored the what, why, and how of games, let’s look at how T.A. can help you to identify and overcome them. Berne wrote mainly for clinicians, so this section of the book is highly analytical. We’ve extracted the principles and reframed them to be useful for your own personal growth efforts.

We’ll first look at where games come from, then at how to identify them. Once you can spot games, we’ll illustrate Berne’s approach to growing beyond them.

Games Originate in Childhood

There’s limited evidence for the origin of games, Berne says. However, he argues that games are passed down from parents to their children. This is usually unconscious. Most parents consciously teach operations, rituals, and small talk (for example, table manners), but children naturally absorb games, whether they know it or not.

According to Berne, a family’s games are the emotional environment they create. In other words, there are “currents” or patterns of emotion that repeat in a given household. These are the emotions of their games—think of Mr. Vesuvius, or similar narcissistic parental archetypes.

A child then picks up on how her family expresses emotions. She learns to...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on the Games You May Play

Identify a game you’ve played (or experienced secondhand) and figure out how to overcome it.

Think back to a significant relationship in your life, like with a parent or past romantic partner. With the basic pattern in mind, can you recognize any games that you and the other played?

Games People Play Summary Part 5: Learn to Grow Past Your Games

With our discussion of games complete, it’s time to look at what lies beyond games.

In the final part of this guide, we’ll discuss the five brief chapters, which conclude Berne’s work. Each is relatively short, so we’ve opted to synthesize the main thrust of them into one part.

Games People Play focuses on the games, but Berne also gestures beyond them. Games are unhealthy and, Berne says, a shallow substitute for deeper human connection. To transcend them, we must learn to show up with deep presence, express ourselves authentically, and embrace sincere relationships. Below, we’ll look at each of these in turn.

After Games Comes Self-Sovereignty

Berne calls this advanced stage of personal development “autonomy,” and we’ll refer to it as self-sovereignty. It’s composed of three capacities, which together enable you to grow past game-playing. Beyond that compulsive drive, we can develop healthier connections with our emotions, understand and control our behavior, and live more fully.

Autonomy in Psychology and Philosophy

Berne isn’t the first person to emphasize the importance of autonomy—[it’s been an important concept for many thinkers throughout...

Shortform Exercise: Consider Your Level of Self-Sovereignty

Reflect on your progress toward game-free living.

Berne argues that fuller human experience depends on breaking out of our inherited conditioning and acting for ourselves. In what ways have you been conditioned by your parents and culture?