The era of influencers and quick tips on the internet presents us with a curious paradox. On one hand, an abundance of information about well-being; on the other, a growing superficiality in approaching human complexities. In our training, we learned that a professional, whether an analyst or a journalist, is constituted through a rigorous process of validation, a sieve of competence that guarantees responsibility for what is communicated.

A clear professional contract indicates what was studied and which skills were developed to lead others to a place of development. However, what we often see on social media is the opposite: a parade of irresponsible two cents. This avalanche of shallow ideas challenges us to look at such paraphernalia with healthy skepticism and to seek a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that really govern our lives. A clinical example illustrates the urgency of this distinction.

We recently received an account of a couple in despair who sought an emergency session after a fight that took them to the brink of divorce. Yet earlier the same couple had been in the therapy room and ignored what they heard. The suspicion that emerges is that they are not seeking a solution but a new round of a game we dubbed We’ve Tried Everything. By getting more analysis that they do not weigh enough to change, both can finally say that nothing worked, and reinforce a script of failure. This phenomenon leads us directly to one of the most important concepts of transactional analysis: the Psychological Game.

‘Respect my story’

Understanding what a Psychological Game is is not a trivial exercise; it is a concept that, if taken to the consequences of its avoidance, can protect us and guide us toward more productive, healthy and, above all, peaceful relationships. As defined by Eric Berne, the Psychological Game is what we do to keep our life stories, our scripts, standing.

Consider the case of an analysand who, from time to time, feels her life is about to collapse. At those moments, she feels the need for someone to tell her exactly where she goes wrong. She seeks out new analysts, priests, leaders or friends to play the role of pointing out her flaws. Curiously, despite repeating this behavior for years, she does not change. Does it not seem logical that the wish was, in fact, to use this denunciation to transform? The analysis reveals that it was not.

Her discomfort is noticing that she cyclically resorts to the same expedients. Investigating her story shows she grew up in a home where her mother spent the day criticizing her and her father, on arriving, beat her. For a child with no benchmarks, that was the definition of human life. She existed for her mother when she was criticized and existed for her father when she was beaten. Years later, hungry to exist, she reproduces the childhood pattern, because that is what kept her alive.

This is the hard, factual information we need to deal with: keeping the system as it is, however painful, ensures survival. Life, in its most elementary form, is extremely resilient. It exists in the water of a battery and in the abyssal depths of the ocean, without light or heat. To maintain a pattern of suffering, we need an excellent reason, and the reason we find is that it has worked so far. It is as in José Saramago’s brilliant Blindness: the imprisoned people, after so many frustrated attempts to leave, give up. The devastating revelation is that they could have left long ago. Our family stories have a bit of that character.

We spend childhood and adolescence on alert and in rebellion to get rid of painful patterns and, after failing, we give up trying. What we do not realize is that those people, our parents in their past versions, are no longer here to humiliate, criticize or hit us. But we often remain stuck in the same place.

Deadly baseball

The dynamic of a psychological game can be understood through the drama triangle, which presents three main roles: Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer.

Imagine a work meeting. The intern arrives late and interrupts the group, saying: “Sorry, my bicycle tire went flat and I also had to help a woman who was mugged.” In this illustration he casts himself as a victim of circumstances. The game’s con, as Eric Berne describes it, is cast, ready to hook a gimmick in the other. The boss reacts, taking the role of Persecutor: “Listen here, the same excuse every time!” The game is set.

If it goes on this way, the relationship tends to deteriorate. But a striking feature of the game is the switching of roles. The Victim (the intern) can suddenly become Rescuer: “Easy, boss, no need to talk like that. I know you’re overloaded.” The boss then changes from Persecutor to Victim: “That’s right, it always falls to me. Sorry I talked to you like that.” Finally, the intern may move to the Persecutor position: “Everybody says you have this explosive way.” They keep alternating roles until the game is complete.

The formula of a game is always the same: a con hits a gimmick in the other, which generates a series of role switches, the switch, and culminates in the payoff. And what is the payoff of a game? Bad feelings. It is when we feel bad, frustrated, misunderstood, angry. Whoever plays, loses. Both (or all) players come away scratched, dirty, burned. And why do we play? Because, in getting the payoff, we feel what our parents taught us to feel. And, when we feel what they taught us to feel, we feel alive, and we confirm our position in the world.

Taking the temperature

Psychological Games have degrees of intensity. A first-degree game is socially acceptable, like teasing between friends at a bar. A second-degree game happens behind closed doors; no one else knows what goes on in the relationship, and psychological violence sets in. It is when the husband says “nobody in my family likes you,” and the wife has no way to check whether it is true or not, because she has already been isolated. A third-degree game, as Berne warns, ends in court, the sanitarium or the morgue. It is the friend who kills the friend, the murder over debt, the femicide.

Two games are particularly common and illuminating. The first is Why Don’t You—Yes, But. A person presents a problem, and others offer solutions (“Why don’t you do such-and-such?”), which are systematically rejected (“Yes, but that won’t solve it”). The goal is not to find a solution but to let the Child ego state frustrate and confuse the Parent figures offering help. The round ends when everyone tires and the person can confirm their feeling that their problem is unsolvable.

The other is If It Weren’t for You. A person afraid of water marries a jealous partner who forbids them from going to the pool. They then complain: “If it weren’t for you, I could swim in the pool.” They avoid their own fear (an external psychological advantage), blame the other and even gain social prestige as a martyr who endures a tyrannical husband (an external social advantage).

Recognizing these patterns is a kind of first step toward autonomy. In an era that encourages us to lose the habit of introspection (we have swapped secret diaries for public posts), we are invited to an exercise in honesty.

1. What did our parents tell us when we started something new?
2. And when we failed, what did they tell us?
3. What feelings emerge when we remember them, and in what current situations do those same feelings appear?

The answers to these questions can reveal, at least partly, the matrix of the games we insist on playing. The proposal of transactional analysis is to give us the resources to finally get off the board. It is an invitation to stop being people with an emotional age of eight in an adult body, and to take responsibility for creating relationships of genuine intimacy.

Watch

In this excerpt from a workshop (in Portuguese), I explain how these dynamics show up. The recording is a documentary record of a meeting, part of the A.dot Parent Preparation program (Preparação de Pais A.dot). Audio quality was prioritized to preserve the clarity of the presentation, even though the image has the limitations of a live recording.