ERIC BERNE The best of Games People Play
Enjoy your gotcha moments and lots of free stuff
When your Adult, Parent, and Children work well together, changing the balance among them to meet the needs of the moment, you have a good life. If one becomes too dominant too much of the time, you close off possibilities for love, joy and adventure. You’ll also explore the games you play, your stamp collection, and the fairy tales that shape your life.
1. Your Adult, Parent, and Children--best they work well together
2. The games you play--enjoy your gotcha moments
3. The joys of stamp collecting--lots and lots of free stuff
4. Living Fairy tales--you can be Cinderella or The Frog Prince
5. At the end of the day
1 YOUR ADULT, PARENT, AND CHILDREN
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight,
Even while the dust moves,
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage.
Quick now, here, now, always.
Ridiculous the waste sad time,
Stretching before and after.
T. S. Eliot
Start with your Natural Child, the part that is adventurous, happy and free. It will be hard for your Natural Child to come out and play if your Adult, Parent or Unnatural Children get in the way.
Adult is your words-data-logic, computer brain. It has an enormous amount of information about the world, knowledge essential for your survival. But your Adult is usually aware of only superficial aspects of the natural world. For instance your Adult glances at a tree, quickly classifies it as a tree, using 2 or 3 defining characteristics, and pays no further attention to it. To you the real tree now exists only as a word.
Our schools and much of our culture reward that kind of shift, changing Reality into words, and you become a proficient word pusher who hasn’t felt the bark of a tree in years. Your Adult will want good, logical reasons why you should spend time walking down the street acting like a kid.
Your Parent may also give you plenty of trouble. It’s your authoritarian, judgmental part that expects you to measure up. Taking a silly walk in the park when there’s work to be done is not measuring up. You should be finishing that report, cleaning your bedroom, and reading a good book instead of acting weird and attracting the attention of strangers. What good is that going to do anybody?
Your Parent also only notices surface aspects of Reality. “That grass needs cutting!” “That sidewalk is filthy!” “Those clothes make her look fat!” “Why are you wasting your time on a stupid walk?”
To help reassure your Adult and Parent, tell them the book you are reading told you to, and it’s written by a PhD psychologist who knows what he’s talking about.
Then there are your Unnatural Children, shaped and scrambled when you were a tiny tyke playing in the sandbox. We all grew up in environments that were both toxic and nourishing. Unnatural Children are created by under- or over-controlling parents, dangerous neighborhood, serious illness, lousy schools, etc.
It never occurs to a beaten down Unnatural Child that puddles are to splash, strange doors are to open, weird clothes are to wear, and frogs are to sleep with. A rebellious Unnatural Child does them all.
Everybody has beaten down and rebellious Unnatural Children because nobody grows up in a perfect environment, or has perfect genes. Your beaten down Unnatural Child will be too scared to go on that walk. Your rebellious Unnatural Child will tell me to go jump in a cold lake.
Enjoy your gotcha moments and lots of free stuff
When your Adult, Parent, and Children work well together, changing the balance among them to meet the needs of the moment, you have a good life. If one becomes too dominant too much of the time, you close off possibilities for love, joy and adventure. You’ll also explore the games you play, your stamp collection, and the fairy tales that shape your life.
1. Your Adult, Parent, and Children--best they work well together
2. The games you play--enjoy your gotcha moments
3. The joys of stamp collecting--lots and lots of free stuff
4. Living Fairy tales--you can be Cinderella or The Frog Prince
5. At the end of the day
1 YOUR ADULT, PARENT, AND CHILDREN
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight,
Even while the dust moves,
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage.
Quick now, here, now, always.
Ridiculous the waste sad time,
Stretching before and after.
T. S. Eliot
Start with your Natural Child, the part that is adventurous, happy and free. It will be hard for your Natural Child to come out and play if your Adult, Parent or Unnatural Children get in the way.
Adult is your words-data-logic, computer brain. It has an enormous amount of information about the world, knowledge essential for your survival. But your Adult is usually aware of only superficial aspects of the natural world. For instance your Adult glances at a tree, quickly classifies it as a tree, using 2 or 3 defining characteristics, and pays no further attention to it. To you the real tree now exists only as a word.
Our schools and much of our culture reward that kind of shift, changing Reality into words, and you become a proficient word pusher who hasn’t felt the bark of a tree in years. Your Adult will want good, logical reasons why you should spend time walking down the street acting like a kid.
Your Parent may also give you plenty of trouble. It’s your authoritarian, judgmental part that expects you to measure up. Taking a silly walk in the park when there’s work to be done is not measuring up. You should be finishing that report, cleaning your bedroom, and reading a good book instead of acting weird and attracting the attention of strangers. What good is that going to do anybody?
Your Parent also only notices surface aspects of Reality. “That grass needs cutting!” “That sidewalk is filthy!” “Those clothes make her look fat!” “Why are you wasting your time on a stupid walk?”
To help reassure your Adult and Parent, tell them the book you are reading told you to, and it’s written by a PhD psychologist who knows what he’s talking about.
Then there are your Unnatural Children, shaped and scrambled when you were a tiny tyke playing in the sandbox. We all grew up in environments that were both toxic and nourishing. Unnatural Children are created by under- or over-controlling parents, dangerous neighborhood, serious illness, lousy schools, etc.
It never occurs to a beaten down Unnatural Child that puddles are to splash, strange doors are to open, weird clothes are to wear, and frogs are to sleep with. A rebellious Unnatural Child does them all.
Everybody has beaten down and rebellious Unnatural Children because nobody grows up in a perfect environment, or has perfect genes. Your beaten down Unnatural Child will be too scared to go on that walk. Your rebellious Unnatural Child will tell me to go jump in a cold lake.
