Tony White

Game theory

Question:
Can one be an alcoholic and not play the game of alcoholic?

Answer:
In psychological game theory there are a number of requirements before one can say that a game has been played. One is that it takes two (at least) to play. Indeed in the game of alcoholic there are 5 players. So if one is marooned on a desert island with unlimited booze one cannot play the game of alcoholic, because it takes at least two people to play a game. We have the perfect cure for alcoholism! Just place the alcoholic on a desert island and they can never again play the game of alcoholic.



So games as used in Transactional Analysis are about discombobulated human communication. One cannot play a game by yourself. Yes one can certainly make self feel bad with negative thinking and so forth but that is not a game. Games are about human communication.

I have always been interested in the evolution of the WWW. I am glad that I was there at the beginning when in about the late 1980s there was an explosion of personal computer users around the world. It was very much like the wild west then. Very few ‘law men’ around and people had to by and large fend for themselves. It was great. In 20 years they will have the WWW much more regulated and the wild west days of the internet will be lost forever. By then the regulators will be looking after us and making sure we are all safe.

Hello, I can do that myself!!



In the early days days if you remember there was very little spam. I was rarely asked if I wanted my penis enlarged or if someone from the Congolese Republic with an unpronounceable name wanted to give me $20 million. Slowly but surely the spam came and there was a while there when you would open up your email and you would spend the first 15 minutes just deleting the spam. There would be 20 spam to 1 proper email. But then the filters got better and the spam significantly reduced.

The internet or the WWW of course is all about human communication and over time what happened to it? It got discombobulated with spam. It got bogged down in the irrelevant and confusing. It became ‘gamey’.

Us humans are so good at bringing spam into our discussions with others and thus we end up with psychological games. Human communication is most often quite simple.

Missus: Do you love me?

Hubby: Yes I love you my darling.

Simple? I think so and imagine if that happened 10 times a day to every one in the world how the world would be different to day.



Whilst it is simple it is by no means easy. In fact it is very difficult and people will go to great lengths to avoid the simple transaction just described. Why? Because if you do do such a transaction then that means all the issues of trust, vulnerability, dependence, power, attachment, closeness, feelings and so on endlessly come up. So what happens?

Missus: Do you love me?

Hubby: What is love my darling?

SPAM!! The communication just got discombobulated. A game has just begun. I suppose this is the natural human condition and thus there will always be spam on the internet and spam between a husband and wife.

But it does have its appeal to just let go of it all and just be straight with others. Perhaps this is as good as it gets for us humans.



After discussing all the games people play, in the very last sentence in Eric Berne’s book, “Games people play” he states:

“This may mean that there is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it”.

Whilst from my heart I clearly reject this, from my head I tend to agree with it.

Graffiti