Games People Play

Antithesis
. As is well known, "Alcoholic" is usually played hard and is difficult to give up. In one 
case a female alcoholic in a therapy group participated very little until she thought she knew 
enough about the other members to go ahead with her game. She then asked them to tell her what 
they thought of her. Since she had behaved pleasantly enough, various members said nice things 
about her, but she protested: "That's not what I want. I want to know what you really think." She 
made it clear that she was seeking derogatory comments. The other women refused to persecute her, 
whereupon she went home and told her husband that if she took another drink, he must either 
divorce her or send her to a hospital. He promised to do this, and that evening she became 
intoxicated and he sent her to a sanitarium. Here the other members refused to play the persecutory 
roles White assigned to them; she was unable to tolerate this antithetical behavior, in spite of 
everyone's efforts to reinforce whatever insight she had already obtained. At home she found 
someone who was willing to play the role she demanded. 
In other cases, however, it appears possible to prepare the patient sufficiently so that the game can 
be given up, and to attempt a true social cure in which the therapist declines to play either 
Persecutor or Rescuer. It is equally untherapeutic for him to play the role of Patsy by allowing the 
patient to forego his financial and punctuality obligations. The correct therapeutic procedure from a 
transactional point of view is, after careful preliminary groundwork, to take an Adult contractual 
position and refuse to play any of the roles, hoping that the patient will be able to tolerate not only 
abstinence from drinking but also from playing his game. If he cannot, he is best referred to a 
Rescuer. 
Antithesis is particularly difficult, because the heavy drinker is highly regarded in most Western 
countries as a desirable object for censure, concern or generosity, and someone who refuses to play 
any of these roles tends to arouse public indignation. A rational approach may be even more 
alarming to the Rescuers than to the Alcoholic, sometimes with unfortunate consequences to the 
therapy. In one clinical situation a group of workers were seriously interested in the game 
"Alcoholic" and were attempting to effect real cures by breaking up the game rather than merely 
rescuing the patients. As soon as this became apparent, they were frozen out by the lay committee 
which was backing the clinic, and none of them was ever again called on to assist in treating these 
patients.