Games People Play

Antithesis
. This is simple for Mrs. White. All she has to do is change her mind, take her husband 
by the arm, smile and go along with him (a shift from Child to Adult ego state). It is more difficult 
for Mr. White, since she now has die initiative; but if he reviews die whole situation, he may be 
39

---

able to coax her into going along with him, either as a sulky Child who has been placated or, better, 
as an Adult. 
"Comer" is found in a somewhat different form as a family game involving the children, where it 
resembles the "double-bind" described by Bateson and his associates.1 Here the child is cornered, 
so that whatever he does is wrong. According to the Bateson school, this may be an important 
etiological factor in schizophrenia. In the present language, then, schizophrenia may be a child's 
antithesis to "Corner." Experience in treating adult schizophrenics with game analysis bears this 
out—that is, if the family game of "Comer" is analyzed to demonstrate that the schizophrenic 
behavior was and is specifically undertaken to counter this game, partial or total remission occurs 
in a properly prepared patient. 
An everyday form of "Corner" which is played by the whole family and is most likely to affect the 
character development of the younger children occurs with meddlesome "Parental" parents. The 
little boy or girl is urged to be more helpful around the house, but when he is, the parents find fault 
with what he does—a homely example of "damned if you do and damned if you don't." This 
"double-bind" may be called the Dilemma Type of "Corner." 
"Corner" is sometimes found as an etiological factor in asthmatic children. 
Little girl: "Mommy, do you love me?" Mother: "What is love?" 
This answer leaves the child with no direct recourse. She wants to talk about mother, and mother 
switches the subject to philosophy, which the little girl is not equipped to handle. She begins to 
breathe hard, mother is irritated, asthma sets in, mother apologizes and the "Asthma Game" now 
runs its course. This "Asthma" type of "Corner" remains to be studied further. 
An elegant variant, which may be called the "Russell-Whitehead Type" of "Corner," sometimes 
occurs in therapy groups. 
Black: "Well, anyway, when we're silent nobody is playing games." 
White: "Silence itself may be a game." 
Red: "Nobody was playing games today." 
White: "But not playing games may itself be a game 
The therapeutic antithesis is equally elegant. Logical paradoxes are forbidden. When White is 
deprived of this maneuver, his underlying anxieties come quickly to the fore. Closely allied to 
"Corner" on the one hand, and to "Threadbare" on the other, is the marital game of "Lunch Bag." 
The husband, who can well afford to have lunch at a good restaurant, nevertheless makes himself a 
few sandwiches every morning, which he takes to the office in a paper bag. In this way he uses up 
crusts of bread, leftovers from dinner and paper bags which his wife saves for him. This gives him 
complete control over the family finances, for what wife would dare buy herself a mink stole in die 
face of such self-sacrifice? The husband reaps numerous other advantages, such as die privilege of 
eating lunch by himself and of catching up on his work during lunch hour. In many ways this is a 
constructive game which Benjamin Franklin would have approved of, since it encourages the 
virtues of thrift, hard work and punctuality.