Games People Play

Thesis
: Now I've got you, you son of a bitch. Aim: Vindication. 
Roles
: Proper Wife, Inconsiderate Husband. Dynamics: Penis envy. 
Examples
: (1) Thank you for the mud pie, you dirty little boy. (2) Provocative, frigid wife. Social 
Paradigm
: Parent-Child. 
Parent: "I give you permission to make me a mud pie (kiss me)-" 
Child: "I'd love to." Parent: "Now see how dirty you are." Psychological Paradigm: Child-Parent. 
Child: "See if you can seduce me." Parent: 'I’ll try, if you stop me." Child: "See, it was you who 
started it" Moves: (1) Seduction-Response. (2) Rejection-Resignation. (3) Provocation-Response. 
(4) Rejection-Uproar. 
Advantages
: (1) Internal Psychological—freedom from guilt for sadistic fantasies. (2) External 
Psychological— avoids feared exhibition and penetration. (3) Internal Social—"Uproar." (4) 
External Social—What do you do with dirty little boys (husbands)? (5) Biological—inhibited sex 
play and belligerent exchanges. (6) Existential—I am pure. 
4 HARRIED 
Thesis
. This is a game played by the harried housewife. Her situation requires that she be proficient 
in ten or twelve different occupations; or, stated otherwise, that she fill gracefully ten or twelve 
different roles. From time to time semi-facetious lists of these occupations or roles appear in the 
Sunday supplements: mistress, mother, nurse, housemaid, etc. Since these roles are usually 
conflicting and fatiguing, their imposition gives rise in the course of years to the condition 
symbolically known as "Housewife's Knee" (since the knee is used for rocking, scrubbing, lifting, 
driving and so forth), whose symptoms are succinctly summarized in the complaint: "I'm tired." 
Now, if the housewife is able to set her own pace and find enough satisfaction in loving her 
husband and children, she will not merely serve but enjoy her twenty-five years, and see the 
youngest child off to college with a pang of loneliness. But if on die one hand she is driven by her 
inner Parent and called to account by the critical husband she has chosen for that purpose, and on 
the other unable to get sufficient satisfaction from loving her family, she may grow more and more 
unhappy. At first she may try to console herself with the advantages of "If It Weren't For You" and 
"Blemish" (and indeed, any housewife may fall back on these when the going gets rough); but soon 
these fail to keep her going. Then she has to find another way out, and that is the game of 
"Harried," 
The thesis of this game is simple. She takes on everything that comes, and even asks for more. She 
agrees with her husband's criticisms and accepts all her children's demands. If she has to entertain 
at dinner, she not only feels she must function impeccably as a conversationalist, chatelaine over 
the household and servants, interior decorator, caterer, glamour girl, virgin queen and diplomat; she 
will also volunteer that morning to bake a cake and take the children to the dentist. If she already 
feels harassed, she makes the day even more harried. Then in the middle of the afternoon she 
justifiably collapses, and nothing gets done. She lets down her husband, the children and their 
guests, and her self-reproaches add to her misery. After this happens two or three times her 
marriage is in jeopardy, the children are confused, she loses weight, her hair is untidy, her face is 
drawn and her shoes are scuffed. Then she appears at the psychiatrist's office, ready to be 
hospitalized.