Games People Play

2 THE STRUCTURING OF TIME
Granted that handling of infants, and its symbolic equivalent in grown-ups, recognition, have a 
survival value. The question is, What next? In everyday terms, what can people do after they have 
exchanged greetings, whether the greeting consists of a collegiate "Hi!" or an Oriental ritual lasting 
several hours? After stimulus-hunger and recognition-hunger comes structure-hunger. The 
perennial problem of adolescents is: "What do you say to her (him) then?" And to many people 
besides adolescents, nothing is more uncomfortable than a social hiatus, a period of silent, 
unstructured time when no one present can think of anything more interesting to say than; "Don't 
you think the walls are perpendicular tonight?" The eternal problem of the human being is how to 
structure his waking hours. In this existential sense, the function of all social living is to lend 
mutual assistance for this project. 
The operational aspect of time-structuring may be called programming. In has three aspects: 
material, social and individual. The most common, convenient, comfortable, and utilitarian method 
of structuring time is by a project designed to deal with the material of external reality: what is 
commonly known as work. Such a project is technically called an activity; the term "work" is 
unsuitable because a general theory of social psychiatry must recognize that social intercourse is 
also a form of work. 
Material programming arises from the vicissitudes encountered in dealing with external reality; it is 
of interest here only insofar as activities offer a matrix for "stroking," recognition, and other more 
complex forms of social intercourse. Material programming is not primarily a social problem; in 
essence it is based on data processing. The activity of building a boat relies on a long series of 
measurements and probability estimates, and any social exchange which occurs must be 
subordinated to these in order for the building to proceed. 
Social programming results in traditional ritualistic or semi-ritualistic interchanges. The chief 
criterion for it is local acceptability, popularity called "good manners." Parents in all parts of the 
world teach their children manners, which means that they know the proper greeting, eating,
courting and mourning rituals, and also how to carry on topical conversations with appropriate 
strictures and reinforcements. The strictures and reinforcements constitute tact or diplomacy, some 
of which is universal and some local. Belching at meals or asking after another man's wife are each 
encouraged or forbidden by local ancestral tradition, and indeed there is a high degree of inverse 
correlation between these particular transactions. Usually in localities where people belch at meals, 
it is unwise to ask after the womenfolk; and in localities where people are asking after the 
womenfolk, it is unwise to belch at meals. Usually formal rituals precede semi-ritualistic topical 
conversations, and the latter may be distinguished by calling them -pastimes. 
As people become better acquainted, more and more individual programming creeps in, so that 
"incidents" begin to occur. These incidents superficially appear to be adventitious, and may be so 
described by the parties concerned, but careful scrutiny reveals that they tend to follow definite 
5

---

patterns which are amenable to sorting and classification, and that the sequence is circumscribed by 
unspoken rules and regulations. These regulations remain latent as long as the amities or hostilities 
proceed according to Hoyle, but they become manifest if an illegal move is made, giving rise to a 
symbolic, verbal or legal cry of "Foul!" Such sequences, which in contrast to pastimes are based 
more on individual than on social programming, may be called games. Family life and married life, 
as well as life in organizations of various kinds, may year after year be based on variations of the 
same game. 
To say that the bulk of social activity consists of playing games does not necessarily mean that it is 
mostly "fun" or that the parties are not seriously engaged in the relationship. On the one hand, 
"playing" football and other athletic "games" may not be fun at all, and the players may be 
intensely grim; and such games share with gambling and other forms of "play" the potentiality for 
being very serious indeed, sometimes fatal. On the other hand, some authors, for instance Huizinga, 
9 include under "play" such serious things as cannibal feasts. Hence calling such tragic behavior as 
suicide, alcohol and drug addiction, criminality or schizophrenia "playing games" is not 
irresponsible, facetious or barbaric. The essential characteristic of human play is not that the 
emotions are spurious, but that they are regulated. This is revealed when sanctions are imposed on 
an illegitimate emotional display. Play may be grimly serious, or even fatally serious, but the social 
sanctions are serious only if the rules are broken. 
Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy. Because of this they may be 
regarded as preliminary engagements rather than as unions, which is why they are characterized as 
poignant forms of play. Intimacy begins when individual (usually instinctual) programming 
becomes more intense, and both social patterning and ulterior restrictions and motives begin to give 
way. It is the only completely satisfying answer to stimulus-hunger, recognition-hunger and 
structure-hunger. Its prototype is the act of loving impregnation. 
Structure-hunger has the same survival value as stimulus-hunger. Stimulus-hunger and recognition-
hunger express the need to avoid sensory and emotional starvation, both of which lead to biological 
deterioration. Structure-hunger expresses the need to avoid boredom, and Kierkegaard10 has 
pointed out the evils which result from unstructured time. If it persists for any length of time, 
boredom becomes synonymous with emotional starvation and can have the same consequences. 
The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy. An individual can 
remain solitary even in the presence of others, as every schoolteacher knows. When one is a 
member of a social aggregation of two or more people, there are several options for structuring 
time. In order of complexity, these are: (1) Rituals (2) Pastimes (3) Games (4) Intimacy and (5) 
Activity, which may form a matrix for any of the others. The goal of each member of the 
aggregation is to obtain as many satisfactions as possible from his transactions with other members. 
The more accessible he is, the more satisfactions he can obtain. Most of the programming of his 
social operations is automatic. Since some of the "satisfactions" obtained under this programming, 
such as self-destructive ones, are difficult to recognize in the usual sense of the word 
"satisfactions," it would be better to substitute some more non-committal terra, such as "gains" or 
"advantages." 
The advantages of social contact revolve around somatic and psychic equilibrium. They are related 
to the following factors: (1) the relief of tension (2) the avoidance of noxious situations (3) the 
procurement of stroking and (4) the maintenance of an established equilibrium. All these items 
have been investigated and discussed in great detail by physiologists, psychologists, and 
psychoanalysts. Translated into terms of social psychiatry, they may be stated as (1) the primary 
internal advantages (2) the primary external advantages (3) the secondary advantages and (4) the 
existential advantages. The first three parallel the "gains from illness" described by Freud: the 
internal paranosic gain, the external paranosic gain, and the eplnosic gain, respectively.11 
Experience has shown that it is more useful and enlightening to investigate social transactions from 
the point of view of the advantages gained than to treat them as defensive operations. In the first 
place, the best defense is to engage in no transactions at all; in the second place, the concept of 
6

---

"defenses" covers only part of the first two classes of advantages, and the rest of them, together 
with the third and fourth classes, are lost to this point of view. 
The most gratifying forms of social contact, whether or not they are embedded in a matrix of 
activity, are games and intimacy. Prolonged intimacy is rare, and even then it is primarily a private 
matter; significant social intercourse most commonly takes the form of games, and that is the 
subject which principally concerns us here. For further information about rime-structuring, the 
author's book on group dynamics should be consulted. 
REFERENCES 
1. Berne, E. Transnational Analysis in Psychotherapy, Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1961. 
2. Spitz, R. "Hospitalism: Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood." Psychoanalytic 
Study of the Child. 1: 53-74, 1945. 
3. Belbenoit, Rene. Dry Guillotine. E. P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1938. 
4. Seaton, G. J. Isle of the Damned. Popular Library, New York, 1952. 
5. Kinkead, E. In Every War But One. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1959. 
6. French, J. D. "The Reticular Formation." Scientific American. 196: 54-60, May, 1957. 
7. The "colloquialisms" used are those evolved in the course of time at the San Francisco Social 
Psychiatry Seminars. 
8. Levine, S. 'Stimulation in Infancy." Scientific American. 202: 80-86, May, 1960. 
————. "Infantile Experience and Resistance to Physiological Stress." Science. 126: 405, 
August 30, 1957. 
9. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens, Beacon Press, Boston, 1955. 
10. Kierkegaard, S. A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. R. Bretall. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 
1947, pp. 22 ff. 
11. Freud, S. "General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks." Collected Papers, Hogarth Press, London, 
1933, II, p. 102. 
————. "Analysis of a Case of Hysteria." Ibid. Ill, p. 54. 
12. Berne, E. The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. J. B. Lippincott Company, 
Philadelphia and Montreal, 1963. (See especially Chapters 11 and 120 
7

---