Games People Play

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
Autonomy 
THE attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: 
awareness, spontaneity and 
intimacy. 
Awareness
. Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own 
way, and not the way one was taught. It may be assumed on good grounds that seeing and hearing 
have a different quality for infants than for grownups,1 and that they are more esthetic and less 
intellectual in the first' years of life. A little boy sees and hears birds with delight. Then the "good 
father" comes along and feels he should "share" the experience and help his son "develop." He says: 
"That's a jay, and this is a sparrow." The moment the little boy is concerned with which is a jay and 
which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. He has to see and hear them 
the way his father wants him to. Father has good reasons on his side, since few people can afford to 
go through life listening to the birds sing, and the sooner the little boy starts his "education" the 
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better. Maybe he will be an ornithologist when he grows up. A few people, however, can still see 
and hear in the old way. But most of the members of the human race have lost the capacity to be 
painters, poets or musicians, and are not left the option of seeing and hearing directly even if they 
can afford to; they must get it secondhand. The recovery of this ability is called here "awareness." 
Physiologically awareness is eidetic perception, allied to eidetic imagery.2 Perhaps there is also 
eidetic perception, at least in certain individuals, in the spheres of taste, smell and kinesthesia, 
giving us the artists in those fields: chefs, perfumers and dancers, whose eternal problem is to find 
audiences capable of appreciating their products. 
Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. A 
good illustration of possibilities, in American life, is driving to work in the morning in a hurry. The 
decisive question is: "Where is the mind when the body is here?" and there are three common cases. 
1. The man whose chief preoccupation is being on time is die one who is furthest out. With his 
body at the wheel of his car, his mind is at the door of his office, and he is oblivious to his 
immediate surroundings except insofar as they are obstacles to the moment when his soma will 
catch up with his psyche. This is the Jerk, whose chief concern is how it will look to the boss. If he 
is late, he will take pains to arrive out of breath. The compliant Child is in command, and his game 
is "Look How Hard I've Tried." While he is driving, he is almost completely lacking in autonomy, 
and as a human being he is in essence more dead than alive. It is quite possible that this is the most 
favorable condition for the development of hypertension or coronary disease. 
2. The Sulk, on the other hand, is not so much concerned with arriving on time as in collecting 
excuses for being late. Mishaps, badly timed lights and poor driving or stupidity on the part of 
others fit well into his scheme and are secretly welcomed as contributions to his rebellious Child or 
righteous Parent game of "Look What They Made Me Do." He, too, is oblivious to his surroundings 
except as they subscribe to his game, so that he is only half alive. His body is in his car, but his 
mind is out searching for blemishes and injustices. 
3. Less common is the "natural driver," the man to whom driving a car is a congenial science and 
art. As he makes his way swiftly and skillfully through the traffic, he is at one with his vehicle. He, 
too, is oblivious of his surroundings except as they offer scope for the craftsmanship which is its 
own reward, but he is very much aware of himself and the machine which he controls so well, and 
to that extent he is alive. Such driving is formally an Adult pastime from which his Child and 
Parent may also derive satisfaction. 
4. The Fourth case is the person who is aware, and who will not hurry because he is living in the 
present moment with the environment which is here: the sky and the trees as well as the feeling of 
motion. To hurry is to neglect that environment and to be conscious only of something that is still 
out of sight down the road, or of mere obstacles, or solely of oneself. A Chinese man started to get 
into a local subway train, when his Caucasian companion pointed out that they could save twenty 
minutes by taking an express, which they did. When they got off at Central Park, the Chinese man 
sat down on a bench, much to his friend's surprise. "Well," explained the former, "since we saved 
twenty minutes, we can afford to sit here that long and enjoy our surroundings." 
The aware person is alive because he knows how he feels, where he is and when it is. He knows 
that after he dies the trees will still be there, but he will not be there to look at them again, so he 
wants to see them now with as much poignancy as possible. 
Spontaneity. Spontaneity means option, the freedom to choose and express one's feelings from the 
assortment available (Parent feelings, Adult Feelings and Child feelings). It means liberation, 
liberation from the compulsion to play games and have only the feelings one was taught to have. 
Intimacy. Intimacy means the spontaneous, game-free candidness of an aware person, the liberation 
of the eidetically perceptive, uncorrupted Child in all its naivete" living in the here and now. It can 
be shown experimentally3 that eidetic perception evokes affection, and that candidness mobilizes 
positive feelings, so that there is even such a thing as "one-sided intimacy" - a phenomenon well 
known, although not by that name, to professional seducers, who are able to capture their partners 
without becoming involved themselves. This they do by encouraging the other person to look at 
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them directly and to talk Freely, while the male or Female seducer makes only a well-guarded 
pretense of reciprocating. 
Because intimacy is essentially a function of the natural Child (although expressed in a matrix of 
psychological and social complications), it tends to turn out well if not disturbed by the intervention 
of games. Usually the adaptation to Parental influences is what spoils it, and most unfortunately 
this is almost a universal occurrence. But before, unless and until they are corrupted, most infants 
seem to be loving,4 and that is the essential nature of intimacy, as shown experimentally, 
REFERENCES 
1. Berne, E. "Primal Images & Primal Judgment." Psychiatric Quarterly. 29: 634-658, 1955. 
2. Jaensch, E. R. Eidetic Imagery. Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1930. 
3. These experiments are still in the pilot stage at the San Francisco Social Psychiatry Seminars. 
The effective experimental use of transactional analysis requires special training and experience, 
just as the effective experimental use of chromatography or infrared spectrophotoraetry does. 
Distinguishing a game from a pastime is no easier than distinguishing a star from a planet. See 
Berne, E. "The Intimacy Experiment." Transactional Analysis Bulletin. 3: 113, 1964. "More About 
Intimacy." Ibid. 3: 125, 1964. 
4. Some infants are corrupted or starved very early (marasmus, some colics) and never nave a 
chance to exercise this capacity.