Games People Play

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
The Attainment of Autonomy 
PARENTS, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, drink, feel and 
perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained and 
are necessary during the first two or three decades of life for biological and social survival. Indeed, 
such liberation is only possible at all because the individual starts off in an autonomous state, that is, 
capable of awareness, spontaneity and intimacy, and he has some discretion as to which parts of his 
parents' teachings he will accept. At certain specific moments early in life he decides how he is 
going to adapt to diem. It is because his adaptation is in the nature of a series of decisions that it can 
be undone, since decisions are reversible under favorable circumstances. 
The attainment of autonomy, then, consists of the overthrow of all those irrelevancies discussed in 
Chapters 13, 14 and 15. And such overthrow is never final: there is a continual battle against 
sinking back into the old ways. 
First, as discussed in Chapter 13, the weight of a whole tribal or family historical tradition has to be 
lifted, as in the case of Margaret Mead's villagers in New Guinea1; then the influence of the 
individual parental, social and cultural background has to be thrown off. The same must be done 
with the demands of contemporary society at large, and finally die advantages derived from one's 
immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Then all the easy indulgences and 
rewards of being a Sulk or a Jerk, as described in Chapter 14, have to be given up. Following this, 
the individual must attain personal and social control, so that all the classes of behavior described 
in the Appendix, except perhaps dreams, become free choices subject only to his will. He is then 
ready for game-free relationships such as that illustrated in the paradigm in Chapter 15, At this 
point he may be able to develop his capacities for autonomy. In essence, diis whole preparation 
consists of obtaining a friendly divorce from one's parents (and from other Parental influences) so 
that they may be agreeably visited on occasion, but are no longer dominant. 
REFERENCE 
I. Mead, M. New Ways for Old. William Morrow & Company, New York, 1956. 
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