Eric Berne Quotes

“A game is played from a position, but a position or its corresponding attitude is not a game.”

“A game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff it becomes apparent that these operations were really maneuvers; not honest requests but moves in the game.”

“A sense of independence is achieved, as we believe, by the release or awakening of three abilities: involvement in the present, spontaneity and closeness.
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“According to many clinicians, neurotics go to the doctor not to be cured, but to understand how to become an even better neurotic.

Scenario analysts say something similar: the patient does not come to be cured, but to learn how to play their games better.”

“As this is written, a sow bug crawls across a desk. If he is turned over on his back, one can observe the tremendous struggle he goes through to get on his feet again. During this interval he has a “purpose” in his life. When he succeeds, one can almost see the look of victory on his face. Off he goes, and one can imagine him telling his tale at the next meeting of sow bugs, looked up to by the younger generation as an insect who has made it. And yet mixed with his smugness is a little disappointment. Now that he has come out on top, life seems aimless. Maybe he will return in the hope of repeating his triumph. It might be worth marking his back with ink, so as to recognize him if he risks it. A courageous animal, the sow bug. No wonder he has survived for millions of years.”

“At the end of the party, each person will have selected certain players he would like to see more of, while others he will discard, regardless of how skillfully or pleasantly they each engaged in the pastime. The ones he selects are those who seem the most likely candidates for more complex relationships — that is, games. This sorting system, however well rationalized, is actually largely unconscious and intuitive.”

“Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”

“Beautiful friendships are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with a minimum effort from the games they play with each other.”

“Each individual is pushed by his or her script to repeat the same patterns of behavior over and over again, no matter how much he or she regrets the consequences.”

“Each person decides in his early childhood how he will live and how he will die, and we call this plan, which he carries in his head wherever he goes, a script.”

“Everyone carries his parents around inside of him.”

“Games are a compromise between intimacy and maintaining distance.”

“Games are integral and dynamic components of the unconscious life-plan, or script, of each individual; they serve to fill in the time while he waits for the final fulfillment, simultaneously advancing the action.”

“Human life is a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.”

“It is not difficult to deduce from an individual’s position the kind of childhood he must have had. Unless something or somebody intervenes, he spends the rest of his life stabilizing his position and dealing with situations that threaten it: by avoiding them, warding off certain elements or manipulating them provocatively so that they are transformed from threats into justifications.”

“Losers spend time explaining why they lost. Losers spend their lives thinking about what they're going to do. They rarely enjoy doing what they're doing.”

“Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, drink, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter.”

“Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy.”

“Pastimes form the basis for the selection of acquaintances, and may lead to friendship. A party of women who drop in at each other’s houses every morning for coffee to play 'Delinquent Husband' are likely to give a cool reception to a new neighbour who wants to play 'Sunny Side Up'.”

“Raising" children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favor different types of games, and various tribes and families favor different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.”

“Salesman: This one is better, but you can’t afford it.
Housewife: That’s the one I’ll take.”

“Scripts are artificial systems that limit spontaneous and creative human aspirations, just as games are artificial structures that limit spontaneous and creative intimacy.”

“Scripts are only possible because people do not know what they are doing to themselves and to others. In fact, knowing what one is doing is the opposite of following a script.”

“Solitary confinement is one of the punishments most dreaded even by prisoners hardened to physical brutality, and is now a notorious procedure for inducing political compliance. Conversely, the best of the known weapons against compliance is social organization.”

“Spontaneity means option, the freedom to choose and express one's feelings from the assortment available.”

“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.”

“The big celebration, the wedding or housewarming, takes place not when the debt is discharged, but when it is undertaken. What is emphasized on TV, for example, is not the middle-aged man who has finally paid off his mortgage, but the young man who moves into his new home with his family, proudly waving the papers he has just signed and which will bind him for most of his productive years. After he has paid his debts — the mortgage, the college expenses for his children and his insurance — he is regarded as a problem, a 'senior citizen' for whom society must provide not only material comforts but a new 'purpose'.”

“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.”

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.”

“The main themes of the life scripts are the same as those found in fairy tales: love, hate, gratitude and revenge.”