Social generalization, besides its flaws, always has advantages over no generalization. Mental stimulation helps both the mental and the physical state of a person. People like to structure the time (e.g., someone breaking the silence in a group) – this structure is aka programming, and it can be material (parent)/social (adult)/individual (child).
Part I: Game analysis. The author formalizes some bits regarding human social interaction and playing “games”. Every person has three ego-states: Parent (automated reactions based on vast experience, leaving routine work to the Adult), Adult (calculating safety probability when passing the street), Child (intuition, creativity) – e.g., doing something wise – “that’s the adult in you”. All three states should be nurtured.
Social generalization as a transaction. Perceiving the existence of others in a social env. is a transactional stimulus (“ok, there’s someone here – I can/should talk to them”). Transactional response is when someone does something (e.g., actually starting to talk). Transactions are complementary when the transactional response is expected and appropriate (child: water, please, parent: here you go).
The rule of communication: Communication will be smooth and can go indefinitely as long as the transactions are complementary, regardless of the ego-state (serious discussion Parent-Parent, playing a game Parent-Child). Communication may be interrupted whenever there’s a crisscross in a transaction – e.g., person A initiates as Adult->Adult, but person B responds as Child->Parent. All combinations of {Parent, Adult, Child}^2 (Cartesian) are considered and discussed with examples.
Hidden transactions are those transactions where multiple ego-states are activated at once (and are the most subject transactions to games). Example of a transactional exchange: Seller: “This is better, but is a bit too expensive for you”. The seller states two objective facts as Parent, to which the normal Buyer response should be “Both are correct” as a Parent. However, commonly the Child will be triggered instead, with a response “No, this is exactly what I’ll get”, just to prove some point.
A game is an array of complementary hidden transactions that converge to a “predictable” result. The real motivation is hidden, like a trick waiting to be revealed. Everybody plays, consciously or subconsciously. Practical analysis of a game looks at the concrete, while theoretical analysis looks at the abstract and figures out patterns. Every game has a thesis (the usual rules a game is being played), an antithesis (the antidote to the thesis – breaking some of the rules), actors, and purpose.
Part II: Games. In the next 100+ pages, the author uses the previous formalized system to analyze a few commonly played games.
Part III: Beyond Games. To reach autonomy across the three ego-states, we need awareness (here and now, beyond all behavioral classifications), spontaneousness (freedom of the impulse to play games, go beyond programming), and closeness (honesty, much more rewarding than games).
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