Eric Berne Quotes

If someone frankly asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. If someone asks for reassurance, and after it is given turns it in some way to the disadvantage of the giver, that is a game.

A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses but talks about what he'll do if he wins and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins but knows what he'll do if he loses.

Each person decides in early childhood how he will live and how he will die ... His trivial behavior may be decided by reason, but his important decisions have already been made: what kind of person he will marry, how many children he will have, what kind of bed he will die in ... It is incredible to think, at first, that man's fate, all his nobility and all his degradation, is decided by a child no more than six years old, and usually three ... (but) it is very easy to believe by looking at what is happening in the world today, and what happened yesterday, and seeing what will happen tomorrow.

Game-free intimacy is or should be the most perfect form of human living.

Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologically impossible for most people, the bulk of time in serious social life is taken up with playing games. Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him. In this connexion it should be remembered that the essential feature of a game is its culmination, or payoff. The principal function of the preliminary moves is to set up the situation for this payoff, but they are always designed to harvest the maximum permissible satisfaction at each step as a secondary product.

Games are passed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children.

Raising children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games.

Many games are played most intensely by disturbed people, generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play.

The attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.

Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth h

Whatever you do, think of next morning's headlines.

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.

Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us.

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.

The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.

It is better to be a slave to your beloved woman than a free man to the unloved one.

Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner.

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.

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

The moment a 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.

In short, a diamond bracelet is a much more honest instrument of courtship than a perforated stomach. She has the option of throwing the jewelry back at him, but she cannot decently walk out on the ulcer. ("Look How Hard I've Been Trying")

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

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

Despair is a concern of the Adult, while in depression it is the Child who has the executive power. Hopefulness, enthusiasm or a lively interest in one's surroundings is the opposite of depression; laughter is the opposite of despair.

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

Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.

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

Everyone carries his parents around inside of him.

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.

Society frowns upon candidness, except in privacy; good sense knows that it can always be abused; and the Child fears it because of the unmasking which it involves. Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of games.

Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.