Review: Games People Play

Games People Play by Eric Berne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think the primary value of reading this text is historical. It’s a snapshot of psychology in the 1960s, it illustrates some of the ideas that preceded modern ideas. If one reads this for theoretical knowledge, it needs to be looked at very critically with a modern eye.

The simple fact is, we know much more about human behaviour today than we did 60 years ago. We have much more information as to what motivates people, the kind of things that impact thinking and behaviour. We know how important biological factors are (something the book doesn’t really seem to account for). Plus, terminology has completely changed. Also worth mentioning is that fact that the opinions regarding sex, gender and orientation, as well as other cultures, is outdated. Very Freudian in some ways, but that ties back to how this review started. It’s a historic book, it’s a snapshot of the past. Like Freud himself, it has very flawed conceptions in places, ideas that have been refuted or replaced in modern theory, but it is still important if you want to understand the history of modern theory.

Transactional Analysis is a place psychologists still draw from in some ways, and there are select insights that are quite interesting. There is a lot of observations Berne makes and lists, and applying modern theories to them is fascinating. It’s a matter of expectations. In a field so young and rapidly changing, where the fundamentals are barely established, a 60-year-old book will not give you the best information per se if you’re trying to understand why we behave the way we do in social situations. If you’re interested in psychology and know the basics of modern cognitive theory, it’s worth reading to see where the field was 60 years ago. If not (or if you’re just not interested in the historical patterns), then it’s probably better to start with a more modern textbook or publication. .

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