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geert_vdm's review against another edition
https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/49176.Games_People_Play#
rhilovestorhid's review against another edition
The language used rather complex; it requires and deserves a concentrated mind.
I’ll return to this book eventually.
I’ll return to this book eventually.
amber_lea84's review against another edition
2.0
This is a book on psychoanalysis written in 1964.
That statement alone tells you most of what you need to know. This actually started out kind of okay and then took a sharp turn into ridiculous Freudian bs in the last half.
It really has everything you would expect. Mad Men era thinking about marriage? Check. References to anal and oral fixations, castration anxiety, and penis envy? Check. An uncomfortable BDSM element? Check. Something about the “homosexuals” that seems super homophobic but is so vague and confusing that you’re not even sure what it's supposed to mean? Cheeeeck.
So this book is about the dysfunctional tactics people employ to get the reactions (or “strokes”) they want from other people. The way it’s framed is overly simplistic and sometimes has that weird misguided resentment toward women, gays and the disabled that you get with early psychoanalysis. Some of the examples seem valid while others are…questionable.
Blatant prejudices of the time aside, my biggest issue is that there's this assumption that people always get something out of unhealthy dynamics as if they're something people are always aware of in the beginning and sign up for with at least some level of knowing what they’re getting. Like for example if you married someone with terrible qualities who treats you badly, you did it because you love to get sympathy by complaining about it. As if people are never surprised to find that they married someone who hid their worst qualities. Or the author assumes the dynamic is something you're recreating about your childhood, and not something that's a reaction to this specific situation that you’ve found yourself in. You know, like there’s no acknowledgment that people get tricked into things and then kept there by circumstance, or that people who “play games” force their games on unwilling participants who can’t get away. It’s the ol’ “you’re suffering because you want to suffer” and that’s just applied to everyone. “Husband’s a jerk? Well, what defect in your character caused you to choose this man?” “Wife makes you crazy? Well, you’re probably recreating your childhood. Tell me about how your mother humiliated you as a boy.”
God, psychoanalysis is so boring.
The ideas in this book that are worth hanging on to could be framed in much more insightful ways. Like yes, people manipulate other people to get what they want (attention), often in subconscious ways because they don’t want to admit to or take responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings or they’re reliving childhood scripts they’re not even aware of. Duh. I kept reading because I thought there was a possibility there would be some interesting advice on how to avoid getting sucked into games you don’t want to be a part of but there really wasn’t. So. It was a pretty big waste of time in my opinion.
That statement alone tells you most of what you need to know. This actually started out kind of okay and then took a sharp turn into ridiculous Freudian bs in the last half.
It really has everything you would expect. Mad Men era thinking about marriage? Check. References to anal and oral fixations, castration anxiety, and penis envy? Check. An uncomfortable BDSM element? Check. Something about the “homosexuals” that seems super homophobic but is so vague and confusing that you’re not even sure what it's supposed to mean? Cheeeeck.
So this book is about the dysfunctional tactics people employ to get the reactions (or “strokes”) they want from other people. The way it’s framed is overly simplistic and sometimes has that weird misguided resentment toward women, gays and the disabled that you get with early psychoanalysis. Some of the examples seem valid while others are…questionable.
Blatant prejudices of the time aside, my biggest issue is that there's this assumption that people always get something out of unhealthy dynamics as if they're something people are always aware of in the beginning and sign up for with at least some level of knowing what they’re getting. Like for example if you married someone with terrible qualities who treats you badly, you did it because you love to get sympathy by complaining about it. As if people are never surprised to find that they married someone who hid their worst qualities. Or the author assumes the dynamic is something you're recreating about your childhood, and not something that's a reaction to this specific situation that you’ve found yourself in. You know, like there’s no acknowledgment that people get tricked into things and then kept there by circumstance, or that people who “play games” force their games on unwilling participants who can’t get away. It’s the ol’ “you’re suffering because you want to suffer” and that’s just applied to everyone. “Husband’s a jerk? Well, what defect in your character caused you to choose this man?” “Wife makes you crazy? Well, you’re probably recreating your childhood. Tell me about how your mother humiliated you as a boy.”
God, psychoanalysis is so boring.
The ideas in this book that are worth hanging on to could be framed in much more insightful ways. Like yes, people manipulate other people to get what they want (attention), often in subconscious ways because they don’t want to admit to or take responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings or they’re reliving childhood scripts they’re not even aware of. Duh. I kept reading because I thought there was a possibility there would be some interesting advice on how to avoid getting sucked into games you don’t want to be a part of but there really wasn’t. So. It was a pretty big waste of time in my opinion.
banandrew's review against another edition
4.0
A psychiatrist's take on "games": situations where people act one way on the surface but with ulterior motivations, often following a predictable archetype. The book provides definitions and examples of ~100 such games, and "antidotes" to each that break people out of the game (spoiler alert: vulnerability and honesty are the easy ways out of games). Some parts are outdated socially---the "marital games" the most so, due to evolution of gender roles---but the high-level ideas remain compelling.
victory1891's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Gives a very brief overview of games from transactional analysis. I read this for my professional and personal development and found it useful. I'll probably read it again to keep refreshing my understanding.
anneduff's review against another edition
1.0
This was such hard work. I dithered over purchasing it as some reviews said you needed a background in the subject to understand it, yet other reviews said you don't. You absolutely, very definitely do.
sunakata's review against another edition
1.0
Hoooo boy, this hasn't aged well. I would add trigger warnings for sexism, racism, and homophobia.
The concepts were interesting but it was hard to get past the above....
The concepts were interesting but it was hard to get past the above....
kellyxmen's review against another edition
1.0
Not at all enlightening like I hoped it would be. The “games” described are either so obvious you know them as games already or weirdly specific and hard to learn from.