Clean & Crafty Listening
and the
Games People Play

The Crafty listening approach encourages and facilitates Curiosity, Rapport, Assertiveness, Focus, Thoughtfulness and a Yes attitude.
We will also use Clean Language and Clean Space to process the exercises.

The Psychological Games People Play, a concept from Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, are predictable patterns of interpersonal behaviour that result in repetitive, familiar, frustrating, and ultimately futile, feelings. Games, which can be anything from light-hearted (e.g. flirting) to lethal (e.g. a violently abusive relationship), are played for The Payoff!

 The basic Game formula is: G+C=H > S > X > P.

A Game starts when a ‘confidence trickster’ (C)
recognising a person’s weakness or ‘gimmick’ (G),
is able to hook (H)
that person into a predictable response (R),
upon which, the Con then pulls the switch (S),
to create a moment of confusion, or cross up (X),
and both players get the payoff they were playing for (P).

Berne takes as an example two possible conversations between a therapist and a client: The client asks, 'Please tell me I'll get better, doctor.' The doctor replies, 'Of course, you'll get better.' The client replies, 'Thank you.' This is not a game.

The client asks, 'Do you think I'll get better, doctor?' The therapist responds, 'Of course you'll get better.' The client replies 'What makes you think you know everything?' This is a game.

C = the original question
G = the therapist's sentimentality
R = 'Of course you'll get better.'
S = 'What makes you think you know everything?"
X = the therapist's confusion
P = the therapist's frustration and the patient's elation at having conned her

This experiential workshop will touch on other aspects of TA such as, Drivers, Basic Positions, the Drama Triangle (Victims, Rescuers, Persecutors and their antidotes), but mainly we will discuss the nature and structure of Games in the context of counselling / therapeutic relationships, how to recognise when you are being invited or, indeed, ready to play them – and how to interrupt the patterns.