Home > Author > Eric Berne
1 " 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. "
― Eric Berne
2 " But wether I am faking on a player piano, or striking the chords with the power of my own mind and hands, the song of my life is equally suspenseful and full of surprises as it rolls off the pulsating sounding board of destiny - a barcarole that either way will leave, I hope, happy echoes behind "
― Eric Berne , What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
3 " Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. "
― Eric Berne , Games People Play
4 " We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs. "
5 " Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, drink, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter. "
6 " Solitary confinement is one of the punishments most dreaded even by prisoners hardened to physical brutality, and is now a notorious procedure for inducing political compliance. (Conversely, the best of the known weapons against compliance is social organization.) "
7 " A variant of "Psychiatry" is "Archaeology" (title by courtesy of Dr. Norman Reider of San Francisco), in which the patient takes the position that if she can only find out who had the button, so to speak, everything will suddenly be all right. This results in a continual rumination over childhood happenings. "
8 " Father has good reasons on his side, since few people can afford to go through life listening to the birds sing, and the sooner the little boy starts his “education” the better. "
9 " At the end of the party, each person will have selected certain players he would like to see more of, while others he will discard, regardless of how skillfully or pleasantly they each engaged in the pastime. The ones he selects are those who seem the most likely candidates for more complex relationships—that is, games. This sorting system, however well rationalized, is actually largely unconscious and intuitive. "
10 " It can be shown experimentally that eidetic perception evokes affection, and that candidness mobilizes positive feelings, so that there is even such a thing as "one-sided intimacy" - a phenomenon well known, although not by that name, to professional seducers, who are able to capture their partners without becoming involved themselves. This they do by encouraging the other person to look at them directly and to talk freely, while the male or female seducer makes only a well-guarded pretense of reciprocating. "
11 " The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours "
12 " 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. "
13 " Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with a minimum effort from the games they play with each other. "
14 " The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull. "
15 " Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy. "
16 " Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others "
17 " The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy. "
18 " Everyone carries his parents around inside of him. "
19 " For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy. "
20 " 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. "
