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The Female Brain

“More than ninety-nine percent  of male and female  genetic  coding  is exactly the same. Out of the 30,000 genes in the human  genome, the variation between the sexes is small. But those few differences  influence every single cell in our bodies—from the nerves that register pleasure and pain to the neurons that transmit perception, thoughts,  feelings and emotions.”
“Just as women have an eight-lane  superhighway for processing  emotion while men  have a small country  road, men  have Chicago’s O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing  thoughts  about sex whereas  women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes. That probably  explains  why  eighty-five percent  of twenty-  to thirty-year-old  males think about sex every fifty two seconds  and women think about it once  a day—or up to every three or four hours on their most fertile days. This makes  for interesting interactions between
the sexes.”

Louann Brizendine

As a medical student,  Louann  Brizendine was aware  of conclusive stud- ies done around the world  showing  that  women  suffer from depression at a ratio  of 2:1 compared to men. Going through college at the peak of the feminist movement,  along with many others  she believed this was the result of the “patriarchal oppression of women.” But it came to her notice that,  up until puberty, depression  rates between  boys and girls are the same. Could  the hormonal changes to girls in their early teenage years, she won- dered, make them suddenly  more prone  to getting depressed?
Later, as a psychiatrist, Brizendine worked  with women  suffering from the extremes  of premenstrual syndrome,  and was struck  by the extent  to which the female brain  is shaped  by dramatic changes in hormonal chemistry,  driving a woman’s  behavior  and creating  her reality. In 1994,  Brizendine established the Women’s Mood  and Hormone Clinic in San Francisco,  one of the first of its type in the world.  The Female Brain, the culmination of her 20 years of practice  as a neuropsychiatrist, pulls together  her own research  and the latest findings from a range of disciplines. Contrasting the relative stability  of male hormonal brain  states with those of the female, which involve an often com- plex cocktail  of chemicals and change dramatically from girlhood  to adoles- cence, early adulthood, motherhood, and menopause, the book  brilliantly shows why women’s brain  states and chemistry  merit independent research, and why generalities  about  human  behavior  usually relate to male behavior.
The Female Brain includes fascinating  chapters  on the female brain  in love, the neurobiology of sex, the “mommy brain” (how a woman’s  thinking changes according  to altered  brain  chemistry  in pregnancy), and the mature female brain,  post-menopause. We focus here on some of Brizendine’s insights regarding  the infant  and pubescent  female brain.

Basic differences
Even taking  into account  differences in body size, Brizendine notes, the male brain  is about  9 percent  larger than  the female. This fact was once interpreted as meaning  that  women  were not as smart  as men. In fact, women  and men have the same number  of brain  cells, but women’s are more tightly packed into their skull.
In the areas of the brain  dealing with language  and hearing,  women  have a full 11 percent  more neurons  than  men, and the part  of the brain  associated with memory,  the hippocampus, is also larger in women.  The circuitry  for observing  emotion  on other  people’s faces is again larger compared to the male. In relation  to speech, emotional intelligence,  and the ability to store rich memory,  therefore,  women  have a natural advantage.
Men, on the other  hand,  have more processors  in the amygdala,  a part  of the brain  regulating  fear and aggression.  This perhaps  explains  why males are more likely to anger quickly and take violent action  in response  to immediate physical danger.  Women’s brains  also evolved to deal with possibly life- threatening situations, but in a different  way. The female brain  experiences greater  stress over the same event as a man’s, and this stress is a way of taking account  of all possible risks to her children  or family unit. This is why, Brizendine suggests, a modern  woman  can view some unpaid  bills as catas- trophic, as they seem a threat  to the family’s very survival.
Brain scanning  and imaging technologies  now allow us to see the work- ings of the brain  in real time. They show the brain  lighting up in different places depending  on whether  we are in love, looking  at faces, solving a prob- lem, speaking,  or experiencing  anxiety,  and these hot spots differ between men’s and women’s brains.  Women  actually  use different  parts  of the brain and different  circuits than  men to accomplish  the same tasks, including  solving problems,  processing  language,  and generally experiencing  the world.
One other  basic brain  difference is noteworthy. Studies have shown  that men think  about  sex on average every 52 seconds, while for women it is once a day. As the part  of the brain  where sexual thought and behavior  is generated is two and a half times larger in the male, this is not surprising.

The baby  female brain
Until they are eight weeks old, the brains  of male and female foetuses look the same—“female is nature’s  default  setting,” Brizendine observes. At about  eight weeks, a male foetus’s brain  is flooded with testosterone, which kills off the cells relating  to communication and helps to grow cells relating  to sex and aggression.  Biochemically,  the male brain  is then significantly different  from a female one, and by the time the first half of the pregnancy  is over, the differ- ences between  male and female brains  are mostly set.
A female baby comes into the world  wired to notice faces and hear vocal tones better.  In the first three months  of her life a baby girl’s abilities at “mutual gazing”  and eye contact  grow by 400 percent.  In the same period, these abilities do not grow at all in boys.
It is well known  that  girls usually begin speaking  some time before boys, thanks  to the better-developed language  circuitry  of their brains.  This contin- ues into adulthood, with women  speaking  on average 20,000 words  a day and men averaging  only around 7,000.  (As Brizendine remarks, this higher ability “wasn’t  always appreciated,” with some cultures  locking up a woman  or putting  a clamp on her tongue  to stop the chatter.)

One other  important difference in infancy is that  baby girls are more sen- sitive to the state of their mother’s  nervous  system. It is important that  infant girls do not have mothers  who are stressed out, as when the girl grows up to have children  of her own her ability to be nurturing will be reduced.  However, armed  with this knowledge,  it is possible to break  the cycle of mother–infant stress.

The teen  girl’s brain
At puberty, a girl’s thinking  and behavior  change according  to the fluctuating levels of estrogen  (one of the “feel-good” hormones), progesterone (“the brain’s valium”), and cortisol  (the stress hormone) in her brain.  Other  impor- tant  hormones produced are oxytocin  (which makes us want  to bond,  love, and connect  with others)  and dopamine (which stimulates  the brain’s pleasure centers).
The effect of these chemicals is to give a teenage girl a great need for and pleasure  in gossiping, shopping,  exchanging  secrets, and experimenting with clothing  and hair styles—anything that  involves connecting  and communicat- ing. Teenage girls are always on the phone  because they actually  need to com- municate  to reduce their stress levels. Their squeals of delight at seeing friends, and the corresponding panic at being grounded, are also part  of these changes. The dopamine and oxytocin  rush that  girls experience  is “the
biggest, fattest  neurological  reward  you can get outside  of an orgasm,” Brizendine remarks.
Why exactly does the loss of a friendship  feel so catastrophic to a teen girl, and why is her social group  so important to her? Physiologically she is reaching  the optimum age for child rearing,  and in evolutionary terms she knows  that  a close-knit  group  is good protection, since if she has a small child with her she is not able to attack  or run away as a man can. (The concept  of “fight or flight” in response  to danger  is an observation of men rather  than women.)  Close social bonds  actually  alter the female brain  in a highly positive way, so that  any loss of those relationships triggers a hormonal change that strengthens the feelings of abandonment or loss. The intensity  of female pubescent  friendships  therefore  also has a biochemical  basis.
The teenage girl’s confidence and ability to deal with stress also change according  to the time of the month,  and Brizendine has treated  many “prob- lem” girls who experience  higher than  average hormonal changes. The most brash  and aggressive girls often have high levels of androgens, the hormones associated  with aggression.  At normal  levels, fluctuations in androgens can cause a girl to be more focused on power,  whether  within  the peer group  or over boys.
Incidentally,  why do teenage boys often become brooding and monosyllabic?  The testosterone that  marinates their brains  not only drives them to “compelling  masturbatory frenzies,”  but also reduces their wish to talk or socialize if it does not involve girls or sport.
Overall,  in the teen years the differing hormonal effects on the brain cause males and females to go off in different  directions—boys gain self-esteem through independence from others,  while females gain it through the closeness of their social bonds.

Final comments
Brizendine began her career in psychiatric  work  and later moved to neurology. This perspective  has made her less willing to speculate  on psychological  or sociological ideas that  have little to do with how the brain  actually  works; though  clearly a feminist, she warns  that political  correctness  has no role in understanding behavior. Yes, we may be able to alter our cultural  attitudes or policies to make a better  world,  but first we must understand the facts about how brain  biology—so  different  between  men and women—shapes behavior.
Brizendine weighs into the debate  sparked  by Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who said that  the differences in achievement  between men and women  in mathematics and the sciences was due to natural brain  differ- ences between the sexes. She notes that  until puberty, boys and girls are exactly the same in mathematical or scientific achievement.  However,  the testosterone that  floods the male brain  makes boys extremely competitive  but also more willing to spend many hours  studying  alone or working  on their computers. With the teenage girl’s flood of estrogen,  in contrast, a female becomes a lot more interested  in social bonding  and her emotional life, and as a consequence is unlikely to sit for hours  alone pondering mathematical puzzles or battling  to top the class. Even as adults  women  are compelled  by their brain  chemistry  to want  to communicate and connect,  and this favors them less for the sort of solitary  work  often required  by mathematical, scientific, or engineering careers. Brizendine’s theory in a nutshell:  It is not lack of aptitude that  makes women stay out of these fields, but brain-driven attitudes to the work  involved.
Yet Brizendine says, “Biology powerfully  affects, but does not lock in our reality.”  That  is, if we know  about  the physiological  or genetic forces that shape us, we are able to take account  of them. The availability  of estrogen  in pill form and the fact that  we can replace hormones (The Female Brain includes a long appendix on hormone replacement therapy)  means that
women  can now have more control  over their daily experience  of reality; per- haps such treatments will end up having as great an impact  on women’s lives and destinies as the contraceptive pill did.
Subtracting the copious  appendices  and notes, The Female Brain is only 200 pages long. As an enjoyable and often witty popular synthesis of the latest research  on the subject, it is likely to be read for many years to come. With many additional insights into the male brain,  this is a book  for everyone.

Louann Brizendine
Brizendine’s first degree was in neurobiology from  the University  of California, Berkeley  (1972–6),  followed by medicine  at Yale University,  and psychiatry  at Harvard  Medical School (1982–5).
After  a stint teaching at Harvard,  in 1988  she accepted a post at the Langley  Porter Psychiatric Institute at the University  of California, San Francisco, where in 1994  her Women’s Mood  and Hormone Clinic was estab- lished. She continues  to combine  research work  with  clinical practice and teaching, focusing  on the effects on mood,  energy, sexual function, and hormonal influences on the brain.

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Gifts Differing

“[We] cannot  safely assume  that other people’s  minds  work on the same principles  as our own.  All too often, others with whom we come  in contact  do not reason as we reason, or do not value the things we value, or are not inter-
ested in what interests us.”
“Well-developed introverts can deal ably with the world around them  when necessary,  but they do their best work inside their heads, in reflection.
Similarly well-developed extraverts can deal effectively with ideas, but they do their best work externally,  in action. For both kinds, the natural preference remains, like right- or left-handedness.”

Isabel Briggs Myers

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a test for gauging personality type that  has been around since the 1940s.  It helped lay the foundations of the psychometric testing methods  that  employers  use today. The test’s origins are somewhat interesting.  The story goes that  one Christmas vacation,  Isabel Briggs brought home a boyfriend,  Clarence  Myers. Though  Isabel’s parents  liked the young man, her mother  Katherine  noted  that he was different  to the family. Katherine  became interested  in the idea of cate- gorizing people according  to personality type, and through reading  auto- biographies developed  a basic typology  of “meditative types,”  “spontaneous types,”  “executive  types,”  and “sociable  types.”  She discovered  Carl Jung’s book Psychological  Types  and it became the theoretical foundation for a life- time’s work,  later taken  up by her daughter (who became Isabel Briggs Myers).
Though  Isabel never studied  psychology formally,  the head of a local bank enabled  her to learn about  statistics  and personnel  tests, and the first forms of her Type Indicator were created  in 1944.  Briggs Myers persuaded school principals  in Pennsylvania  to get the test taken  by thousands of stu- dents, and also by medical and nursing  students.  A private  educational testing firm heard  about  the Indicator and published  it in 1957,  but it did not go into wide public use until the 1970s.  Since then, the MBTI has been administered to millions of people, mostly for job compatibility purposes  but also in rela- tion to teaching,  marriage  counseling,  and personal  development. The test has been refined over the decades, but Katherine  Briggs’ original  intention of dis- covering “why  people are how they are”  remains  its inspiration.
Gifts  Differing: Understanding Personality Type  is Isabel Briggs Myers’ personal  explanation of her work,  written  with the assistance  of her son Peter Briggs Myers and completed  shortly  before her death.  If you are interested  in the ideas behind  personality typology,  this is a key book  to read.
When you do the actual  MBTI test (consisting  of yes or no questions) your personality preferences are expressed  in a four-letter code, for example ISTJ or ESFP. Below is a summary  of some of the key distinctions between  the
16 types, and how this knowledge  can be applied  in practice.

Ways of perceiving: Sensing or intuiting
In Psychological  Types,  Jung suggested two contrasting ways in which people saw the world.  Some people can appreciate reality only through their five senses (“sensing” types), while others  wait for internal  confirmation of what  is true or real, relying on their unconscious. These are the “intuitive” types.
People who use the sensing mode are engrossed  in what  is around them, look only for facts, and find it less interesting  to deal with ideas or abstrac- tions.   Intuitive  people like to dwell in the unseen world  of ideas and possibili- ties, distrustful of physical reality. Whatever  mode people enjoy using and trust most, they tend to employ from an early age and refine over a lifetime.

Ways of judging:  Thinking or feeling
In the Jung/Briggs Myers understanding, people choose between  two ways of coming to conclusions  or judgments:  by thinking,  using an impersonal process of logic; and by feeling, deciding what  something  means to them.
People stick to their preferred  method.  Trusting  their own way, the thinkers  consider  the feelers as irrational and subjective. The feelers wonder how the thinkers  can possibly be objective about  the things that  matter  to them—how can they be so cold and impersonal?
Generally,  a child who prefers the feeling mode is likely to become some- one good at interpersonal relations,  while a child who prefers the thinking mode will become good at collating,  using, and organizing  facts and ideas.

The four preferences
These orientations of Sensing (S), Intuition (N), Thinking  (T), and Feeling (F) form four basic preferences that  produce  certain  values, needs, habits,  and traits.  They are:

ST—Sensing plus Thinking SF—Sensing plus Feeling NF—Intuition plus Feeling NT—Intuition plus Thinking

ST people like to proceed  only on the basis of facts that  their senses can verify. Practical  minded,  their best work  is done in fields that  require  impersonal analysis such as surgery, law, accounting, and working  with machinery.
SF people also rely on their senses, but the conclusions  they make are more based on how they feel about  the facts rather  than  cold analysis of them. They are “people  people”  and tend to be found  in fields where they can
express personal  warmth, such as nursing,  teaching,  social work,  selling, and
“service-with-a-smile” jobs.
NF people also tend to be warm and friendly, but instead  of focusing on the situation or the facts at hand,  are more interested  in how things might be
changed or future possibilities.  They like work that  utilizes their gift for commu- nication  combined  with their need to make things better,  such as higher-level teaching,  preaching,  advertising,  counseling  or psychology, writing,  and research.
NT people are also focused on possibilities,  but draw  on their powers  of rational analysis to achieve outcomes.  They are likely to be found  in profes- sions that  require  ingenious solving of problems,  particularly of a technical nature, such as science, computing, mathematics, or finance.

Extraversion  and introversion
A preference  for extraversion (seeing life in terms of the external  world)  or introversion (greater  interest  in the inner world  of ideas) is independent of your preferences for sensing, thinking,  intuition, and feeling. You can be an extraverted NT type, for instance,  or an introverted sensing and feeling type; that  is, an ENT or an ISF. The first letter of the four letter code, E or I, indi- cates your extraversion or introversion preference.
Extraverts tend to move quickly and try to influence situations directly, while introverts give themselves time to develop their insights before exposing them to the world.  Extraverts are happy  making  decisions in the thick of events, while introverts want  to reflect before taking  action.  Neither  preference necessarily makes better  decisions than  the other;  it simply represents  the style that  each is comfortable with.

Dominant and auxiliary processes
Although  we each favor certain  ways of being, one will dominate above the others.  Consider  NT types. Although  possessed of both  intuitive  and think- ing preferences,  if they find thinking  more attractive this becomes their dom- inant  process.  They may intuit  something  as being right,  but this must be confirmed  by objective thinking.  As thinking  is a process of judgment,  the final element in this person’s type is “Judgment.” They are ENTJs.  Other people’s final letter is P for “Perception,” indicating  their strong  desire to understand better.
The need for a dominant process to bring cohesion  to the self is perfectly understandable, but Jung went further  to suggest that  each person  also needs an “auxiliary” process. Introverts have extraversion as their auxiliary  so they can “put  on a public face” when necessary. Extraverts use introversion as their auxiliary  to take care of their inner lives. In both  cases, if the auxiliary  is little used, the person  lives in one extreme  and their life suffers accordingly. Briggs Myers noted  that  in our extravert-oriented society, there is a greater  penalty for introverts who do not develop their auxiliary  than  for extraverts who fail to take account  of inner things.
The aim of personality typing is to acquire  greater  powers  of perception and judgment,  which are both  assisted by the use of the auxiliary. Briggs Myers observes: “Perception without judgment  is spineless; judgment  with no perception is blind. Introversion lacking any extraversion is impractical; extraversion with no introversion is superficial.”

Better relationships through type awareness
The fact that  people don’t get along all the time suggests that  we don’t under- stand  or value the ways other  people see the world.  A thinker, for instance, will underrate a feeling type’s judgment,  because the thinker  cannot  under- stand  how the feeling type can come to good decisions without using logic. The thinker  makes this assumption because their own feelings are erratic  and unreliable.  But the feeling type has cultivated  their dominant process to such an extent  that  it delivers them good perceptions and judgments, even if it doesn’t do so for the thinker.
In the same way, because a sensing type must perceive and judge based on what  they see, hear, smell, and touch,  the views and conclusions  of an intuitive type, who just “knows” if something  is good or bad, seem incomprehensible. For the intuitive,  the sensing type seems to plod along without the “breath of life,” inspiration. To take another example:  Thinkers  think  that  feeling types talk too much. When thinkers  talk to someone  they want  information.
Therefore  if a feeling type wants  anything  from a thinker, they should  try to remember  to be concise.
In all these cases, what  each type fails to appreciate is that  the dominant process of another person  works,  and works  well. Trying to tell that  person that their perception or judgment  is wrong  is like telling grass that  it shouldn’t be green.

Dealing  with the types at work
In work  situations, if you have some idea of how your colleagues think,  you can expect to be more effective in getting your ideas accepted  and reduce any friction.  You would  know  that:
❖  With a sensing type you have to articulate the problem  very quickly before you can expect them to provide  a solution.
❖  Intuitives will only be interested  in helping if an enticing possibility  is dangled before them.
❖  Thinkers  need to know  what  sort of result they are looking  for and to have the situation explained  in a set of logical points.
❖  Feeling types will need to have the situation framed  in terms of what  it means to the people involved.

With all types, it is as well to remember  never to focus on the people involved, but to attack  the problem.  If we are aware  of each type’s contributions, there will be less conflict, less chance of loss of face, and a greater  opportunity for a perfect solution  to emerge.

Final comments
Isabel Briggs Myers’ lack of formal  psychology qualifications ensured  that  she was never fully accepted  by the psychological  establishment. Some have ques- tioned  whether  she interpreted Jung correctly,  and therefore  whether  the whole methodology for identifying  personality types is unsound. Jung himself was wary of applying  his general principles  to particular individuals,  and skeptics also claim that  the type explanations are too vague and could apply to anyone. Judge for yourself. You may find, if you take the test or a variant  of it, that  the description given of you is remarkably accurate.
On her own scale, Briggs Myers came out as an INFP (Introverted– Intuitive–Feeling–Perceiving). She noted  that  introverts often gain the most from doing the test. As three out of every four people are extraverted, and for every intuitive  there are three sensing types, we therefore  live in an “extravert’s world.” As a less common  type, introverts may, not surprisingly,  feel some pressure  to be something  they are not, and the MBTI allows them, perhaps  for the first time, to feel it is OK to be who they are.
One of the fascinating  insights in Gifts  Differing  is that  recognition and development of our type may be more important to success in life than  IQ. Isabel Briggs Myers’ view was that  personality type is as innate  as left- or right-handedness; anyone  who tries to be a right hander  when they are really a leftie is asking for stress and misery, whereas  going with our strengths  mas- sively increases our chances of fulfillment,  happiness,  and productivity.

Isabel  Briggs Myers
Born in 1897,  Briggs was schooled  at home  by her mother  in Washington DC. Her father, Lynam Briggs, was a physicist  and for over a decade was the direc- tor of the National Bureau of Standards. Isabel married Clarence Myers in 1918  and the following year graduated from  Swarthmore College with  a BA in political science.
Her tests of over 5,000  medical students  were conducted at the George Washington School of Medicine.  She followed up the study  12 years later, finding that the students  had generally followed paths (i.e. research, gen- eral practice, surgery, administration) that might  be expected  of their type. The nursing study  involved  more than 10,000 students.  The MBTI was first pub- lished in 1957  by the Educational  Testing  Service.
Isabel Briggs Myers died in 1980.  Her work  is continued today through  the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

Peter Briggs Myers, born in 1926, was a Rhodes  Scholar in physics. A scientific researcher and administrator, he was a staff director at the National Academy of Science. Involved in the development of the MBTI since his teens, he is now Chair of the Myers & Briggs Foundation and a Trustee of the Myers-Briggs Trust.

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The Psychology of Self-Esteem

“There is no value-judgment more important to man—no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation than the estimate he passes on himself.”
“Happiness or joy is the emotional state that proceeds  from the achievement of one’s values.  Suffering is the emotional state that proceeds  from a negation or destruction  of one’s values.”
“The collapse  of self-esteem is not reached  in a day, a week,  or a month:  it is the cumulative result  of a long succession  of defaults, evasions,  and irrationalities a long succession of failures to use one’s mind  properly.”

Nathaniel Branden

This book  popularized the concept  of self-esteem. Previously most psychologists  recognized  that  how we perceive ourselves is important, affecting our behavior  in areas such as work  and love, but few had looked  into exactly why. The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  attempts to get to the roots  of personal estimation—what increases it, and what  diminishes  it.
Nathaniel Branden  was a disciple and lover of Ayn Rand,  a famous Russian-American philosopher and author of the classic novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. As a result,  for a work  of psychology his book  is very philosophical, driven along by Rand’s notions  of supreme rationalism and individualism.
The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  takes as its premise that we are rational beings in full control  of our destiny. If we accept this truth  and take responsi- bility for it, we naturally see ourselves in a good light. If we fail to take responsibility for our life and actions,  that  estimation falls into danger.
Many  readers  find this book  tough  going, especially the first half, but it is one of the earliest classics of the popular psychology genre and still has the power  to change minds.

Conceptual beings
Branden  devotes many pages to highlighting  how humans  are different  to other  animals.  His chief point  is that  while other  animals  may have conscious- ness, or at least awareness, only humans  require  a conceptual  framework by which to view themselves. Other  animals  can perceive green-colored objects, but only we have the idea of “green.” Dogs can perceive individual  people, but only we have the concept  of “humankind.” Only humans  can ask questions about  the meaning  of life. There is nothing  automatic about  such conceptualiz- ing; thinking,  therefore, is for us an act of choice.
Branden  refutes the two schools of psychology that  were dominant at the time he was writing.  Freudian  psychoanalysis had humans  as an “instinct- manipulated puppet,” while behaviorism  saw us as a “stimulus–response machine.” Neither  took  account  of our powerful  conceptual mind that  gives
us self-awareness  and the ability to reason.  Branden  recalls Ayn Rand’s remark:  “The  function  of your stomach,  lungs or heart  is automatic; the function  of your mind is not.”  We have the power  to regulate  and shape our own consciousness  to achieve our goals.
We are created  to think,  and we must do so in order  to esteem ourselves highly. If we dim our awareness, or are passive or fearful, step by step we kill our greatest  gift. The result is that  we hate ourselves. To love ourselves, we must cherish our ability to think.

Emotions  and self-esteem
Have you ever been in a position  where you know  intellectually  you should  do something, but emotionally cannot  bring yourself to do it? Psychological maturity, according  to Branden,  is the ability to think  in terms of principles, not emotions.  Psychological  immaturity is being swamped  by the moment  and the emotion  so that we lose sight of the broader picture.  When we sacrifice thought and knowledge  to feelings that  cannot be justified rationally, Branden notes, the result is that  we subvert  our self-esteem.
Only if we have a rational approach to our emotions  can we be free of paralyzing  self-doubt, depression,  and fear. This does not mean becoming  a robot  or a cold person,  but simply having the awareness  that  emotions  must be contained within  a larger personal  life philosophy. Neurosis,  on the other hand,  occurs when we let our feelings dictate  our thoughts and actions.  It is impossible  to be both  happy  and irrational, Branden says; someone  in com- mand  of their life, if we look carefully, lives according  to reason.
We think  of happiness  as an emotion,  but it is one that  stems from values that  have been consciously chosen and developed—we  are happy  when we achieve or fulfill what  is most important to us. When we deny or erode those values, we suffer. Branden  remarks  that  anxiety  tends to happen  only “when  a person  has not done the thinking  about  an issue he should  have.”  By not thinking,  the person  has “thereby rendered  himself unfit for reality.”
Physical pain is a mechanism  designed for our bodily survival, but Branden suggests that  psychological  pain also serves a biological  purpose: When we feel anxiety,  guilt, or depression,  that  is telling us that  our conscious- ness is in an unhealthy state. To correct  it, we must reassert  ourselves as an individual  and assess our values, perhaps  forming new ones. In contrast, when we sacrifice reason  to our emotions,  we lose trust  in our own judgment.

Not sacrificial animals
People high in self-esteem are guided by objective facts. They have a good rela- tionship  with reality, and always seek to stay true to who they are.
Their opposite  is someone  whose life is not really their own, who lives to satisfy the expectations, conditions, and values of other  people; they want  to
be seen as “normal” at all costs, and feel terrible  if others  reject them. Branden calls such people “social  metaphysicians” because their philosophy of life revolves around others,  not themselves. Of course, this person  will label their style of life as “practicality,” as if self-sacrifice were quite rational. However, every step along this path  leads them away from what  is real and toward a loss of their true self.

Final comments
Branden  disabuses the reader  of the idea that  self-esteem is a “feel-good  phe- nomenon.” Rather,  it is a deep need that  cannot  be satisfied by shallow  means. It must come from within,  and like a muscle will get stronger  the more we develop it. The more decisions we make that  reflect our highest good, the better  we will naturally feel. The more “shoulds” (I should  do this, or do that, because…) we have in our life, the more justifications  we have to come up with. We become covered in a cloak of excuses, while inside our confidence slowly ebbs away.
If you are a very confident  person  and all is going well, The Psychology of Self-Esteem  may not mean much to you, but read it when faced with diffi- cult choices in your life and it may come alive. For a more practical  and less philosophical approach to self-esteem, you may prefer one of Branden’s subse- quent  books,  such as The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem  or The Art of Living Consciously.

Nathaniel Branden
The author  was born Nathan Blumenthal in Ontario, Canada in 1930.  He attended  the University  of California, Los Angeles, where he received a BA in psychology, and completed his psychology PhD at New  York  University.
Branden  first met Ayn  Rand  in 1950,  later becoming  leader of the “collective” or inner circle around  her, which  included  his wife Barbara Branden and Alan Greenspan,  later chairman  of the US Federal Reserve Board. In the late 1950s  Branden  established  the Nathaniel Branden  Institute to pro- mote  objectivism, and was considered  the movement’s second voice. Despite being more than 20 years her junior, Branden  had a lengthy  affair with  Rand, but only after they had gained the consent  of their spouses. The romantic  and professional  relationship  ended in 1968,  when  Rand  learnt of Branden’s affair with  the actress Patrecia Scott. His book  My Years with Ayn Rand  gives a good insight into the period, and although  he has since criticized the cult of personality  around  Rand,  her ideas continued to be reflected in his writing.
Branden  co-wrote  several books  with  Rand,  including  The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)  and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).  Other  titles include The Psychology of Romantic Love (1980),  Honoring the Self (1983), and Taking Responsibility (1996).
Based in Los Angeles, Branden  is a practicing psychotherapist and runs self-esteem  seminars.

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Lateral Thinking

“Lateral thinking  is like the reverse gear in a car. One  would  never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time.  On the other hand one needs  to have it and to know  how  to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”
“The purpose of thinking  is not to be right but to be effective.”

Edward  de Bono is inevitably  associated  with the word  “thinking,” and no one is better  known  for getting people to work  on the effectiveness of their thought patterns and ideas.
De Bono’s early books  were among  the first in the popular psychology field. The writing  style is not exactly bubbly,  but the quality  of the ideas made them bestsellers. De Bono coined the term “lateral thinking,” now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, in The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967),  but it is Lateral Thinking (subtitled  Creativity  Step by Step in the United States and A Textbook of Creativity  in Britain) that  is more widely read and still in print.

What is lateral  thinking?
When de Bono started  writing  in the 1960s  there were no practical,  standard- ized ways of achieving new insights. A few people were considered  “creative,” but the rest had to plod along within  established  mental  grooves. He promoted  the concept  of lateral  thinking  as the first “insight  tool”  that  anyone could use for problem  solving.
The lateral  thinking  concept  emerged from de Bono’s study of how the mind works.  He found  that  the brain  is not best understood as a computer; rather, it is “a special environment which allows information to organize  itself into patterns.” The mind continually looks for patterns, thinks  in terms of pat- terns, and is self-organizing, incorporating new information in terms of what  it already  knows. Given these facts, de Bono noticed  that  a new idea normally
has to do battle  with old ones to get itself established.  He looked  for ways in which new ideas could come into being via spontaneous insight rather  than conflict.
Lateral  thinking  is a process that  enables us to restructure our patterns, to open up our mind and avoid thinking  in clichéd, set ways. It is essentially cre- ativity, but without any mystique.  It is simply a way of dealing with informa- tion that  results in more creative outcomes.  What  is humor,  de Bono asks, but the sudden  restructuring of existing patterns? If we can introduce the unex- pected element, we need not be enslaved to these patterns.
Lateral  thinking  is contrasted with “vertical  thinking.” Our  culture  in general, but in particular our educational system, emphasizes the use of logic, by which one correct  statement proceeds  to the next one, and finally to the “right” solution.  This type of vertical thinking  is good most of the time, but when we have a particularly difficult situation it may not give us the leap forward we need—sometimes  we have to “think outside  the box.” Or as de Bono puts it, “Vertical  thinking  is used to dig the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking  is used to dig a hole in a different  place.”
Lateral  thinking  does not cancel out vertical thinking,  but is complemen- tary to it, to be used when we have exhausted the possibilities of normal thought patterns.

Techniques of creative  thinkers
It is not enough  to have some awareness  of lateral  thinking,  de Bono asserts, we have to practice  it. Most  of his book  consists of techniques  to try to get us into lateral  thinking  mode. They include:
❖  Generating alternatives—to have better  solutions  you must have more choices to begin with.
❖  Challenging  assumptions—though we need to assume many things to function normally,  never questioning our assumptions leaves us in thinking  ruts.
❖  Quotas—come up with a certain  predetermined number  of ideas on an issue. Often  it is the last or final idea that  is the most useful.
❖  Analogies—trying  to see how a situation is similar to an apparently different one is a time-tested  route  to better  thinking.
❖  Reversal thinking—reverse how you are seeing something, that  is, see its opposite, and you may be surprised  at the ideas it may liberate.
❖  Finding the dominant idea—not  an easy skill to master,  but extremely  valuable in seeing what  really matters  in a book,  presentation, conversation, and so on.
❖  Brainstorming—not lateral  thinking  itself, but provides a setting for that  kind of thinking  to emerge.
❖  Suspended  judgment—deciding to entertain an idea just long enough  to see if it might work,  even if it is not attractive on the surface.

One of de Bono’s key points  is that  lateral  thinkers  do not feel they have to be “right” all the time, only effective. They know  that  the need to be right pre- vents new ideas forming,  because it is quite possible to be wrong  at some stages in an idea cycle but still finish with great outcomes.  What  matters  most is generating  enough  ideas so that  some may be wrong,  but others  turn  out right.

The glorious  obvious
De Bono remarks, “It is characteristic of insight solutions  and new ideas that they should  be obvious  after they have been found.”
Brilliant yet obvious  ideas lie hidden  in our minds, just waiting  to be fished out. What  stops us from retrieving them is the clichéd way we think, always sticking to familiar labels, classifications,  and pigeonholes—what de Bono describes as the “arrogance of established  patterns.”
To get different  results, we need to put information together  differently. What  makes an idea original  is not necessarily the concept  itself, but the fact that  most other  people, thinking  along conventional lines, were not led to it themselves.
We have the cult of genius, glorifying famous  figures like Einstein, only because most people are not taught  to think  in better  ways. For those who practice  lateral  thinking  all the time, the flow of original  ideas never stops.

Final comments
Though  de Bono’s books  are the progenitors of many of the sensationally written  “mind  power” titles available  today, Lateral Thinking itself has a dry style. Unlike many of the seminar  gurus who followed  him, de Bono has degrees in psychology and medicine,  so there is more rigor in his approach.
If you have never got much out of de Bono before,  the chances are you are already  a lateral  thinker. But everyone can become a better  thinker, and his books  are a good place to begin.
People take jibes at de Bono’s invention  of words  like “po” to simplify his teachings,  but he has probably done more than  anyone  to get us thinking about  thinking  itself. This is an important mission, because among  the many things that  make the world  progress,  new and better  ideas are always at the heart  of them.

Edward de  Bono
Born in 1933  in Malta, the son of a professor of medicine  and a magazine journalist,  de Bono  was educated  at St. Edward’s  College and gained a medical degree at the Royal  University  of Malta at the age of 21. He won  a Rhodes Scholarship  to Christ Church,  Oxford, graduating  with  an MA  in psychology and physiology and a DPhil in medicine. He completed his doctorate  at Cambridge  and has had appointments at the universities  of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard.  He became a full-time  author  in 1976.
De Bono  has worked with  many  major corporations, government organizations, teachers, and schoolchildren, and is a well-known public speaker. He has written  over 60 books,  including  The Mechanism of Mind (1969),  Po: Beyond Yes and No (1973),  The Greatest  Thinkers  (1976),  Six Thinking  Hats  (1986),  I Am Right, You Are Wrong  (1990),  How  to Be More Interesting  (1997),  and How  to Have a Beautiful Mind  (2004).

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People Skills

“Although interpersonal  communication is humanity’s  greatest accomplish- ment,  the average person does not communicate well. Low-level  communica- tion leads to loneliness  and distance  from friends, lovers, spouses,  and children as well as ineffectiveness at work.”
“Communication skills, no matter how finely structured, cannot be a substitute for authenticity, caring, and understanding. But they can help us express these qualities
more effectively than many of us have been able to do in the past.”

Robert Bolton

ften the best books  are those that  authors needed to write for their own use. In the preface to People Skills: How  to Assert Yourself, Listen  to Others,  and Resolve  Conflicts would  never have got into the communications field were it not for the fact that  his own people skills were so bad.
The book  was written  over a six-year period  while he was running  a consulting  firm, and the material  was tested on thousands of people doing the company’s  communication skills workshops. Participants involved everyone from top executives to hospital  workers  to small business owners  to priests and nuns.
There are virtually  no jobs where communicating well does not make a big difference to our success. As many people have found,  particularly those in a more technical  field, the actual  “work” is only part  of the job; the rest is managing or dealing with people. Therefore,  if we can communicate well, this can account  for at least half our achievements.

Removing  the roadblocks
People yearn for a closer connection with one another, Bolton notes. They may be lonely not because they don’t have others  around them, but because they cannot  communicate well. Yet if we can put a man on the moon and cure viru- lent diseases, why aren’t we all great communicators? It is partly  because we learn a good deal of our communication skills from our family; chances are our parents  were not perfect communicators, and neither  were their parents.
Nearly  everyone wants  better  communication skills, yet often without knowing  it our communication is full of roadblocks that  prevent  real commu- nication  with others.  Two of the main ones are judging and sending solutions.
When talking  with someone,  it is difficult to listen to what  they are saying without putting  in our “two  bits’ worth.” This is the nicer side of judging. The other  is criticism and labeling. With people close to us we feel we should  be critical, otherwise  we don’t see how they will ever change. With others,  we feel the need to give them a label such as “intellectual,” “brat,” “jerk,” or “nag,” but by doing so we cease to see the person  before us, only a type. Our  “good advice”  is in fact rarely constructive, because it usually represents  an affront  to the other  person’s intelligence.
We may be so used to having roadblocks that  we wonder  what  will be left if we remove them from our style of conversation. What  remains  is the ability to understand and empathize  with other  people, and to make our con- cerns clearly known.

Listening skills
Are your conversations a competition in which “the  first person  to draw breath is declared  the listener”?  Not  many people are good listeners. Research has found  that  “75  percent  of oral communication is ignored,  misunderstood, or quickly forgotten.”
There is a huge difference between  merely hearing  and listening, Bolton notes. The word  “listening” is derived from two Anglo Saxon words,  hlystan (“hearing”) and hlosnian  (“waiting in suspense”).  The act of listening there- fore means more than  just something  physical, it is a psychological  engage- ment with another person.
Listening is not a single skill, but if genuinely practiced  involves a number of skill areas, which are described below.

Attending
The common  estimate  given in research  papers  is that  85 percent  of our com- munication is nonverbal. Therefore  attending skills, which are about  the extent to which we are “there” for someone  when they are speaking,  are vital to good communication. You are not looking  somewhere  else in the room,  but through your posture,  eye contact,  and movement  show the other  person  that they are your focus; you are “listening  with your body.”
Bolton describes when painter  Norman Rockwell was creating  a portrait of President  Eisenhower.  Even though  the President  was amid the worries  of office and about  to enter an election campaign,  for the hour  and a half he sat for Rockwell,  Eisenhower  gave the painter  his full attention. Think  of anyone you know  who is a great communicator and they will be the same: They fully attend  to you with their whole mind and body.

Following
Following  skills relate to how we follow up what  someone  says to us. Though commonly  we advise or reassure,  a better way is to provide  a “door opener” phrase.  This may involve:
❖  Noting  the other  person’s body language:  “Your  face is beaming  today.”
❖  Inviting the other  person  to speak: “Tell me more.” “Care  to talk about  this?” “What’s  on your mind?”
❖  Silence: giving the other  person  space to say something  if they want  to.
❖  Our  body language:  offering the message that  we are ready to listen.

Doing any of those things shows respect; the other  person  can talk or not talk as they wish. There is no pressure.  Bolton comments  that  a lot of people are initially uncomfortable with silence, but with a little practice  it is not hard  for us to extend  our comfort  zone.
In developing  our skill at following,  we become adept  at discovering exactly how the speaker  sees their situation, unlocking  or bringing  out what- ever is waiting  to be said. This is valuable  to both  parties.

Paraphrasing
Bolton defines paraphrasing as “a concise response to the speaker  which states the essence of the other’s content  in the listener’s own words.” For example, when someone  is telling us their problems,  we report  back to them in our own words,  and in one sentence, what  they are saying. This lets them know  we are really listening, and indicates  understanding and acceptance.  We may feel strange  doing this at first and think  the other  person  will wonder  what the hell we are doing, but in fact most of the time they will be glad that  their feelings are being recognized.

Reflective responses
This type of listening provides  a mirror  to the speaker  so that  the state or emotion  they are in is recognized.  Bolton gets us to picture  a young mother  on a morning  when everything  is going wrong.  The baby cries, the phone  rings, the toast  gets burnt. If her husband notices this and says something  like “God, can’t you learn to cook toast?” the woman’s  reaction  is likely to be explosive.
But picture  an alternative. The same events happen  and the husband says, “Honey, it’s a rough  morning  for you—first the baby, then the phone,  now the toast.” This is a reflective response,  acknowledging what  his wife is experienc- ing without any judgment  or criticism. Imagine how much better  she will feel!
Reflective responses work  because people don’t always wish to spell out what  they are really feeling. They beat around the bush. Only by being reflec- tive, not reactive, are we able to discern their real message. Psychologists  talk of the “presenting problem” and the “basic  problem.” What  presents is what  a person  says is the matter, and behind  it is the real problem.  This is why we have to listen for the feeling in a conversation. That  points  us in the right direc- tion, whereas  a common  mistake  is to try to make sense of the words  only.
People complain  that  reflective listening takes more time and effort. It does in the short  term, but it is likely to avoid major  troubles  that  blow up later on as the result of poor  communication.

Assertiveness skills
Bolton likes to think  of listening as the yin (the receiving aspect) of communi- cation,  while assertiveness  is the yang (the active aspect).
Because of the poor  communication skills most of us have been taught, when we want  something  we choose between  either nagging or aggression,  or we avoid the issue altogether. These responses stem from the basic “fight or flight” modes we operate  with as animals.  But as humans  we also have a third option:  verbal assertion. We can stand  our ground  yet not be aggressive. This is easily the most effective means of communication for most situations, yet most of us either forget assertion  or don’t know  how to use it.
The whole point  of assertion  statements is to produce  change without invading  the other  person’s space. There is no power  or coercion  involved, as the focus is on a result. We can remain  very angry, and the other  person knows it from what  we are saying, yet at the same time it allows us not to be hostile or aggressive. They are left to decide for themselves how to respond  to
the message, which allows them to retain  their dignity—while we have taken  a big step in getting what  we want.

Conflict prevention and control
What  we really want  in life is situations where everybody  wins. Bolton pre- sents the counterintuitive idea that  if we define a problem  in terms of solu- tions, one person  wins and the other  loses. To get win–win  outcomes,  we have to focus not on the solution  but on each party’s needs.
For instance,  he worked  with a group  of nuns who only had one car between  them. Several of them needed the car to make visits and go to meet- ings, so there were inevitable  clashes. When one person  had the car, the others lost out. But Bolton asked them what  each of them needed. The need they identified was transportation, and use of the group’s car was only one solution to that.  Seeing the situation in terms of needs meant  that  many other  possible solutions  appeared.
As the old saying goes, “A problem  well defined is a problem half solved.” Bolton provides  a step-by-step  process for identifying  needs, which then lead to a solution. Using this method surprisingly  elegant answers  can be found to questions we may have thought were intractable. But it first requires us to really listen to what other people require to make them happy.

Final comments
People Skills has been around for a quarter of a century  and still sells well. What  is the secret of its longevity? First, the book  rests on a strong  intellectual foundation, referencing  ideas from the likes of Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud, and Karen Horney.  Secondly, it sticks to the fundamentals, not trying to cover every aspect of interpersonal relations  but focusing on three vital, learnable skills: listening, asserting,  and resolving conflict. Although  the book  seems long and there is a fair amount of repetition, it contains  some highly useful tips and techniques  that  can be applied  immediately.
Nowhere does People Skills ask us to change our personality to become a warm  and fuzzy “people  person.” What  it does do is show us well-researched techniques  that  can make a dramatic difference to our effectiveness. We sud- denly understand what  people are really saying, and we begin to be able to communicate what  we truly want  in a direct fashion.
Conversely,  if we still have a tendency  to think  that  having good people skills means the ability to manipulate others  into doing or saying something that  suits us, not them, Bolton’s book  reminds us of the three pillars of respect that  really produce  good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive  love, and genuineness.

Robert Bolton
Bolton  is the head of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting  firm founded in 1972  that focuses on workplace communication and interpersonal  skills. He previously  created training programs for the New  York  State Department of Mental  Hygiene  and also founded a psychiatric  clinic.
His other book, written  with  his wife Dorothy Grover  Bolton,  is People Styles at Work:  Making  Bad Relationships Good  and Good Relationships Better (1996).

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Games People Play

“[The] marital game of ‘Lunch Bag.’ The husband,  who  can well afford to have lunch  at a good restaurant, nevertheless makes  himself a few sandwiches every morning,  which  he takes to the office in a paper bag. In this way he uses up crusts of bread, leftovers from dinner and paper bags his wife saves for him. This
gives him complete control over the family finances,  for what wife would  dare buy herself a mink stole in the face of such self-sacrifice?”

“Father comes  home  from work and finds fault with daughter, who  answers impudently, or daughter may make  the first move by being impudent, where- upon  father finds fault. Their voices  rise, and the clash becomes more acute… There are three possibilities: (a) father retires to his bedroom and slams the
door; (b) daughter retires to her bedroom and slams the door; (c) both retire to their respective  bedrooms and slam the doors. In any case, the end of a game
of ‘Uproar’ is marked  by a slamming  door.”

Eric Berne
In 1961,  psychiatrist Eric Berne published  a book  with a very boring  title, Transactional Analysis  in Psychotherapy. It became the foundation work  in its field, was much referenced,  and was a reasonable  seller.
Three years later he published  a sequel based on the same concepts  but with a more colloquial  feel. With its brilliant  title and witty, amusing  cate- gories of human  motivation, Games  People Play was bound  to attract more attention. Sales for the initial print  run of 3,000  copies were slow, but two years later, thanks  mostly to word  of mouth  and some modest  advertising,  the book  had sold 300,000 copies in hardback. It spent two years on the New York Times  bestseller list (unusual  for a nonfiction  work) and, creating  a template for future  writers  who suddenly  got wealthy  by writing  a pop psychology bestseller, the fiftysomething  Berne bought  a new house and a Maserati, and remarried.
Though  he did not realize it at the time, Games  People Play: The Psychology  of Human Relationships marked  the beginning of the popular psy- chology boom,  as distinct from mere self-help on the one hand and academic psychology on the other.  Mainstream psychologists  looked  down  on Berne’s book as shallow  and pandering to the public, but in fact the first 50 or 60 pages are written  in a rather  serious, scholarly  style. Only in the second part  does the tone lighten up, and this is the section most people bought  the book  for.
Today,  Games  People Play has sold over five million copies and the phrase  in its title has entered  the English idiom.

Strokes and transactions
Berne began by noting  research  that  infants,  if deprived  of physical handling, often fall into irreversible  mental  and physical decline. He pointed  to other studies suggesting that  sensory deprivation in adults  can lead to temporary psychosis. Adults need physical contact  as much as children, but it is not always available  so we compromise, instead  seeking symbolic emotional “strokes” from others.  A movie star, for instance,  may get his strokes  from hundreds of adoring  weekly fan letters, while a scientist may get hers from a single positive commendation from a leading figure in the field.
Berne defined the stroke  as the “fundamental unit of social action.” An exchange  of strokes  is a transaction, hence his creation  of the phrase  “transac- tional  analysis”  (TA) to describe the dynamics of social interaction.

Why we play games
Given the need to receive strokes,  Berne observed that  in biological  terms human beings consider  any social intercourse—even if negative—as  better  than none at all. This need for intimacy  is also why people engage in “games”— these become a substitute for genuine contact.
He defined a game as “an  ongoing  series of complementary ulterior  trans- actions  progressing  to a well-defined, predictable outcome.” We play a game
to satisfy some hidden  motivation, and it always involves a payoff.
Most  of the time people are not aware  they are playing games; it is just a normal  part  of social interaction. Games are a lot like playing poker,  when we hide our real motivations as part  of a strategy  to achieve the payoff—to  win money. In the work  environment the payoff may be getting the deal; people speak of being in the “real  estate game”  or the “insurance game”  or “playing the stock market,” an unconscious  recognition that  their work  involves a
series of maneuvers  to achieve a certain  gain. And in close relationships? The payoff usually involves some emotional satisfaction or increase in control.

The three  selves
Transactional analysis evolved out of Freudian  psychoanalysis, which Berne had studied  and practiced. He had once had an adult  male patient  who admit- ted that  he was really “a little boy in an adult’s clothing.” In subsequent ses- sions, Berne asked him whether  it was now the little boy talking  or the adult. From these and other  experiences,  Berne came to the view that  within  each person  are three selves or “ego states”  that  often contradict each other.  They are characterized by:
❖  the attitudes and thinking  of a parental figure (Parent);
❖  the adult-like  rationality, objectivity,  and acceptance  of the truth  (Adult);
❖  the stances and fixations  of a child (Child).

The three selves correspond loosely to Freud’s superego  (Parent),  ego (Adult), and id (Child).
In any given social interaction, Berne argued,  we exhibit  one of these basic Parent,  Adult, and Child states,  and can easily shift from one to the other. For instance,  we can take on the child’s creativity,  curiosity,  and charm, but also the child’s tantrums or intransigence. Within  each mode we can be productive  or unproductive.
In playing a game with someone  we take on an aspect of one of the three selves. Instead  of remaining  neutral, genuine, or intimate,  to get what  we want we may feel the need to act like a commanding parent, or a coquettish child,
or to take on the sage-like, rational aura  of an adult.

Let the games begin
The main part  of the book  is a thesaurus of the many games people play, such as the following.

“If it weren’t for you”
This is the most common  game played between  spouses, in which one partner complains  that  the other  is an obstacle  to doing what  they really want  in life.
Berne suggested that  most people unconsciously  choose spouses because they want certain  limits placed on them. He gave an example of a woman  who seemed desperate  to learn to dance. The problem  was that  her husband hated going out, so her social life was restricted.  She enrolled in dancing  classes, but found that  she was terribly afraid of dancing  in public and dropped out. Berne’s point was that  what we blame the other partner for is more often revealed as an issue within ourselves. Playing “If it weren’t for you” allows us to divest our- selves of responsibility for facing our fears or shortcomings.

“Why don’t you—yes, but”
This game begins when someone  states a problem  in their life, and another person  responds  by offering constructive  suggestions on how to solve it. The subject says “Yes, but…”  and proceeds  to find issue with the solutions.  In Adult mode we would  examine  and probably take on board  a solution,  but this is not the purpose  of the exchange.  It allows the subject to gain sympathy from others  in their inadequacy to meet the situation (Child mode). The prob- lem solvers, in turn,  get the opportunity to play wise Parent.

Wooden leg
Someone playing this game will have the defensive attitude of “What do you expect of a person  with a wooden  leg/bad childhood/neurosis/alcoholism?” Some feature  of themselves is used an excuse for lack of competence  or moti- vation,  so that  they do not have to take full responsibility for their life.

Berne’s other  games include:
❖  Life games—“Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch”; “See What  You Made
Me Do.”
❖  Marital games—“Frigid Woman”; “Look  How  Hard  I’ve Tried.”
❖  “Good” games—“Homely sage”; “They’ll be glad they knew me.”

Each game has a thesis—its basic premise and how that  is played out—and an antithesis—the way it reaches its conclusion,  with one of the players taking  an action  that  in their mind makes them the “winner.”
The games we play, Berne said, are like worn-out loops of tape we inherit from childhood and continue  to let roll. Though  limiting and destructive,  they are also a sort of comfort, absolving us of the need to confront unresolved psychological  issues. For some, playing games has become a basic part  of who they are. Many people feel the need to get into fights with those closest to them or intrigues  with their friends in order  to stay interested.  However,  Berne warned,  if we play too many “bad” games for too long, they become self- destructive.  The more games we play, the more we expect others  to play them too; a relentless game player can end up a psychotic who reads too much of their own motivations and biases into others’ behavior.

Final comments
Though  Games  People Play was reviled by many practicing  psychiatrists  as
too “pop” and inane, transactional analysis continues  to be influential  and has been added  to the armory  of many psychotherapists and counselors  who need to deal with difficult or evasive patients. It seemed like a ground-breaking
book  because it brought a psychologist’s  precision  to an area that  was nor- mally the preserve of novelists and playwrights. Indeed, American  novelist Kurt Vonnegut  wrote  a celebrated  review that  suggested its contents  could inspire creative writers  for years.
Be aware  that  Games  People Play is quite Freudian, with many of the games based on Freud’s ideas about inhibition, sexual tension,  and uncon- scious impulses. It is also clearly a relic of the 1960s  in its language and social attitudes.
Yet it can still be a mind-opening read, and is a classic for the simple insight that  people always have and probably always will play games. As Berne noted,  we teach our children  all the pastimes,  rituals,  and procedures they need to adapt  to our culture  and get by in life, and we spend a lot of time choosing their schools and activities, yet we don’t teach them about  games, an unfortu- nate but realistic feature  of the dynamics of every family and institution.
Games  People Play can seem to offer an unnecessarily  dark  view of human nature.  However,  this was not Berne’s intention. He remarked that  we can all leave game playing behind  if we know  there is an alternative. As a result of childhood experiences we leave behind  the natural confidence, spon- taneity,  and curiosity  we had as a child and instead  adopt  the Parent’s ideas of what  we can or cannot  do. Through greater  awareness  of the three selves, we can get back to a state of being more comfortable within  our own skin. No longer do we feel that  we need someone’s permission  to succeed, and we become unwilling to substitute games for real intimacy.

Eric Berne
Eric Bernstein grew up in Montreal,  Canada; his father was a doctor  and his mother  a writer. He graduated from  McGill  University  in 1935  with  a medical degree, and trained to be a psychoanalyst at Yale University.  He became a US citizen, worked at Mt Zion  Hospital  in New  York,  and in 1943 changed his name to Eric Berne.
During  the Second World  War Berne worked as a US army psychia- trist, and afterwards  resumed  his studies under Erik Erikson  (see p. 84) at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. Settling in California  in the late 1940s, he became disenchanted with  psychoanalysis, and his work  on ego states evolved  over the next  decade into transactional  analysis. He formed  the International Transactional  Analysis Association, and combined private prac- tice with  consulting  and hospital  posts.
Berne wrote  on a range of subjects. In addition  to his other bestseller, What  Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1975),  which  examined the idea of “life scripts,” he also published  the Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry  and Psychoanalysis  (1957),  Structure  and Dynamics  of Organizations and Groups (1963), Sex in Human Loving (1970), and, posthumously, Beyond Games and Scripts (1976).  See also the biography  by Elizabeth  Watkins Jorgensen, Eric Berne: Master  Gamesman (1984).
Berne admitted that he had a well-developed Child, once describing himself  as “a 56-year-old  teenager.” He was a keen poker  player, was married three times, and died in 1970.

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