 Hello and welcome to MIPS TV and with me always is Bob Cook, who is going to share a piece of literature, one of his famous book reviews. And we've got a very interesting book today. It's called A Game Free Life by Stephen Cartman. And that's a name that people will know for sure. Yeah, in T.A. Parlers, he's one of the elders of the T.A. community worldwide. And he was in, well he was right at the front of the Eric Byrne Revolution, Eric Byrne being the creator of Transaction Houses. And he spent five or six years and never missed a week when he went to the Eric Byrne Tuesday seminars. And he was a young man then, but he was Davouti Avogba. That's where he comes from. So for students, it's a really good book, this. Well, what's interesting is that you talk about Game Free Life. Games is part of the architecture of it. It's in the DNA, isn't it, of transactional analysis. Yeah, so Games is the colloquial name, if you like, for the compulsion to repeat. So the definition of Game in T.A. Parlers would be a maladaptive, repetitive series of behaviors that you've sort of repeated from childhood. Yeah. That you keep doing and keep doing in a repetitive manner, but it doesn't actually help you anymore. Like blaming other people. Yeah, you learned it in childhood, sort of got you by, but today it doesn't. No. Cartman talks about if you're free of games, you're able to love them. Yes. Yeah. I guess you'd taken a bit of responsibility for your life, aren't you? It's the most famous book that Eric Byrne ever wrote. I don't think it's the best book ever wrote, but certainly I think it's the book that took him to Stella Starden was about games in 1964. And so this is a bold claim by Cartman saying this is a sequel, really, to the games book in 1964. Yeah. Which is a really bold book. Those are big shoes to fill, really. That was a best-selling book for 20 years in what sales, wasn't it, Games People Play? Oh, yeah. Games People Play in 1964, written by Eric Byrne, where he looked at and analysed the behavioural patterns people played unconsciously, which kept their script going and kept the interaction between the two players going. So he helped really social workers, probation workers at the time, young therapists to look at these behavioural patterns between people, which actually weren't working, but kept an unhealthy script going. Yeah. Yeah. So it's an interesting book from a student's perspective, Bob. How do you think it's helpful as a student? Wow. It sort of reframes the idea of what Byrne came up with of putting these classifications of behavioural transactions, which interact between different players, into what Byrne called persecuted games, victim games and rescue games. And of course, where Cartman went a step further, he created what was called a drama triangle. And he was famous for this drama triangle. And the idea of rescuers, they took, you know, the thoughts even further, victims and game, sorry, persecutors, and he used this drama triangle to actually analyse the games. Eric Byrne never used a drama triangle. He didn't create the drama triangle. And of course, this book is all about triangles, you know, and how rescuers are over helpful, you know, persecuted or over fearful victims often stay young. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. He talked about how people pick at these, these people unconsciously to fit into their life script. So for example, people who are over helpful will look for people they can keep young to get strokes and to come from a one-up position really outside their awareness. So people pick their interlocking people on this diagram and then they move around it to confirm how they see the world. Yeah. So what Cartman does in this book is really outline what I've just said and the many persecuted games, the many victim games and the many rescue games. So he sort of goes over the literature away. It's a useful book to have, but what I found sort of critically evaluating book, this poster, this book if you like, is it goes over many, many of the games that Byrne went over and Cartman himself talked about earlier in 1974, for example. So it's repeating a lot of the earlier literature. What's new about this book is how to get off the game triangle and what he talks about how to get onto a compassion triangle. But he's still going from one triangle to another triangle. It's just a winner's triangle and one is a loser's triangle. Well, I mean, it sounds like a central reading if you're a student or a practitioner of transactional analysis and, you know, you're working with life scripts, putting in your scripts on the road as you've often said, Bob. And part of that is, I guess, looking at that, that drama triangle and maybe replaced it with something a little bit more compassionate to self. Yeah. So you're thinking of, if you change victim to vulnerable, think of the rescue to responder. Think of persecutor more in the permission level. Yes. You start changing the words to a winner's triangle or a winner's cycle, if you like. I like that's what he, I like that idea of what he talks about. But he spends a lot of the book repeating, I think, what's been said before, and also really going through or inventing if you like, many, many more games and many, many more triangles. And my daughter is just taking the maths exam, a basic GC exam, because you had to take it again. And it's a bit like that. There's lots of equations and lots of A, B, C. And personally, I don't particularly find that stimulating, but I do like the idea that to have love and intimacy, you need to get off the negative game triangle. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess that's a lesson for everybody. So the book's called A Game Free Life. It's by Stephen Cartman. We're going to put details downstairs. So you can click a link to the book and you can go and see it and look at it. Of course, Bob isn't this is a sponsored video. Bob does this because of his love of literature and share his knowledge. And we're very thankful of that. And as always, Bob, thank you very much. Thank you very much.