ABSTRACT
In 1964, psychiatrist Eric Berne published Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. Berne introduced transactional analysis, in which he posited that human interactions took the form of 'transactions', and that these transactions would often take the form of a predictable series of strategies designed to accomplish specific emotional payoffs. A key part of transactional analysis is that people tend to create and maintain a narrative, or script, about who they are and why the things that have happened to them happened. Game Theory's proponents, with their formulae and quantified analysis, were widely considered geniuses. Conversely, Berne's ideas, which closely paralleled the game theorists, were considered 'too simplistic' and the only obvious difference being that of the ability to quantify the payoff grid. The ability to accurately quantify the payoff grid in even the simplest of games is illusory, which ought to land game theory advocates in the same 'too simplistic' category as transactional analysts' supporters.
