Mind games and psychology is used to define three forms of demoralize or disempower the thinking subject making the aggressor look superior also referred to as power games to the unconscious games played by people engaged in ulterior transactions of which they are not fully aware and which transactional analysis considers to form.
A central element of social life all over the world three mental exercises designed to improve the functioning of mind and/or personality see also brain teasers or puzzles the term mind games was first used in 1968 mind games in the sense of the struggle for prestige appear in everyday life in the fields of office politics sport and relationships played most intensely perhaps by type of personalities office mind games are often hard to identify clearly as strong management blurs with over direction healthy rivalry with manipulative head games and sabotage the wary salesman will be consciously and unconsciously prepared to meet a variety of challenging mind games and put-downs in the course of their work the serious sportsman will also be prepared to meet.
A variety of gambits and head games from their rivals attempting meanwhile to trade the fine line between competitive psychology and paranoia in intimate relationships mind games can be used to undermine one partner's belief in the validity of their own perceptions personal experience may be denied and driven from memory and such abusive mind games may extend to denial of the victims reality social undermining and the trivializing of what is felt to be important both sexes have equal opportunities for such verbal coercion which may be carried out unconsciously as a result of the need to maintain one's own self-deception Eric Bern described a psychological game as an organized series of ulterior transactions taking place on twin levels social and psychological and resulting in a dramatic outcome when the two levels finally came to coincide he described the opening of a typical game like flirtation as follows cowboy come and see the barn visitor I've loved barns ever since I was a little girl at the social level a conversation about barns at the psychological level one about sex play the outcome of the game which may be comic or tragic heavy or light will become apparent when a switch takes place and the ulterior motives of each become clear between 30 and 40 such games as well as variations of each were described and tabulated in Burns bestseller on the subject according to one transactional analyst games are so predominant and deep-rooted in society.
They tend to become institutionalized that is played according to rules that everybody knows about and more or less agrees to the game of Alcoholic a 5 handed game illustrates this so popular that social institutions have developed to bring the various players together such as alcoholics Anonymous and allanon psychological games vary widely in degrees of intensity ranging from first-degree games socially acceptable to third degree games that are played for keeps.
Vern recognized however that since by definition games are based on ulterior transactions they must all have some element of exploitation and the therapeutic ideal he offered was to stop playing games altogether mind games for self-improvement fall into two main categories there are mental exercises and puzzles to maintain or improve the actual working of the brain there is also the category of the self empowering mind game as in psycho drama or mental and fantasy workshops elements which might be seen as an ultimate outgrowth of yoga as a set of mental and physical disciplines.