Ключові слова: гра «Нехай поб’ють один одного», рольова гра, інтерналізація, очікування, кодування, декодування, когнітивній дисонанс.

The aim of the article is to test out the cognitive scenario “Let you and him fight” against interpretations offered by the classics of fiction.

The main thesis illustrated here is that the cognitive scenario “Let you and him fight” can show a stunning variety of moves if put against the background of its fictional interpretation. 

The theoretical urgency of the research is clear from the frequency and boundless variety of “Let’s You and Him Fight” game played in different cultures.

Preliminaries

A good deal of our life consists in communicating with other people. In the process of communication a human being creates and acts out different “roles” for all sorts of occasions and places.

1964 saw the publication of a bestselling book "Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships" by psychiatrist Eric Berne. Since then it has sold more than five million copies. Its enormous popularity is accounted for by Berne’s collection of games: people read the games first skipping the body of theory. However, the theory tries to make it easy for the reader by avoiding ‘clever’ words and offering simple schemes.

Communication between two persons is presented, for example, in the following way. Every mature person, he says, has in his personality three parts: a child-like part, and adult part, and a part that imitates parents. At any given moment the person can respond as a Parent (P), and Adult (A) and a Child (C). There are nine different combinations
(P-P, P-A,P-C, etc.) in which these two can communicate, some pleasing, some maddening, some useful, some not. Eric Berne does not recommend an A-A relationship at all times. Each of the nine combinations is appropriate to some occasion. For example, C-C is appropriate to love. It may seem oversimplified, but it is quickly grasped. Kurt Vonnegut promoted Eric Berne’s best-seller in his review. The review first appeared in the June 11, 1965 issue of Life Magazine and was included in the 40th anniversary edition of Games People Play published in September 2004. Here is a quote from it:

“The book is a brilliant, amusing, and clear catalogue of the psychological theatricals that human beings play over and over again. When someone creates a commonplace social disturbance in order to gain some secret relief or satisfaction, Dr. Berne calls it a game. In the opening move in a game of “Try and Collect,” for instance, a player runs up a big bill, which he is very slow to pay. (This is a game, incidentally, which the author says children usually learn from their parents.) The middle moves are the low-comedy threats and chases which deadbeats find delicious. The end, when the creditor either collects the money or gives up, often leads to a harrowing round of another game, such as “Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch,” or “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?”

Dr. Berne sketches 101 games in 186 pages.“

The theoretical background

1. Students read texts and emails and Facebook posts throughout the day. They are certainly reading. However, they no longer report reading much literature as part of their reading for pleasure. Certain types of reading seem to be going out of fashion among university students. They are now more likely to spend time on a “visualized world” [9, с. 82Schewe, 2004: 82].

2. “Playing with toys may well involve language, but it also requires physical activity. Ideology is not just expressed in language; it is found in every aspect of our lives, including the way children interact with toys” [6, с. 54Mooney, 2015: 54].

3. Fiction provides fertile grounds for psychological research: great authors are great psychologists. In his famous work “Akzentuierte Persönlichkeiten” Karl Leonhard made a point of using fiction for his psychological case studies [4 Leonhard, 1978]. Deplorably, the reproach addressed by Leonhard to psychologists for their neglect towards fiction is relevant today.

4. Resorting to the interpretation of intentions found by Stanislavsky in the remarks of personages from Griboedov’s play “Woe from Wit” L. S Vygotsky makes a far-reaching observation: “The theatre faced the problem of the thought behind the words before psychology did” [10, с. 123 Vygotsky 1934: 123].

5. “Parents in all parts of the world teach their children manners, which means that they know the proper greeting eating, emunctory, courting and mourning rituals, and also how to carry on topical conversations with appropriate strictures and reinforcements. The strictures and reinforcements constitute tact or diplomacy, some of which is universal and some local” [2, с. 17 Berne, 1964: 17].

6. “To be able to read is to be able to decode writing. The reader has to have an interpretation of the text or parts of it. For traditionalists, interpretation is a matter of what goes on in the mind. If readers know the language, can decode writing, and have the requisite background ‘facts’ to draw the inevitable inferences any writing requires, they can construct the ‘right’ interpretation in their heads. And this ‘right’ interpretation is the same for all competent readers. There are ‘fancy’ interpretations of texts like poems, riddles, novels and sacred texts. But to read is to have in one’s head a ‘basic’ interpretation” [3, с. 38 – 39 Gee, 2012: 38 - 39].

7. “The text’s functional significance as discourse acts as a gateway to its interpretation. While linguistic features do not themselves constitute a text’s ‘meaning’, an account of linguistic features nonetheless serves to ground a stylistic interpretation and to help explain why, for the analyst, certain types of meaning are possible” [8, с. 2 Simpson, 2010: 2].

The methodological approach

It is that of a psychologist who tries to find clues to the peculiarities of role-play in the works of fiction of those authors who make a point of looking into the games their characters play.

The psychological dimension of the crisis

Psychological ‘stroking’ so important for normal communication is getting very primitive and vulgar. People get less susceptible to such an essential bridge between the participants of communication as empathy.  Communication started to produce role-play never seen before. The President of the most powerful nation may use Twitter to address very important problems, assume the Parent role in the Parent – Child role-play and call for the President of Turkey “not to be a fool”, thus reducing Erdogan to the status of the Child. The strictures and reinforcements that constitute tact or diplomacy, according to Eric Berne, are being thoroughly revised.   

Let You and Him Fight – Dr. Berne’s presentation

This may be a maneuver, a ritual or a game. In each case the psychology is essentially feminine. Because of its dramatic qualities, LYAHF is the basis of much of the world’s literature, both good and bad.

1. As a maneuver it is romantic. The woman maneuvers or challenges two men into fighting, with the implication or promise that she will surrender herself to the winner. After the competition is decided, she fulfills her bargain. This is an honest transaction, and the presumption is that her and her mate will live happily ever after.

2. As a ritual, it tends to be tragic. Custom demands that the two men fight for her, even if she does not want them to, and even if she has already made her choice. If the wrong man wins, she must nevertheless take him. In this case it is society and not the woman who sets up LYAHF. If she is willing, the transaction is an honest one. If she is unwilling or disappointed, the outcome may offer her considerable scope for playing games, such as ‘Let’s Pull A Fast one on Joey’.

3. As a game it is comic. The woman sets up the competition, and while the two men are fighting, she decamps with a third. The internal and external psychological advantages for her and her mate are derived from the position that honest competition is for suckers, and the comic story they have lived through forms the basis for the internal and external social advantages.

Commentary: The strangest claim appears in the sentence: “the psychology is essentially feminine”. It is essentially masculine because all the moves in the game point to a woman as the guilty participant and the cause of the trouble. Examples offered by Eric Berne fit into a popular idiom “Cherchez la femme”.  The jocular name is in line with Eric Berne’s preference for colloquialisms and is to be treated as a unifying cognitive frame that describes the essence of the game more accurately than LYAHF.

Eric Berne uses maneuver, ritual and game to identify romantic, tragic and comic cognitive scenarios. We shall see that they can be mixed. Anyway, all of them should be treated as a game because they presuppose mutual ‘stroking’ in a well-organized arrangement of ‘moves’ aimed at gaining a victory.

Here are examples of the same game with different combinations of moves. Words pointing to individual features of persons and explanatory forces behind a cognitive scenario in bold type are underlined.