The man said, “The woman you put here with me"”she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12,13.
Adam blames the woman: she blames the serpent. People blaming each other for their wrong doing began a long time ago! Often I see couples in counselling playing the same "game", demanding that the other person changing is all that is needed to solve their problems. What can we do to help ourselves and others to extract ourselves from this unhelpful (and sinful!) pattern of behaviour?
In the 1960's, Eric Berne described the theory of Transactional Analysis (TA) in his book Games People Play (1964) in which he outlines a number of "games' we play - including the "blame game"
He posited the concept of "ego states" to help explain how we operate psychologically and how we relate to others. Diagrams of the Ego states can be drawn as three stacked circles and they form the building blocks of understanding Transactional Analysis. Berne postulates that depending on which ego state is determining our behaviour; we will think, feel and behave in characteristic ways.
Parent ego state is our evaluating part, which can be either "nurturing" or "critical". This is our internal voice of authority which we learnt from parental figures around us as we grew up. Our Parent ego state is made up of a huge number of automatic "scripts" which typically start with phrases like "you should", "always" etc, but can also nurture the other.
Adult ego state is our rational, logical part, which began developing in us around the age of 10 months old when we start learning about the rational state of the world around us. In healthy relating, it is the means by which we mediate our Parent and Child reactions and is the foundation for our ability to think and determine action for ourselves, based on received information from the external and our internal world.
Child ego state is characterized as our more emotional, spontaneous part. Our internal reaction and feelings to external events form the ‘Child’. This is the seeing, hearing, feeling, and emotional body of important data within each of us. When anger or despair dominates reason, the Child is in control.
Examining the "transactions" between these ego states illuminates what may happen as we relate to others. For example, we can be relating "adult" to "adult" which happens when there is a rational transfer of information between two people.
Alternatively we may relate "parent" to "child", such as happens when one person gets home tired and their spouse says to them "sit down and I will get you a cup of tea" - they are being a "nurturing parent" to their partner.
However, when people start arguing, a TA understanding is that:
"¢ There is blaming or angry language from the "critical parent" which is heard by the "hurt child"
"¢ In turn, their "critical parent" blames the other person, which is heard by their "hurt child". And so on.
When I share this proposed understanding with a couple, they often find it helpful to recognise their behaviour as being caught in a pattern which is not all of their making, and begin to develop some ideas for themselves as to how to stay in their "adult" ego state so that the argument avoids the "blame game".
Can you recognise when you play the blame game - either with your partner or your colleagues?
