The Link between the Mathematical Game Theory and the Transactional Analysis. A New Kind of Psychological Game Comes into Being in New Interpersonal

Abstract

MGT studies human games to find the best strategies for gaining a concrete advantage. TA studies human games to get the answer to the question why people make efforts in order to suffer, (to win negative payoffs), and how these people can be helped to give up these daily repeated games. These cause sufferings for all participants, and are the causes of many psychological diseases. However both describe the human conflicts, suffering having a sense of lost in MGT, apparently MGT games and TA games are in contrast with each other. Studying the evolution (the degeneration) of MGT games, we can observe that the majority of human conflicts start off with a “Prisoners Dilemma”, goes on with the “Chicken! Game” and degenerates into a “Dollar Auction Game”. The last one is a trap, and its main characteristic is that all participants, even those who wins the “dollar” (the target of the game), loose, having invested more than they could earn back. The psychological games result for the need for self-justification, for psychological pay-offs of the participants. The more you play the game the earlier the suffering as a target appears in the MGT game, transforming it into a „Fireman game”, than in a „Double target game”. At the end the concrete target transforms into gimmick, a pretext for winning the psychological pay-off of negative strokes. At this point we can speak about a real psychological game. In the author’s opinion the negative stroke is not a real target, it is only a way, a means of winning the real one, the self-justification, which is a positive pay-off in comparison to loosing without having any justification.