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Articles

To Change or Not to Change

Reflections on the Role Games Play in Maintaining Psychic Equilibrium

Pages 91-103
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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This article considers whether a legacy in transactional analysis of overinvesting in change and the analysis or avoidance of games can lead to a foreclosure of important emergent processes in psychotherapy. The authors do not advocate a preferred way of working with games, recognizing that offering an antithesis often leads to establishing further doctrine. Instead, they describe two ways of understanding clients’ need to maintain equilibrium and relate this to game theory. They explore the dialectic between interpersonal analysis of games and the value of giving more space to clients’ intrapsychic processes.

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Author information

Steff Oates

Author Biographies
Lis Heath, BSc, is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy) and a United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy-registered psychotherapist. She lives in Penrith in the north of England, where she maintains a private clinical and supervision practice. She also teaches transactional analysis in Romania. Lis can be reached at 24 Wordsworth Street, Penrith CA11 7QY, United Kingdom; email: .
Steff Oates is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy) who maintains a private psychotherapy practice in the northwest of England and travels to teach and learn in various European locations. She also served as ITAA Secretary from 2009-2014 and remains involved on various committees and as a Transactional Analysis Journal reviewer. Steff can be reached at Swallowfield, Slade Lane, Mobberley, Knutsford WA16 78N, United Kingdom; email: .