Playing Games

A comment at VD:

Read Erik Erikson's book, "The Games People Play" (it's light reading, you can read it in 2 hours, and it's one of the most understandable books regarding psychology and patterns of misconduct and self-destructive behavior that you'll ever read.)

Erikson's book documents a few dozen "games" such as:

* Alcoholic (generalizable to all substance abuse)

*Therapy (Mental health clinicians actively interfering with forward their clients becoming fully functional again, as this lowers the client count, and thus their government subsidies)

* Let's You & Him Fight (Softball versions include girl initiating the game by deliberately involving an ununaware guy to use him to provoke a jealousy response in her boyfriend -- see the lyrics Jay & The Americans' 1964 hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart & Wes Ferrell . Fastpitch versions include: Divorce, and Hardball versions would be "Call the Police" or even "Hire a Hitman"

Like many social problems, Pederasty is a multi-player Eriksonian "game", with each play of the game involving one or more minors, and one or more abusers OR one child victim and one (still child) abuser, who has been in the victim role so many times that he/she thinks this is normal.

Just like an alcoholic can easily change roles to barman/provider for another alcoholic, many can switch from one role to another. Example, the spouse of an alcoholic can play the role of persecutor when the alcoholic comes home drunk at 3AM, or spent a whole paycheck on booze, yet when the alcoholic is being threatened or punished by an outside entity, will quickly switch to the protective/mother role.

One does not have to be willing participant in one of these games to eventually participate in any of multiple roles depending on the circumstances of the moment.