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PUT OFFS AND COME ONS by Dr. A. H. Chapman

PUT OFFS AND COME ONS

By

Pub Date: June 21st, 1968
Publisher: Putnam

While this is not, at least seemingly, as sophisticated as the Berne book, that is the obvious parallel and this q.e.d.evastating view of interpersonal relationships certainly could be parlayed into another parlor Games attraction. Dr. Chapman, also a psychiatrist, is not witty but he can be amusing; less so, this cheerless view of people (from his casebook but somehow one gets the impression there are many more Marthas than Georges) belittling, berating, seducing, saving, CRUSHING other people. Rather than the devices of the title, Dr. Chapman itemizes maneuvers and stratagems--basic plays and ploys in between men and women, parents and children, in bed, in business, in middle and a more intractable old age, in analysis, in social groups, in infighting all over: whether it's the imperious mother or the father who depreciates his wife or the child whose tantrums tyrannize, etc., etc. None of this, to the initiated reader, is really startling--all of it is recognizable. . . . But where are the Soul People?