GAMES DIVORCED PEOPLE PLAY

If TA is your thing--particularly the identifying and naming of ""games""--this is the after-divorce guide for you; others might find the neat slotting of human behavior a bit too strangulatory. Here, then, are the potential pitfalls in dealing with mates, children, dating, and remarriage: games like ""I Got Screwed in the Settlement"" (at the most harmless level, an attempt to gain sympathy as ""poor little me""; at its most complicated, an actual bid for defeat, inadequacy, and depression). The authors--a clinical psychologist and a conductor of divorce workshops who together produce a syndicated column called ""After Divorce""--warn us to suspect a game is afoot when someone is left ""feeling bad"" over and over again, and to analyze how it starts, proceeds, and ends; in other words, what's the ""Payoff""? Could it be reinforcement of the belief that all members of the opposite sex are untrustworthy? That you aren't good enough for the person you're dating? Or, in the case of children, that you are loved and needed? Whatever the purpose, games are all obstacles to true communication and must be stopped: it's that simple. ""Awareness,"" ""a new decision"" to change, and ""practicing"" that decision are the steps involved. To test your ability to spot games at 50 paces after their prepping, the authors conclude with a chapter of letters from their column; this, purportedly, will hone your after-divorce ""skills"" to a fine edge. For some quick and dirty insights into human behavior at a touchy time.