Games Alcoholics Play (1975)
By Claude Steiner

1971 he wrote Healing Alcoholism which
he updated in 2003.

Healing Alcoholism.

I wrote this book in 1979 and rewrote it
in 2003 for publication in Russian.
It contains my latest views on alcoholism,
transactional analysis and psychotherapy

http://www.claudesteiner.com/healing.htm

Healing Alcoholism pdf file

Part 1. Alcoholism

Part 2. Theory

Part 3. Healing Alcoholism

RE: Games Alcoholics Play: The most lucid account of the patterns of problem drinkers ever set down in a book!

Drawing on soundly tested theories of transactional behavior, Dr. Steiner describes the three distinct types of alcoholics -- Drunk and Proud, Lush and Wino -- and their games, scripts and rackets: Debtor... Kick... Cops and robbers... Plastic Woman... Captain Marvel...Ain't it awful... Schlemiel... Look how hard I've tried... and others.

His approach is the single most useful tool for dealing with alcoholism since A.A. and the Twelve Steps, and offers the first real help -- and hope -- for problem drinkers and their families.

Inside Flap Copy
The most lucid account of the patterns of problem drinkers ever set down in a book!

Drawing on soundly tested theories of transactional behavior, Dr. Steiner describes the three distinct types of alcoholics -- Drunk and Proud, Lush and Wino -- and their games, scripts and rackets: Debtor... Kick... Cops and robbers... Plastic Woman... Captain Marvel...Ain't it awful... Schlemiel... Look how hard I've tried... and others.

His approach is the single most useful tool for dealing with alcoholism since A.A. and the Twelve Steps, and offers the first real help -- and hope -- for problem drinkers and their families

re: Games Alcoholics Play:

re: Games Alcoholics Play
An AA friend loaned me this book about 20 years ago. It made me aware of all the excuses I made for wanting to drink. I heard all of that mumbo jumbo about Alcoholism being a disease but I never bought into it and I'm glad I didn't because that would be all the excuse I would need to keep drinking until I died.

Steiner's other book, Life Scripts was a life saver also. After reading that book it didn't take me long to realize the script I had been acting out most of my life, that started when I was an infant taking the drug, paregoric, that contains opium and alcohol, that set me up for my addiction later. Even when I was young I was some what intoxicated because I was consuming excessive amounts of sugar, trying to recreate the feeling I got from the paregoric and the human body makes alcohol from sugar and fat. Then I got my first beer when I was 17 and I was off and running. The script was being played out again and I repeated it constantly until I discovered that I was acting out.

Another book not mentioned here is Choices.

I am of the opinion, based on my own personal experiences, that using alcohol in an abusive manner is a learned behavior, not a genetic predisposition. All you have to do is look at all of the advertsing for alcohol, all of the social outlets that include drinking, etc, to see that it is a big part of our social lives. What is a Football or Baseball game without a big cup of beer and a footlong hotdog? I think it is just a social disease, perpetuated by Corporate America!

Claude Steiner Biography
and Vitae

I was born in 1935 in Paris, France, the first born of Austrian parents. Fleeing from Hitler's impending invasion of France, my Jewish mother and Christian father escaped to Spain in 1939 with my sister Katherine and me in tow. Eventually, after having one more child--my brother Miguel--my parents emigrated to Mexico just following the end of WWII. I spent my childhood and adolescent posing as a Christian in catholic schools. My sister is a language teacher now living in Rohnert Park in N. California and my brother currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

In 1952 I came to the US to study engineering and then physics at Santa Monica City College in California and for a while earned my living as an automobile mechanic. I went on to study physics at the University of California in Berkeley but decided that I didn't want to spend my life making bombs and transferred to the study of psychology and child development. I also began to work as a summer camp counselor and eventually director at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center Summer Camp. In 1957 I met and became a disciple of Eric Berne, the psychiatrist author of Games People Play. Eventually, in 1965, at Berne's urging, I obtained a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His wish was that I should be his first research director. Over time I became Eric Berne's colleague, collaborator and friend and with him, and a founding member of the International Transactional Analysis Association. (ITAA)

In the late 1960's and after Berne's death in 1971, I got more and more involved as an activist in various liberation movements and against the war in Vietnam and went on to develop the theory and practice of Radical Psychiatry about which I wrote extensively in books and journals especially in The Radical Therapist a quarterly journal published by the Radical Psychiatry collective. In addition, I conducted a full time, group and individual therapy practice in Berkeley. I have written eight books, two of them minor best sellers. I also wrote the now ubiquitous children's fable, The Warm Fuzzy Tale.

In 1975 I started to develop and teach my emotional literacy concepts and eventually I refined the program of emotional literacy training presented in my latest book Achieving Emotional Literacy. I coined the phrases warm fuzzies and emotional literacy, and developed the theory of the Stroke Economy. (See a complete list of my publications, below)

My books have been translated into eight languages and I have a world-wide lecturing and teaching audience. My burning interest in power plays, especially the most subtle psychological power play -- propaganda -- caused me to give up my clinical practice and travel as a journalist to Mexico and Central America to study the effects of US propaganda in that region. Later I returned to the practice of clinical psychology and also became a founding member and Senior editor, for three years, of the quarterly journal Propaganda Review.

I have three grown children Mimi (42) Eric (40) and Denali (24) and four grand children (Mathew and Bella, Mimi's children and Alex and Mariel, Eric's children) and with my wife Jude Hall, I live in Berkeley and on my 160 acre ranch with its two acre, commercial, organic garden in Ukiah, Mendocino County, California.

Details

Claude M. Steiner. 65. Born: Paris, France, Jan. 6, 1935.

Lived in Madrid, Spain 1939-1946, Mexico D.F. and Gualalajara, Mexico, 1946-1952, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. USA, 1952 to present except for five years in Ann Arbor Michigan while getting my doctorate.

Education

1952-54 Santa Monica City College, Santa Monica CA, AA Physics.

1955-57 U. of California, Berkeley, BA Psychology.

1957-59 U. of California, Berkeley, MA Child Development.

1960-65 U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ph.D. Clinical Psychology.

1967 California Psychologist License.

1965-1970 Staff Psychologist. Center for Special Problems, San Francisco, CA.

1970-to date Private Practice. Group and Individual Psychotherapy in Berkeley, CA and Ukiah, CA.

Teaching Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association since 1969.

Twice recipient of the Eric Berne Scientific Award; 1971 (For the Script Matrix) and 1980 (For the Stroke Economy.)

1989-1994 Senior editor. Propaganda Review Quarterly.

Journalism

1974 Traveled to Scotland with Spence Meigham M.D. to interview Ronald D. Laing Interview published in The Radical Therapist. Autumn 1975

1985 Traveled to Bordeaux, France with Miguel Steiner, to interview Jacques Ellul. Interview published in Propaganda Review 1988:2

1986 Traveled as a translator and photographer with partner Charles Rappleye, by automobile, throughout Mexico and Central America to report on the effect of United States policies in that region. Resulting in the publication of a pamphlet: Following the US Footprint in Central America. (Click her to read)

Publications: (ordering information)

1069 Ta Made Simple. RaPress. Berkeley

1970 Games Alcoholics Play. Grove Press, New York, NY.

1974 Scripts People Live. Grove Press, NY.

1975 Readings in Radical Psychiatry. Claude Steiner, Editor. Grove Press, NY

1976 Beyond Games and Scripts. Claude Steiner, Editor. Grove Press, NY

1979 Healing Alcoholism. Grove Press, NY.

1981 The Other Side of Power. Grove Press, NY.

1986 When a Man Loves a Woman. Grove Press, NY.

1997 Achieving Emotional Literacy. Avon Books, New York.

2003 Emotional Literacy; Intelligence With a Heart. Personhood Press. Fawnskin, California.

Journal articles too numerous to list here. Click here for complete publications list.

Work in Progress: Cyberpsychology; Love, Power and Redemption in the Age of Information Machines, and The Self Hate Book; Conquering the Enemy Within.