author of games =e ZPenguin Books Sex in Human Loving Dr Eric Berne, like his father, graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and later moved to the United States, where he had his internship in psychiatry at the New Haven Hospital and the Yale Institute of Human Relations. He also studied at the New York and San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institutes. During the Second World War he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and was discharged with the rank of major. Afterwards he became a consultant in psychiatry and neurology to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army. He was a practising psychiatrist in Carmel and San Francisco, California, a lecturer at the University of California Medical School, and Consultant in Group Therapy at McAuley Clinic in San Francisco. He was a corresponding member of the Indian Psychiatric Society, chairman of the board of trustees of the International Transactional Analysis Association and editor of the Transactional Analysis Bulletin. He also wrote The Mind in Action, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, and Principles of Group Treatment. Games People Play and A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis have already been published in Penguins. While at college he wrote for the Canadian magazine Forum, the London Adelphi, and other periodicals, He died in 1970,Eric Berne Sex in Human Loving Penguin BooksPenguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published in the U.S.A. 1970 Published in Great Britain by André Deutsch 1971 Published in Penguin Books 1973 Reprinted 1975, 1976 Copyright © City National Bank, Beverly Hills, California, 1970 Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Set in Linotype Times This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaseroe rom om m9 ao Per apo Contents Foreword 13 Introduction: Talking About Sex . Sex Is Wet 19 Some Cold Dry Words 19 Some Warm Damp Words 21 Obscene Words 22 The Nature of Obscenity 23 The Trash Can 26 . The Mother-Cuffers 27 . Obscenity for Fun 28 Obscenity and Love 30 Sex Education, Junior Type 31 Intermediate Sex Education 32 Advanced Sex Education 34 . Adult Sex Education in America 36 A Standard Sexual Vocabulary 37 Notes and References 38 PART ONE: SEX AND SEX ORGANS 1 Why Sex is Necessary 43 . Introduction 43 . What Is Sex? 44 But What Is It All About? 46 The Purpose of Sex 486 Contents SP oop mon rire me Ao op . Sex and Science 51 Sex and Religion 52 2 The Sexual Act 55 Male and Female Sex Organs 55 How It Begins 56 . Male Power 60 Female Power 64 . The Orgasm 66 The Psychology of Sex 68 The Biology of Sex 70 Notes and References 74 3 The Exploitation of the Sex Organs 77 . Introduction 77 The Exploitation of the Penis 77 The Exploitation of the Vagina 79 Sex Organs in Time-Structuring 81 . The Exploitation of the Orgasm 83 Sexual Deviations 86 Notes and References 89 PART TWO: SEX AND PEOPLE 4 Forms of Human Relationship 93 The Human Personality 93 . The Relationship Diagram 96 Acquaintances 98 Co-workers 99 Committee Members 101 Respect 105 Admiration 108 . Affection 110 The Turn-On 113OepoR gm re oP rR mean mean gD ~ So Contents 7 Lechery 121 . Companions 122 Friends 123 . Intimacy 125 . Love 129 . Classifying Relationships 130 . Marriage 134 . Legal Relationships 135 Notes and References 138 5 Sexual Games 141 Introduction; It’s a Crazy World 141 Parental Programming 144 Types of Scripts 148 . Nature’s Tricks 155 . What Isa Game? 160 Some Sexual Games 165 . Why People Play Games 174 . The Hhusion of Autonomy 177 Notes and References 181 6 Sex and Well-being or Preventive Intimacy 185 . Introduction 185 . Physical Contact and Physical Health 186 The Six Hungers 189 . Sex and Ethics 194 Sex and Aesthetics 196 Sex and Intimacy 197 Sex and Marriage 199 . Sex and Research 200 Sex and Well-Being 201. Notes and References 2118 Contents op apo esp PART THREE: AFTERPLAY 7 Questions 217 . Questions and Answers 217 . A Selected List of Books 226 8 A Man of the World 233 . Love and Marriage 233 Short Sayings 239 . The Sad Ones 245 Final Rap 245 Appendix: The Classification of Human Relationships 247 Introduction 247 . Types of Relationships 248 . Discussion 255 Index 259WoONnansuwne 10. 1. 12. 13. 14A. 14B. 14C, 15. 16 (1). 16 (5). 16 (9).- 16 (2). 16 (3). 16 (6). 16 (5). - 16(9). 16 (3). 16 (6). 16 (7). 17A. 17B. 17C, Table of Figures . The Human Personality 94 . A Relationship Diagram 97 Co-workers 101 . Committee Members 102 A Grievance Committee 104 Admiration, Affection, and Turn-On 109 Companions 123 . Friends 124 . An Asymmetrical P-C Relation 132 An Asymmetrical A-C Relation 132 A Symmetrical C-C Relation 132 Total Exploitation 132 The Drama Triangle 163 The Stickleback Switch 164 The Baboon Switch 164 The Patient Switch 164 The Relationship Diagram 248 Parents P-P 250 Spouses A-A_ 250 Lovers C-C 250 Bolster P-A 250 Comforter P-C 251 Teacher A-C 251 Co-workers A-A 251 Playmates C-C 251 Critic P-C 252 Advisor A-C 252 ‘Child’ Psychiatrist C-P 252 Child-programmed Adult 256 Adult-programmed Child 256 Parent-programmed Child 256To all those who have been my friends for still these many years... in love, appreciation, and gratitudeForeword This book is based on the Jake Gimbel Sex Psychology lectures which I was privileged to give at the University of California in April and May of 1966. Dr Salvatore P. Lucia, Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine at San Francisco Medical Center, was on the selection committee, and I believe it was mainly through his influence that I was chosen for this honour. iam grateful to him and the other members of the committee for giving me such an opportunity. About 600 people attended and overflowed into the aisles and the back of the auditorium, each from a different background and with a different way of approaching the subject. The original programme read as fol- lows: THE 1966 JAKE GIMBEL SEX PSYCHOLOGY LECTURES UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE COMMITTEE FOR ARTS AND LECTURES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO MEDICAL CENTER Sex in Human Living ~ APRIL 6 Talking about Sex APRIL 13 Forms of Human Relationship APRIL 20 Sex and Well-being APRIL 27 Sexual Games The above four lectures will be given at 8.30 p.m. in the Medical Sciences Auditorium, San Francisco Med- ical Center. MAY 23 Language and Lovers The above lecture will be given in the Field House, University of California at Santa Cruz. All interested persons are cordially invited to attend. ‘14 Foreword Although ‘all interested persons’ were invited to attend, the audience consisted mainly of students, faculty, professional people and their co-workers. Dr Lucia was a most gracious and diplomatic chairman, and my assistant, Miss Pamela Blum, ably assisted in the platform arrangements. Meanwhile, Dr Lucia’s secretary, Marjorie Hunt, arranged to preserve the lectures on tape, and Miss Olga Aiello typed them out for me. Without this service, of course, the lectures would have been lost forever, since I had no text and my notes consisted only of topic headings. But primarily I am grateful to the late Jake Gimbel for mak- ing such a series of lectures possible in the first place. When he died in 1943, he left a substantial trust for this purpose, to alternate between Stanford University and the University of California. Since then the Lectureship has been held by a list of distinguished authorities. They have set a standard which is such a difficult challenge that it has taken me four years to attempt to meet it by placing my thoughts in writing before the public, and it is with some diffidence that I do so even now. There has been a considerable emergence and spread of sex- ual knowledge since these lectures were given. In 1967 began the publication of the monthly journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, the most reasonable, reliable, and respect- able periodical of its kind. It has much less of the slightly sensational and disapproving attitude of its most illustrious predecessor, the old Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft wherein the pioneers of psychoanalysis published some of their early papers, and which was a prime source for Havelock Ellis and students of the ‘psychopathology’ of sex of that era. During the same four-year period the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States? emerged into prominence under the leadership of Dr Mary Calderone, of New York. The im- peccable qualifications and manner of Dr Calderone have un- doubtedly contributed to the wide acceptance of her work, par- ticularly in promoting sex education in the schoolroom. A third force in emergent sexual knowledge is the classified ad- vertisement columns of the Berkeley Barb or Tribe and otherForeword 15 underground papers, which reveal the prevalence and variety of departures from the official vis-a-vis position in sexual intercourse much more poignantly than Kinsey and his associ- ates did, although less romantically perhaps than Havelock Ellis’s writings. A fourth influence which has made itself felt in a significant way during the past two or three years is the legal relaxations: the acceptance of homosexual consent liaisons in Britain, and of pornography in Denmark, for example. Best of all is the recent conjunction of sex with healthy wit and hum- our (as opposed to morbid, distasteful, or derogatory jokes), as in the satirical Official Sex Manual and the ‘sexy-picture parodies in Evergreen magazine. The current advanced posi- tion is that sex is reasonably decent and is here to stay, so we had best face it. This is in distinction to the rightist position that sex is nastier than anything, and the radical position that nothing is nasty so that sex will not suffer if it is thrown into the pot with violence and garbage. All of these influences, including the underground papers (which have to be repudiated by everyone else for reasons of ‘respectability’), come into fullest flower in the writings of Dr Eugene Schoenfeld, who forthrightly enlightens the public in a weekly column under the name of Dr Hip Pocrates.‘ (He has now retired from this activity.) The greatest change which has taken place during this period, however, is not an educational one but a practical one. The fuller impact of ‘the pill’ on American life is marked by the emergence or resurgence of the ‘emancipated woman’, with her claim for full sexual equality. The manuscript of this book was combed by several of them for signs of ‘male chauvinism’. Some of the examples they found were pretty hairy, so I made appropriate changes in the final draft. In other instances, where I felt ‘female chauvinism’ was rearing its head, I have stood my ground, and allowed them to have their say in foot- notes, where they are represented by the initials BW, with my replies on occasion labelled EB. In fairness to EW, I should say that I have not included their many approving and enthu- siastic comments. ~16 Foreword What I have done in this book is tell it like I think it is, which entails the use of colloquialisms, imagery, and case re- ports. Anyone is at liberty to keep it out of the hands of their children under sixteen, or under eighteen, or under twenty-one (or under forty, for that matter), if they feel a need to. I will gladly receive the documentation of anyone who wishes to correct any error I have made in facts. As to matters of opinion, I cannot conscientiously defer to someone else unless he or she has listened to more or to more cogent sexual his- tories than I have during the past thirty years. I imagine that there are some pimps and prostitutes who know more about sex in general, and some scientists who know more about par- ticular aspects of it, than an experienced and interested psy- chiatrist does. On the whole, I think that there is as much science as art in what I have put down, and any disputation should be supported by an appropriate body of evidence. A lot of what is written here was not said in the lectures, or was said in a different way. For one thing, I have learned a lot since 1966, and for another, lecturing is different from writing. Thus it was necessary to edit, change, cut, rearrange, and add to the lectures, to bring them up to date and make them more readable. In order to do this most effectively, I have adopted the device of writing as though I were writing for an audience of one. In other places J have referred to a writer called Cyp- tian St Cyr, who is the purported author of a work entitled Letters to My Wife's Maid. These letters are supposed to have been written while St Cyr was travelling with his wife to far- away places, and are for the purpose of preparing the young lady in question to venture out into the world alone when she leaves her present employment. That is a suitable context for the present work, which is therefore written in the spirit of St Cyr’s ‘Letters’, while still endeavouring to maintain a tone of the original lectures as well. In line with this, the previous order of programming, as given above, has been abandoned, along with the original title of the series.* * The ‘official’ title of this book, for those who prefer to think of sex in a More academic way, is ‘Cerebral and Behavioural Correlates of Coupling in Higher Primate Communities’.Foreword 17 Because of the many changes which have been made, it is only fair to say that neither the Jake Gimbel Trust nor the University of California is responsible for any of the opinions expressed. That responsibility is solely my own. I want to thank the members of the San Francisco Trans- actional Analysis Seminar for spending several evenings listen- ing while I read the manuscript to them, and for the many valuable suggestions and constructive and destructive criti- cisms they made, and also those who read the whole manu- script at their own leisure and did likewise. These include, emancipated or square, Bertha Joung, Al and Pam Levin, Arden Rose, Valerie Venger, Nadja and Valerio Giusi, and Rick Berne. CARMEL, CALIFORNIA APRIL 1970. Notes and References 1. Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, edited by Theodore Bawer, M.D., and David M. Reed, Ph.D., and a board of consulting editors. Published monthly at 18 East 48 Street, New York, N.Y. 10017. 2. SIECUS, 1855 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023. 3. The Official Sex Manual, by Gerald Sussman. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1969. 4. Dear Doctor Hip Pocrates, by Eugene Schoenfeld. Grove Press, New York, 1969; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973.X Introduction: Talking about Sex a. SEX IS WET Sex is not an easy subject to write about, mainly because it is wet. In fact it is more than wet, it is slippery. Anyone who ignores that is going to feel a little sticky talking about it. I knew a poet once who wrote about it beautifully, but without impact, and I said to her, ‘I think it’s a mistake to use dry words to talk about wet feelings.’ So she started to use wet words, and then I said, ‘Wet words aren’t good enough either. You have to use words that people’s minds will slip on.’ She liked that, and in return told me that a pregnant woman sitting by a window thought of a black snake. I didn’t understand that, not being a woman, but it sounded right. It sounded better than the pregnant woman who was very proper in her speech, and said that she was hoping to have a good flow of milk so she could raise a bust-fed baby. That one reminded me of the joke about the lady from Boston who always apologized when she talked about ‘chamber’ music or ‘cocktail’ parties, and who reported one day that a friend of hers had fallen over a preci- peepee. To start off with, I think we should review our vocabulary and decide which words will most clearly and comfortably say what we are talking about. b. SOME COLD DRY woRDS The words that people use for sex start with conjugation, which is what lower organisms do, and copulation, which is for higher animals. Sexual intercourse is for people. Scientists call it cé-i-tuis, although if it makes them nervous they some- times call it co-igh’-tus, but co’-i-tus is what it is. Sexual union20 Introduction is something you can talk about in front of an audience, but only on Sunday. In fact you can talk about any of these except sexual intercourse. You are not supposed to talk about that; instead you must communicate. Communication may be very difficult, and it gives some people, including me, a headache, so just plain talking is better if you can get away with it. Even listening to other people communicate can give you a head- ache sometimes, especially if they don’t know what they’re communicating about or whom they’re communicating with. In short, communication may cause trouble, and most people who indulge in it should learn to talk to each other sooner or later if they want to get along. The worst kind of communica- tion is called a continuing dialogue, which may give the par- ticipants not only a headache but often chronic stomach trouble as well. Sometimes, however, people in a continuing dialogue start talking to each other, and then everything gets better. A cynical friend of mine, Dr Horseley, tells over- educated couples who are not getting along to stop communi- cating and start talking. The trouble with all the words above is that they seem cold and dry and sterile even though they are not. Conjugation sounds like making a fire by rubbing two eggs together. Copu- lation sounds wet but slightly repulsive, while coitus just sounds sticky, like walking through molasses in a pair of sneakers. Sexual intercourse is an okay phrase to use in public or in writing, although it sounds too sensible to be much fun. For variety’s sake, the sex act is a convenient synonym. The words used for the results of all these activities are not much better. Sexual satisfaction is instead of a good steak for a man, or instead of a cheese soufilé for a woman. Sexual outlets are like the faucets on an aluminium coffee urn or the tap on the bottom of a boiler that you turn on once a month to drain out the sludge. Climax started off as a decent enough word, but it has been so overworked on the news-stands that it now sounds like the moment when two toasted marshmallows finally get stuck to each other. Orgasm, I think, is the best word to use in writing.Talking about Sex 21 Lawyers have words of their own, but they don’t help much. Their favourites are cohabitation, sexual relations, and adult- ery, all of which are charges or accusations. Lawyers have no interest whatsoever in whether sex is any fun. They are only interested in ‘establishing’ it or ‘proving’ it so that someone will have to pay for it. You pay just as much if it wasn’t any fun as if it was the greatest thrill you ever had. There is no deduction for dreariness and no premium for ecstasy. Lawyers also have other words that are called crimes against nature, although nature has never filed any complaints. There is no such word in the legal vocabulary as decent exposure. All ex- posure is deemed indecent until proven otherwise. This seems contrary to the constitutional provision that says a man is innocent until proven guilty, or decent until proven indecent. Some of the biggest fights between lawyers are over the word obscenity, and we will talk about that later. The real trouble with all these words and phrases is that they evade the issue, which is lust and pleasure and intoxication, and that is why they sound cold and dry and sterile. c. SOME WARM DAMP WORDS Mating sounds warm and fertile; it has a great future ahead of it, but it lacks presence. Perhaps the most human and least vulgar of all sexual terms is making love. It has a warm, damp, fertile ring to it, and also a promise of something more endur- ing than the act itself. Nobody knows what happens after sun- rise to the people who copulate or have coitus or sexual inter- course. But people who make love are the most likely to have breakfast together, and that is why most young ladies prefer that term to all the others. Unfortunately, perhaps, it seems to be slightly less popular among men, even men who are willing to face their women at the breakfast table. To come is another warm damp word. What it lacks in drama it makes up in cosiness. Some people, oddly enough, say go instead.d. OBSCENE WORDS It is perfectly possible, and I think desirable, to talk about ob- scenities without being obscene. For example, we can write four of the commonest sexual obscenities backward or sideways as cuff, swerk, kirp, and tunc, without either misleading or offending anyone. Cuff is the only word in the English language that gives the full feeling, excitement, slipperiness, and aroma of the sexual act. Its lascivious ‘f? sound also helps to give it a realistic punch. The synonyms mentioned in the previous section care- fully avoid the idea of excitement and lust, and even more carefully avoid one of the most primitive and powerful ele- ments in sex, which is smell. Cuff takes in all of these, just as a child does, because it starts off as a child’s word. Oddly enough, it is not, as is commonly supposed, an Anglo- Saxon word. It got into English from Scotland in the 1500s" and most probably came from an old Dutch or German word, ficken, which means to beat, very much like the Arabic dok, which means to pound like a pestle in a mortar. Thrusting or pounding is one of the most important elements in sexual intercourse, as we shall see. Equally important is what Arabic sexologists call hez, which means an exhilarating, lascivious, free-swinging movement of the female pelvis. It is just because cuff means dok and hez that it has such a thrust and swing. Cuffing is something two people do together, where swerk- ing is a more one-sided word. A very wise girl named Amaryl- lis once said to me, ‘I like cuffing, but I don’t want a boy who will swerk me just for the glory of it. Bailing is something people do together too.* There is no need to discuss kirp and tunc and their numer- ous synonyms, since they are all mere vulgarities that add little * EW: Balling is a post-pill phenomenon. There is no feeling of exploita- tion, it implies mutual consent, an act carried out together, not done to someone but with someone. It is the wet- word equivalent of ‘making love’, used with pride and joy. °Talking about Sex 23 to our understanding. Penis, to most people, brings up a Pic- ture of something skinny and not very imposing, or, for those who have little boys in the house, cute. It will do for the organ in its flaccid state. For the more noble state of erection, I think Phallus comes closer to the truth, even though it sounds artificial and lacking in juice. Vagina will serve for the female organ. It has the warmth, if not all the other qualities, of tunc. The main difficulty is with the external genitals of the female, called. by anatomists the vulva. That is much too clinical a word for everyday use, but there is really no polite term for them, so we shall have to settle for the conventional genitals. There are lots of other words that you can find in Roget's Thesaurus, in various dictionaries of slang,? and in the Crim- inal Codes. of various jurisdictions, but the above list should be enough for everyday purposes. €. THE NATURE OF OBSCENITY I will now explain why I prefer to avoid the use of obscenity. ° The word obscene itself means sort of repulsive. Obscenity is usually divided into two types - pornography and scatology. Pornography means writing about harlots, and is properly applied to bedroom words, while scatology applies to bathroom vulgarities. Some people find both pornography and scatology offensive, while others find one obscene but not the other. This all makes it sound as though obscenity were a matter of arti- ficial rules, but that is not quite so. It has a much deeper psychological meaning than that. Any word worth saying arouses an image in the speaker ~ and also in the hearer. These images do not always present themselves clearly, but with a little care they can be fished up from the deeps of the mind. The images for most words are bland, poorly formed and shadowy, and fade into an unknown background unless they are very familiar. That is why they are so seldom noticed when the speaker speaks. These may be called Adult or shadow images. Other words are accompanied24 Introduction by images which are more vivid and powerful. Those images are relics of childhood, and are called Child or primal images.* Because they are so detailed and colourful, primal images arouse emotional responses. Some of them are strikingly beau- tiful, like the images people often see when they smoke mari- juana or take LSD. Others are repulsive, and these are the ones we are concerned with here, since they give us a psycho- logical way of defining obscenity. A word becomes obscene when the accompanying image is primal and repulsive. It is so because the image and the reality it stood for became vivid and tepulsive in childhood, as is commonly the case with odorous excretions during toilet training, and the image keeps that power in later years.t This definition of obscenity is not based on artificial rules made by oppressive and ignoble authorities to deprive the people of freedom of speech, but comes from the structure of the human nervous system and its profound psy- chology. If obscenity is based on deep and universal psychological factors dating from childhood, then only childhood words should have such potency. If a language is learned later in life, say after the age of six, it can have no obscenities for the learner because he never heard its words in the primal years of life. Thus a proper Englishman may be able to say or read words like merde, Scheiss, fourrer, végeln, cul, or Schwanz without embarrassment or diffidence because those words, al- though he may know very well what they mean, do not arouse any primal imagery, but maintain in his mind a more abstract quality. If the new language becomes deeply ingrained, how- ever, and he starts thinking in it, certain of its words may gradually penetrate through to the primal layers, and thus be- come obscene. Such observations indicate that the quality of obscenity is here to stay, but the particular words that arouse an obscene reaction are a matter of choice or chance. Basically it has to do with smell and taste, and also slippery touch. Obscene words are ones that become connected with slippery sensations in primal imagery. In special cases, the most inoffensive words