I don't just agree with this Mexican. I believe that this is an extremely accurate description of the “disease” of modern man. Our man is dead; he is a doll, and his behavior is indeed very similar to the behavior of a corpse, which “allows” those around him to do whatever they want to him, although he himself, by his very presence, influences them in a certain way.
Modern man is deliberate and deliberate, and has great difficulty with emotions. He is reliable at work, but lacks living desires, desires, and aspirations. His life is extremely boring, empty and meaningless. He is busy controlling and manipulating those around him, and at the same time he is securely caught in the network of his own and others’ manipulations.
This book gives a brilliant description of us, today's people, endlessly playing some roles, as a rule, false ones, which prevent us from being and living. Modern man will foam at the mouth and deny that he is dead and false; and the more ardor he shows at the same time, the more accurate our diagnosis of his lifetime death will be.
The author of this book offers you a number of methods for your own resuscitation. “So what if you were dead? - he thinks. “So come to life, pull yourself out by your hair from the grave into which you pushed yourself.”
I am confident that the movement from manipulation to actualization described in this book will help you get your life back. In essence, this process is a movement from illness to health. And, who knows, maybe if each of us wants to go down this path, if each of us wants to recover, that is, to turn from a soulless manipulator into a living, real, creative actualizer, maybe then our entire society will be able to recover from its diseases.
Forward! And - may hope help us!
The first step we must take on the path to salvation is to become aware of our manipulations. But not as a merciless judgment on oneself, but as material that should be remade. A person cannot become an actualizer without hoping that it is possible.
Unfortunately, such hope has been abandoned in modern psychiatry and psychology, making the treatment process more difficult. Today, most psychotherapists cannot unambiguously define a patient as “sick” or “healthy”. The easiest way is to label others as psychotic or neurotic; It is much more difficult to treat the patient as an INDIVIDUAL who has many problems in life and who resorts to manipulative behavior for self-defense. A psychotherapist who is responsible for his work must teach the patient to defend himself in other, more humane and more effective ways. If modern man is not mentally ill, then what is wrong with him?
According to William Glasser's theory, man is “irresponsible” and has a great need to “impose responsibility on others. According to Eric Berne's theory, modern man “plays games.”
Albert Ellis assures us that man is “a person acting on illogical assumptions.”
According to Everett Shostrom, a person is a manipulator, that is, a dysfunctional person who seeks to control himself and those around him, and treats people as things and is not aware of his falsity and lifelessness. That is why a person needs psychotherapeutic help that is understandable to him and the benefits of which are obvious to him.
I believe Everett Sjostrom offers you just such help.
Frederick S. PERLS,
Isaoen Institute,
Beat Shur, California.
FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR
Modern man is a manipulator, no matter who he is - whether he is a car salesman persuading us to make a purchase; whether the father of a fifteen-year-old son, confident that he, and only he, knows what career his son should pursue; whether it's a teenager working adults for $200 hours, or a husband hiding his salary from his wife... Manipulators are legion. In each of us there lives a manipulator who endlessly uses all sorts of false tricks in order to achieve this or that good for himself.
Of course, not all manipulation is evil. Some manipulative steps are necessary for a person in his struggle for existence. But most of our manipulations have a very detrimental effect on both the lives of the manipulators themselves and the lives of their loved ones. Manipulation is harmful because it masks the illness of a particular human personality.
The tragedy of our lives is that modern man, as a result of his endless manipulation, has lost every opportunity to express himself directly and creatively and has reduced himself to the level of a preoccupied automaton who spends all his time trying to hold on to the past and insure the future. Yes, he often talks about his feelings, but rarely experiences them. He loves to talk about his worries, but he cannot honestly face them and try to get rid of them.
Modern man gropes through life, using a whole arsenal of blind masks and evasive statements, and has no idea how rich and colorful the real world is.
Since every person is a manipulator to some extent, modern humanistic psychology suggests that from all manipulations we can develop a positive potential, which Abraham Maslow and Kurt Goldstein call “self-actualization.”
An actualizer is the opposite of a manipulator. There are no actualizers in their pure form, but the more natural a person is, the more sincere his feelings,
the closer it is to ideal.
Each of us is part manipulator, part actualizer. That is, in each of us there is a certain sincere beginning that allows us to trust our feelings, know our needs and preferences, rejoice at the real enemy, offer the necessary help when necessary and not be afraid to show our aggression.
But we also have a manipulative side that forces us to hide and camouflage our feelings. The range of behaviors of the average person is enormous - from arrogant hostility to obsequious flattery. All this, replacement, takes a lot of effort - exactly as much as it takes for the most lost manipulator to “transform” into an actualizer, that is, to breathe life deeply and become a full-blooded person. How to do it? This is exactly what my book is about.
I dreamed of writing it for a long time and finally decided to do this work after reading Erich Fromm’s article “Man is not a thing” in Saturday Review of March 16, 1957, where Fromm warns that with today’s market-oriented society, consumer knowledge and manipulation it becomes the paramount task of the moment. From market manipulation, Fromm wrote, the desire to manipulate one’s employees logically follows. This second most important field of psychology is called “human relations,” from which it is only one step to the psychology of leaders, when everyone has to be manipulated, as in politics.
This book should help you see manipulation in your own life and learn how to deal with it. If you learn to accurately describe yourself, if you can become a psychotherapist for yourself, if you can accurately diagnose yourself and your loved ones, we have won, and I congratulate you and myself. Yes, I want to give you some guidelines based on my many years of psychotherapeutic experience. But the main thing in curing depression, neuroses, psychoses that most people suffer from is in your hands.
Surely you will recognize yourself, your family and friends on the pages of this book. Don't laugh and don't be sad. Become a better person - it is possible. And - most importantly! - don’t betray yourself. Be patriotic of your own personality.
Everett L. SHOSTROM.
Causes. Why do they do this?
One of the main reasons is the desire to receive the love of others through power over them. In this case, the manipulator hides his true feelings and thoughts. He's trying to make you love him.
The second reason is a person’s internal conflict, his distrust of himself and others. To gain trust, the manipulator tries to control people and bring them closer to him.
The next reason is fear of deep relationships. Therefore, manipulators prefer superficial control rather than close interaction. Hence their hypertrophied self-control: they do not allow themselves to express strong feelings (fear, joy, anger).
Chapter 1. PROBLEM
The modern manipulator does not stand still - it develops and is constantly improved. He also strives to understand the secrets of human nature, but with one single goal - to better control those around him. Look: a husband, for example, has greatly succeeded in getting to know his wife. And what? Do you think he will use this knowledge for good? Most likely no. He needs them in order to control his wife, to keep her on a leash and to insure himself against any unexpected actions of hers.
Is this game of cat and mouse with your own wife still enjoyable? Not at all. On the contrary, she exhausts him completely. But he cannot get rid of the harmful habit of managing, controlling, manipulating. He has been used to this since childhood and cannot imagine any other life.
Of course, manipulators are not born. They become them. But it's very early. So, having barely learned to walk, a child already knows that in order to achieve his goal, he needs to sometimes coo, sometimes yell. Do you think crying children always want to cry? Nothing like this. They just want to get this or that from their parents, and tears are their weapon at the moment. Parents, for their part, will do everything possible to raise a neurotic and psychotic child out of a healthy child, that is, they will play along with him in mastering the difficult craft of manipulation. They console a child who is not sad at all; punishing a child who is not to blame...
Before his eyes, his father can play the role of a responsible parent for the simple reason that he has a secret need for omnipotence, hidden from everyone. His mother shows him an example of skillful manipulation, trying to hold onto the strings of her apron and hiding her inertia and laziness behind it.
Manipulation has become such a common, such an everyday part of our lives that we have stopped noticing it. They are like birds, which are many around us, but which we do not see or think about.
Manipulation, being the main scourge of modern man, is universal, endless and timeless. For example, we read in the Old Testament the story of how David, struck to the very heart by the beauty of Uriah’s wife, orders Uriah to be sent to the most dangerous battle. David hopes that Uriah will die, although he does not admit it even to himself. A huge manipulation! By the way, its denouement does not at all contradict the canons of psychiatry: David’s last days were, as we know, filled with torment, and his sinful love did not bring him happiness.
The paradox of modern man is that, being not just an intelligent, but also an educated being, he drives himself into a state of unconsciousness and a low level of vitality. No, we are not all deceivers, sales managers or Elgar Gantry evangelists. But we are afraid to get to know life and look at ourselves honestly. We habitually put on one mask or another - everyone has several of them - and take part in the general masquerade, calling it life.
Above all, the manipulator is afraid that someone, even a close and beloved person, will find out about his true feelings. Hiding your true feelings is the mark of a manipulator.
Psychotherapists almost never believe what their patients say, but they carefully observe their behavior. Words may lie, but the human body never lies. For example, a patient says to a doctor: “You make me crazy!” But at the same time she smiles. This means she is trying to hide her anger from the therapist. If she hadn't been pretending, her fists would have been clenched and her eyes would have been burning with rage. But she wants to get some benefit from the doctor for herself, so she puts on a mask of being kind and smiling. Without taking into account only one thing - the mask never covers the whole person, and the true essence will certainly come out somewhere.
The manipulator is a skillful gambler with life who constantly strives to hide his empty card. A professional player knows how to perfectly feign indifference, but what nervous tension does this indifferent face cost him! Only the most experienced psychotherapist can look behind the face of a poker player; look and see behind this expressionless mask horror or rage over a huge loss or gloating over a big win... These are the laws of poker. But do we rarely meet such “players” in life?
A very common type of manipulator is a person who imposes his language on his interlocutors. Or he “hides behind” expressions like “Yes, this is, of course, very interesting,” while he does not feel any, even slight, interest. Do you want to sober up a lying manipulator? Put him in an awkward position. Say something like, “I don’t believe you.”
Another paradox of the modern manipulator is that he does not use even a fraction of the opportunities that life provides him. Instead of being sincerely happy, he will only smile sourly. He is a preoccupied automaton who will never take responsibility for his actions and his mistakes and will therefore endlessly blame everyone. By the way, it is not such a simple matter to blame others. Therefore, the manipulator is like a live fish in a hot frying pan - all his life he does nothing but fidget, make excuses and make faces.
The ways to simulate it are endless.
Surely you've met the person who quotes Shakespeare at every convenient turn of conversation. He read nothing but two or three sonnets, but he learned them by heart. This is very characteristic of a manipulator - superficial erudition, the goal of which is to impress, to catch others on his bait, after which to control them. He does not study life, but collects a collection of clever things, words and sayings, so that with its help he can throw dust in your eyes.
Another manipulative example is a large businessman who has a reputation among his colleagues as a seducer of secretaries. Imagine that, as a rule, he is not interested in sex as such. He tries to get girls into bed just to demonstrate his strength to everyone. This is a manipulative competition, but since it does not bring him any spiritual joy and satisfaction, after each “victory” he invariably experiences a loss of strength and depression.
One of my “favorite” types is the “whiner.”
You know him well too. When he meets you, he will definitely devote the first fifteen minutes to a detailed story about how unhappy he is, how bad things are going for him and how upset his health is. Need I add that usually things are going well for him and his health is fine?
In a neurotic modern society, it is more convenient to live as a manipulator than as an actualizer. But more convenient does not mean better. Ultimately, the manipulator is left with his nose. There is no need to look at the “road signs” of our life - they are completely false. “Be always pleasant,” they urge us. “Don’t get irritated”, “Don’t do anything you shouldn’t do” - this is truly excellent advice! It's as if we know each other so well that we can easily predict who should do what in different situations. And what about this common statement: “The consumer is always right.” We all repeat it regularly, but does anyone believe that the consumer is always right? And has anyone ever met someone who is always pleasant and never gets irritated?
In America, Bill Rogers says: “I’ve never met a person I didn’t like.” What can you say to this? You can smile. You can tap him on the shoulder and say, “Oh, I can guess what’s going on. It’s just that you, old man, have never met those whom I meet so often.” And think to yourself: he’s probably never met anyone, poor guy.
Never and no one.
Now a little more about why the manipulator himself suffers from his manipulations. The fact is that mechanical, insincere activity turns life into an unloved job. The manipulator treats his activities as day labor, which he is bored to death and from which it would be good to get rid of as quickly as possible. He has forgotten how to enjoy life as it is and experience deep feelings. He usually believes that the time of fun and pleasure, learning and development is over, gone along with childhood and youth, and that in adulthood only problems and hardships await him. So, upon reaching maturity, he, in fact, switches to a plant lifestyle, without trying to comprehend the goals and meaning of his existence.
Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, taught us a most powerful lesson in actualization in his time. After his first attempt to be elected to Congress failed, he said: “If good people, in their wisdom, see fit to keep me in the background, well, then so be it. I know disappointment too well to be upset about it.” Fabulous! If we conduct a psychological analysis of these words, it will become clear: Lincoln understood that any competition inevitably creates winners and losers, but life does not end with the competition. Therefore, you should calmly prepare for the next attempt to win.
Now compare the reaction to Lincoln's defeat with the typical reaction of a manipulator who failed to advance in his career as planned or failed to receive a salary increase that was so dear to his heart. Yes, he will kill everyone! Arriving home, he will do everything to poison the existence of his wife and children, and may even go so far as to shift the blame to his long-dead parent, who tyrannized him, and to the housekeeper, who poorly prepared his breakfast that very morning.
After which he can get drunk or get sick, fall into a trance and terrorize those around him with his gloom, that is, declare a passive strike against himself, all of humanity and his stupid boss.
The manipulator, we have already talked about this, loves to control. He can't live without it. He is a slave to this need of his. So, the next paradox of the manipulator, which I would definitely like to say: the more he likes to manage, the stronger his need to be controlled by someone.
For man, the riddle of “good” and “evil” has always been overwhelming, and he could not always distinguish one from the other. Therefore, for centuries, man has been looking for some kind of authority that would decide for him what is “good” and what is “bad.” Thus, everything that is pleasant to the chosen authority becomes “good”, and everything that the authority does not like becomes “bad”.
Of course, the man did not know what sacrifices such irresponsibility would require of him; did not know that from the moment he allowed someone to decide for him, he lost his integrity and split into two. The moral concepts of “good” and “evil” imposed by someone lead to a psychology of rejection, since a person must decide which parts of his nature are good and which are not. Accordingly, he will try to be the “good” parts of himself, and mercilessly reject the “bad” parts. And - a civil war begins within a person; a war full of pain and grave doubts: not a single person can ever decide to the end what is evil and what is good in himself.
It is impossible, it is dangerous to “reject” part of your nature. Whatever it is, it must be taken into account. And all human manifestations should be respected. It is stupid to cut off the left hand for the reason that it does everything worse than the right. It is also stupid to amputate part of your personality. But a person is responsible for the style with which he expresses himself.
We are all manipulators. But before we reject or amputate our manipulative behavior, we should try to remake or modernize it into actualizing behavior. In short, we need to manipulate more creatively, since actualization behavior is the same manipulative behavior, only expressed more creatively.
In each of us there are two principles, which Frederick Perls calls “top dog”, “bottom dog”.
“Dog on top” is an active principle, expressed in the desire to command, subordinate, and put pressure on with authority. “Dog from below” is a passive principle, expressing our need to submit, agree, and obey. Each of these principles can manifest itself either manipulatively or creatively.
Manipulators often love to plunge into the world of psychiatry and psychology. Having swallowed terms and concepts there, they, as a rule, proudly retire into the vast world of dissatisfaction with themselves, where they remain until the end of their days. And they use psychological concepts to justify their unsatisfactory behavior. The manipulator finds the cause of current misfortunes in his past, where something was done wrong to him. He has already left the childish “I can’t help you!”, but has already firmly entered the adult “I can’t help you because...”. Anything could follow next; it was not for nothing that he read psychological literature. For example: “Because I’m an introvert,” or “Because my mother didn’t love me,” or “Because I’m very shy.” Because, because, because...
Let me remind you that psychology was never intended to justify socially dangerous and self-destructive behavior that prevents an individual from developing his maximum human potential. Yes, psychology tries to explain the reasons for this or that behavior, but its goal is not that, but to help a person improve himself, make himself better and happier.
Chapter 2. MANIPULATOR
The modern manipulator has evolved from our market orientation, where a person is a thing that you need to know a lot about and which you need to be able to manage.
Erich Fromm said that things can be dismembered, things can be manipulated without damaging their nature. Another thing is the person. You cannot dismember it without destroying it, without killing it. You cannot manipulate him without hurting him, without killing him.
However, the main task of the market is to get people to be things! And not without success.
In market conditions, a person is not so much a person as a consumer. For a merchant, he is a buyer. For a tailor - a suit. For a traveling salesman - a bank account. Even in those establishments that provide you with rather intimate personal services, the madam is only part of her client.
The market seeks to depersonalize us, deprive us of individuality, but we don’t want this, we are indignant. I don’t want to be the “head” of my hairdresser, I want to be Everett Sjostrom everywhere and everywhere - a whole person. We all want to be special. And we all cease to be special when we fall for the hook of commercial thought, which seeks to destroy precisely our “specialness” to the ground.
I have already said that there is a manipulator inside each of us. Now I will tell you something even more terrible: each of us contains several manipulators. And I am ready to list them. At different moments in life, first one or the other of them takes over to lead us. But - keep this in mind - among them there is a main one, that is, in each person one type of manipulator, characteristic of him, predominates. So, there are eight main manipulative types, and you will probably easily recognize them, since each of them is among your friends or acquaintances.
1. DICTATOR.
He certainly exaggerates his power, he dominates, he orders, he quotes authorities - in short, he does everything to control his victims. Types of Dictator: Abbess, Chief, Boss, Lesser Gods.
2. RAG.
Usually a victim of the Dictator and his exact opposite. Rag develops great skill in interacting with the Dictator. She exaggerates her sensitivity. At the same time, typical techniques are: forgetting, not hearing, passively remaining silent. Types of Rags: Suspicious, Stupid, Chameleon, Conformist, Confused, Retreating.
3. CALCULATOR.
Exaggerates the need to control everything and everyone. He deceives, evades, lies, tries, on the one hand, to outwit, and on the other, to double-check others. Varieties: Businessman, Conman, Poker Player, Advertiser, Blackmailer.
4. STICKED.
The polar opposite of the Calculator. He tries his best to exaggerate his dependence. This is a person who longs to be the subject of concern. He allows and gradually forces others to do his work for him. Varieties: Parasite, Whiner, Eternal Child, Hypochondriac, Dependent, Helpless, Person with the motto “Ah, life didn’t work out, and that’s why...”.
5. HULIGAN.
Exaggerates his aggressiveness, cruelty, and hostility. Controls using various types of threats. Varieties: Insulter, Hater, Gangster, Threatening. The female variation of the Bully is Grumpy Woman (“Saw”).
6. NICE GUY.
Exaggerates his caring, love, attentiveness. He kills with kindness. In some ways, he is much more difficult to deal with than the Bully. You can't fight a Nice Guy. Surprisingly, in any conflict between a Bully and a Nice Guy, the Bully loses. Varieties: Obsequious, Virtuous Moralist, Organizational Man.
7. JUDGE.
Exaggerates his criticism. He doesn’t trust anyone, is full of accusations, indignation, and has difficulty forgiving. Varieties: Omniscient, Accuser, Accuser, Gatherer of Evidence. Shamener, Appraiser, Avenger, Forcer to admit guilt.
8. DEFENDER.
The opposite of Judge. He overemphasizes his support and forbearance towards error. He corrupts others by empathizing beyond measure and refuses to allow those he protects to stand on their own feet and grow into their own. Instead of taking care of his own affairs, he takes care of the needs of others. Varieties: Mother Hen with Chicks, Comforter, Patron, Martyr, Helper, Selfless.
I repeat, we usually represent one of these types in the most pronounced form, but from time to time the others can awaken in us. The manipulator unerringly finds a partner, or one more suitable to his “type”. For example, a Rag wife will most likely choose a Dictator husband in order to most effectively control him with the help of her subversive measures.
Sometimes we appear completely different to different people. And the point here is not at all in their perception. We simply demonstrate to different people different manipulators living within us. This is why we must be very careful in our judgments about people if these judgments are based on the opinions of others. Remember, they only saw part of the personality. Maybe not the main one.
Chapter 3. REASONS FOR MANIPULATION
The main reason for manipulation, Frederick Perls believes, is a person’s eternal conflict with himself, since in everyday life he is forced to rely on both himself and the external environment.
The best example of such conflict is the relationship between employer and worker. For example, the employer replaces individual original thinking with the rules of trade. He clearly does not trust the seller with this matter and does not allow him to show initiative. The salesman must become a tool in the hands of his boss, which, of course, deals an irreparable blow to the integrity of his personality. The buyer, who no longer communicates with a human seller, but with a blind executor of the owner’s will, also finds himself insulted and humiliated.
There is another side to the problem. The worker in modern society tends to be a freeloader, a hunter of free stuff. He demands a lot of rights and privileges without doing much. He will not prove his abilities and his skills as a statement of his own worth. No. They owe him simply because they have to. These are his arguments.
A person never trusts himself completely. Consciously or subconsciously, he always believes that his salvation lies in others. However, he does not completely trust others either. Therefore, he embarks on the slippery path of manipulation so that “others” are always on his leash, so that he can control them and, under this condition, trust them more. It's like a child sliding down a slippery slide, clinging to the edge of someone else's clothing, and at the same time trying to control him. This is similar to the behavior of a co-pilot who refuses to fly the plane, but tries to control the first pilot. In short, we will call this - the first and main - reason for manipulation Distrust.
Erich Fromm puts forward a second reason for manipulation. He believes that normal relationships between people are love. Love necessarily presupposes knowing a person as he is and respecting his true essence.
The great world religions call us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and here the vicious circle of our lives closes. Modern man does not understand anything about these commandments. He has no idea what it means to love. Most people, no matter how much they want, cannot love their neighbor because they do not love themselves.
We adhere to the false postulate that the better we are, the more perfect we are, the more loved we are. This is almost the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, the higher our willingness to admit human weaknesses (but precisely human ones), the more we are loved. Love is a victory that is not easy to achieve. And in essence, the lazy manipulator is left with only one pathetic alternative to love - desperate, complete power over another person; power that forces another person to do what HE wants, think what HE wants, feel what HE wants. This power allows the manipulator to make a thing out of another person, HIS thing.
The third reason for manipulation is offered to us by James Bugenthal and the existentialists. “Risk and uncertainty,” they say, “are all around us.” Anything can happen to us at any moment. A person feels absolutely helpless when faced with an existential problem. Therefore, the passive manipulator takes the following position: “Oh, I can’t control everything that can happen to me?! Well, I won’t control anything!”
Bitterly aware of the unpredictability of his life, a person falls into inertia, completely turning himself into an object, which greatly increases his helplessness. To an ignorant person it may seem that from now on the passive manipulator has become a victim of the active one. This is wrong. Shouts: “I give up! Do whatever you want with me!” - nothing more than a cowardly trick of a passive manipulator. As Perls proved, in any life conflict between the “bottom dog” and the “top dog,” the passive side wins. A universal example would be a mother who “gets sick” when she cannot cope with her children. Her helplessness does its job: children become more obedient, even if they didn’t want it before.
An active manipulator operates using completely different methods. He sacrifices others and openly takes advantage of their powerlessness. At the same time, he experiences considerable satisfaction in ruling over them.
Parents, as a rule, try to make their children as dependent on themselves as possible and are extremely sensitive to their children’s attempts to gain independence. Usually parents play the role of “top dog,” and children happily play along with them as “bottom dog.” In this situation, the “if-then” behavioral technique becomes especially popular.
“If you eat a potato, you can watch TV.”
“If you do your homework, you can drive the car.”
The child also successfully masters the same technique:
“If I mow the lawn, what do I get?”
“If Jim’s father allows him to drive away on Saturday and Sunday, then why don’t you tell me not to?”
How would a real active manipulator behave in such a situation? He would have yelled, “Do as I say and don’t pester me with stupid questions!” In business, this reaction is common: “I own 51 percent of the capital, and they will wear THIS uniform because I want it so!” I remember the founder of the college where I once studied saying, “I don’t care what color the buildings are as long as they’re blue.” He was a wonderful person and a wonderful active manipulator.
We found the fourth reason for manipulation in the works of Jay Haley, Eric Berne and William Glasser. Haley, during his long work with schizophrenics, noticed that they were most afraid of close interpersonal contacts. Byrne believes that people start playing games in order to better manage their emotions and avoid intimacy. Glasser suggests that one of the basic human fears is the fear of predicament.
Thus, we conclude that a manipulator is a person who treats people ritualistically, trying his best to avoid intimacy in relationships and difficult situations.
And finally, Albert Ellis offers us the fifth reason for manipulation. He writes that each of us goes through a certain school of life and absorbs certain axioms, with which we then compare our actions. One of the axioms is this: we need to get everyone's approval.
A passive manipulator, Ellis believes, is a person who fundamentally does not want to be truthful and honest with others, but who tries by hook or by crook to please everyone, since he builds his life on this stupid axiom.
I want to emphasize that by manipulation I mean something more than a “game”, as described by Eric Berne in the book “Games People Play and People Who Play Games.” Manipulation is more of a game system; it is a way of life. A single game aimed at avoiding a predicament is one thing; and another thing is the life scenario, which regulates the entire system of interaction with the world. Manipulation is a pseudo-philosophy of life aimed at exploiting and controlling both oneself and others.
For example, the Rag wife turned her entire existence into an invisible campaign to make her Dictator husband responsible for all her life's troubles. This is not a separate random game, this is a scenario for their entire life together. To some extent, this same scenario plays out in most families, including mine and yours, although the roles may be reversed.
As for individual games, there are a great many of them. Bern records, for example, the following: “Hit me!”, “Rushing”, “Look how hard I try.” All of them are aimed at compromising the husband. After she provoked him to scold and goad her, she will do her best to convince him what a scoundrel he is. Her manipulative system can be called “Collecting injustices.”
