Mind Games: Awareness and Resilience

Dr. Baute takes the understanding of mind games to an entirely new level: showing they are natural, instinctive, universal and inevitable. He finds all mind games have a common source as well as common accelerants. Four main game energies are elaborated: Rescuer, Victim, Blamer, and Avoidance Rebellion. As social comparisons, envy and a negative bias are essential components of being human, so mind games, both positive and negative are intuitive, unavoidable and even necessary for human effectiveness. Without understanding how our minds are easily hijacked by such games, we live with emotional blindness, easy conflict, unnecessary stress and unconscious sabotage of our best efforts. Another unique feature is the Transactional Checklist, a brief inventory for rapid identification of game energies. This allows the reader to measure his mind game tendencies and to compare them with other groups. Extra copies are provided for obtaining feedback from working partners in order to validate one's own impressions. Charts provide easy scoring and comparisons. This is an interactive workbook with many occasions for developing game awareness and resilience. Using 40 years as a family therapist and consulting psychologist, Dr. Baue distills his experience into 15 chapters on mind games and 17 chapters for developing resilience, self-intimacy and wellness. Early praise has been received from professions in seven different fields. Mind Games is designed to be used from 10th grade through graduate school in courses on human behavior as well as human resource management. Every profession dealing with people will find Mind Games a powerful tool for understanding human behavior, such as education, law, psychology, social work, nursing, rehab, counseling, medicine, corrections, business management as well as coaching and mentoring. It is already being used in correctional settings for repeat addictive offenders. It is also a program for resolving couples conflict. Couples will find a mutual, self-help program, employing their partner for feedback. Dr. Paschal Baute is also a blind veteran who served his country with all four branches of the U. S. military over 23 years. Now with a VA diagnosis of "Catastrophically Disabled," he uses his blind rehab training in computer skills from the Hines VA in Chicago, in order to demonstrate that a severe handicap can become a manageable challenge.