Power Plays Their Uses and Abuses in Human Relations

Power Plays is a brilliant depiction of what happens when there is a covert attempt to impose rules on the behavior of the other, rules, moreover, which, regardless of how they are rationalized, are patently meant to benefit only one person. As such, it may be the first phenomenological treatment of power transactions between people from a psychodynamic and interpersonal framework. A major theme throughout is that the power plays that are not politicized are as abusive, if not more so, than those that are, if only because they often go unrecognized.