If someone frankly asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. If someone asks for reassurance, and after it is given turns it in some wa… - Eric Berne

Intimacy begins when individual (usually instinctual) programing becomes more intense, and both social patterning and ulterior restrictions and motives begin to give way. It is the only completely satisfying answer to stimulus-hunger, recognition-hunger and structure-hunger.

The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours. In this existential sense, the function of all social living is to lend mutual assistance for this project.
The operational aspect of time-structuring may be called programing. It has three aspects: material, social and individual. The most common, convenient, comfortable, and utilitarian method of structuring time is by a project designed to deal with the material of external reality: what is commonly known as work. Such a project is technically called an activity; the term “work” is unsuitable because a general theory of social psychiatry must recognize that social intercourse is also a form of work.

"Иногда в психотерапевтических группах встречается элегантный вариант игры в "Тупик", который можно назвать игрой типа Рассела–Уайтхеда.
Блэк: "Ну, во всяком случае, когда мы молчим, никто не играет в игры".
Уайт: "Молчание само по себе может быть игрой".
Рэд: "Сегодня никто не играет в игры".
Уайт: "Но не играть в игры тоже может быть игрой"."