accepted social manners and rituals may suddenly assume the 
stark outlines and the arbitrary patterns of a game. The 
Gamesmanship  of Stephen Potter speaks of a social revolution 
in England. The English are moving toward social equality and 
the intense personal competition that goes with equality. The 
older rituals of long-accepted class behavior now begin to 
appear comic and irrational, gimmicks in a game. Dale 
Carnagie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People  first 
appeared as a solemn manual of social wisdom, but it seemed 
quite ludicrous to sophisticates. What Carnagie offered as 
serious discoveries already seemed like a naive mechanical ritual 
to those beginning to move in a milieu of Freudian awareness 
charged with the psychopathology of everyday life. Already the 
Freudian patterns of perception have become an outworn code 
that begins to provide the cathartic amusement of a game, 
rather than a guide to living.