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Double Bind | Aug 20 2000

I own fifteen books, tops. It’s this thing I have about things: they weigh on me. The only books I keep are reference books: my dictionary, thesaurus and computer manuals. The sole exception is “Steps to an Ecology of Mind” by the late great social scientist Gregory Bateson.

Sadly, Bateson is best known for having been married to Margaret Mead and not for his own intellectual accomplishments, which were considerable. Bateson’s work – spanning anthropology, psychiatry, biological evolution, genetics and most broadly, systems theory and ecology – had at its core a single insight: to understand a thing we must understand the larger system to which it belongs. Nowadays this seems a pretty basic idea – in large part, I believe, because of Bateson’s influence – but sixty-four years ago, when he wrote his first book, “Naven,” it was plain weird.

Okay, okay, okay, I love Gregory Bateson. I’ll get to the point.

In 1955, Bateson and others wrote a paper in which they reported on their research into a new theory of Schizophrenia. The theory goes like this: Schizophrenia arises in an environment in which the child is continually caught in “double binds” – situations in which no matter what he does, he “can’t win.”

At the heart of this theory is Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Logical Types, which Bateson applies to communication; specifically, communication between parent and child. The idea is this: certain communication – often really important communication – is ABOUT communication. The mode of this meta-communication is usually but not always nonverbal: posture, gesture, facial expression, intonation, etc. We need this information to determine what people REALLY mean; whether they’re serious or joking, or what they are. Schizophrenics are notoriously bad at this kind of communication, both in giving it and interpreting it. Why? Bateson and his colleagues theorized that Schizophrenics have been conditioned through repeated “double binds” (Bateson’s term) to ignore all meta-communications. Oddly, this enormous and in many ways debilitating blind spot is necessary to their survival.

Here is Bateson’s description of the three general characteristics of the “double bind”:

(1) The individual is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminate accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately.
(2) And, the individual is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and one these denies the other.
(3) And, the individual is unable to comment on the message being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to, i.e., he cannot make a meta-communicative statement.

If we get a bit more concrete, Bateson’s theory – and the reason I mention it – should become clearer.

Bateson builds from the idea of a “double bind” to create a hypothesis of the general characteristics of a “Schizophrenic” family – that is, a family capable of producing a Schizophrenic member (Bateson established much of the theoretical framework for what later became Family Systems Therapy, among other family-based therapy modalities). Again there are three conditions:

(1) A child whose mother becomes anxious and withdraws if the child responds to her as a loving mother. That is, the child’s very existence has a special meaning to the mother which arouses her anxiety and hostility when she is in danger of intimate contact with the child.
(2) A mother to whom feelings of anxiety and hostility toward the child are not acceptable, and whose way of denying them is to express overt loving behavior to persuade the child to respond to her as a loving mother and to withdraw from him if he does not.
(3) The absence of anyone in the family … who can intervene in the relationship between the mother and child and support the child in the face of the contradictions involved.

Bateson gives the following example to bring home how this works:

For example, if the mother begins to feel hostile (or affectionate) toward her child and also feels compelled to withdraw from him, she might say, “Go to bed, you’re very tired and I want you to get your sleep.” This overtly loving statement is intended to deny a feeling which could be verbalized as “Get out of my sight because I’m sick of you.” If the child correctly discriminates her meta-communicative signals, he could have to face the fact that she both doesn’t want him and is deceiving him by her loving behavior. He would be “punished” for learning to discriminate orders of messages accurately. He therefore would tend to accept the idea that he is tired rather than recognize his mother’s deception. This means that he must deceive himself about his own internal state in order to support mother in her deception. To survive with her he must falsely discriminate his own internal messages as well as falsely discriminate the message of others.

Bateson provides a second example, this time of an actual case, to further illustrate the mechanism of destruction.

A young man who had fairly well recovered from an acute schizophrenic episode was visited in the hospital by his mother. He was glad to see her and impulsively put his arm around her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she asked, “Don’t you love me any more?” He then blushed, and she said, “Dear, you must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings.” The patient was able to stay with her only a few minutes more and following her departure assaulted an aide and was put in the tubs.

It would be downright diabolical if the mother had any idea she was doing it, which of course she doesn’t. Bateson makes the following observations:

(1) The mother’s reaction of not accepting her son’s affectionate gesture is masterfully covered up by her condemnation of him for withdrawing, and the patient denies his perception of the situation by accepting her condemnation.
(2) The statement “Don’t you love me any more” in this context seems to imply: (a) “I am lovable.” (b) “You should love me and if you don’t you are bad or at fault.” (c) “Whereas you did love me previously you don’t any longer,” and thus focus is shifted from his expressing affection to his inability to be affectionate. Since the patient has also hated her, she is on good ground here, and he responds appropriately with guilt, which she then attacks.

It is enough to make one crazy, and according to Bateson, it does. (For more on Bateson, including lots of online stuff, try ikos.org.)