A double bind is a paradoxical situation that arises within the context of interpersonal communication. This double bind situation involves one of the individuals receiving conflicting messages on different levels of communication. Moreover, regardless of the individual’s response to the message, the result is some form of punishment.

In their paper “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” George Bateson and colleagues put forth the following as an illustration of this type of double bind situation:

“The Zen Master attempts to bring about enlightenment in his pupil in various ways. One of the things he does is to hold a stick over the pupil’s head and say fiercely, “If you say this stick is real, I will strike you with it. If you say this stick is not real, I will strike you with it. If you don’t say anything, I will strike you with it.” (Bateson et al., 1956, p.5).

While double bind situations commonly arise within social interactions, they are typically resolved with ease through the use of metacommunication. That is, utilizing one’s ability to comment on the message being exchanged, such as asking, “What do you mean?”, “Are you serious?” or other clarifying questions to assist with discriminating the logical type of the message. The purpose of accurately differentiating what the logical type is for a given message is to aid the receiver of the message in responding appropriately.

The mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell posited the Theory of Logical Types. Russell’s theory asserts that there is a discontinuity between a class and the members comprising that class. Therefore, the class must be of a different level of abstraction or logical type than that of the level of the members since, in formal logic, the class cannot be a member of itself.

While Bateson and colleagues agreed that this discontinuity holds in formal logic, they argued that “in the psychology of real communications, this discontinuity is continually and inevitably breached” (Bateson et al., 1956, p.1). Fundamentally, their argument was that the world of communication can violate foundational rules of logic.

There are then two sets of rules: one set that is strictly governed by the formal rules of logic and another that is governed by logical rules while simultaneously allowing exceptions to such rules.

Confusing, right? Bateson and colleagues thought so. In fact, they hypothesized that after repeated exposures to these sorts of confusing communicative exchanges, the individual might develop “schizophrenic symptomology,” which manifests in a particular difficulty labeling the types of messages received from others, uttered by oneself, or even conceptualized internally.

When someone has persistently been exposed to double bind situations, such as within a family system, then the person may develop defensive strategies for handling these situations. For example, the person might assume there is some meaning concealed behind every message, take everything literally, laugh off contradictory messages, or respond uninterestedly to all communications.

Schizophrenia is characterized as primarily a thought disorder; it presents with various types of disordered thinking, among other symptoms. However, in regard to Bateson and colleagues’ research into the etiology of schizophrenia, their primary focus was on the thought process of schizophrenia.

However, Bateson’s initial interest in double binds arose in 1952 while studying play behaviors in monkeys at the San Francisco Zoo. Bateson’s original research interest was “not specifically aimed at ‘explaining’ schizophrenia” (Servais, 1998, p.7).

Although the double bind hypothesis became more broadly focused on understanding and explaining the symptomology of schizophrenia, the central guiding question remained: “How does a human individual acquire an imperfect ability to discriminate these specific signals?” (Bateson, 1972, p.195).

This focus aligned more with Bateson’s interest in formulating a “conceptual model” for understanding the intricacies of communication as a whole rather than exclusive to any specific “syndrome,” as illustrated by the following quote from Bateson, “In our approach we assume that schizophrenia involves general principles which are important in all communication and therefore many informative similarities can be found in ‘normal’ communication situations (Bateson, 1972, p.227).

References
Bateson, G., Jackson, D.D., Haley, J. and Weakland, J. (1956), Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Syst. Res., 1: 251-264. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830010402

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Jason Aronson

Servais, V. (1998). Gregory Bateson. https://www.professores.uff.br/ricardobasbaum/wp-content/uploads/sites/164/2020/05/Servais_Gregory_Bateson.pdf