Gregory Bateson’s Double Bond Theory

The double-bind theory was developed by anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his team of researchers in Palo Alto, California (1956). It is a concept of psychology that refers to contradictory relationships where affective and aggressive behaviors are expressed simultaneously, where the two people are strongly emotionally involved and cannot separate from each other.

This theory was formulated to explain the psychological origin of schizophrenia, leaving aside brain dysfunctions and organic hypotheses. Schizophrenia remains one of the most baffling mental illnesses. In fact, several theories have been postulated about how it originates, some of an organic or biological nature and others of a social nature. Let us take a closer look at what the double bind theory consists of.

A Brief Overview of Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was born in Grantchester, UK, on ​​May 9, 1904. He was an anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and cybernetician whose work had repercussions in many other intellectual fields. Some of his most notable texts are in his books: Ecology of the Mind (1972), Spirit and Nature (1979) and The Fear of the Angels: The Epistemology of the Sacred (1987).

Bateson and some of his collaborators such as Jay Haley, Donald Jackson, and John Weakland were pioneers in developing the systems perspective. Indeed, in academic circles he is recognized as an important figure whose appeal includes his obscurity, eccentricity and diversity of achievement. However, the growing interest in holism (comprehensive understanding of phenomena), systems and cybernetics has led other educators and students to publish their work.

For Bateson, communication is what makes human relationships possible, that is, it acts as their support. From your point of view, this includes all the processes through which a person influences others. From this perspective, the media becomes a determining component of the social structure that is worth analyzing.

Bateson said that it was necessary to eliminate the double bond that appears sporadically in communication. He even stated that this phenomenon is constantly seen on television. For example, in one TV show a moral value is proclaimed and in the other it is violated. This creates conflicts in the viewer’s mind, especially if they are children or people with a low critical sense.

What is a double bond?

According to Bateson, a double bind is a communicative dilemma due to the contradiction between two or more messages. That way, no matter what the answer is, it will always be wrong. It is a communicative situation that causes suffering and can lead to some psychological disorders.

We can understand it better with an example. A child tries to relate to his mother, who suffers from emotional difficulties. She expresses how much she loves him through gestures, but the child only receives signs of verbal rejection. Therefore, the message that the mother expresses verbally does not correspond to the message that her body sends to the child. In this way, he finds himself caught in a contradiction that implies affection and rejection.

Another example would be the famous statement: “Be spontaneous”. A double message of impossible achievement: if the person is not spontaneous, he does not comply with this order. But if she does, somehow she is also not fulfilling because it is not spontaneous, since obeying does not imply spontaneity.

The double bind theory

The double bind theory is based on the analysis of communications, and specifically on Russell’s theory of logical types. From this theory and from the observations made with schizophrenic patients, a situation called “double bonding” results. As we have seen, no matter what a person does, he cannot run away.

Bateson said that someone trapped in the double bind can develop schizophrenic symptoms. The central thesis of the double-binding theory is that there is a discontinuity between a class and its members, since the class cannot be a member of itself. None of the members can be the class, as the term used for the class is from a different level of abstraction.

In the pathology of real communications, this discontinuity unfolds continuously and inevitably. Likewise, a pathology occurs in the human organism when certain formal patterns are broken in the communication between mother and child. Thus, this pathology is classified as schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder, of the psychotic type, where there are alterations in thought and language.

Ingredients needed to manifest the double bond

The ingredients needed to manifest a double bond are as follows:

• Two or more people emotionally involved. One of them is the “victim”. The double bind is not only inflicted by the mother; it can be inflicted by the mother, spouse, father and/or siblings.
• Repeated experiences. The double bind is a recurrent theme in the victim’s story. It is not a single traumatic experience, but it is an experience so repeated that the double bind structure becomes a habitual expectation.
• Primary harmful behavior . It can present one of two ways: “Don’t do this, or I will punish you” or “If you don’t do this, I will punish you”. The learning context is based on the avoidance of punishment and is not a reward-seeking context. Punishment can consist of withdrawing love or expressing aggression or anger. Even more devastating is that it can also be the kind of abandonment that results from the expression of the father’s extreme helplessness.

• Secondary harmful behavior in conflict with the first. It is usually not expressed verbally and therefore more difficult to understand. It is reinforced by punishments or signs that herald a danger to survival. Secondary order verbalization can take a variety of forms. For example: “Don’t consider this a punishment” or “Don’t submit to my prohibitions”. There are other examples when the double bind is inflicted by two individuals. For example, one parent may deny the other’s order on a more abstract level.
• A third harmful behavior that makes it impossible for the victim to escape.  It could be a family tie, social pressure to maintain a marriage, financial issues. It may be unnecessary to classify this behavior as a separate element. If double ties are imposed during childhood, it is naturally impossible to escape.

According to the double-bind theory, this complete set of ingredients will no longer be needed when the victim learns to perceive his universe under double-bind standards. Any part of a double-bind sequence can be enough to trigger panic or anger.

The effect of the double bind

The double-bind effect suggests that there will be a breakdown in the individual’s ability to discriminate between logical types or modes of communication each time a double-bind situation occurs. This situation has the following general characteristics:

• The individual is involved in an intense relationship. He feels that in the relationship it is very important to correctly discriminate the type of message he is receiving.

• The individual is trapped in a situation where the other people who intervene express two different orders and one of them denies the other.
• The person feels unable to comment or ask for clarification on messages received. In other words, it cannot formulate a metacommunicative enunciation.

Bateson’s double-binding theory is not only considered solid as an explanation for the cause of schizophrenia, but it highlighted the importance of communicative and family patterns in mental health. Although the double-binding hypothesis has become obsolete in this sense, it has been crucial to the evolution of systemic therapies.