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Double Bind: The Foundation of Communicational Approach to the Family

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After readings of Gregory Bateson's "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", a collection of some of his most influential articles - including the one where he first introduces the concept of "double bind" with his colleages, and the ones that try to extend and clarify it over the course of time - the question still quite much eluded me - what is it, the double bind? There's a list of "ingredients" commonly referred to, which define a communicational pattern as double binding: a paradoxical injunction (two mutually disqualifying messages) in an intense relationship, where it is not possible to comment on the unteneble situation created by the paradox nor ignore it by leaving the communicational field. The occurence of this pattern is supposed to be related to the etiology of schizophrenia.

The way Bateson et al came to this concept is perhaps worth mentioning. They, unlike any researcher before, observed schizophrenic communication from the point of view of adaptation, asking deductively how would a communicational context look like where shizophrenic modes of thinking and acting would make sense, how would a world look like in which shizophrenic would be reacting appropriately given the circumstances?

In other words, they focused on the context of communication, in order to overcome the limitations imposed by the intrapsychic concepts of psychoanalysis dominant back then and still now, and relate psychopathology better to its environment. But putting it that generally still misses some of the point, and precisely the one I've come to appreciate better thanx to this book: that double bind should not so much be considered as a strictly analytical concept as a language or part of a new epistemology in its own right. This means that the value of double bind notion is not restructed to any one field of study - be it psychopathology or biology - and that in order for it to prove useful, it should be appreciated in relation to its background. So if double bind has proven to be practically unresearchable and "unscientific" in empiricist terms, it really isn't enough to disqualify it - after all, as Bateson put it - a language can not be true or false (much like psychoanalysis is a langauge). Its just provides a way to model things differently, ask new questions and in this, it certainly proved significant judging by the nontrivial productivity of the Palo Alto research group headed by Bateson and of the interest it arouse (and perhaps still does) in researchers in diverse fields.

Now its exactly 50 years since the publication of the "Towards a theory of Schizophrenia", that sent the whole story of communicational approach rolling, and 30 years since the publication of this book. Of the developments of one of the core concepts of this approach between these years, this book does an excellent job at introducing, criticizing, revising and reviewing. The table of its contents is following, with comments by the editors in the end of each chapter:

1. "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia" Bateson, Jackson, Haley, Weakland
2. "The Double Bind Hypothesis of Schizophrenia and Three-Party Interaction" Weakland
3. "A Note on the Double Bind" Bateson, Jackson, Haley, Weakland

5. "Development of a Theory: History of a Research Project" Haley
6. Comments on Haley's "History" Bateson, Weakland, Haley

7. "Researching the Unresearchable: Experimentation on the Double Bind" Gina Abelas

9. A Fragment from "Psychotherapy East & West" A. Watts
10. A Fragment from "Pathwys to Madness" J. Henry
11. A Fragment from "Patterns of Psychotic Communication" P. Watzlawick
12. A Fragment from "Madness & Morals" M. Schatzman

14. "Mystification, Confusion and Conflict" R. D. Laing
15. "Transactional Disqualification" Sluzki, Beavin, Tarnopolsky, Verón
16. "Double Bind" 1969 Bateson
17. "On the Anguish and Creative Passions of Not Escaping Double Binds" L. Wynne
18. "Double Bind as a Universal Pathogenic Situation" Sluzki, Verón
19. "The Double Bind: Logic, Magic, and Economics" A. Wilden, T. Wilson
20. "Critique of the Clinical Use of the Double Bind Hypothesis" R. Rabkin
21. "The Double Bind Theory by Self-Reflexive Hindsight" Weakland

I especially liked the dialogical approach of the editors, who added at times substantial commentaries to the works of others and struggeled hard to create a continuous flow in the diversity of their presentations. And also the fact that it is possible to see how the contributing authors have judged their own progresses over time, and those of their colleagues. Its the kind of layout that supports the discussion of a concept that has as many facets as the double bind does. Appropriately to the subject as well, not all of them come to accord with each other - but a lot of the building blocks necessary for a viable synthesis are there.

A collection of 22 articles divided into 5 sections with comments at the end of the sections by the editors, an index, and 15 page bibliography. From the book's Preface: "The book is divided into four parts: Part I collects what can be considered the core papers, those that proposed the model, defined its conceptual universe, and established its language. Part II constitutes an insiders account of the development of double bind theory. Part III is an extensive review of the research done in the field, and an analysis of the complex relationship between theory and observables that helps to account for the type of research done and the type of results obtained. Part IV is a collection of excerpts from several authors who, in the course of writing about a variety of subjects, tested the boundaries of the double bind model by applying it to their own work. Finally, the series of statements collected in Part V provide a testimony of the growing power of the theory as a thinking tool, constituting an exploration of its philosophical foundation, its internal configuration, and its range of application in the behavioral sciences."