Double Bind
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:49 pm
Double Bind
A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation. For example, if your employer tells you to do a job, but doesn't allow enough time for you to do it, and you are in danger of losing your job if you question the situation, you are in a double bind.
Double binds are often utilized as a form of control without open coercion—the use of confusion makes them difficult to respond to or resist.
Grown-up-in-authority to child: "Speak when you're spoken to" and "Don't talk back!"
These phrases have such time-honoured status that the contradiction between them is rarely perceived: If the child speaks when spoken to then he cannot avoid answering back. If he does not answer back then he fails to speak when spoken to. Whatever the child does he is always in the wrong.
The field of neuro-linguistic programming also makes use of the expression "double bind". Grinder and Bandler (both of whom had personal contact with Bateson) asserted that a message could be constructed with multiple messages, whereby the recipient of the message is given the impression of choice—although both options have the same outcome at a higher level of intention.
This is called a "double bind" in NLP terminology, and has applications in both sales and therapy. In therapy, the practitioner may seek to challenge destructive double binds that limit the client in some way and may also construct double binds in which both options have therapeutic consequences.
In a sales context, the speaker may give the respondent the illusion of choice between two possibilities. For example, a salesperson might ask: "Would you like to pay cash or by credit card?", with both outcomes presupposing that the person will make the purchase; whereas the third option (that of not buying) is intentionally excluded from the spoken choices.
Link
A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation. For example, if your employer tells you to do a job, but doesn't allow enough time for you to do it, and you are in danger of losing your job if you question the situation, you are in a double bind.
Double binds are often utilized as a form of control without open coercion—the use of confusion makes them difficult to respond to or resist.
Grown-up-in-authority to child: "Speak when you're spoken to" and "Don't talk back!"
These phrases have such time-honoured status that the contradiction between them is rarely perceived: If the child speaks when spoken to then he cannot avoid answering back. If he does not answer back then he fails to speak when spoken to. Whatever the child does he is always in the wrong.
The field of neuro-linguistic programming also makes use of the expression "double bind". Grinder and Bandler (both of whom had personal contact with Bateson) asserted that a message could be constructed with multiple messages, whereby the recipient of the message is given the impression of choice—although both options have the same outcome at a higher level of intention.
This is called a "double bind" in NLP terminology, and has applications in both sales and therapy. In therapy, the practitioner may seek to challenge destructive double binds that limit the client in some way and may also construct double binds in which both options have therapeutic consequences.
In a sales context, the speaker may give the respondent the illusion of choice between two possibilities. For example, a salesperson might ask: "Would you like to pay cash or by credit card?", with both outcomes presupposing that the person will make the purchase; whereas the third option (that of not buying) is intentionally excluded from the spoken choices.
Link