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 anymore?” 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 he assaulted an aide and was put in the tubs.

R.D. Laing was influenced:

At this point, Laing came across Gregory Bateson’s famous explanation of schizophrenic behaviour, the so-called “double-bind” theory. The “double bind” is a particular knot: a situation in which an individual is compelled to respond to two contradictory commands which are presented simultaneously. It is, Bateson says, “a situation in which no matter what a person does, he ‘can’t win’ “.

Patrice Guillaume writes:

According to Carlos Sluzki the double bind has the following characteristics:

(1) two or more persons; (2) repeated experience; (3) a primary negative injunction; (4) a secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, and like the first enforced by punishments or signals which threaten survival; (5) a tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping from the field; (6) finally, the complete set of ingredients is no longer necessary when the victim has learned to perceive his universe in double bind patterns. (9, 209)

Looking more closely at the double bind, Paul Watzlawick has described four variations on the theme. The first and probably the most frequently used is what he calls the “Be spontaneous” paradox. The wife who wants her husband to surprise her with flowers is experiencing this sort of dilemma. She is asking him to do something which by its nature must be spontaneous. “It is one of the shortcomings of human communication that there is no way in which the spontaneous fulfillment of a need can be elicited from another person without creating this kind of self-defeating paradox,” says Watzlawick. (12, 15-26)

A second variation of the double bind involves a situation in which a person is chastised for a correct perception of the outside world. In this situation the child will learn to distrust his own sensory awareness in favor of the parent’s assessment of the situation. One example would be the child who is raised in a violent household but is expected to see his parents as loving and peaceful. In later life this person will have a difficult time determining how to behave appropriately in a variety of situations. Indeed, this person will spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to decipher exactly how he “should” interpret the situation.

The third variation on the theme is one in which a person is expected to have feelings other than those he actually experiences. The mother who wants her child to “want” to do his or her homework falls into this category. The child will often end up feeling guilty when he or she cannot achieve the “proper” feelings.

The fourth variation, according to Watzlawick, occurs when we demand and prohibit at the same time. The parent who demands honesty while encouraging winning at any cost is placing the child in this kind of bind. The child is placed in a position of having to disobey in order to obey.

How will a person be affected by growing up in an environment where he or she cannot comment on these perceived discrepancies? Does that person eventually learn to trust only one part of their experience and to deny or distrust the rest?

I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom
of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, — the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

In chess we use a phrase “going rogue” for a style of play that you adopt when you know that you are going to be defeated if you continue to play conventionally. You try any sacrifice in the hope that lightning will strike and you will find a way to checkmate your opponent.
I don’t believe that power will stop corrupting but I do feel that defeat is approaching and it is time to adopt a new style.