The logic of the double bind as captured in one of R.D. Laing’s “Knots”
“They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.” R.D. Laing
MANAGED ORGANISATIONS create the conditions under which effective communication – and therefore interpersonal trust – is made particularly difficult. It presents its “victims” with a variety of dilemmas that are seemingly irreconcilable. Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist and social scientist, has given the name “double bind” to just such dilemmas. A double bind is “a situation in which no matter what a person does, he can’t win”. It was originally put forward as an explanation of schizophrenia by Bateson, Donald Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland in 1956, but it is increasingly seen as offering valuable insights into the complexities of everyday communication. A double bind is the dilemma experienced by an individual receiving two conflicting demands to which there can be no satisfactory logical response and about which no discussion or inquiry is allowed.
Human communication is fraught with difficulty, partly because much of what is communicated is either implied or contextual, and non-verbal cues are often critical. In a power structure where the consequences of confusion, misinterpretation or disobedience are serious, the difficulties are accentuated. For example, a demand is made by a boss of a subordinate but the demand itself is inherently impossible to fulfil because some contextual factor forbids it. This is how Bateson defined the double bind:
The situation involves at least two individuals (or groups), one of which can be characterised as the “victim”. The other is a figure of authority that the victim respects.
The double bind is experienced by the victim, not as a single troubling episode, but as a recurring pattern of distressing experiences.
A “primary injunction” is imposed upon the victim by his nemesis in one of two forms – “Do X or I will punish you” or “Do not do X or I will punish you”.
The punishment could be the withdrawal of trust or respect, the expression of anger or disapproval, or the display of helplessness or hopelessness.
A “secondary injunction” is imposed that conflicts with the first at a higher level of abstraction, such as “Do what I said, but only do it because you genuinely want to do so”. This injunction may be implied rather than spoken.
A “tertiary injunction” is imposed – often tacitly – that prevents the victim from evading the dilemma.
The essence of a double bind is two irreconcilable demands, each on a different logical plane, neither of which can be ignored or avoided, which leave the victim caught on the horns of a dilemma, so that whichever demand they seek to satisfy, the other cannot be met. The victim’s response to such a dilemma is something like: “I must do it, but I can’t do it.”
A Zen Buddhist master uses the device of the koan to place the student in a double bind that acts as a therapeutic tool of enlightenment. For example, the master asks the student, “Show me who you really are”. There is nothing that the student can do, and also nothing he cannot do, to be authentic and to present his true self. In this way, the student learns the Buddhist concept of anatman (non-self).
In business, employees are presented every day with a stream of double-bind injunctions – each of them a kind of corporate koan:
You must respect me.
Set your own goals.
If this were your own business, what would you do?
Act as a leader: be yourself – with skill.
Be spontaneous.
How are we doing?
Feel free to be candid and say exactly what is on your mind.
It’s not my job to tell you what to do, but what I suggest is that …
Are you with us – or against us?
Challenge orthodoxy! Break the rules! Bet the farm!
Put all your effort into simply being yourself.
Give me your honest feedback.
Think the unthinkable.
Just do it!