Double Bind

Double bind is the term used by Gregory Bateson to describe the simultaneous transmission of two kinds of messages, one of which contradicts the other, as for the example the father who says to his son: go ahead, criticize me, but strongly hints that all effective criticism - at least a certain types of criticism - will be very unwelcome. [...]. It seems to us that the double bind, the double impasse, is instead a common situation, oedipalizing par excellence. And although it would require formalization, the other type of non-sense spoken of my Russell is brought to mind by the double-bind situation: an alternative, an Exclusive Disjunction is defined in terms of a principle which, however, constitutes its two terms or underlying wholes, and where the principle itself enters into the alternative (a completely different case from what happens when the disjunction is inclusive). Here we have the second paralogism of psychoanalysis. In short, the "double bind" is none other than the whole of Oedipus. It is in this sense that Oedipus should be presented as a series, or an oscillation between two poles: the neurotic identification, and the internalization that is said to be normative. On either side is Oedipus, the double impasse.
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