Double bind
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A dilemma in which someone receives contradictory instructions and cannot act on either.
A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which a person receives two or more conflicting messages and one message denies the other, a situation in which the person will be put in the wrong however they respond, and the person can't comment on the conflict, or resolve it, or opt out of the situation. A double bind generally includes different levels of abstraction in orders of messages, and these messages can be stated or implicit within the context of the situation, or conveyed by tone of voice or body language. Further complications exist when frequent double binds are part of an ongoing relationship to which the person is committed.
See also
- Cognitive dissonance
- Complex question
- Dialectics
- False dilemma
- Master suppression techniques
- R. D. Laing
