Double bind

Development of the hypothesis

The term double bind was coined by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his colleagues (including Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland) in the mid-1950s, in their discussions on complexity of communication in relation to schizophrenia. Bateson made clear that such complexities are common in normal circumstances, especially in "play, humour, poetry, ritual and fiction" (see Logical Types below). Their findings indicated that the tangles in communication often diagnosed as schizophrenia are not necessarily the result of an organic brain dysfunction. Instead, they found that destructive double binds were a frequent pattern of communication among families of patients, and they proposed that growing up amidst perpetual double binds could lead to learned patterns of confusion in thinking and communication.

While working in the United States' Veteran's Administration Hospital with World War II veterans from 1949 to 1962, Bateson and his colleagues hypothesized that schizophrenic thinking was not necessarily an inborn mental disorder but a pattern of learned helplessness in response to cognitive double-binds externally imposed.

The veterans had been able to function well in combat, but life-threatening stress had affected them. At that time, 18 years before post-traumatic stress disorder was officially recognized, the veterans had been saddled with the catch-all diagnosis of schizophrenia. Bateson didn't challenge the diagnosis but he did maintain that the seeming nonsense the patients said at times did make sense within context, and he gives numerous examples in section III of Steps to an Ecology of Mind, "Pathology in Relationship". For example, a patient misses an appointment, and when Bateson finds him later the patient says "the judge disapproves"; Bateson responds, "You need a defense lawyer". See following (pp. 195–6). Bateson also surmised that people habitually caught in double binds in childhood would have greater problems—that in the case of the person with schizophrenia, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context from infancy on. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system (see in Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia – Illustrations from Clinical Data).

One solution to a double bind is to place the problem in a larger context, a state Bateson identified as Learning III, a step up from Learning II (which requires only learned responses to reward/consequence situations). In Learning III, the double bind is contextualized and understood as an impossible no-win scenario so that ways around it can be found.

Double bind communication has since been proposed as a feature of borderline personality disorder. In a series of publications, Mark L. Ruffalo has argued that individuals with borderline personality disorder engage in double bind communication as an expression of the disorder's characteristic "need-fear dilemma," involving a simultaneous desire for and fear of interpersonal closeness. A 2025 empirical study by Ruffalo and psychologist John Rucker reported that patients with personality disorders used language in ways consistent with double bind communication. In 2026, Ruffalo and psychiatrist Jerold J. Kreisman elaborated this proposal into a formal double bind theory of borderline personality disorder, published in the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic.

The double bind as a driver of evolution

After many years of research into schizophrenia, Bateson continued to explore problems of communication and learning, first with dolphins, and then with the more abstract processes of evolution. Bateson emphasized that any communicative system characterized by different logical levels might be subject to double bind problems. Especially including the communication of characteristics from one generation to another (genetics and evolution).

Evolution always followed the pathways of viability. As Lewis Carroll has pointed out, the theory [of natural selection] explains quite satisfactorily why there are no bread-and-butter-flies today."

Bateson used the fictional Bread and Butter Fly (from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There) to illustrate the double bind in terms of natural selection. The gnat points out that the insect would be doomed if he found his food (which would dissolve his own head, since this insect's head is made of sugar, and his only food is tea), and starve if he did not. Alice suggests that this must happen quite often, to which the gnat replies: "It always happens."

The pressures that drive evolution therefore represent a genuine double bind. And there is truly no escape: "It always happens." No species can escape natural selection, including our own.

Bateson suggested that all evolution is driven by the double bind, whenever circumstances change: If any environment becomes toxic to any species, that species will die out unless it transforms into another species, in which case, the species becomes extinct anyway.

Most significant here is Bateson's exploration of what he later came to call "the pattern that connects"—that problems of communication which span more than one level (e.g., the relationship between the individual and the family) should also be expected to be found spanning other pairs of levels in the hierarchy (e.g. the relationship between the genotype and the phenotype):

We are very far … from being able to pose specific questions for the geneticist; but I believe that the wider implications of what I have been saying modify somewhat the philosophy of genetics. Our approach to the problems of schizophrenia by way of a theory of levels or logical types has disclosed first that the problems of adaptation and learning and their pathologies must be considered in terms of a hierarchic system in which stochastic change occurs at the boundary points between the segments of the hierarchy. We have considered three such regions of stochastic change—the level of genetic mutation, the level of learning, and the level of change in family organization. We have disclosed the possibility of a relationship of these levels which orthodox genetics would deny, and we have disclosed that at least in human societies the evolutionary system consists not merely in the selective survival of those persons who happen to select appropriate environments but also in the modification of family environment in a direction which might enhance the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the individual members.

Positive double binds

Bateson also described positive double binds, both in relation to Zen Buddhism with its path of spiritual growth, and the use of therapeutic double binds by psychiatrists to confront their patients with the contradictions in their life in such a way that would help them heal. One of Bateson's consultants, Milton H. Erickson (5 volumes, edited by Rossi) eloquently demonstrated the productive possibilities of double binds through his own life, showing the technique in a brighter light.

Double binds in society

Gender stereotypes

Societal expectations of gender can create situations where people are viewed negatively regardless of the actions or decisions they make. For example, the belief that masculinity means decisiveness can cause men who are cautious to be seen as less manly. Double binds can be used by those with influence to use stereotypes to cause harm to less powerful groups. In the case of gender, this means using gender stereotypes to force, typically women and nonbinary people, into boxes related to stereotypes. This is done by creating a contradiction of roles and then asserting that no person can be more complicated than those two options. This creates a no-win situation where a person cannot overcome the stereotypical expectations and create a third category or role. The most common way this shows up is related to gender in women in roles of power.

When women are assertive in business positions, politics, or personal lives, they are seen as too assertive and unpleasant. However, if women revert to socially acceptable and proper ways of being, they are seen as weak and undeserving of their accomplishments. This creates a no-win situation. Women also exist in a social construct that places unspoken responsibilities on females that males don't have. They are expected to give care, attention, and validation to men which can influence their decisions and increase the pressure in double bind situations. Kate Manne suggests that dominant groups in society act as a sort of "law enforcement" patrolling those who aren't in the "in-group" - another gendered factor that influences choice situations. In a patriarchal society, women are associated with certain beauty ideals and expectations surrounding their role in the societal structure. Those who reject this construct risk not being accepted or being disregarded. However, since frameworks of female beauty standards for women in society create norms where women are forced into restrictive roles as, for example, sexual objects, compliance with these roles also involves alienation and disregard. This forms a very broad double bind often remarked on in feminist scholarship.

Racial stereotypes

Much like the intersection of gender and the double bind, stereotypes about race are used to create a double bind. Racial groups exert power over less privileged groups by invoking stereotypes to explain why those groups do not have access to the privileges the powerful groups have in excess. Race and gender also intersect to create a “triple bind” where stereotypes are used against women of color to cause more harm and barriers to access opportunities. The concept of the double bind as it relates to race is common in Race, Nation, and Culture studies and Political Science studies.

Double binds in science

One of the causes of double binds is the loss of feedback systems. Gregory Bateson and Lawrence S. Bale describe double binds that have arisen in science that have caused decades-long delays of progress in science because the scientific community had defined something as outside of its scope (or as "not science") on the paradigm of classical science versus that of systems theory and cybernetics. (See the foreword to Steps to an Ecology of Mind for Bateson's account of the development of the double bind hypothesis.)

Girard's mimetic double bind

René Girard, in his literary theory of mimetic desire, proposes what he calls a "model-obstacle", a role model who demonstrates an object of desire and yet, in possessing that object, becomes a rival who obstructs fulfillment of the desire. According to Girard, the "internal mediation" of this mimetic dynamic "operates along the same lines as what Gregory Bateson called the 'double bind'." Girard found in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, a precursor to mimetic desire. "The individual who 'adjusts' has managed to relegate the two contradictory injunctions of the double bind—to imitate and not to imitate—to two different domains of application. This is, he divides reality in such a way as to neutralize the double bind." While critical of Freud's doctrine of the unconscious mind, Girard sees the ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, and key elements of Freud's Oedipus complex, patricidal and incestuous desire, to serve as prototypes for his own analysis of the mimetic double bind.

Far from being restricted to a limited number of pathological cases, as American theoreticians suggest, the double bind—a contradictory double imperative, or rather a whole network of contradictory imperatives—is an extremely common phenomenon. In fact, it is so common that it might be said to form the basis of all human relationships.

Bateson is undoubtedly correct in believing that the effects of the double bind on the child are particularly devastating. All the grown-up voices around him, beginning with those of the father and mother (voices which, in our society at least, speak for the culture with the force of established authority) exclaim in a variety of accents, "Imitate us!" "Imitate me!" "I bear the secret of life, of true being!" The more attentive the child is to these seductive words, and the more earnestly he responds to the suggestions emanating from all sides, the more devastating will be the eventual conflicts. The child possesses no perspective that will allow him to see things as they are. He has no basis for reasoned judgements, no means of foreseeing the metamorphosis of his model into a rival. This model's opposition reverberates in his mind like a terrible condemnation; he can only regard it as an act of excommunication. The future orientation of his desires—that is, the choice of his future models—will be significantly affected by the dichotomies of his childhood. In fact, these models will determine the shape of his personality.

If desire is allowed its own bent, its mimetic nature will almost always lead it into a double bind. The unchanneled mimetic impulse hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting desire. It invites its own rebuffs and these rebuffs will in turn strengthen the mimetic inclination. We have, then, a self-perpetuating process, constantly increasing in simplicity and fervor. Whenever the disciple borrows from his model what he believes to be the "true" object, he tries to possess that truth by desiring precisely what this model desires. Whenever he sees himself closest to the supreme goal, he comes into violent conflict with a rival. By a mental shortcut that is both eminently logical and self-defeating, he convinces himself that the violence itself is the most distinctive attribute of this supreme goal! Ever afterward, violence will invariably awaken desire...

— René Girard, Violence and the Sacred: "From Mimetic Desire to the Monstrous Double", pp.156–157