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THE DOUBLE BIND
In order to get to the root
of neurotic patterns of
thinking and behaviour we
need to understand the 'double bind' that lies behind them. If we don't get to the paradoxical root of neurosis, then
nothing we do will do us any good in fact, when we don't have insight into the principle of the
double bind, then everything we do to 'solve' the neurosis feeds back into the neurosis. A good
example of this essential snag is what happens in anxiety. The simplest way to explain anxiety is
to say that it is what happens when we try to fight reality. In other words, anxiety results when
we make a rule saying "Reality must be other than it is" There is no need to spend time
pointing out why this rule causes problems!
Fighting reality is obviously counterproductive. We do it because we want to help
ourselves, because we want to improve our situation, but actually we just make things a lot worse
than they were before we started trying to help ourselves. If I were to take a break from panicking
and compulsively 'rejecting reality' then I would see that what I was doing was simply making
matters worse, but once panic takes hold it is like a horse that has taken fright and just keeps
running away. Using the metaphor of a horse that has been spooked is a good intuitive way to
explain panic, but we can also rationally analyse the situation in terms of a 'double bind'. The
essential double-bind of anxiety can be explained as follows: if I were to suddenly see that fighting
reality is no good because it is making things worse, then I would probably say to myself
something like "I must not fight reality" or "I must accept reality" and then I would try to correct
myself so that I wasn't fighting reality any more. But this is no good either because I am still
fighting reality I am still saying "Reality must be other than it is". I am 'fighting' either way:
either I am fighting reality, or I am fighting my fighting (i.e. I am fighting the reality of 'me
fighting reality'). This no win situation is the double bind of anxiety.
THE DOUBLE BIND OF 'LIKE VERSUS DISLIKE'
We have looked at anxiety as a particular example of a neurotic double bind. We can now go one step further and identify the essential double bind of neurosis. All neurotic struggles come down to the tricky business of being 'trapped in an issue'. Issues are only issues because we make them issues, and whether we like the issue or dislike the issue doesn't make the slightest bit of difference it is still every bit as much of an issue as it was to start off with. And if I try to 'neither like or dislike' then what is my motivation for 'neither liking nor disliking'? Clearly, my motivation must be either 'like' for one state of affairs, or 'dislike' for another, which means that my stance of not caring actually stems from caring. It matters to me that it should not matter, and so it matters after all. It is therefore possible to arrive at a definition here and say that neurosis is rooted in like/dislike, attraction/aversion or +/-. Let us say that I as a sufferer from neurosis obtain the insight needed to understand that +/- is the root of my troubles, then it is natural that I will promptly fall into the trap of disliking +/-, which is to say experiencing aversion towards attraction/aversion. So my basic underlying prejudicial attitude of mind has been turned against itself in the attempt to cure itself, and this is the double bind of neurosis. An alternative way to approach this is to say that the double bind arises out of my attempt to 'control my own controlling'.