The paramountcy principle, which is enshrined in the Children Act in the UK, requires that the best interests of the child are held central to everything being considered in private and public family law cases. Many criticise the family courts for the secrecy which surrounds them and campaigns are underway to make what happens therein, more open to scrutiny. Transparency is to be welcomed, because it is only when the public at large, understand why decisions to remove children are taken, that the emotional and psychological harm which is done to children, will become visible.
The underlying harms which are caused in cases which are referred to as parental aliention, are clear in law.
From Re (S) Neutral Citation Number: [2020] EWCA Civ 568
The law concerning parental alienation
7. At the outset, it must be acknowledged that, whether a family is united or divided, it is
not uncommon for there to be difficulties in a parent-child relationship that cannot fairly
be laid at the door of the other parent. Children have their own feelings and needs and
where their parents are polarised they are bound to feel the effects. Situations of this
kind, where the concerned parent is being no more than properly supportive, must
obviously be distinguished from those where an emotionally abusive process is taking
place. For that reason, the value of early fact-finding has repeatedly been emphasised.
8. As to alienation, we do not intend to add to the debate about labels. We agree with Sir
Andrew McFarlane (see [2018] Fam Law 988) that where behaviour is abusive,
protective action must be considered whether or not the behaviour arises from a
syndrome or diagnosed condition. It is nevertheless necessary to identify in broad termswhat we are speaking about. For working purposes, the CAFCASS definition of
alienation is sufficient:
“When a child’s resistance/hostility towards one parent is not
justified and is the result of psychological manipulation by the
other parent.”To that may be added that the manipulation of the child by the other parent need not be
malicious or even deliberate. It is the process that matters, not the motive.13. In summary, in a situation of parental alienation the obligation on the court is to respond with exceptional diligence and take whatever effective measures are available. The situation calls for judicial resolve because the line of least resistance is likely to be less
Lord Justice McCombe, Lady Justice King, Lord Justice Peter Jackson (2020)
stressful for the child and for the court in the short term. But it does not represent a
solution to the problem. Inaction will probably reinforce the position of the stronger
party at the expense of the weaker party and the bar will be raised for the next attempt
at intervention. Above all, the obligation on the court is to keep the child’s medium to
long term welfare at the forefront of its mind and wherever possible to uphold the child
and parent’s right to respect for family life before it is breached. In making its overall
welfare decision the court must therefore be alert to early signs of alienation. What will
amount to effective action will be a matter of judgement, but it is emphatically not
necessary to wait for serious, worse still irreparable, harm to be done before appropriate
action is taken. It is easier to conclude that decisive action was needed after it has
become too late to take it.
Cases which are considered to have met the welfare threshold for serious harm are those where the child concerned is considered to have gone beyond parental control or where the child is not receiving the parenting to which they are entitled to by law. This is the point, at which removal may be considered. Decisions about whether a case has met the welfare threshold, are made by judges and are taken after extensive investigation.
Those who work with families affected by a child’s outright rejection of a parent in situations where there is no evidence to suggest that the rejected parent has caused harm, and where the Court has heard all of the evidence and where the judge has made a decision that the child is being harmed, recognise that removal of the child from the parent they are hyper aligned to, is on the basis of the harm which is being caused by that parent.
Just as a child who is being physically or sexually abused, is removed from the parent causing that harm, a child who is being emotionally or psychologically abused, is, sometimes, removed from a parent causing that, when they are unable or unwilling to change their behaviours. That is the law and transparency in the enactment of the law, would demonstrate that.
Parents who have been rejected by their children, are once again recipients of shame and blame and their experience is being erased and mischaracterised. This is not unexpected, but it is deeply unpleasant to observe. One of the problems that we have, is that public discource around this problem is driven by the very people who have something to gain from relying upon anecdotal evidence. Surveys of self selecting groups of parents, tend to cloud the issue rather than illuminate it. If you ask people who have had their children removed from them, for example, it is unlikely that these people will tell you that the system is fair or that they have harmed their children. And yet, these voices are elevated by some, as the only reality, to a point at which they dominate the discourse around what is actually, a highly complex, psychological and relational child welfare issue.
Opening up the family courts in a way that remains protective of children’s right to anonymity, can only increase understanding of why decisions to protect those children are taken by judges. It will also prevent the public debate from being dependent upon anecdotal evidence and personal interest.
Family Separation Clinic Evaluation
Given the degree to which the debate around this issue is driven by personal experiences and, some may argue, political agenda, it is particularly important that more objective evidence is obtained.
We hope that the year-long, independent evaluation of the Clinic’s services, which is being carried out by researcher’s from a UK university, will contribute to that. For example, it is frequently argued that the term ’parental alienation’ is used by men to obscure allegations of domestic abuse that are levelled by mothers. And yet, the latest gender diseggregated statistics from parents seeking the Clinic’s support around rejection by a child after divorce and separation, reveals that, in the period 1 April to 30 June 2021, 75.4% of clinical work was with rejected mothers and 24.6% was with rejected fathers.
The study will utilise both quantitive and qualitative methodologies to, independently, explore and understand the experiences of those accessing the Clinic’s services. It is only through such objective approaches that we can shift the discussion about alienation reactions in children away from sensationalisation on both sides of this sensitive topic and towards a more nuanced, clinical and empirical understanding of the problem.
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
Hi Karen I was waiting for your blog today and as always it hasn’t disappointed – thank you for keeping on banging the drum and importantly (from my perspective) having the desegregated statistics give real weight and balance to less aware perspectives. Great blog!
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Glad you found it helpful Clair, in the midst of sensationalism, this issue has to be addressed from a) the perspective of child protection and b) from as distant objective as it is possible to attain (not easy in the middle of a storm of negative projections). I go to the place where the judge makes the ruling, that is my starting point. If a judge subsequently overrules that, I go to the overruling view. That and only that, in my view, is how it is possible to do this work with the child at the centre. All the rest is just he said/she said. I do think transparency in the enactment of the law would help, I think it would help judges to understand what other judges are doing too. The statistics are essential to look at, these stats are self referrals, which in itself is interesting because here again we are only looking at what people themselves are saying about their experience. When it comes to the work we do with clinical trials and residence transfers, which are delivered after fact finding and judgment of alienation, then we will see the way in which this work is balanced in terms of who is being judged to have harmed children and what the outcomes of intervention are. Results are due in 2022, the evaluation is underway now. I saw some of the testimony yesterday, from rejected parents judged to be innocent of all wrong doing, it is moving and powerful – however, lest I trip into the same anecodotal evidence giving I am critiquing in this blog, I will let the results speak, eventually, for themselves. K
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Interesting comments, I would like to know the sample size of your study for such figures.
And how many if the Mothers who complained about Alienation actually live with their children. As I find that hard to process when 90% of Single Parent Households are Mothers.
In my experience many people are delusional and absolve their conscience to protect the integrity of their minds. I call it mental shielding. That is why they can seldom admit culpability. It is like constantly looking in the mirror when your face is riddled with blemishes and scars and deliberately not acknowledging them due to prevent the loss of self esteem or those who refuse to acknowledge hair loss by combing their hair over in an attempt to disguise it. Instead of shaving their hair level.
We are supposed to have checks and balances via impartial regulators, researchers and professional pyschologists to provide impartial analysis.
In terms of Domestic Abuse again in my experience this is usually a tool by narcissistic resident parents too maintain control over children physically and emotionally. While creating a financial nest to shield them from poverty for social housing and welfare benefits.
I took part in this research and when a fellow activist published the results the findings backed up my hypothesis.
https://www.upfederation.org/blog/our-blog-1/false-allegations-in-family-court-results-2
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Cognition and Language
A Series in Psycholinguistics • Series Editor: R. W Rieber
THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
Robert W. Rieber and Harold J. Vetter
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
The Double-Bind Concept and Gregory Bateson
Sullivan (1944) has expressed the belief that language serves the vital function of preserving feelings of security among one’s fellow human beings. The schizophrenic’s peculiarities of language, he proposes, arise from an extreme need to feel secure. The schizophrenic does not believe that speech will help attain gratification; instead, it is used to counteract feelings of insecurity. The problem lies in recurrent severe disturbances in the schizophrenic’s relationships with people that result in a confusion of the critical faculties concerning the structure of spoken and written language.
In a similar vein, Cameron (1944) suggests that the schizophrenic has somehow managed to become isolated from the common social environment.
The language behavior and thinking of the organized adult are outgrowths of repeated social communication that depends on the development of an ability to take the role of other persons, to be able to reproduce their attitudes in one’s own responses and thus learn to react to one’s own behavior as others are reacting to it. The acquisition of this ability is what makes a social person. Cameron feels that schizophrenics are people who have never been able to develop role-taking skills and therefore have not been able to establish themselves firmly in the cultural pattern. In the face of emotional conflicts and disappointments the schizophrenic withdraws into fantasy life, which eventually dominates all thinking and excludes social life altogether.
Kasanin (1944) also maintains that the most important cause of disturbance in the language and thought of the schizophrenic is the disarticulation of the schizophrenic from the social context. It is obvious that early on the child or infant goes through some traumatic process that interferes with his or her relation to the outside world. The nature of this process involves the peculiar pattern of communicative behavior in the parent-child context to which the name double-bind has been given.
The double-bind hypothesis, first advanced by Gregory Bateson and his associates (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956), emphasizes the communication or interaction that occurs between parents and child. According to the theory, the parents (usually the mother) continually communicate conflicting or incongruent messages to the child because the mother for some reason has a fear of intimate contact with the child but is unable to accept this fear and denies it by overtly expressing “loving behavior.” These two different and conflicting orders of messages are presented to the child at the same time.
The presentation of these incongruent messages poses a problem for the child. Since the mother is the primary love object, the child would like to be able to discriminate accurately between the messages received from her. However, if the child does this, he or she will be punished by the realization that his mother does not really love him or her. On the other hand, if the child does not discriminate accurately between the messages and accepts his mother’s simulated loving behavior as real, he or she will then approach his mother. When the child does this, she will become hostile, causing him or her to withdraw. After the child withdraws, she will punish him or her verbally for withdrawing because it indicated to her that she was not a loving mother.
Consequently, the child is punished whether he or she accurately or inaccurately discriminates between the messages. Hence, the child is caught in a double-bind.
The only real escape for the child from this situation is to communicate with the mother about the position in which she has put him or her. However, if the child does this, she will probably take the communication as an accusation that she is not a loving mother and will punish the child for saying it. In other words, the child is not allowed to talk about the situation in an effort to resolve it.
Because this sequence of events occurs repeatedly in the child’s home life, his or her ability to communicate with others about their communication to him or her is greatly impaired. As a result, the child is incompetent in determining what other people really mean when they communicate with him or her and also incompetent in expressing what he or she really means when he or she communicates with others.
Because of this impairment of the ability to relate to others effectively, the child may begin to respond defensively to others with incongruent responses when presented with the double-bind situation. In addition, the child may manifest withdrawal or other defense mechanisms that are part of the symptomatology of schizophrenia.
THE LOGICAL BASIS FOR DOUBLE BIND
Bateson (1955) reports that the basic conception of the double bind grew out of his observation of animals in a semi-naturalistic setting. As part of a 10-year study of communication he was interested in the ways animals use signals in their interactions. The critical nature of these stimuli is best seen when animals are at play. When Bateson was invited to the Fleishhacker Zoo in California, he observed an interesting pair of otters that would not play with one another. One characteristic of otters is their playful nature; therefore, this pair was a rarity warranting closer examination. Bateson put together a string device to entice the otters to play with him, which they learned to do. When he withdrew, however, Bateson noticed that the otters would only play with one another for a limited amount of time: “The autism of his otters made him reflect anew on the mental disturbances of schizophrenic children and schizophrenic adults” (Rieber, 1989, p. 8).
Nearly as striking in the interaction is the fact that normal otters, like typical human children and/or adults, freely play with one another and seemingly know how to distinguish a menacing shove from a playful pat on the back.
Such activity requires a surprisingly sophisticated message system that in effect communicates, “These actions, in which we now engage, do not denote what would be denoted by these actions which the actions denote” (Bateson, 1955).
A playful bite must not be misperceived as an attack, even though it is the same in form as an attack. Two messages, the “bite” and “This is play,” are on different levels of communication and are both required for play to occur. The first message denies the assertion of the second, and vice versa, and thus forms an Epimenides type of paradox.
In logic an example of this type of paradox is that as shown in Figure 7.1.
Because the first statement is about the second statement, it is, by definition, on a different level of abstraction. And since each statement denies the assertion of another statement, the set of statements constitutes a paradox. It is a contradiction that follows a correct deduction from consistent premises. Bertrand Russell, in his Theory of Logical Types (Whitehead & Russell, 1913), was the first to “solve” this type of paradox with the general rule that whatever involved all of a collection must not be one of the collection. Therefore, the Epimenides type of paradox is an example of a type of reasoning, that is, an inappropriate use of concepts drawn from two levels.
Russell’s approach accounted for antinomies, or paradoxes arising in formal logical systems; Carnap (1942) proposed a similar theory to account for hidden inconsistencies that arise from the structure of language (“paradoxical definitions”). By theorizing that there exist an object language and a meta-language about objects, a metalanguage about the metalanguage, and so on,
All statements within this frame are true
I love you I hate you
FIGURE 7.1. Epimenidean paradox.
and by applying Russell’s rule, paradoxes of the type “I am lying” can be defined as meaningless self-reflexive statements. This brief discussion of logic is necessary because Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) indicate that the paradox has pragmatic implications for everyday life. The fundamental conception of the double bind grows directly from these logical considerations.
INITIAL APPLICATIONS
Haley (1955) made some immediate extensions of Bateson’s insights to fantasy, hypnosis, and psychotherapy. In 1956, Bateson, Jackson, Weakland, and Haley began to study schizophrenic communication. They hypothesized that the symptoms of schizophrenics were due mainly to an inability to assign the correct communicational mode to their own messages, to messages from others, or to their own thoughts and feelings. The notion behind the “communicational mode” was not defined, but it apparently referred to levels of communication: The schizophrenic seemed to be suffering from inner conflicts of logical typing a la Russell. Bateson et al. (1956) stated that, if their reading of the symptoms was correct and the hypothesized schizophrenia essentially resulted from familial interaction, it ought to be possible to arrive a priori at a formal description of those consequences of experience that would induce such a series of symptoms. The result of this deductive interactional approach to schizophrenia was the first explication of the double-bind hypothesis.
In Bateson et al. (1956) the stress was placed on the relationship between the schizophrenic victim and his or her anxious mother. The major elements of the double bind were (1) two or more people who have (2) repeated experience with a communication pattern consisting of (3) a primary negative injunction and (4) a secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, plus (5) a tertiary negative injunction prohibiting escape from the field.
The complete set of ingredients is no longer necessary when the victim learns to perceive the universe in “double-bind patterns.” In their discussion of schizophrenia per se, Bateson et aI. (1956) add the concept of an intense relationship, defined as one in which the schizophrenic feels that accurate discrimination of the type of message being communicated is crucially important so that he or she may make the appropriate responses. Furthermore, the individual is unable to comment on the double bind so as to correct the misperception. Presumably, the motivational state inferred here guarantees the necessary repeated experience with the double bind, and the inability to comment is analogous to an inability to leave the field.
Lu (1962) and Ferreira (1960) objected to the dyadic emphasis in Bateson et al. (1956) and advanced the “quadruple bind” and “split double bind,” respectively, to describe pathological communication patterns involving more than two family members. Around the same time, Weakland (1960) attempted a systematic extension of the initial conception to three-party interactions. Lu (1962) interestingly reports a double-bind pattern that is cultural in origin.
The mothers of the schizophrenics in the study apparently attempted to make their children simultaneously dependent and independent; further, an analysis of “sick” versus “well” siblings indicated that the schizophrenics were the children who attempted to obey both injunctions. Unfortunately, the promised full analysis of Lu’s sample of schizophrenics has never appeared in print.
Ferreira (1960) contends that the double-bind hypothesis has greater generality than as a theory of schizophrenia. He found that the families of delinquent boys tend to be characterized by bipolar messages from the parents to the children. These take the form:
1. A to B: “Thou shall not … x (or I will not love you).”
2. C to B: “Thou shall not. .. obey, hear, etc …. A’s message (or I will not love you).”
The child finds it impossible to obey both messages and is often pushed out of the field (i.e., the family interaction pattern). The major difference between this formulation and the one set forth by Bateson et al. (1956) is the lack of a tertiary negative injunction. It is possible that various “types” of double-bind characterize various “types” of disturbed families and that schizophrenic, neurotic, delinquent, or homosexual behavior is simply an attempt to adjust to the peculiar demands of this type of environment. Mishler and Waxler (1965) report initial indications of considerable similarity among families that produce a variety of disturbed children.
Weakland (1960) emphasized that both individuals in the interaction were caught in the double bind and also that more than two individuals could be involved. He went on to postulate that the concealment, denial, and inhibition inherent in the basic contradictory pair of messages make the achievement of an adequate response nearly impossible. This was the first attempt to define some of the processes that prevent meaningful responses to paradoxical communications.
Jackson (1960, 1961) developed some of the themes of Haley’s (1955) analysis of psychotherapy and formulated the concept of the therapeutic double bind, that is, that all forms of psychotherapy set up double binds through the requirements they place on the patient in the situation. Jackson and Haley (1963) explicated the double binds in psychoanalysis, and Haley (1963) extended the analysis to other types of therapy. A “cure” in this formulation comes about when the patient finally realizes the nature of the “game” the therapist is playing and refuses to play further. Watts (1961) stresses the “gamesmanship” aspects of this type of therapy and then attempts to picture the basic structure of society as a double bind consisting of rules that confer independence and in doing so take it away again. One of the unfortunate aspects of the double bind is that it can be applied fairly easily to almost any aspect of human behavior.
Watzlawick (1963) reviewed the literature on the double-bind up to 1961 and commented that few of the references cited dealt with the essential component of the double-bind, that is, the theory of logical types. He also stressed that the double-bind was not equivalent to a failure to discriminate stimuli in an experimental situation. Pavlov’s (1927) experiments on experimentally induced neuroses are an analog because the animal was first trained to discriminate the circle and oval. Behavior broke down when the discrimination was made impossible for the animal, not because of the ability to discriminate but because a previously established contingency pattern was broken.
In a short article, Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland (1963) reviewed their recently concluded research project and offered a series of observations and conclusions with respect to the double-bind. The double bind, they stated, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition in accounting for the etiology of schizophrenic disorders. However, they make it plain that they regard the double bind as an inevitable byproduct of schizophrenic communication.
They emphasize that observable communicative behavior and relationships are the appropriate object of empirical and theoretical analyses involving the double-bind concept. They prefer to “conceptualize the conflicting definitions of the relationship” rather than a simple relationship involving a binder and a victim.
During the mid-1960s, the Palo Alto group dealt mainly with various aspects of schizophrenia and family therapy and only incidentally with the double bind. Only those papers that seem germane to a definition of the phenomenon are reported in the following sections of this chapter. Mishler and Waxler (1965) provide an excellent review of contributions to schizophrenia and a comparison of various theoretical approaches to family therapy.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOUBLE BIND
A number of attempts have been made to define more precisely the double bind. Watzlawick (1965) provided the most comprehensive analysis of the relation between the double bind and logical paradoxes. He postulates a set of pragmatic paradoxes that are simply the semantic paradoxes (paradoxical definitions) that occur in one form or another in communication. 1Wo of the most common types of pragmatic paradoxes are paradoxical injunctions (the core of the interactional double bind) and paradoxical predictions.
Paradoxical injunctions are statements that demand conflicting types of behaviors, such as “You ought to love me” or “Don’t be so obedient,” which demand behavior that can only be spontaneous. This is the usual conception of the double bind and can presumably be handled by either commenting on the communication (meta-communicating), attempting to bind the binder, or re-treating into a paradoxical (schizophrenic) mode of communication that enables a person to communicate that he or she is not communicating without actual communication taking place (Watzlawick, 1965).
The relation of paradoxical predictions to the double bind is not clear. The paradox in this case is based on the contention that “reason and trust do not mix. ” This is most clearly seen in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, in which trust of the other player and rational self-interest dictate alternative strategies so that the strategy usually adopted is the one involving minimal loss. In this case the paradox depends on the player’s analysis of the situation conflicting with his/her analysis of another’s intentions. Unfortunately in human interactions one subject must make predictions about another because the former cannot know the latter as the latter knows him- or herself. This raises the melancholy prospect that in at least some cases the victim may bind him- or herself as much or more than he or she is bound by others in an interaction situation. This conception also allows the prediction that an outside observer who has had some previous contact with the individuals in a communication situation will probably mislabel some straightforward interactions as double binds. The observer’s previous experience could result in erroneous predictions about various meta-levels of the ongoing communication.
Sluzki, Beavin, Tarnopolsky, and Veron (1967) made a pioneering effort to redefine the double bind in more experimentally meaningful terms. They postulated the existence of many different types of double binds, all based on differing paradoxical injunctions. They redefine Bateson et al.·s (1956) criteria in terms of disqualifying statements and attempt to indicate some of the common reactions to this “transactional disqualification.” Their approach is important because it attempts to tie a specific type of double bind to a specific set of behaviors. Unfortunately, this study only presented clinical data, and the list of reactions is almost certainly too limited, but this is undoubtedly the only way to analyze the double bind in complex interaction situations. The theoretical literature on the double bind is replete with what are labeled examples of the double bind, but in many cases the bind is by no means as clear to the readers as it is to the writers. Even in the best collection of this material, a tape published by Watzlawick (1964), the nature of the bind is not always immediately apparent. When an entire family pattern is observed, analysis becomes incredibly complex (Jones, 1964). Haley (1963) admitted that the therapist frequently does not become aware of the binding nature of some interactions until considerable time has elapsed.
Bateson et al. (1963) have complained that the double bind is not the core of their work and have indicated that their major focus of interest was the development of a communicational approach to the study of behavior. The first full version of this theory was presented by Watzlawick et al. (1967), in which they offered a model for the analysis of the behavioral effects (pragmatics) of human communication. Basic postulates include the impossibility of not communicating (since even silence has some sort of communicative significance), the idea that every communication consists of a message and an injunction (metacommunication) that constrains behavior, and the notion that the nature of a relationship is contingent on the patterning of the communicational sequences between participants.
The fact that human beings can communicate both digitally and analogically is the source of many of the paradoxical features of human relationships.’ The difficulties involve semantics, on the one hand, and syntactics, on the other hand. That is, digital language does not possess adequate semantic resources in the area of relationships, although it boasts a complex and versatile syntax. Conversely, analogic language has adequate semantics but lacks a logical and well-delineated syntax for dealing with relationships.
Watzlawick et al. (1967) present a modified and expanded formulation of the double bind. First, it is essential that two or more people be involved in the kind of intense relationship (love, loyalty, dependence, etc.) that has a “high degree of physical and/or survival value” for them, individually or collectively.
Second, a message is transmitted within this context that poses mutually exclusive interpretations, that is, if it is an injunction, it must be either obeyed or disobeyed. Third, constraints are present in the situation that prevent the individual from “leaving the field” by withdrawing or by means of metacommunication. This last stipulation is necessary if double binds are to be defined as paradoxes and not mere contradictions, since in contradictions, unlike paradoxes, an alternative is left open to the individual.
This definition of the double bind is both more explicit and easier to work with than those presented elsewhere. It should be fairly easy to set up a situation in a laboratory setting in which two people are in a fairly intense relationship.
The experimental procedures developed in social psychology should be useful in this context. The wide list of situations mentioned should allow various different experiments that simply control the type of situation as an independent variable.
Simply stated, the second element of the double bind mentioned above indicates that any communication that in any way modifies another communication can potentially set up the binding situation. The two types of disqualification mentioned are probably part of a much larger set of binds that would require a set of investigations testing the effects of various ways of setting up mutually exclusive assertions. The conflicting messages could of course be introduced into the situation by a stooge, but it would probably be easier to use a set of standardized messages and structure the situation so that the individual feels it is essential to respond appropriately to the correct meaning of the message. An important line of research would deal with the ability of individuals to perceive double binds present in a larger set of communications and would also attempt to determine how people normally attempt to deal with paradoxical messages. The effects of varying the supposed source of the communication should also be tested, since a communication from a “significant other” should have an effect different from a communication from a less important source. Finally the effect of various operational definitions of the levels of communication must be evaluated.
The final element of the double bind, the restriction on metacommunication or withdrawal, may be difficult to set up in an experimental situation, but the initial instructions or the context of the experiment could probably control this. The definition offered by Watzlawick et al. (1967) is wide enough to allow various experiments but narrow enough to impose some regularity on the eventual results of such experimentation.
Most of the available material on the double bind is anecdotal in nature and there have been few well-designed studies. A review of the literature, however, seems to indicate that this pattern is changing, and more researchers are becoming interested in this area of inquiry.
Haley (1964), in a departure from his usual approach to family research, analyzed triads drawn from 40 healthy and 40 disturbed families. By simply measuring the order in which individuals talked he was able to significantly differentiate the two types of families. The addition of a fourth family member, however, changed the interaction patterns and washed out the difference (Haley, 1967).
Coser (1960) pointed out the importance of laughter in setting up double binds. Zuk, Roszormeny-Nagy, and Heiman (1963) were able to make a reliable count of the number of laughs in a family-therapy situation and report a significant inverse relationship between the number of times the parents and their schizophrenic daughter laughed. Zuk (1964) follows up this study and attempts systematically to relate laughter to the double bind. Zuk et al. (1963) and Haley’s studies are important not because they buttress the double-bind concept but because they represent useful ways of studying interactions in situations in which double binds may be present.
Schuham (1967) reports on three doctoral dissertations (Ciotola, 1961; Potash, 1965; Loeff, 1966) that involved the double bind. Ciotola (1961) exposed schizophrenics and nonpsychotic psychiatric patients to an impossible auditory discrimination and then tested their reaction times to simply auditory discriminations. The fact that no differences were found is not surprising since, to satisfy the definition of the double bind, the order of presentation of discrimination tasks would have to be reversed. Also, since it is possible that the double bind may be involved in all types of behavior pathology, the comparison group should have more accurately reflected the general population.
Potash (1965) matched undifferentiated male schizophrenics and hospital employees on age, education, and intelligence and tested them in a two-person, three-choice game. It was hypothesized that the schizophrenics would choose more often to withdraw from the game, yet this was not confirmed. Why this game is not an analogy to the double bind is not clear from Schuham (1967), but an important part of the double-bind concept is that the schizophrenic cannot withdraw from the situation except through pathological communication. A more meaningful measure in this type of situation would have been the changes, if any, in the behavior of schizophrenics as they confront the situation.
Nonschizophrenics should handle this situation in somewhat different ways. A useful design is employed in Loeff (1966). He presented nonschizophrenics, schizophrenics, and delinquents with a set of metaphors in which the content and verbal affect were in direct conflict. Semantic differential scales (but not rating scales) significantly differentiated normal and combined pathological groups. The schizophrenics were not deficient in their perception of the metacommunication, and both pathological groups responded more to the affect than to the content level. As Schuham (1967) points out, both of these findings conflict with the Palo Alto group’s conceptualization of schizophrenia. The differential results found with semantic differential and rating scales are interesting and bear directly on the question of how double binds are perceived. Variations on Loeff’s design are likely to form a significant segment of future work on the double bind.
Berger (1965) developed a questionnaire consisting of 30 double-bind statements and applied it to patients with a history of communicational difficulties, nonschizophrenic hospitalized patients, ward attendants, and college students. The initial form differentiated schizophrenics and college students, and a form containing the 12 most discriminating items differentiated the two groups of hospitalized patients. The five items that best discriminated the schizophrenics from the other groups reflects either an affect/content or a father/mother conflict. The results indicate that it may be possible to develop a discriminating measure based on certain types of double-bind statements.
Schuham (1967) objects to the procedure of requesting subjects to recall experiences on the grounds that such a procedure is unreliable. Berger (1965), however, reports a significant test-retest reliability when the questionnaire is given over a one-week period.
Perhaps the clearest example of the weaknesses of the double-bind concept can be found in two studies of letters to schizophrenics. Weakland and Fry (1962) postulated that such letters are typical of the communication patterns normally present between the sender and the recipient and as such are a “permanent and objective piece of data, on one level, unitary, condensed and easier to study.” They arrived at their conclusions without study of non-schizophrenic letters, and in a number of cases their analysis of the sample letters is based more on their intimate knowledge of the patient than on what was actually written. Ringuette and Kennedy (1966) obtained 40 letters from parents to their schizophrenic children and also asked volunteers to write similar letters. The letters were rated on a seven-point scale (schizophrenic to nonschizophrenic): first-year psychiatric interns with experience in the double-bind theory applied Weakland and Fry’s (1962) criteria; experienced informed and uninformed clinicians sorted the letters into schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic categories; and naive raters used a seven-point like/dislike scale.
Only the naive raters and the interns with double-blind experience were consistent, while the “expert” and the “trained” judges were unable to differentiate the volunteer letters from the rest. Ringuette and Kennedy (1966) clearly indicates the uselessness of a global definition when one is trying to correctly perceive a phenomenon in a complex set of communications that are presumed to contain that phenomenon. The same processes that lead to the unreliability of clinical diagnosis are probably at work in this situation.
SUMMARY AND REDEFINMON
The work of Bateson, Haley, Jackson, and Weakland has already served the important purpose of shifting attention from psychic factors to the study of interactional processes through the analysis of communicational behaviors.
Their interest, however, centers on the creation of a useful theory and not on the design of useful experiments to test that theory. Any attempt to investigate rigorously the pragmatic effects of communication must redefine the global definitions of phenomena now available into smaller, more carefully limited and operational statements that can be utilized in the design of experiments. In the specific case of the double-bind, this must involve recognition of the fact that, if the double-bind exists, it is only the generic label for a large class of interactions satisfying some set of criteria drawn from logic and that the properties and effects of different “types” of double-binds may well have different behavioral effects. The properties of these binds will in part depend on how the three aspects of the double bind are operationally defined.
The requirement of an “intense relationship” could, for example, be defined as a situation in which the individual is motivated to perceive correctly and/or respond appropriately to a set of communications. The experimental question then becomes: How can we set up experiments to initiate and maintain this “set”? If, by definition, any statement that refers to another statement is logically on a higher level than the first statement, then the process of setting up conflicting communications on different levels becomes clear. The various dichotomies (abstract/concrete, verbal/nonverbal, etc.) mentioned in the literature become different ways of operationalizing the basic concept and presumably have some validity and probably also differential effects. Finally, an experimental situation can be so structured as to limit metacommunication and leaving the field.
In conclusion, the experimental investigation of the double-bind requires some major compromises between the desire of the Palo Alto group to extend a basic concept to large blocks of human behavior and the rather severe limitations and requirements of experimentation. This necessarily involves either the restriction of the concept to a limited range of behaviors or the breaking up of the concept into a number of categories that can be separately investigated.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Chaika (1990) has recently challenged the double-bind theory, asserting, “There is no case history proof that all schizophrenics were ever caught in such a bind. Nor is there any evidence that normals have not been caught in such a double-bind” (p. 4). She goes on to explain that schizophrenic speech is of an intermittent nature and thus “negates the double-bind theory” (Chaika, 1990, p. 4), given the contradiction resulting from the fact that schizophrenics can communicate at times, although not at all times. Chaika claims that schizophrenics, like others, must somehow and at some time have learned to communicate, and she further points out the important role played by peers in all learning processes. She emphasizes the established notion that the peer group is relevant to a child’s language, basing this assertion on “sociolinguistic studies [which] have determined again and again that the peer group is the primary source of a child’s language, not the parent” (Chaika, 1990, p. 4).
This criticism of the double-bind, however, stems from a simplified view that fails unfortunately to make an effort to understand the very premises of the theory. Bateson’s double-bind does not address the speech processes that Chaika is concerned with, instead focusing on the communication that takes place between the mother and child “culture.” Psychotic speech might have certain surface characteristics, many of which have been addressed throughout the earlier chapters, that are insightful in their own right. The double-bind theory, on the other hand, examines a much more deeply embedded process, and as such it takes a much broader perspective, or frame of reference, to accept the viability of the double-bind theory in explaining dysfunctional interaction systems.
An important point to underscore is that the double bind is a theoretical approach to explain a mental, or cognitive, problem and not a performance phenomenon. It is a theory that addresses the possible internal causes of outward behavior, which can be detected most readily in dysfunctional or otherwise abnormal linguistic patterns. In this respect, Bateson, in collaboration with Margaret Mead, advanced the notion of “schismogenesis” to describe “patterns of interchange between self and others that lead to a rapid escalation of behavior and a concomitant breakdown of social integration” (Rieber, 1989, p. 5).
Schismogenesis is a label for the circumstances in which the behavior of one individual serves as a signal to another to initiate more drastic behavior.
This might in turn serve as a signal to the first to again react negatively, further arousing negative reactions on the part of the second individual. In such a possibly infinite cycle, a mere, slight, initial difference, perhaps a threatening gesture from one individual, igniting a feeling of threat in another, can cause the system to run rapidly out of control. The problem arises from the unbreak-able loop in the cycle, almost resembling the way a computer might” get stuck” on a damaged application and run awry, not correcting itself until the power is switched off and usually losing some amount of information in the material that was being worked on. However, if the system is not turned off, the loop continues endlessly and hopelessly. In a way, the computer is caught in a double bind: If it is turned off, the information will be lost, but if no such action is taken, the loop will not automatically correct itself.
Little current research has focused on Bateson’s ideas about the double bind. This could be due to the interdisciplinary and eclectic nature of the topics under the scope of Bateson’s work, a characteristic of few researchers in any of these areas of study. However, the study of the mind encompasses more than that concocted in formal research settings. Indeed, our resources are limited with respect to formalized approaches to the study of communication. Yet we can gain exceptional insight from extraordinary individuals like Bateson in their unorthodox confrontations with questions pertaining to human cognition such as those we have been attempting to answer throughout this text.
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