Editing Double bind (section)

== Development of the hypothesis ==
{{More citations needed section|date=August 2023}}

The term ''double bind'' was coined by the [[anthropologist]] [[Gregory Bateson]] and his colleagues (including [[Donald deAvila Jackson|Don D. Jackson]], [[Jay Haley]] and [[John Weakland|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 [[#Theory of logical types|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 helplessness|learned patterns of confusion]] in thinking and communication.

While working in the United States' Veteran's Administration Hospital with World War II veterans during 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". {{Clarify span|date=February 2021|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.&nbsp;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 [[delusion]]al system (see in ''Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia&nbsp;– Illustrations from Clinical Data'').{{fcn|date=July 2022}}

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 described by Mark L. Ruffalo as occurring within the context of [[Personality disorder|personality pathology]], specifically [[borderline personality disorder]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ruffalo |first=Mark L. |date=March 2025 |title=Heads I win, tails you lose: Interpersonal aspects of borderline personality disorder |url=https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/bumc.2025.89.1.52 |journal=Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic |volume=89 |issue=1 |pages=52–69 |doi=10.1521/bumc.2025.89.1.52 |pmid=40063356 |issn=0025-9284|url-access=subscription }}</ref> He has hypothesized that patients with [[borderline personality disorder|BPD]] engage in double bind communication as a result of their characteristic need-fear dilemma, a simultaneous need for and fear of closeness with other persons.