The concept of a double bind characterizes a persistent style of communication that puts its victim in a difficult, painful and «hopeless» position. This happens because:
- At different levels of communication, different, conflicting requirements are presented;
- The victim is deprived of the opportunity to express his attitude towards the double bond or to withdraw from the interaction.
The double bond deprives the ability to receive messages that are clear in meaning as a result of communication and take part in social interactions.
One single complex communicative act can contain many messages belonging to different logical types, according to Bertrand Russell, and often includes different modalities that may contradict or reinforce each other. The aggressive meaning of the message can be softened, for example, by appropriate movements, posture or tone, expressing that «everything that happens is a joke.» Moreover, the meaning of the message can be highly dependent on the environment or the experience of the past interaction of the participants in the communication.
The communication approach implies that each entry of the parties into communication includes a message suggesting or confirming one or another type of interaction, as well as a response message in which this type of interaction can be accepted, modified or rejected. Adolescents’ violent skirmishes with their parents often have nothing to do with the explicit content of the dispute, but rather reflect the changes taking place in their relationship with which one or the other side does not agree.
The ability to decipher the meaning of communicative acts requires special learning, often non-verbal, especially in the presence of obvious contradictions between the levels of the communicative message, as in the case when swear words are pronounced with laughter. When the meaning of a message is not obvious, people learn to move to a more abstract level and start discussing such ambiguous messages in an attempt to clarify their meaning. Children initially do not have this ability, and depriving them of the opportunity to learn to understand the meaning of messages can affect them already in adulthood, leading to serious disorders.
The communication style with a double link is especially dangerous due to the presence of internal contradictions and blocking of learning. Double bond research often manifests itself in the mother-child interaction, where the mother does not seem to seek to be understood by the child. Such a mother lacks both acceptance of the child and acceptance of the very fact of his rejection. The double bond describes a veiled desire to maintain distance in a relationship, which is masked by a mutual demonstration of love and care. Such parents actually encourage intimacy on one level of communication while rejecting it on another.